Mother of tortured U.S. citizen appeals case to Supreme Court
On Monday, the mother of a U.S. citizen who was allegedly tortured at a naval base in Charleston asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other government officials on behalf of her son.
Jose Padilla, a convicted terrorist, had sued Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials over his alleged torture at the naval base, but a district court judge granted Rumsfeld immunity and dismissed the case, Padilla v. Rumsfeld. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the dismissal in January.
“If the appeals court’s ruling is allowed to stand, government officials will have a blank check to commit any abuse in the name of national security, even the brutal torture of an American citizen in an American prison,” said Ben Wizner, the ACLU attorney who argued the case before the Fourth Circuit. “It is precisely the role of the courts to ensure that allegations of grave misconduct by Executive Branch officials receive fair adjudication. That vital role does not evaporate simply because those officials insist that their actions are too sensitive for judicial review.”
Padilla was arrested as an “enemy combatant” in May of 2002 after returning to the U.S. from Egypt. He was detained at a U.S. navy prison in South Carolina for nearly four years without charge.
According to his defense team, while in military custody Padilla was subjected to sleep deprivation, threats of execution, exposure to noxious fumes and extreme temperatures, physical abuse, and was forced stand in uncomfortable positions for extended periods of time.
“Tell me where in the Constitution it says that torturing Americans is acceptable,” Estela Lebron, Padilla’s mother, said. “You don’t even treat an animal the way my son was treated. If they can do this to Jose, they can do it to anyone. I’m going to continue fighting until justice has been done for my son.”
Padilla was later transferred to the civilian justice system, where he was sentenced to 17 years in jail in 2007 for aiding a U.S.-based al Qaeda cell.
The charges said the al Qaeda cell had conspired to murder and kidnap people in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other countries from 1993 to 2001.
(via cultureofresistance)
Blocking #WikiLeaks emails trips up #BradleyManning prosecution
By JOSH GERSTEIN | 3/15/12
The federal government’s vigilance at preventing anything relating to WikiLeaks from appearing on a government computer has tripped up military prosecutors, causing them to miss important emails from the judge and defense involved in the case against an Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and military reports to the web-based transparency organization.
At a hearing last month, prosecutors in the case against Pfc. Bradley Manning noted that they didn’t receive the messages but could not explain why. Chief prosecutor Capt. Ashden Fein said at a hearing Thursday that the messages had been “blocked by a spam filter for security.” However, it fell to defense attorney David Coombs to explain precisely why the e-mails about evidence issues in the Manning case never made it.
“Apparently, they were blocked because the word ‘WikiLeaks’ was somewhere in the e-mail,” Coombs said.
Fein said there is now a procedure in place to check the spam filter on a daily basis for errant e-mails. In addition, military Judge Col. Denise Lind said prosecutors had set up an alternate e-mail account that shouldn’t encounter the same problem.
At the hearing Thursday at Fort Meade, Md., Lind rejected two defense motions, one seeking a bill of particulars with more detail about the charges and another seeking to use arguments that prosecutors would not have access to in order to bolster the defense’s demands to produce additional evidence before trial.
However, much of the information the defense sought emerged at the hearing. For instance, the prosecution indicated that the “enemy” in the most serious charge Manning faces—aiding the enemy—is Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. That came as no great surprise based on earlier disclosures in the case. However, some had speculated that the U.S. Government had deemed WikiLeaks itself to be an enemy of the U.S.
In addition, prosecutors appeared to indicate that they did not plan to argue that Manning broke into government computers, but simply that he used his assigned password to initiate computer sessions during which he downloaded information he planned to send to WikiLeaks.
Credit union sues Wall St. firms #occupy #ows
March 13, 2012, Tom Knox
Space Coast Credit Union filed a lawsuit against several investment banks and rating agencies alleging that fraudulent mortgage securities led to the collapse of a credit union it acquired in 2009.
Melbourne-based Space Coast has 10 branches in Volusia County, plus a new branch inside the New Smyrna Beach Walmart opening next week. It also has two branches in Flagler County.
The credit union is suing Wall Street investment banks including Barclays Capital, Merrill Lynch and the credit rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. The state court lawsuit accuses the defendants of causing more than $100 million in losses to Eastern Financial Florida Credit Union, leading partly to its collapse.
Space Coast acquired Miramar-based Eastern in July 2009.
The complaint accuses the defandants of conspiring to use fraudulent credit ratings, and the investment banks of dumping those inflated securities onto unsuspecting investors.
The losses were written off, Space Coast spokeswoman Meredith Gibson said, but the goal of the lawsuit is to recover some of those funds.
