Operation Fundamental Justice

WikiLeaks and espionage ... First birthday for Citizens United ... Extra curricula political activities haunt Justices Scalia and Thomas ... Local district courts riven by politics ... Our Man in Washington reports 

Another Guantánamo prisoner has been released, through the most reliable method - death.

The Afghan Awal Gul, posthumously described as a "Taliban base commander", died in custody "after exercising." One of the 48 men Obama planned to hold forever, it was the seventh Gitmo death.  

Naturally, the US had classified the deceased as a "terrorist suspect", entitled to no more than the modest protections of the Pentagon version of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

If Gul was indeed an officer in the Afghan army, he would seem entitled to Prisoner of War status. But Obama has embraced the claims of Mr Bush's accomplice-lawyers - that Afghanistan in 2001 was a failed state whose army lay outside the Geneva Conventions. 

As a result, the Pentagon continues Mr Bush's lawless suspension of the Uniform Code of Military Justice rules governing treatment of prisoners.

Gul's lawyers say he left the Taliban before the war even began, but his true status may never be known.  For the Pentagon, however, death ends mere suspicion. Gul will forever be a guilty "terrorist detainee."

Such self-serving official designations abound in the US military, not infrequently for illegal activities. Some would be funny if they weren't so sad. 

Release from Guantanamo: the funeral of Awal Gul We all remember how the Bush Gang christened the Afghan invasion "Operation Enduring Freedom."  Then there was the Iraq adventure, initially "Operation Iraqi Liberation" but quickly re-branded Operation Iraqi Freedom due to the unfortunate connotations of the acronym OIL.

Now, a previously unknown example of Pentagon irony has surfaced in WikiLeaked documents about US use of a Turkish air force base for the extralegal transfer of human beings to Guantánamo and elsewhere. 

A US military history revealed that the "rendition mission" - where people are abducted to indefinite extrajudicial detention and/or torture - bore the official name "Operation Fundamental Justice". 

You can't get more Orwellian than that. The Guardian has more.

The UK human rights law firm Reprieve has even uncovered tasteless commemorative coins for those who wish to memorialise their participation in these "detainee escort" operations. 

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Our JulianIn February, Julian Assange returned to London for his extradition hearing on sexual offence allegations in Sweden.

The exhibits produced at the hearing included these lurid claims of the Swedish prosecutor. Here is a list of exhibits.

In the US, meanwhile, the Wikileaks witch-hunt descended into farce when the Air Force posted a notice (later rescinded) that families of service members looking at the whistleblower website's materials on their own PCs faced prosecution for espionage. 

The Air Force Times has more. 

MIT's Technology Review has a nice piece on Assange and the technical history of his whistleblowing website. 

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A new Supreme Court case will give the justices a chance to rule on the unfairness of the government invoking the state secrets claim.

This time the conservative court might rule against the government. Instead of ordinary human persons, e.g. tortured terror detainees, the aggrieved are corporate "persons".

For (living) flesh and blood persons, the law remains bleak, judging from a new all-Republican decision of the DC Circuit denying the ACLU's FOIA request for the statements of "high value detainees" stored at Guantánamo. More here.

Once a human person is dead, the government is more forthcoming. The Pentagon has finally given the ACLU the names and autopsy reports for the 190 people who are known to have died under US detention or torture. 

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Clarence Thomas: compromised by attending events sponsored by beneficiary of Supreme Court's Citizens United decisionThe infamous corporate freedom of speech case Citizens United is now a year old (see my post from January 2010) and many are lamenting its malign effects. 

Co-incidentally, there are accusations of improper judicial behaviour by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in the lead-up to the Citizens case. 

Even the NY Times seems concerned by the two justices' extracurricular politics.

Law prof Jonathan Turley calls Scalia the first "celebrity justice", and it's a fact he's been in Australia this month, entertaining people in Adelaide.  

Scalia is the court's most determined "originalist", and recently opined that the 14^th amendment provides no protection to women or gays, presumably because they weren't on the minds of 19^th century legislators. 

In his attack on the 14^th, however, Nino may have inadvertently destroyed the underpinnings of corporate personhood. 

The court may be having second thoughts about the sweep of Citizens United, judging from argument in a case where AT&T claims a right to privacy in respect of FCC records sought by FOIA claimants.  

The New York Times sees problems with such a corporate privilege.

Amazingly, the 1886 Supreme Court case always cited for establishing corporations as persons, Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad, never ruled on the issue - corporate personhood was a dictum furtively inserted as a headnote in the published opinion. Thom Hartmann has more. 

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The incremental politicising of the federal appellate judiciary (most dramatically, the Supreme Court itself, in Bush v Gore) has now reached the local, district court level.

Two Democrat-appointed judges found the new Obama health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, to be constitutional, while two Republican-appointed federal judges found it unconstitutional in whole or in part.

A Supreme Court decision striking down the new health law could endanger Social Security and more. That's one reason a petition is circulating seeking Justice Thomas's recusal in the PPACA appeals.

The latest Republican judge to overturn the law, Roger Vinson of Pensacola, Florida, went further and found the whole Act unconstitutional, even the parts that weren't before him. 

The Progress Report comments.

In the view of law prof Jack Balkin, it's another Bush v Gore and wanton judicial activism. 

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Bush: Swiss holiday cancelledAlthough Al Gore can travel freely these days, George Bush was forced to defer his Swiss holiday.  

The Center for Constitutional Rights and allied human rights groups handed the Swiss a letter proposing Bush's arrest for torture when he arrived to address a fundraising dinner. 

An indictment of the confessed torture addict was ready to file. Jurist has more. 

Sadly, Mr Bush's planned speaking engagement was abruptly cancelled.