People Before Profit blog

U.S. bends law to deny justice to Cuban 5

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 12:44:00 +0000

Routine administrative and legal procedures are often subject to manipulation, never more so than when Cuba’s enemies manipulate them.

The misuse of accepted procedures is seen in the continuing persecution of five Cuban men and members of their families. René Gonzáles, Gerardo Hernández, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González have been in U.S. jails for seven years. Three of them received life terms (two life terms for one), the other two, 19 years and 15 years each. Their crime: giving Cuba a heads-up on anti-Cuba terrorist actions coming out of Florida.

Olga Salanueva has not visited her husband René for over five years. René last saw their 7-year-old daughter Ivette when she was four months old. Adriana Perez has not has not seen her husband Gerardo for seven years.

The U.S. government refuses to issue them visas that are required for entry into the United States. Amnesty International in 2002 and the UN Human Rights Commission this year condemned the U.S. denial of visas as a violation of international law.

On Oct. 29, Adriana learned that Washington had rejected her sixth visa application. After multiple interviews, administration officials informed Olga on Nov. 9 that a decision on her seventh application was “delayed.”

U.S. officials base their refusal to grant Olga a visa on regulations relating to her deportation in 2002. Their first excuse with Adriana was that she represented a security threat. Now she is excluded as a potential immigrant. Observers suggest that Washington holds back on visas in order to intimidate René and Gerardo.

Judicial proceedings for the five prisoners are off course too. On Aug. 9, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the verdicts handed down at their Miami trial were prejudiced and invalid. A new trial was expected.

On Oct. 31, however, the court announced its acceptance of the prosecution’s request for another appeals hearing, this time before the whole court rather than a three-judge panel. The new appeal will extend well into 2006.

Richard Klugh, defense lawyer for Fernando González, was incredulous. In 25 years, he told the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde, he had never encountered a “full court hearing granted for reconsideration of a unanimous decision” from a judicial panel. “We are speaking of ideas, of an ideological battle. … In the United States what we have is the politicization of criminal law.”

The case of Luis Posada Carilles, an international terrorist in U.S. custody, also illustrates the hazards of subordinating the law to political considerations. Venezuela has requested Posada’s extradition so that judicial proceedings interrupted by his CIA-assisted escape from jail can be resumed. He was in prison there for having organized the bombing in 1976 of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 persons.

An extradition treaty exists between the two nations. Nevertheless, a U.S. immigration judge on Sept. 26 ruled against extradition. He’d heard uncorroborated testimony from a former Posada accomplice that current-day Venezuela tortures prisoners. He went on to invoke the UN Convention on Torture. Posada, an admitted terrorist, may eventually go free on parole unless Washington soon finds another country to accept him.

atwhit at megalink.net

Renewal of Patriot Act runs into trouble

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 12:42:00 +0000

The USA Patriot Act, major parts of which have to be reauthorized by Congress before the end of the year, has run into unexpected trouble, with both Democrats and some Republicans balking on conceding powers desired by the White House.

The act was originally passed by a large majority of the House, and only one “no” vote in the Senate (Feingold, D-Wis.), on Oct. 26, 2001, with no public input and very little congressional debate. The anger generated by 9/11 and the fear arising from the subsequent anthrax scare made it possible for the Bush administration to ram through what civil libertarians immediately denounced as a nightmarish threat to constitutional rights.

Some of the most dangerous aspects of the Patriot Act, including its extreme broadening of the legal definition of terrorism and its criminalization of certain kinds of association, do not have “sunset” or expiration provisions. They remain in force indefinitely. Other parts of the act, most of which give the government greatly widened powers of surveillance, are set to sunset this year unless they are reauthorized by Congress.

Both the government and its opponents took advantage of the debate to try to modify the law. The government tried to make permanent the sunsetted provisions and add more repressive powers. Civil libertarians attempted to increase some constitutional safeguards (such as making the government tell you within seven days if they have executed a secret search of your home or office) and continue the sunsetting provisions.

