Nederland en Afghanistan 43

De Amerikaanse journalist William Fisher schrijft in een artikel voor Inter Press Service over een nieuw martelkamp van onze bondgenoot in de 'war on terror.' Een gevangenis in Afghanistan waar te zijner tijd gevangenen van de Nederlandse militairen in Uruzgan ongetwijfeld in zullen verdwijnen zodra de Amerikanen dit bepalen. Fisher: 'Noah S. Leavitt, an attorney who has worked with the International Law Commission of the United Nations in Geneva and the International Court of Justice in The Hague, took issue with the US military's chief spokesman in Afghanistan, who is quoted as saying the US is "providing the best possible living conditions and medical care in accordance with the principles of the Geneva Convention." That statement, Leavitt charged, "highlights the administration's ignorance of or cavalier attitude toward long-established international law." He added, "The world will always be in catch-up mode when it comes to investigating, discovering and challenging the many ways the Bush administration has undermined international legal norms. Just as they did for Guantánamo, concerned lawyers, journalists and researchers will have to figure out how to gain access to Bagram in order to bring the harsh treatment of the prisoners to the attention of the US judicial system and the international community before any improvements are seen." Leaders of the religious community have also weighed in on the Bagram issue. George Hunsinger, McCord professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and coordinator of Church Folks for a Better America, told us, "America must lead by example. If we continue to shame our country through secret prisons, torture and abuse, the world will no longer look to us as a beacon of hope, but as a dungeon of despair. The only way to defeat terrorism is by upholding our ideals not by trampling on them." Meanwhile, in a related development, a new round of reviews of the Guantánamo Bay detainees is set to begin, but attorneys say the US government is flouting military and international law by preventing any meaningful consideration of proposed evidence and denying information to the detainees' lawyers. Experts from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which is currently overseeing 450 pro-bono attorneys representing the detainees, expressed "outrage about this violation of due process" and pointed to a new federal court decision vindicating their calls for transparent and fair hearings.' Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030206Z.shtml Zie voor William Fisher's weblog: The World According to Bill Fisher.