Red Cross Wants Information on Missing Detainees

I've been going on and on about whether the US is holding people in secret interrogation camps abroad. Now AP reports that the Red Cross Fears U.S. Is Hiding Detainees and has been expressing this concern to the US for some time without getting a satisfactory reply:

But Notari told The Associated Press that some suspects reported as arrested by the FBI on its Web site, or identified in media reports, are unaccounted for.

“Some of these people who have been reported to be arrested never showed up in any of the places of detention run by the U.S. where we visit,” Notari said.

She said she had read media reports that some people are being held at Diego Garcia, a British-held island in the Indian Ocean used as a strategic military base by the United States, but the ICRC has not been notified of any prisoners there.

“We just simply have absolutely no confirmation of this in any formal way,” she said.

The U.S. government has not officially responded to a Red Cross demand for notification of all detainees, including those held in undisclosed locations, she said.

That request was made by ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger in January during a visit to Washington that featured meetings with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

“So far we haven't had a satisfactory reply,” Notari said.

This is a serious issue.

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9 Responses to Red Cross Wants Information on Missing Detainees

  1. Copeland says:

    Bush&Co have done their best to hide the gulag ; but the existence of the gulag is indisputable.
    Justice delayed is justice denied. What is this?–a case of the administration over-riding the law?
    I wonder what the legal remedy might be? Could this scandal be taken to The Hague?

  2. MP says:

    Hillarious. A few terrorists are allegedly unaccounted for, and you’re ready to go crying to the impotent europeans and their kangaroo courts. Meanwhile, how many Chinese dissidents are missing? Cuban? North Korean?

    We have a Constitution. Its sad to see those on the left so naively intoxicated with europe that they are willing to throw away our freedom and be ruled by technocrats in europe. And so close to an election.

    To hate a particular politician, or even a party, I can understand. But to so hate our laws and way of life?

  3. Jean says:

    Yes we have a Constitution. For a United States President to usurp that Constitution and declare himself above the law is NOT hilarious.
    It should ring alarm bells across the country.

  4. What’s sad MP is to see those on the right so utterly divorced from any actual understanding of the Consitution, justice, or any faint clue of human decency as to suport fascism and disparage international courts as “kangarro courts” while simultaneously supporting a war criminal like George Bush when he’s even now engaged in the sordid business of setting up REAL KANGAROO COURTS.

    But I have to agree with you on this much: we don’t need the Europeans here, what we need to is to indict, try, and CONVICT every last one of these criminals that you hypocrites on the right are supporting for their CRIMES pursuant to 18 USC 2441, the War Crimes Act of 1996. And I do mean Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and every last member of their gang.

    And while we are at it — flush the Republican party down the toilet once and for all.

    Sic semper tyrannis, in case you forgot.

  5. What’s sad MP is to see those on the right so utterly divorced from any actual understanding of the Consitution, justice, or any faint clue of human decency as to suport fascism and disparage international courts as “kangarro courts” while simultaneously supporting a war criminal like George Bush when he’s even now engaged in the sordid business of setting up REAL KANGAROO COURTS.

    But I have to agree with you on this much: we don’t need the Europeans here, what we need to is to indict, try, and CONVICT every last one of these criminals that you hypocrites on the right are supporting for their CRIMES pursuant to 18 USC 2441, the War Crimes Act of 1996. And I do mean Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and every last member of their gang.

    And while we are at it — flush the Republican party down the toilet once and for all.

    Sic semper tyrannis, in case you forgot.

  6. Jean says:

    Don’t forget the lawyers who produced these ‘opinions’.

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  8. MP says:

    I suggest you review the acts of actual convicted war criminals and try to gain perspective.

    There is nothing to suggest that our own legal system is incapable of dealing with illegality, should any be found.

    Lest we forget, it was the liberals in Congress who declared Clinton “above the law”, and then Clinton himself who handed out pardons to the highest bidder.

  9. MP: the actual illegality of the Bush administration’s policies on detainees has been manifest from the beginning, starting with the 11/13/2001 “military order” on detentions etc, and the fraudulent 2/7/2002 “fact sheet” twisting the the Geneva Conventions into a pretzel.

    This administration is committing crimes against US and international law that we once executed the Nazi’s for committing:crimes against Peace, war crimes, and crimes against Humanity. The torture isn’t the worst part of it. They’ve attempted to subvert the Constituion itself, and far from making us safer, they’ve made this nation a greater threat to the safety of the world than all the terrorists combined.

    There is probable cause on a galaxy of charges, and proof to a logical certainty on some, but you won’t see it as long as you allow your political prejudice to blind you to the facts. 18 USC 2441 is not ambiguous in the least, nor is Geneva Common Article 3 or Hauge IV (1907) Annex art. 23[h]… among other things.

    The idea that the US Constitution would authorize the President to exercise the powers of a Roman dictator when acting as C-i-C is simply insane to whatever extent it isn’t simply dishonest: it is simply illegal to either issue or obey an unlawful order, and military operations have been comprehensively governed by statute since 1775. These fascist crooks you are defending are a disgrace to everything this nation is supposed to stand for — what they stand for is tyranny, racism, religous bigotry, and economic exploitation.

    The neo-fascists are very fond of drooling that the Constituion is not a suicide pact, but they overlook something: the most certain form of suicide for a nation is precisely to allow people like Goerge Bush and Dick Cheney to exercise power unrestrained by the rule of law.

    —–

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