'Mr Chairman, no one is above the law'

Video via Neil from Amnesty

Meanwhile, via Democracy Now, some righteous signs to be hopeful about...

JUAN GONZALEZ: President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee to be attorney general, Eric Holder, has declared waterboarding to be a form of torture and has vowed to shut down Guantanamo Bay. At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder also pledged to restore credibility to the Justice Department and to serve as the people’s lawyer. If confirmed, Holder will become the nation’s first African American attorney general.

Here are excerpts of the hearing, including questions from Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy; Wisconsin’s two Democratic senators, Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold. This is Eric Holder.

ERIC HOLDER: Let me try to state this as simply as I can. It simply should not be the policy or the practice of the United States of America to turn over a prisoner, a captured person, to a nation where we suspect or have reason to believe that that person will be tortured.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Do you agree with me that waterboarding is torture and illegal?

ERIC HOLDER: If you look at the history of the use of that technique, used by the Khmer Rouge, used in the Inquisition, used by the Japanese and prosecuted by us as war crimes—we prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam—I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Do you believe that the President of the United States has authority to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture?

ERIC HOLDER: Mr. Chairman, no one is above the law.

SEN. HERB KOHL: Mr. Holder, for decades, this country has been looked up to around the world for its unwavering commitment to human rights and the rule of law. There is a growing consensus that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay has tarnished that image. While the past two attorneys general, the current secretaries of Defense and State, and the President himself have publicly said that they would like to close Guantanamo, no steps, as yet, have been taken.

ERIC HOLDER: To responsibly close the facility, I think that we have to understand who these people are, make an independent judgment of who they are based on an examination of the records that exist down there, so that we can treat them in an inappropriate way. I think substantial numbers of those people can be sent to other countries safely. Other people can be tried in a jurisdiction and put in jail. And there are possibly going to be other people who we’re not going to be able to try for a variety of reasons, but who nevertheless are dangerous to this country, and we’re going to have to try to figure out what we do with them. But I think that review that we’ll have to go through to figure out who these people are and in what categories they fit will take an extended period of time, and I think that is the thing that will prevent us from closing Guantanamo as quickly as I think we would like, but I want to assure the American people that Guantanamo will be closed.

SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: Is there anything in the FISA statute that makes you believe that the President has the ability under some other inherent power to disregard the FISA statute?

ERIC HOLDER: No, I do not see that in the FISA statute.

SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: Well, thank you. I think that’s a very important break in favor of the rule of law that we’ve been waiting for in this country for many years, and I appreciate that answer.

URGENT: Worldwide day of action for Troy Davies

Have you got 5 minutes to try to stop a death row execution? If so, thank you and please read on.

Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed in Georgia at 7pm local time on 27 October. He has been on death row for 17 years for a murder he maintains he did not commit.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has already rejected clemency for Troy Davis, and has indicated that it will not reconsider its decision. It has sole authority to grant executive clemency in Georgia capital cases.

Click here and scroll to the bottom to send an email asking for clemency

Troy Davis was convicted in 1991 of the murder of 27-year-old Officer Mark Allen MacPhail, white, who was shot and killed in the car park of a Burger King restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, in the early hours of 19 August 1989. Davis was also convicted of assaulting Larry Young, a homeless man, who was accosted immediately before Officer MacPhail was shot.

At the trial, Troy Davis admitted that he had been at the scene of the shooting, but claimed that he had neither assaulted Larry Young nor shot Officer MacPhail. There was no physical evidence against Troy Davis and the weapon used in the crime was never found. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony. In affidavits signed over the years since the trial, a majority of the state’s witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony. In addition, there is post-trial testimony implicating another man, Sylvester Coles, as the gunman.

In March 2008, the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, joined by two other Justices on the Court, wrote that,:
"In this case, nearly every witness who identified Davis as the shooter at trial has now disclaimed his or her ability to do so reliably. Three persons have stated that Sylvester Coles confessed to being the shooter. Two witnesses have stated that Sylvester Coles, contrary to his trial testimony, possessed a handgun immediately after the murder. Another witness has provided a description of the crimes that might indicate that Sylvester Coles was the shooter."

The Chief Justice wrote that, "the collective effect of all of Davis's new testimony, if it were to be found credible by the trial court in a hearing, would show the probability that a new jury would find reasonable doubt of Davis's guilt or a least sufficient residual doubt to decline to impose the death penalty".

When it had stayed the execution on 16 July 2007, the Board stated that,
"the members of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will not allow an execution to proceed unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused". Find out more about this stay

This would suggest that at least a majority of its members have now been persuaded of Troy Davis's guilt. Amnesty International believes that in the interests of transparency and public confidence in the justice system, the Board should reveal how it came to its conclusion.
Prior to the decision, the chairman of the State Bar of Georgia's indigent defence committee was quoted as saying that:

"It is important to the public's confidence in Georgia's criminal justice system that no person's life is taken by the state except in circumstances where their constitutional rights to a fair trial have been fully respected. With so many witnesses recanting their testimony, there just seems to be too many doubts to move forward with this execution."

After the Board's decision, Troy Davis's lawyer said that an emergency motion for a stay of execution would be filed with the US Supreme Court. He said, "the hardest thing I've ever had to do was to tell Troy we're denied" by the Board.

The head of the Georgia-based Southern Center for Human Rights, Stephen B. Bright, a law professor at Yale University, called the Board's decision "shocking". He said that "For somebody to be executed, we really should be sure beyond doubt that the person is guilty." International standards prohibit the execution of anyone whose guilt is in doubt.

