[Marauder]

Piloto argelino preso erradamente por Londres pode pedir indemnização

O piloto argelino que passou cinco meses na prisão no Reino Unido por suspeitas falsas dos Estados Unidos foi hoje autorizado por um tribunal a pedir uma indemnização ao Governo britânico.


Um juiz do Tribunal Superior de Londres autorizou Lofti Raissi, de 32 anos, a empreender diligências judiciais para pedir uma indemnização ao Ministério do Interior britânico, que até agora se negou a indemnizá-lo argumentando que se trata de um caso de extradição.

Foram as autoridades norte-americanas que pediram a sua detenção, dez dias depois dos atentados do 11 de Setembro de 2001 nos Estados Unidos, por suspeitarem que tinha participado na instrução dos dois pilotos que sequestraram e lançaram os aviões contra as duas torres do World Trade Center.

Raissi, que no momento de ser detido residia em Colnbrook, perto do aeroporto de Heathrow (oeste de Londres), ficou encarcerado na prisão de alta segurança de Belsmarch até que, em Fevereiro de 2002, foi posto em liberdade mediante o pagamento de uma caução.

Em Abril deste ano, um tribunal confirmou o que os advogados do argelino vinham a dizer: que não havia provas de qualquer tipo que o relacionassem com actividades terroristas.

A vítima afirma que a sua detenção, além de o privar da liberdade, prejudicou a sua reputação e lhe causou ansiedade e traumas.

Por esse motivo, quer que as autoridades britânicas que o detiveram e encarceraram o indemnizem, embora a sua detenção tenha sido pedida pelos Estados Unidos.

Rossi confirmou que pedirá ao ministro do Interior que volte a reflectir sobre o seu caso.

«Destruíram-me a vida. Escolhi ser piloto, trabalhei duro para consegui-lo, passei fome. Mas a realidade é que sofri esta injustiça por ser argelino, muçulmano, árabe e um piloto de uma companhia aérea», declarou.

«Acredito que um homem é inocente até que se demonstre a sua culpabilidade. No meu caso, fui declarado culpado e tive que demonstrar a minha inocência», lamentou.

Diário Digital / Lusa

de:
http://diariodigital.sapo.pt/news.asp?s ... ews=215511


     Quando se pensa que somente nos países não-europeus à falta de liberdade e de direitos humanos....existe sempre algo que nos faz lembrar que os EUA não são os senhores da razão....pena é o RU ir sempre atrás do "seu dono", o que me deixa espantado com a posição de Tony Blair ser a favor do fecho da Prisão de Guantanamo....talvez naquele dia ainda estava a dormir quando tomou essa decisão..

     Em termos de liberdade a Europa felizmente está à frente dos EUA...no entanto continuamos ir para a batalha com este, sendo mal guiados....sim.....ainda estão à procura das Bombas de Destruição Maçiça no Iraque..

   Cumprimentos

[Marauder]

Outside View US No Better Than Soviets
by Lou Marano
UPI Outside View Commentator
Washington DC (UPI) Feb 22, 2006

Now that the Defense Department has come up with a name for the current conflict -- "the Long War" -- it's fair to ask if that war's duration amounts to a life sentence for detainees and also to question the circumstances under which captives are being held.
I never bought the argument that those captured in Afghanistan or elsewhere do not deserve Prisoner of War status because they are not members of the armed forces of a recognized government. A war is a war, and a prisoner is a human being regardless of whether his side has a parliament or an air force.

In the past, civilized countries repatriated POWs after the cessation of hostilities. Prisoners taken in the fall of 2001 have now been held almost four-and-a-half years, longer than the United States was a belligerent in World War II. At a time when it's not uncommon for convicted murderers to serve 15 years or less in some Western democracies, how long should somebody be incarcerated for running with the wrong crowd in Jalalabad?

Don't get me wrong. Anyone who continues to present a danger should be kept locked up in Guantanamo, and I'm not competent to sort the prisoners out.

But clearly, not everyone who was scooped up in Afghanistan was a threat. Let's stipulate, however, that everyone who should be repatriated has already been sent to his home country. For the sake of argument, assume only the hard cases remain. This does not justify the brutal force-feeding of hunger strikers who have no other way to protest their indefinite incarceration.

