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Prosecuting High-level Americans for War CrimesOn September 13-14, 2008, over two hundred people from the United States and abroad gathered in Andover. Massachusetts for ... Conference on the Planning for Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals... Impeachment of Bush-Cheney... the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney was very much on the table ... Local, state and federal criminal prosecution ...the Brattleboro, Vermont, ordinance that calls for the arrest on sight of Bush and/or Cheney... One particular scenario ... was to charge Bush and Cheney with murder of U.S. soldiers who have died in the Iraq...

President Bush could pardon officials involved in brutal interrogations -- but he may also face a sweeping investigation under the new president. WASHINGTON -- With growing talk in Washington that President Bush may be considering an unprecedented "blanket pardon" for people involved in his administration's brutal interrogation policies, advisors to Barack Obama are pressing ahead with plans for a nonpartisan commission to investigate alleged abuses under Bush. The Obama plan, first revealed by Salon in August, would emphasize fact-finding investigation over prosecution. It is gaining currency in Washington as Obama advisors begin to coordinate with Democrats in Congress on the...

our democratic senators are finally applying the desperately needed checks and balances regarding the out of control and lawless bu$hit administration! in regard to the ridiculous stonewalling and secrecy over their absurd torture memos: "Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) warned Ashcroft that his refusal might have consequences. In one testy exchange, Biden snapped, "Well, general, that means you may be in contempt of Congress." "You've got to have a reason not to answer our questions, as you know from sitting up here," Biden told Ashcroft, a former senator. "If such a memo existed . . ....

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney chose someone in his own likeness to be his new chief of staff. Like Cheney, David Addington shuns the limelight. And like Cheney, Addington already has made a large imprint on the Bush White House. At Cheney's side since the 1980s, Addington has been a behind-the-scenes player in one after another of the hot-button controversies the Bush administration has faced: _The CIA leak probe. _The fight to disclose which corporations advised the White House on energy policy. _The dispute over the treatment of suspected terrorists. _The White House disagreements with the Sept. 11 commission...

They were loyal conservatives, and Bush appointees. They fought a quiet battle to rein in the president's power in the war on terror. And they paid a price for it. A NEWSWEEK investigation. Feb. 6, 2006 issue - James Comey, a lanky, 6-foot-8 former prosecutor who looks a little like Jimmy Stewart, resigned as deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. The press and public hardly noticed. Comey's farewell speech, delivered in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, contained all the predictable, if heartfelt, appreciations. But mixed in among the platitudes was an unusual passage. Comey thanked "people...

A retired U.S. soldier who was ambushed by armed fighters holed up in the mud compound where Omar Khadr was captured said on Tuesday the Canadian deserves to be at Guantanamo Bay. Sergeant Layne Morris said he had not seen the dramatic interrogation video released by Mr. Khadr's lawyers, in which the young detainee cries for help, but he brushed off the footage as a public relations exercise. Sgt. Morris said the defence lawyers' strategy seemed to be to win sympathy for their client, and that he found it "troublesome" the public had to be constantly reminded of what Mr....

Politicians and human rights groups want to go on board US-registered planes that are believed to be carrying terror suspects when they land in Norway for refueling. Planes believed to be chartered by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have landed at the Sola Airport outside Stavanger as many as 15 times since 2003, reports local newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad. It's also believed that the planes, officially owned by Aviation Specialties Inc of the US, have landed for refueling at airports in Bergen and Evenes as well. A report to the European Parliament in 2006 claimed that Aviation Specialties is a...

(CBS) A German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that Americans tortured him in many ways - including hanging him from the ceiling for five days early in his captivity when he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Even after determining he was not a terrorist, Murat Kurnaz says the torture continued. Kurnaz tells his story for the first time on American television this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Kurnaz, an ethnic Turk born and raised in Germany, went to Pakistan in late 2001 at age 19 to study Islam and...

81 protesters arrested at Supreme CourtFri Jan 11, 3:56 PM ET WASHINGTON - Eighty people were arrested at the Supreme Court Friday in a protest calling for the shutdown of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Demonstrators wearing orange jump suits intended to simulate prison garb were arrested inside and outside the building in the early afternoon. "Shut it down," protesters chanted as others kneeled on the plaza in front of the court. They were charged with violating an ordinance that prohibits demonstrations of any kind on court grounds. Those arrested inside the building also were charged under...

The only Army officer charged with a crime as a result of the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has been cleared of all criminal responsibility in the case after a general this week dismissed the one conviction against him and wiped away the sentence. Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan was convicted last year on one charge of disobeying an order when a jury found that he spoke to others about the Abu Ghraib investigation after he was ordered not to do so. Though Jordan was exonerated at trial of any connection to the abuse of Iraqi detainees...

