Free Republic

A marathon deportation case against two Palestinian immigrants, pursued by the administrations of four U.S. Presidents over 20 years, has been dismissed. The ruling closes a Byzantine legal saga that wound its way through federal appellate courts, the U.S. Supreme Court and federal immigration boards, breaking new legal ground along the way. It ended at the Department of Homeland Security, where the dismissal order was entered Tuesday. One of the defendants, Khader Musa Hamide, said in an interview that he will never get over the experience of being under suspicion for 20 years but now "I can breathe better." A...

One in five Guantanamo Bay detainees is on hunger strike Guantanamo Bay (Roberto Schmidt/EPA) 33 detainees are being force-fed Tim Reid in Guantanamo Bay Nearly a fifth of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay are on hunger strike with the aim of attracting the attention of Barack Obama, military officials have told the Times, with most of them being force fed. Of the 248 inmates inside the controversial US detention facility, 44 are refusing food, and 33 of those are receiving nutrition with tubes that are forced up their noses and into their stomachs. On election night, according to one...

Does America need a terrorist financier to secure its “freedom”? Sami al-Arian thinks so. His National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom poses as a watchdog for the Constitution, but he has focused his lobbying efforts on repealing anti-terrorist legislation. While Sami al-Arian himself has been arrested for being a prime financier for Palestinian Islamic Jihad (and likely one of its three founders), his political movement continues to threaten homeland security. Al-Arian founded the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF) in 1997 as a reaction to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996. The coalition’s stated goal “is to help change the...

Two leading civil rights groups plan to file lawsuits Tuesday against the Bush administration over its domestic spying program.... The Center for Constitutional Rights plans to sue on behalf of four lawyers at the center and a legal assistant there who work on terrorism-related cases at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,... Similarly, the plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit include five Americans who work in international policy and terrorism, along with the A.C.L.U. and three other groups.... One of the A.C.L.U. plaintiffs, Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, ... Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist...

Michael Ratner (above, holding document) of the Center for Constitutional Rights rants against the country he hates most: the United States.* * * * * Much has already been written of the U.S. Supreme Court's lawless, nonsensical decision in Boumediene v. Bush that gives America's terrorist enemies unprecedented access to our civilian court system, but little has been written about the aggressively anti-American public interest law firm that helped to make it happen.* The nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights, which acted as co-counsel in the case, is deeply enmeshed in the politics of terrorism (take one guess on whose side)...

Detention transformed doctor into man of peace Saudi carries no bitterness home as he ends San Antonio stay 05/25/2002 By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News SAN ANTONIO - Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi sits easily on the carpeted floor of the mosque. He speaks with a soft intensity, the words spilling out as he describes the day his life was turned upside down. Stony-faced FBI agents whisked him from his San Antonio home a day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was flown to New York and secreted in a detention cell for nearly two weeks. Like hundreds...

French prosecutors throw out Rumsfeld torture case Fri Nov 23, 2007 12:27pm EST PARIS (Reuters) - The Paris prosecutors' office has dismissed a suit against Donald Rumsfeld accusing the former U.S. defense secretary of torture, human rights groups who brought the case said on Friday. The plaintiffs, who included the French-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) and the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said Rumsfeld had authorized interrogation techniques that led to rights abuses. The FIDH said it had received a letter from the prosecutors' office ruling that Rumsfeld benefited from a "customary" immunity from prosecution granted...

A US human rights group says it is suing private security firm Blackwater for unspecified damages for war crimes and wrongfully killing Iraqi civilians. The Center for Constitutional Rights is acting on behalf of an injured survivor and three families of men killed by Blackwater guards on 16 September. The Iraqi government said the incident in which 17 people died was unprovoked. Blackwater denies firing without cause. The case has put a spotlight on private military contractors in Iraq. BLACKWATER USA FACTS Founded in 1997 by a former US Navy Seal Headquarters in North Carolina One of at least 28...

A Saudi suspected of being the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks has recanted his confession, saying he made false statements after he was beaten, abused and humiliated at Guantanamo, according to documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press. Mohammed al-Qahtani — who U.S. officials have said previously was subjected to harsh treatment authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld — denied knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks in his first appearance before a military panel at Guantanamo Bay in October. "I am a businessman, a peaceful man," al-Qahtani testified under oath, nearly five years after he was...

It's been two years since Hurricane Katrina and Rita ripped through the belly of the South, and survivors, along with various scholars and activists, are seeking to hold the US government responsible in a tribunal court hearing scheduled for this August. On Tuesday (July 17), New York City Councilman Charles Barron and former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney met at Manhattan's Center for Constitutional Rights for a press conference to discuss the upcoming trial. The tribunal will target President Bush, the US government, State of Louisiana, State of Mississippi, and various other agencies who were involved in the Katrina and Rita...

