Thursday, Dec 26th
Last update09:02:29 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
On their second try, federal prosecutors won sweeping convictions Monday against five leaders of a Muslim charity in a retrial of the largest terrorism-financing case in the United States since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
TVNL Comment: If there was an iota of justice in the US, anyone who contributed a single dime to anyone in the Bush killing machine would be convicted of aiding a terrorist group.
City officials have ordered 22 New York churches to stop providing beds to homeless people.
With temperatures well below freezing early Saturday, the churches must obey a city rule requiring faith-based shelters to be open at least five days a week -- or not at all.
Arnold Cohen, president of the Partnership for the Homeless, a nonprofit that serves as a link with the city, said he had to tell the churches they no longer qualify.
He said hundreds of people now won't have a place to sleep.
On Sunday, the Pentagon admitted that 12 juveniles -- those under the age of 18 at the time their alleged crimes took place -- have been held at Guantanamo Bay (as opposed to the figure of eight that was submitted to the UN in May).
Last week, the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, based at the University of California, issued a report pointing out that, contrary to the Pentagon's assertions, at least 12 prisoners were juveniles at the time of their capture.
Five of six Algerians must be released after nearly seven years of captivity at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a federal judge ruled on Thursday in a setback for the Bush administration,
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled from the bench after holding the first hearings under a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June that gave Guantanamo prisoners the legal right to challenge their continued confinement.
Violent clashes erupted early Thursday between settler activists and Israeli security forces at a disputed house slated for evacuation in the West Bank city of Hebron, prompting Israeli and Palestinian officials alike to call for legal enforcement. The High Court on Sunday ordered the settlers to vacate the house, after they forged ownership documents. The settlers were given until noon Wednesday to evacuate voluntarily, a deadline that expired without heed.
The settlers also scribbled graffiti around Hebron, including spraying 'Mohammed Pig' on the walls of a local mosque and on Palestinian homes nearby.
TVNL Comment: Imagine the international outcry if the Palestinians had sprayed a swastika on a synagogue.
Throughout its history, Israel willfully and systematically committed premeditated extrajudicial killings of Palestinians and other Arabs as official state policy - carried out with explicit high-level political, judicial and military authorization and allegedly in "self-defense" against individuals threatening Israeli security. Government officials even admit that certain persons are targeted, and Dan Haluts, former Israeli Army Chief of Staff, once told the Washington Post (in August 2006) that "Targeted killing is the most important method in the fight against 'terrorism.' " In other words, premeditated murder is acceptable as long as it's properly classified.
An American Muslim subjected to several years of intense FBI scrutiny and questioning about links to terrorism has been held without charges, access to a lawyer or contact with his family for nearly three months by the security services of the United Arab Emirates.
That allegation is central to a lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union was planning to file Tuesday in federal court in Washington against President Bush, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and FBI Director Robert Mueller.
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