The House and Senate passed very different versions of the re-authorization bill earlier this year. The House made many more concessions to the president, while the Senate version, while hardly a civil libertarian’s dream, did add a few safeguards.

For example, in the Senate version the famous Section 215 “library search” provision, which involves other kinds of records also, would be allowed only if the person whose records are requested is suspected, as an individual, of involvement with terrorism, but in the House version would be available to investigate anybody if the matter was “relevant” to a terrorism investigation, whether the individual under surveillance was suspected of doing anything wrong or not.

The Senate version would have sunsetted some provisions in four years, but the House version would only have sunsetted them in 10 years.

The two contrasting version were then referred to a joint House-Senate Conference Committee to come up with a final version. Civil libertarian organizations such as the ACLU and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee put out the word to try to get the Conference Committee, and then the whole of both houses of Congress, to approve the Senate version and not the House one. The committee came up with a rotten compromise: Sunsetting was included for some aspects of the act, but for seven years instead of four. There were no very substantial new protections for civil liberties in the Conference version.

To the amazement of many, there was a mid-November rebellion in both houses, including Democrats and Republicans, against the report of the Conference Committee.

Major Republican figures such as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) joined liberal Democrats such as Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Vermont independent Rep. Bernie Sanders in repudiating the version produced by the Conference Committee because it did not go far enough in protecting civil liberties. They demand a reversion to the four-year sunsetting and other guarantees, and are even threatening a filibuster.

Why this bipartisan rebellion? The administration’s position on all matters related to civil liberties has been weakened by wide public debate about government abuses. The issue of torture, of secret prisons in other countries to which the U.S. government sends prisoners, the 30,000 “National Security Letters” which the Bush administration has been issuing yearly since the passage of the Patriot Act to investigate U.S. citizens and residents without their knowing it — all of these things are in the headlines every day.

Furthermore, the work that has been done at the grassroots by the many local organizations linked to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in Northampton, Mass., has had the result that nearly 400 communities, including seven state legislatures and all the largest cities, have passed resolutions denouncing the Patriot Act.

More grassroots pressure on Congress is needed now. The rebellion in the House and Senate stopped the re-authorization of the act until after Thanksgiving. The administration has stated that this is a priority when Congress reconvenes on Dec. 12 and before the Christmas break, because the originally sunsetted provisions of the act would lapse otherwise.

Editorial: Keep the pressure on

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:47:00 +0000

President George W. Bush is continuing his lies to justify the unjustifiable. In a Nov. 30 speech crafted to contain a brewing rebellion against his failed Iraq policy, he led off with a long-discredited whopper, alluding to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and linking them to the Iraq “battlefront.” As we know, there was no Iraqi involvement in 9/11. But since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, terrorist attacks have increased worldwide, especially against Iraqi civilians.

He repeated his refrain of “bringing democracy” to Iraq — another big lie, unless the Bush administration’s definition of democracy is torture, military occupation, war crimes, scheming and arm-twisting.

The president then offered up his old “stay the course” pap, with a twist. In articulating his view of what it will take to get Iraqi forces up and running “on their own,” he detailed an endless quagmire that will suck up billions more dollars and military personnel for years to come. The needs of the U.S. people for rebuilding the Gulf Coast, health care, heat, food, and jobs will all be sacrificed for the war and those who profit from it.

Rep. John Murtha, a pro-war Democrat from Pennsylvania, rocked the White House last week with his call for a prompt withdrawal of troops, charging that the Bush policy is a “flawed policy wrapped in illusion.” Murtha is a highly decorated Marine veteran and sits on the House Armed Services Committee. He reportedly has close ties to the military. Murtha is able to say things the generals and enlisted soldiers cannot. It indicates a significant section of Bush’s base is questioning the president’s “stay the course” bromides.

Bush’s speech was designed to quell the growing congressional dissent, which reaches across both sides of the aisle.

The majority dissatisfaction of the American people with Bush’s Iraq policy is fueling the shifts in Congress and framing the 2006 election landscape. This is a moment when mass pressure on Congress to bring the troops home can block and reverse this bloody, “flawed policy wrapped in illusion.” Keep the pressure on.