ALSO KNOWN AS OUTSOURCING-TORTURE:

Obama to fulfil promise and shut Guantanamo (Leonard Doyle, 11 November 2008, Independent)

Mr Obama's plans for Guantanamo inmates should see most detainees, against whom there is little or no evidence, being released to their home countries after years in legal limbo. Others will face prosecution in US criminal courts. One problem for those courts will face is deciding whether evidence from anonymous intelligence sources or obtained without any legal process can be taken into account. Some Guantanamo inmates suffered torture or other abusive treatment at the hands of CIA interrogators either at the prison or after they were picked up in security sweeps in Afghanistan or Pakistan. A few have been through the controversial military commissions process, from which even prosecutors have resigned. The US Supreme Court has several times rebuked the Bush administration for its handling of the detainees.

Close Guantanamo – But Don't Send Detainees Back to Countries that Torture (Eric Goldstein, 9/10/07, The Huffington Post)

In late July, I visited that country to see what happened to the first two Guantanamo detainees returned there. The picture is bleak. Tunisian authorities held both Abdallah Hajji and Lotfi Lagha for several weeks in tiny isolation cells after the United States flew them from Guantanamo on June 18. Each is facing serious charges of terrorism before Tunisian courts whose proceedings are anything but fair. Hajji told his lawyer that upon arrival police deprived him of sleep for 48 hours, threatened to rape his wife, and slapped him until he signed a statement he was not able to read. Tunisian authorities deny he was mistreated but won't let him be seen by any independent monitor in a position to comment publicly. [...]

Hajji says he would have preferred to remain in Guantanamo had he known that Tunisia would jail and retry him, according to his lawyer. For five weeks he was in a cell he described as a "tomb" so dark that he could not tell day from night, and was forbidden all contact with other inmates. In August, authorities moved him to a cell with two other inmates.

Considering his positions on abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, dealing with dictators, and shipping these guys back to their native regimes, on what are people basing the idea that he cares about human rights?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 10, 2008 9:40 PM