Pakistani convicted for plot to bomb New York subway05-25-2006, 00h32 NEW YORK (AFP) In this courtroom illustration, James Elshafay (C) and Shahawar Matin Siraj (R) appear August 2004 in Federal District Court in New York, before Magistrate Kiyo Matsumoto (R rear) during an arraignment on charges related to an alleged plot to bomb a New York City subway station. Standing at left are Assistant US attorneys John Nathanson (L) and Kelly Currie (2nd L). (AFP/Getty Images/File) A Pakistani man was convicted of planning to blow up a New York subway station ahead of the Republican National Convention held before the...

An Iraqi man accused of being a key aide to Osama bin Laden and a top leader of al-Qaeda was arrested late last year on his way to Iraq and handed over to the CIA, the Pentagon announced yesterday, in what became the first secret overseas detention since President Bush acknowledged the existence of such a program last September. -snip- He spent 15 years in Afghanistan as a trainer and planner beginning in the early 1990s, the Pentagon said. Before leaving his home country to join al-Qaeda's Islamic movement, al-Iraqi served in Saddam Hussein's military, rising to the rank of...

FORT BLISS, Texas - A man once considered a top al-Qaida operative escaped from a U.S.-run detention facility in Afghanistan and cannot testify against the soldier who allegedly mistreated him, a defense lawyer involved in a prison abuse case said Tuesday. Omar al-Farouq was one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants in Southeast Asia until Indonesian authorities captured him in the summer of 2002 and turned him over to the United States. A Pentagon official in Washington confirmed Tuesday evening that al-Farouq escaped from a U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, on July 10. The official spoke on condition of...

May 15, 2004 Earlier Jail Seen as Incubator for Abuses in IraqBy DOUGLAS JEHL ASHINGTON, May 14 — An American-run detention center outside Baghdad known as Camp Cropper was reportedly the site of numerous abuses of Iraqi prisoners several months before the mistreatment of prisoners unfolded last fall at Abu Ghraib prison, according to documents and interviews.The detention facility, on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, appears to have served as an incubator for the acts of humiliation that were inflicted months later on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. At both sites, the mistreatment has been linked to interrogations overseen...

George W. Bush was quoted in The New York Times for the first time in 1967. Back then he didn’t use the W., but it’s still him. The story was about his Yale fraternity being in trouble for torturing initiates by branding them with a hot iron in the shape of a Greek letter. Bush, quoted as the former president of the fraternity, told the newspaper the burn wasn’t as bad as it sounded and really amounted to “a cigarette burn.” Bush and all of us have been talking about torture a lot lately, 39 years after that Yale experiment....

A former POW in Iraq names an Ashley-based reservist in a complaint against the U.S. Army. And he compared the treatment at his camp to the abuse that's making international news. Hossam Shaltout said widespread mistreatment from soldiers in Camp Bucca, where he was imprisoned last year, was as inhumane as that depicted in recent photos from Camp Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Shaltout described Camp Bucca as a "torture camp" where soldiers beat and humiliated prisoners, had them lie naked atop each other or pose in sexual positions. "They wanted us to have sex with each other," Shaltout said. He...

Some U.S. House Democrats who want to close the Guantánamo Bay detention center are floating an idea to move captives to American military brigs on U.S. soil. Republicans are opposing the idea, with one Florida congressman issuing a press release, ``America's Most Wanted Terrorists Not Welcome in the Sunshine State.'' Rep. James Moran, D-Va., a member of the House defense subcommittee, said in a recent interview on Fox News Channel, ``I'm simply offering some options. If you close [the Guantánamo detention center], we do have military brigs that are secure.'' ''I don't see the momentum yet within Congress, although I...

The metamorphosis of Condoleezza Rice from the chrysalis of the protégé into the butterfly of the State Department has not been a natural evolution but has demanded self-discipline. She has burnished an image of the ultimate loyalist, yet betrayed her mentor, George H.W. Bush's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft. She is the team player, yet carefully inserted knives in the back of her predecessor, Colin Powell, climbing up them like a ladder of success. She is the person most trusted on foreign policy by the president, yet was an enabler for Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives. Now her public...

TAMPA - Maybe it was his desire to stand and stretch in the airplane. Maybe it was the gruesome images of torture he watched on his laptop that caught attention. Something about Iyad Abuhajjaj's behavior on a Southwest Airlines flight from Phoenix to Tampa on Wednesday afternoon concerned airline officials enough to call police. Police have not accused Abuhajjaj, 36, of any wrongdoing on the plane, but a search of his name revealed an Okaloosa County warrant for his arrest. On Thursday, the Palestinian health care worker and actor who lives in California was held without bail in the Hillsborough...

A human rights group is asking President Bush to disclose the fates of all terror suspects held since 2001, including at least 16 it believes have been locked up in secret CIA facilities. Human Rights Watch said it compiled a report about the 16, whose whereabouts are unknown, along with 22 others possibly held by the CIA, based on interviews with former detainees, press reports and other sources. The report — "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention" — includes an accounting from Marwan Jabour, a Palestinian who says he was held incommunicado for more than two years by...