9/11 trial focused on torture

Telegraph

The defence lawyers for those accused of planning the September 11 attacks insist that their clients trial is a opportunity to investigate claims of mistreatment and torture.

The second attempt to prosecute the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11 attacks and four men accused of helping orchestrate the plot got off to a rough start on Saturday, with the defendants disrupting their arraignment and forcing the proceedings to drag on late into the night.

At a news conference on Sunday morning, defence lawyer James Connell called the actions of the defendants a "peaceful resistance to an unjust system" following years of torture.

"These men have endured years of inhumane treatment and torture. This treatment has had serious long-term effects and will ultimately infect every aspect of this military commission tribunal," he said.

Mr Connell, who represents defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the government has tried to eliminate the mention of the use of torture from the trial and he said he is committed to revealing what he claims is evidence his defendant and others were mistreated.

Cheryl Bormann, a civilian defence lawyer for accused 9/11 co-conspirator Walid bin Attash, said her client has scars on his arms from alleged mistreatment at the hands of the government.

"We're hoping to address that while in the courts and hoping to get a fair hearing on that," said Ms Bormann.

Saturday was the defendants' first appearance in more than three years after stalled efforts to try them for the attacks, in which hijackers steered four commercial jets into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a western Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.

Render to Caesar, Extraordinarily

Consortium News
Ray McGovern

Some of us pause on Good Friday to mark the torture and death of a high-value detainee rendered, extraordinarily, to Roman occupiers.

Although the charges against Jesus of Nazareth were trumped up, the Romans decided to err on the safe side by going to the “dark side.” They applied enhanced torture techniques with the ultimate hanging.

I try my best to follow the example set by that fellow from Nazareth. I do get beat up on occasion for “knowing where I stand and standing there,” as Dan Berrigan has told us. But I don’t expect to be tortured — much less hung up to die. Those things just happen to folks who don’t look like me.

In my worst nightmares I never dreamed that my country of birth, the country I love, would resort to torturing prisoners. Still less, did I expect my alma mater, Fordham University, to honor a person known to have championed kidnapping and torture (as well as illegal eavesdropping on Americans), by inviting him to give the commencement address.

What’s the big deal? I have been asked. Aren’t you proud to have a fellow Fordham alumnus at the right hand of the President as deputy national security adviser? When I answer, “Not proud, but shamed,” I am met with a quizzical look.

When the shock wears off, I realize this should come as no surprise. The findings of a Pew poll conducted three years ago should have accustomed me to the shame. Those polled were white non-Hispanic Catholics, white Evangelicals, and white mainline Protestants. A majority of those who attend church regularly (54 percent) said torture could be “justified,” while a majority of those not attending church regularly responded that torture was rarely or never justified.

I let myself wonder whether similar results might obtain, if a similar poll were conducted today at Fordham. And then I remembered that most of the college students at Fordham had not yet reached their teens, when President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney decided to resort to techniques developed for the Spanish Inquisition and honed by the Nazis — “enhanced” methods to use on suspected terrorists.

Here’s some background for those just coming of age — and a refresher for others — with particular attention to what you should know about John Brennan (College, 1977).

Brennan’s Role in Torture

John Brennan had been CIA Director George Tenet’s chief of staff for two years when Tenet promoted him to be CIA’s Deputy Executive Director in March 2001. In that post he continued to function as one of Tenet’s closest aides – after the 9/11 attacks – as President Bush and Vice President Cheney ordered the CIA onto what Cheney (and later Brennan himself) came to call the “dark side.”

More records indicate that inmate was in jail when 1992 double murder occurred

Chicago Tribune
Steve Mills

State attorney general begins inquiry into conduct of Cook County prosecutors in case

The Illinois attorney general's office has opened an in-depth examination of how Cook County prosecutors have handled the trial and nearly two decades of appeals in a controversial 1992 double murder case that sent a teenager to prison for life, even though records showed he was in a Chicago police lockup when the crime occurred, according to court documents and interviews.
 
At issue is whether prosecutors failed to turn over key information to defense lawyers that would have helped the case of Daniel Taylor, whose defense at trial seemed ironclad: that he had been arrested on unrelated charges before the murders occurred and was not released until after.

Taylor's case, in turn, casts doubt on the entire criminal investigation, since eight suspects in all confessed and implicated each other.

A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that included Judge Richard Posner recently found Taylor's claims were worth pursuing and took the unusual step of granting his request to file a second appeal in federal court — a move that could lead to a new trial. And that was before the attorney general's office began digging deep into the case and uncovered additional documents it said were not turned over to Taylor.

"When combined with the testimony of (a) newly revealed witness and the newly disclosed police reports," the judges wrote in an order late last year, "this is strong proof that Taylor's participation in the crime was physically impossible. In contrast, the circumstances surrounding the non-videotaped confession are suspect."

The case against Taylor and the seven other defendants was the focus of the Tribune's 2001 investigation "Cops and Confessions." Five of the eight defendants were convicted and sent to prison, and Taylor was sentenced to life without possibility of parole. The Tribune has continued to investigate the case. Among the subsequent revelations: A Taylor co-defendant said he and several other men committed the murders and that Taylor and the others who were arrested are innocent.

In some cases, crucial documents or witnesses that can turn a prosecution upside down do not surface for years. That it is happening in a case that has received such scrutiny may raise questions about who in the prosecutors' office had knowledge of the documents and why they were allegedly withheld.
The failure to turn over material that can help a defendant's case at trial is among the most serious violations a prosecutor can commit.

The current inquiry began as the attorney general's office took over the federal appeal from Cook County prosecutors, a routine job for litigators in the office of Attorney General Lisa Madigan.