“This was an injustice that was done. Eastern is gone — that can’t come back,” she said. “But what we can do is attempt to get some justice for those members.”
#Facebook, #Google to Stand #Trial in #India
By AMOL SHARMA, via @AdamfromNorway
NEW DELHI — Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are set to begin trial here Tuesday to face charges that they didn’t censor objectionable content from their sites, putting on stark display the legal risks for Internet companies chasing growth in India.
The case is the highest-stakes example yet of the controversy in India over what role Internet companies should have in policing content on the Web. If convicted, executives from the companies could face jail time and the companies could face fines, lawyers following the case said.
The trial comes as Google and Facebook see India as an important growth market. Facebook, which faces heavy restrictions in China, said in a recent filing for its planned U.S. initial public offering that India is among its most significant sources of growth. The company said it had 46 million monthly active users in India at the end of last year, up 132% from a year earlier.
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Jury convicts Texas financier Stanford on nearly all charges in $7 billion Ponzi scheme - BlackListedNews.com
March 6, 2012, via @TurboKitty
HOUSTON — Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford, whose financial empire once spanned the Americas, was convicted Tuesday on all but one of the 14 counts he faced for allegedly bilking investors out of more than $7 billion in massive Ponzi scheme he operated for 20 years.
Jurors reached their verdicts against Stanford during their fourth day of deliberation, finding him guilty on all charges except a single count of wire fraud.
Stanford, who was once considered one of the wealthiest people in the U.S., looked down when the verdict was read. His mother and daughters, who were in the federal courtroom in Houston, hugged one another, and one of the daughters started crying.
“We are disappointed in the outcome. We expect to appeal,” Ali Fazel, one of Stanford’s attorneys, said after the hearing. He said the judge’s gag order on attorneys from both sides prevented him from commenting further, and prosecutors declined to comment after the hearing.
Prosecutors called Stanford a con artist who lined his pockets with investors’ money to fund a string of failed businesses, pay for a lavish lifestyle that included yachts and private jets, and bribe regulators to help him hide his scheme. Stanford’s attorneys told jurors the financier was a visionary entrepreneur who made money for investors and conducted legitimate business deals.
Stanford, 61, who’s been jailed since his indictment in 2009, will remain incarcerated until he is sentenced.
More…
Call your government representative. Dismiss all the charges against #BradleyManning.
Every week from now until the court martial the Bradley Manning Support Network will be asking supporters to write or call individuals and organizations influential to the trial.
Pfc. Bradley Manning, an alleged WikiLeaks whistle-blower, will be formally arraigned on the 23rd of February. While his presence in the courtroom will be brief, the arraignment sets in motion Manning’s court martial, which is currently expected to begin in May. With this in mind we are requesting that supporters write, email, and call their local representatives to express their outrage over the charges against, and the treatment of, Pfc. Bradley Manning. The military court proceedings have thus far been for show, but we can still ask our elected officials to protect whistle-blowers and to pressure the Obama Administration to drop all the charges against Bradley Manning.
Anders Behring Breivik réclame sa “libération immédiate”
06.02.12
L’auteur des attaques qui ont fait soixante-dix-sept morts le 22 juillet en Norvège, Anders Behring Breivik, a réclamé, lundi 6 février, sa “libération immédiate”, expliquant que son carnage était “une attaque préventive contre des traîtres à la patrie”, commise pour “défendre la population ethnique norvégienne”. “Je n’accepte pas l’emprisonnement. J’exige d’être libéré immédiatement”, a déclaré l’extrémiste de droite de 32 ans, lors d’une comparution devant le tribunal d’Oslo, qui devait ordonner son maintien en détention provisoire.
Pirate Bay Founders’ Prison Sentences Final, Supreme Court Appeal Rejected
Ernesto, February 1, 2012, via @rawbyaa
A few moments ago Sweden’s Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal in the long-running Pirate Bay criminal trial. This means that the previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström will stand.
November 2010, the Swedish Court of Appeal found three people behind The Pirate Bay guilty of criminal copyright infringement offenses.
Although Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström all had their prison sentences decreased from the levels ordered at their original 2009 trial, they were ordered to pay increased damages amounting to millions of dollars to the entertainment company plaintiffs.
Hoping to overturn the ruling, the three filed for a hearing of their case at the Supreme Court. Today this request was denied, meaning that the sentences as determined by the Court of Appeal are now final.
[…]
Despite the fact that sentences are now final, The Pirate Bay website remains online as it was not part of the legal proceedings. However, a few hours after the Supreme Court decision was made public, The Pirate Bay website started redirecting to a .se domain, fearing a possible seizure from the US authorities.