In a Feb. 9 report, The New York Times' Tim Golden quotes Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin, chief military spokesman at Guantanamo, as saying the force-feeding has been carried out "in a humane and compassionate manner" and only when necessary to keep the prisoners alive. But Golden also cites military officials who say detainees have been strapped into restraint chairs, sometimes for hours a day, to be force-fed through tubes inserted through the nose. Through attorneys, prisoners describe rough treatment, with feeding tubes inserted and removed so violently that some detainees bled, fainted, or screamed in pain.

It scarcely needs to be said that the hunger strike has been used by such respected figures as Mohandas K. Gandhi, British suffragettes of the early 20th century, and prisoners of conscience in the former Soviet Union. As for the "humane and compassionate" nature of force-feeding through nasal tubes, we have the account of Vladimir Bukovsky, who warns not only against the inhumanity of such measures, but also against the corrosive effect it has on its perpetrators. How can you compel your own people to commit acts that will scar them forever? Bukovsky asked in Dec. 18 Washington Post essay. He made his case by recounting how he was force-fed through the nostrils in Moscow's notorious Lefortovo Prison in 1971.

"About a dozen guards led me from my cell to the medical unit," Bukovsky wrote. "There they straitjacketed me, tied me to a bed, and sat on my legs so that I would not jerk. The others held my shoulders and my head while a doctor was pushing a feeding tube into my nostril.

"The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept shoving the pipe father and farther down. Only when it reached my stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up. They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the pipe out bit by bit."

The procedure was repeated every morning for ten days, when the guards could stand it no longer.

"As it happened it was a Sunday and no bosses were around. They surrounded the doctor: 'Hey listen, let him drink it straight from the bowl, let him sip it. It'll be quicker for you, too, you silly old fool.' The doctor was in tears: 'Do you think I want to go to jail because of you lot?' ... And so they stood over my body, cursing each other, with bloody bubbles coming out of my nose."

On the twelfth day, the authorities acceded to Bukovsky's demand: he could get his own lawyer instead of one assigned by the KGB. "But neither the doctor nor those guards could ever look me in the eye again," Bukovsky wrote.

Do U.S. staffers at Guantanamo have less humanity than the guards at Lefortovo -- despised Soviet apparatchiks? Bukovsky, whose case horrifies even in retrospect, was hunger-striking for his own attorney. The Guantanamo prisoners, faced with life sentences without trial, have greater cause. U.S. officials justify the force-feeding as suicide prevention. In fact, they are cruelly removing the prisoners' one method of non-violent protest against an intolerable situation.

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Outside ... viets.html

[JoseMFernandes]

In the past, civilized countries repatriated POWs after the cessation of hostilities

Not exactly!Para citar apenas a II GM, e esquecendo algumas posteriores como a Coreia, os prisioneiros de guerra alemaes (e do Eixo) permaneceram entre dois a quatro ou mais anos em campos de detençao externos(no Canada, USA,França G-Bretanha e suas colonias ou Australia...) e isto apenas a contar do fim da guerra e nao de sua detençao em operaçoes(como o Afrika Corps), efectuada por vezes varios anos antes.Estes detidos efectuavam basicamente trabalho 'forçado' em campos, quintas e fabricas proximo dos campos de 'prisioneiros', em condiçoes degradantes com custos humanos muito elevados ( basta cf. ou 'googlar' o tema, de que o conhecido livro doc. do autor canadiano,  James Bacque "Other Losses" é um exemplo).E evidente que tudo isto era independente dos publicos procedimentos de justiça contra os reais responsaveis por crimes de guerra.
Exclui-se claramente o caso especial da entao Uniao Soviética (que nao seria exactamente 'a civilized country') e cujos prisioneiros de guerra  na sua esmagadora maioria permaneceram até morrer em condiçoes degradantes nos confins da Sibéria.Como simples exemplo, os ultimos e escassos sobreviventes da 'Division Azul' espanhola regressaram do cativeiro apenas em 1954!