December 3, 2006: In the United States, a federal judge has ruled that the President does not have the authority to designate certain organizations as terrorist groups. This ruling is the latest round of lawfare against the war on terror. In this case, two foreign terrorist organizations, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elan (LTTE), were the beneficiaries of this suit. Why is this case, filed on behalf of the Humanitarian Law Project, important? After all, a number of human rights groups have still been waging lawfare, largely on behalf of al Qaeda. This suit...

Rabih Haddad, a founder of an Islamic charity based in suburban Bridgeview, held meetings outside the U.S. more than a decade ago with members of terror groups linked to Al Qaeda, according to federal prosecutors. During his overseas trips, the Lebanese-born Haddad, who was arrested by immigration agents four months ago, was reportedly seen at facilities that housed and supported organizations tied to the terrorist network, government officials said. The accusations were contained in the more than 1,000 pages of documents from immigration court transcripts released Friday by the government. Their release came after a federal appeals court in Cincinnati...

The ACLU of Georgia is one of the crown jewels in the ACLU’s stable of state chapters. According to Gerry Weber, Legal Director of the ACLU of GA, the GA ACLU litigates approximately 40 cases. Weber stated this is the “highest caseload of any ACLU in the country.” The GA Chapter has successfully fought against the state Voter ID law, assisted Henry Co school system set up a Gay/Straight Alliance in the schools and attempted to overthrow the voice of the people in GA regarding same sex marriage. If an issue arises in the state that is in opposition to...

Last week, I reported how the ACLU is using unaccountable global governance bodies to find the United States in violation of a whole host of what they called “universal” human rights. As outrageous as this is, the ultra-Left Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is planning something far more sinister. On November 14, 2006, the CCR plans to file a criminal complaint in a German court on behalf of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, and...

As Posted on Drudge...Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abusehttp://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1557842,00.htmlAlso:# Alberto Gonzales, George Tenet also to be named...# Focus: Alleged roles in abuses committed at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay...# Former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski to testify on behalf of plaintiffs...# PENTAGON: NO COMMENT...

Worse Than The ACLU If you thought the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union was bad, wait till you read about the ultra-left "public interest" law firm called the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in “The Terrorists’ Legal Team.” The Center for Constitutional Rights is openly anti-American and pro-terrorist. Groups suspected of ties to terrorism give money to CCR. The granddaughter of the executed Communist spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg works there. The late (second) wife of the traitor Alger Hiss left money to CCR in her will. Actors Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon fund CCR, as does singer Natalie Merchant...

A new book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe has enraged the Left and alarmed many conservatives. It exposes the machinations of a radical clique working at the highest levels of government and finance to undermine American power. That book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. It hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week in print. Here to tell us about The Shadow Partyis co-author Richard Poe, our esteemed colleague at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, where he serves as director of research. Mr....

Civil Liberties for Terrorists But Not for American TroopsBy Jacob LaksinFrontPageMagazine.com | June 21, 2006 In recent years the ranks of alleged victims championed by civil libertarians on the political Left have swollen to include everyone from the terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay, to anti-American radicals, to environmentalist ultras and illegal immigrants. But there’s at least one group ineligible for victim status under the legal Left’s guidelines: American troops.  This seems to be the lesson of the “Camp Pendleton Eight.” A group of seven Marines and one Navy corpsman, they are currently being held--reportedly under excessively harsh conditions--at the Camp...

To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Connie Julian, 917-449-9064, Janet Yip 212-941-8086 or commission@nion.us News Advisory: From: International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration WHEN: January 10, 2006 at 1:30 p.m. WHERE: The White House, Walk-in Gate, across from Lafayette Park WEBSITE: http://www.bushcommission.org An unprecedented series of indictments alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity, in five separate areas, on moral, political, and legal grounds, will be delivered by a citizens' tribunal to President Bush at the front gate of the White House this Tuesday, January 10th. Named in the indictments are: President of...

One "plaintiff" in the nuisance lawsuits being filed against the Director of the NSA et al is none other than the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg -- Rachel Meeropol.Lest we forget, the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 for helping to pass US atom bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. (Most fittingly, Julius's KGB nom de guerre was "Liberal.")True to her roots, Rachel is a Vice President of the New York City chapter of the communist National Lawyers Guild. She is also a fixture in some of the most ultra left organizations out there, such as The Children Of Resistance.Of...