Yesterday I wrote about the lawsuit the Center for Constitutional Rights and other groups are filing in Germany seeking a war crimes prosecution against Donald Rumsfeld.

Time Magazine has more on the lawsuit today.

Here is the backgrounder from C.C.R. (pdf) on the lawsuit.

Via How Appealing: An article in the California Daily Journal (pass through link) reports that one of Sen. Patrick Leahy's first efforts as probable Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be to hold hearings to restore some of the habeas rights taken away by the Military Commissions bill.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who is expected to become chairman, confirmed Thursday that he is drafting a bill to undo portions of a recently passed law that prevent terrorism detainees from going to federal court to challenge the government's right to hold them indefinitely.

Leahy's goal is to "try and do something to reverse the damage," said his spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler.

The sooner the better in my opinion. I also think Leahy is a great choice for Judiciary Committee Chair. He has been a champion for the rights of the accused on many issues, such as the original Innocence Protection Act. Even though ultimately, an overly weak IP bill was passed, it wasn't his fault. He fought till the bitter end.

I really look forward to having Sen. Leahy serve as Judiciary Chair.

Remember in 2005, when Italy issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents alleged to have kidnapped suspected radical muslims and flown them on Ghost Air to secret prisons in countries that practice torture?

One of those Italy alleged to have been kidnapped by the CIA, flown to Egypt and tortured was Abu Omar, also known as Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr.

The Washington Post reports that an 11 page handwritten account of his kidnap and torture has been smuggled out of the Egyptian prison where Abu is being held and made its way to Italian prosecutors. He describes his torture (many details have previously been made public by the Italian newspaper):

The case of Majid Khan is proceeding through the courts. The Judge, Reggie Walton, is the same judge presiding over the Scooter Libby trial.

What will he do with the Government's latest request -- to prevent detainees in CIA secret prisons from talking to their lawyers about their conditions of confinement?

The government, in trying to block lawyers' access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees' experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public.

... Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantanamo, said the prisoners "can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is 'Alice in Wonderland.' "

Kudos to the New York Times for this editorial today blasting Bush and Sen. Lindsay Graham for the military commissions bill.

One of the many problems with the new law is that it will only make it harder than it already is to separate the real terrorists from the far larger group of inmates at Guantánamo Bay who were bit players in the Taliban or innocent bystanders. Mr. Graham and other supporters of this dreadful legislation seem to have forgotten that American justice does not merely deliver swift punishment to the guilty. It also protects the innocent.

Marine Sgt Heather Cerveny went to Guantanamo three weeks ago to serve as a legal aide to military lawyers. She reported that five Navy guards told her how they beat up detainees. The Pentagon has ordered an investigation.

"The one sailor specifically said 'I took the detainee by the head and smashed his head into the cell door'," she said in the affidavit. "From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the sergeant wrote.

"Everyone in the group laughed at the others' stories of beating detainees."

Sgt. Cerveny's charges mirror those of military lawyers:

Military lawyers who represent detainees at the camp have filed an affidavit that describes guards boasting of abusing prisoners.

Via Southern District of Florida Blog: Taj Mohammad was a goat shepherd in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. His tribe, the Gudjers, are nomads. He got in a fight with his cousin and hit him with a stick. His cousin's family, in retaliation, claimed he was a member of the Taliban. Unbeknownst to Taj, his cousin had been working laying pipe for the American military. They came to question Taj, arrested him and took him to the prison at Bagram AFB, and then shipped him to Guantanamo where he was held for four years.

The Defenders began representing Taj about a year ago and, after security clearances were approved, Paul Rashkind began to uncover evidence and develop a strategy to obtain his release. Just 14 days ago, Rashkind and Cone filed a set of classified challenges to Taj's continued detention, explaining why he should be released now. Last night, on the eve of the military hearing, Taj was on a plane back to Afghanistan. He was released to his family earlier today. Rashkind commented, "America was not a safer place while he was detained, but we can certainly feel better about ourselves now that he is home."

Kudos to defenders Paul Rashkind and Tim Cone for their victory.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall. The Red Cross this week met with the 14 new detainees at Guantanamo, those who reportedly were interrogated under abusive conditions in overseas prisons, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh.

It was the first time anyone but their captors have seen the men since their capture. From my post of October 12, 2004, exactly two years ago:

Professor Stephen Griffin over at Balkanization has a thoughtful post on torture and the ticking time bomb theory in the context of Judge Richard Posner's new book, Not a Suicide Pact. Posner seems to embrace the TTB theory.

Posner comments: "In the era of weapons of mass destruction, torture may sometimes be the only means of averting the death of thousands, even millions, of Americans. In such a situation it would be the moral and political duty of the president to authorize torture. It seems odd that people who accept this point nevertheless denounce torture with such ferocity."

Griffen says,

What disturbs me is the moral shallowness of this particular scenario. Defined in a common sense way, torture involves deliberate cruelty and, as such, should be absolutely prohibited.

Must read of the day: When Lawyers are War Criminals: Remarks delivered by Scott Horton at the ASIL Centennial Conference on The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, Bowling Green, OH, Oct. 7, 2006.

On the Military Commissions bill:

I want to ask today: What has this legislation done to the legacy of Nuremberg? Has it granted impunity to persons who committed war crimes? Is that impunity effective, and might it have unintended consequences?

At Nuremberg, Justice Jackson promised that this process would not be "victor's justice." He said "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well." Powerful words. A moral compact. Did the Bush Administration seek to repudiate Jackson's commitment? This can be answered quite clearly: yes. But did they succeed? That is less clear.

Law Prof Marjorie Cohn warns that the military commissions bill authorizes Bush to round of thousands, including Americans, and hold them in detention camps.

The contract, she writes, has already been awarded to a Haliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root.

As I wrote back in May, when warning about the Republican immigration bill, immigrants aren't safe either.

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

This is a disgrace:

The Navy lawyer who took the Guantánamo case of Osama bin Laden's driver to the U.S. Supreme Court -- and won -- has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word he had been denied a promotion to full-blown commander this summer, "about two weeks after" the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. Under the military's "up-or-out" promotion system, Swift will retire in March or April, closing a 20-year career of military service.

This disagraceful vengeance upon a Navy lawyer committed to the ideals he swore to uphold is just as much as taint on our country as the detainee bill. Why? Because it puts into grave doubt the whole idea of military tribunals, and the independence and commitment of layers appointed to defend detainees. The Navy reward for a job well done is to be busted out of the service. An outrage.