[Marxism] The Abu Ali Torture case -- an earlier paradigm

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Last week, Daniel Schorr, NPR's house liberal pundit, gave credibility 
to all the violations of human and civil rights that are evident in the 
Abu Ali torture case by embracing the U.S. government claim that there 
must have been security reasons for not producing public evidence 
against the defendant.

Why couldn't he have claimed that it was probably like the secret 
evidence of WMDs or the secret Downing Street Memos?

In other words, when the government wants to cover up its evil acts, it 
always claims state security. When it is revealed, they attack the 
revealer or dismiss it as an exceptional error. Or someone like Schorr 
comes along to give his own independent fig leaf.

Here is what happened in a similar case--the so-called "ricin plot."

Brian Shannon

______________

The only trouble was, there was no plot. Four of the defendants were 
acquitted of terrorism and four others had the cases against them 
abandoned. Only one man, Kamal Bourgass, was convicted in relation to 
the claims after he murdered Special Branch Detective Constable Stephen 
Oake during a raid.

The Meguerba case provides an almost perfect snapshot of Britain’s 
complicity in the new global dirty war that the Western powers find 
themselves sucked into. While Meguerba was almost certainly living on 
the fringes of Islamic extremism in the UK – and Bourgass was without 
doubt a dangerous fanatic – Meguerba’s claims were fatally flawed 
because of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his captors.

The use of torture is again in the full glare of publicity after the 
European Union demanded information about CIA rendition flights. These 
rendition flights work like this: a suspect is captured in one country 
and then taken, or rendered (in CIA-speak), to friendly nations such as 
Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Uzbekistan which routinely use torture. 
Often the private CIA jets which transport the captives around the 
world stop off in the UK – the two favoured airports being Glasgow and 
Prestwick. After the suspect is tortured, and inevitably confesses, the 
information is fed back to Western intelligence services like MI6 via 
the CIA.

FULL at http://www.sundayherald.com/53162

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