Amnesty International opposes Troy Davis's execution unconditionally, regardless of questions of guilt or innocence, as it does all use of the death penalty.

For a full report on this case, see USA: ‘Where is the justice for me?’ The case of Troy Davis, facing execution in Georgia, February 2007
Find about Amnesty's campaign to stop the use of the death penalty

Monday's speech

'Thank you very much to Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International, and to all the Amnesty team for the invitation to speak tonight at this protest against the government's latest counter-terrorism bill which includes the plans to detain terrorism suspects for up to 42 days without charge. It's a privilege and an honour to be here, and it is great to see how many people have come out on a cold Monday night in their dressing gowns to show that they are passionate about defending their liberties and to show that they will not sleepwalk into giving up essential rights and freedoms.

We have a long and honourable tradition of freedom in this country - an idea of freedom and democracy that we have shared all over the world. One of the most important freedoms we have is the ancient right of habeas corpus; the right not to be detained without being charged, and to be brought before a court who have the authority to say whether you are being lawfully held and why you are being charged.

Over the years, millions of men and women have made great sacrifices to preserve our freedoms against enemies who wanted to destroy them. Older generations have fought and died in terrible wars. Not so very long ago, hundreds of thousands of people said goodbye to their loved ones and friends, not knowing if they would return alive or badly injured. Parents evacuated their young children to live with strangers, hoping they would escape the dangers of aerial bombardment from the weapons of mass destruction of the time. People undertook war work – usually hard and boring, sometimes dangerous. The fight to defend our nation's freedom from our enemies' threats was something that was an inescapable part of everyone's daily lives.

Why am I going on about the second world war in 2008? To make the point that the threat we face now is not anything like the daily threat our grandparents and great-grandparents faced. It is shameful that when others risked so much and gave so much to preserve our freedoms, we seem to barely notice as they are taken away.

Many of the men and women debating the terrorism bill in the House of Lords today are old enough to remember a real war of terror, very different to a 'war on terror'. They remember that out of the horrors of that war came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners of war and prohibiting torture and inhumane treatment. The nations of the world came together after that terrible war to focus on human rights; to say 'never again'.

Human rights are precious. History teaches us what happens when a political party, or a charismatic leader begins to spread the lie that not every person deserves human rights...that some kinds of people are 'different' and the normal rules do not apply...
We all deserve the right to be treated as fully human and accorded full human rights. Yes, even the suspected terrorist. Especially the person suspected of terrorism, in fact.

These last few days in America, we have seen a politician giving a speech to a large and excited crowd of people, and we have heard voices in that crowd begin shouting 'Terrorist! Kill him! Behead him!'
The person that crowd suspected of being a terrorist is the Democratic Presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama. Meanwhile, also last week, the government of Iceland were very surprised and upset when they found out that the UK government were using terrorism laws to seize the UK assets of Icelandic banks last week.
Do you see my point? Look at who is being suspected of terrorism. A potential President? An Icelandic banker? Is this what 'suspected of terrorism' really means? In fact, UK terrorism laws have recently been used to arrest pensioners and protesters, parents and poets and priests – all sorts of people – people like you and me. Terrorism laws have been used by councils to spy on barking dogs and noisy children and muddled recyclers and people parking in disabled spaces without the right badges and even people 'selling unauthorised pizzas'. It's crazy. It would be funny, except it isn't funny at all.

Since 9/11, 1228 people have been arrested under UK terrorism laws – only for 669 of them to be released later as entirely innocent. That's more than half of them.

We can be sure of something. If you give State officials powers, they will use them.

We can also be sure of another thing: giving up freedom doesn't make you more free. Nor does it make you particularly safe.
In fact many distinguished people whose entire career has been about keeping us safe from criminals and terrorists, and prosecuting those who mean us harm, have said that legislation like the 42 days clause is counter-productive and actually dangerous.

Here's another thing we can be sure of in uncertain times. Giving up your freedoms does give the State a lot more power over you – not just now, but in the future as well. And we do not know what the future will bring. We can only, as I said, look to the lessons of recent history.

Over the last week, we have seen 'suspected terrorist' be used in a very strange way. It has been used to mean 'someone we, the party in power don't like the look of, doing something we don't approve of.' It has been used to ratchet up fear for political reasons. It has been used to look tough.

Well, we know politicians find it useful to look tough and in control, especially when events are changing fast and they are not in control as much as they would like. Events can change things very suddenly, as we have seen with the recent pandemonium in the world economy. Politicians can come and go, financial markets can be gripped with panic and spiral out of control and none of us can predict the future.

What we can do is protect the human. We can protect ourselves and each other by choosing to focus on our freedoms, not our fears. We can stand up, as we did today, shoulder to shoulder, and show that we will not sleepwalk into a very different future. We can learn the lessons of the past about our better and worse natures, and remember how a war-torn world came together to say that human rights must be protected and preserved for all time, that the dignity of all human people is the foundation of justice and peace in the world; that freedom of speech and belief, freedom from fear and want are proclaimed as 'the highest aspiration of the people'.

Nothing has changed in the last sixty years to change that. Nothing ever will.

Human rights and freedoms remain something worth cherishing, worth loving. Worth living for. Worth dying for.

Thank you, all of you, for standing up to protect and preserve freedom today, tonight, and always.'