The Shalom Center - Torture

Shalom Ctr as Amicus in Torture case

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:52:56 -0500

The Shalom Center was invited to join in an Amicus (friend of the court) brief in the case of Yousuf v. Samantar, involving whether survivors of torture by other governments can, in the US, sue officials of those governments as provided in US law. We agreed to join in the Amicus brief, along with other religious groups, and submitted an explanation of our stake in supporting the argument on appeal. For our explanation, see below. First, the essence of the argument we support is this:

When Congress passed the Torture Victim Protection Act (“TVPA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1350 note (2000), it intended to allow survivors of torture to sue former officials of foreign governments in U.S. courts, on the understanding that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1602-1611 (2000), would not bar suits against former officials accused of torture.

Psychosocial Causes for the Palestinian Factional War

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:29:42 -0400

By Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, head of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme. Dr. Sarraj has been an outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies.

The Psychosocial causes for the Palestinian Factional War
14 February 2007

Many questions even after Mecca meeting [creating a unity Hamas-Fatah government of occupied Palestine] remain … what has become of us? Our people have suffered for 59 years from displacement, homelessness, discrimination, impoverishment and expatriation, but they withstood that suffering and never killed each other; so what happened to us? T

TO DISCOVER THE TRUE AMERICA: Fasting on Oct. 8 to challenge the culture of Violence

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:06:12 -0400

WE CALL FOR A NATION-WIDE FAST ON OCTOBER 8
TO DISCOVER THE TRUE AMERICA;

TO MOVE FROM CONQUEST TO COMMUNITY,
FROM VIOLENCE TO REVERENCE

A Call from the Tent of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah

America stands in great danger of becoming addicted to violence, at home and overseas.

Pervasive violence in American culture, society, and policy is expressed in mass murders like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech; in daily murders on the streets of our cities; in physical and sexual abuse in families and communities; in the obsession of our media with grotesque violence; in our government's decision to wage an unnecessary, morally abhorrent, and disastrous war; in its effort to make torture a legitimate instrument of policy; indeed, most lethal of all, in the ecocidal violence we are imposing on the earth itself.

Rabbis for Human Rights Natl Conf: Turning Dark Despair into the light of Change

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:18:03 -0500

Dear Friends,

On Sunday December 10, International Human Rights Day , 200 rabbis / rabbinical students gathered in the first-ever conference on Judaism and Human Rights, brought together by Rabbis for Human Rights / North America. Let me share with you a few glimpses into that meeting -- five moments:

1) Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American Catholic nun who went to Guatemala to serve the poor, was kidnapped in 1989 by a unit of the Guatemalan military commanded by a US CIA officer. She was tortured and repeatedly gang-raped. Her own hands were used by her torturers to torture a friend of hers. She survived; her friends and co-workers were tortured to death.

Letter to Congressmembers: "A republic -- if we can keep it"

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:14:23 -0500

THE SHALOM CENTER
A Prophetic Voice in Jewish, Multireligious, and American Life
6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia PA 19119
215/844-8494 www.shalomctr.org office@shalomctr.org

NOVEMBER 1 , 2006

The Honorable xxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Member of Congress [or
United States Senator]

Dear Congressman/ woman/ Senator:

I am transmitting to you a set of petitions signed by Philadelphians who gathered at the Federal Courthouse in Philadelphia on the day President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act.

We gathered to mourn the signing of the Act, which is a betrayal of the principles of the Constitution and of several of its specific passages.

CNSNews on Waskow Interview, Torture, & Military Commissions Law

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:55:40 -0500

By Kate Monaghan
CNSNews.com Correspondent
October 17, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - President Bush Tuesday signed into law the much contested Military Commissions Act of 2006, the law aimed at defining how suspects in the war against terrorism will be interrogated and prosecuted. Despite much criticism, the president insisted that the act would provide a just response to those accused of terrorism.

"These military commissions will provide a fair trial in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them," said Bush.

"These military commissions are lawful, they are fair and they are necessary," he added.

The Israeli approach to detainee rights

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:29:28 -0400

By GABRIELLA BLUM AND MARTHA MINOW

N Y Times October 18, 2006

BEFORE ENACTING the ``Detainee Bill " (otherwise known as the Military Commissions Act) two weeks ago, Congress should have spent more time learning from the Israeli experience. Compared with Israel's security measures during a long and difficult experience with terrorism, the US Congress has gone too far in its willingness to compromise human rights and civil liberties. Security considerations, as legitimate and forceful as they are, do not justify such excessive measures, as the Israeli practice demonstrates.

Israel enacted its own Unlawful Combatants Law in 2002, with the purpose of providing a domestic legal framework for the prolonged detention of terrorists. Rejecting the terrorists' status as prisoners of war, the law instead provides for holding them ``until the end of hostilities." From its inception, it was intended not so much for the detention of Palestinian terrorists, who are either tried as criminals or held in administrative detention, but for others -- mostly from Lebanon or other Arab countries.

The Torture of Jose Padilla, US citizen

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 20:18:23 -0400

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

MIAMI DIVISION

CASE NO. 04-60001-CR-COOKE/BROWN(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

vs.

JOSE PADILLA,
Defendant,
____________________________________/
MOTION TO DISMISS FOR OUTRAGEOUS GOVERNMENT CONDUCT
Mr. Jose Padilla, through undersigned counsel, moves this Court to dismiss the
indictment based on outrageous government conduct and in support thereof states:
BACKGROUND
Mr. Padilla was arrested on May 8, 2002, in Chicago O=Hare International Airport, as
he stepped off an airplane from Zurich, Switzerland. The arrest was purportedly authorized

Canadian describes Torture at US/ Syrian hands

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:13:36 -0400

Maher Arar's statement to the media on November 4, 2003.

[The truth of his statements about himself, his detention, his "rendition" to Syria by the US, and his treatment has been affirmed by an independent Canadian commission. A suit in US Federal court brought on his behalf by the Center for Constitutional Rights was thrown out on grounds that even if all allegations were true, the claim of national security by the US government meant no trial could proceed. This decision is now on appeal.]

I am here today to tell the people of Canada what has happened to me.

There have been many allegations made about me in the media, all of them by people who refuse to be named or come forward. So before I tell you who I am and what happened to me, I will tell you who I am not.

April / May Actions against War & Global Scorching

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 16:24:03 -0400

Dear Friends,

Below is a short, summary report about what turned out to be a very significant long weekend for The Shalom Center in New York, April 29 tp May 1, 2006.

The Shalom Center was a member of three coalitions that were active in the streets that weekend: Climate Crisis Campaign, working on "global scorching"; Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq, which was working against the war and against the use of torture by the US government, and calling for the closure of the prison at Guantanamo; and the Darfur Coalition.

Ted Glick of the Climate Crisis Coalition writes:

In New York, Saturday, April 29th, was an inspiring and hopeful spring day. We were joined by hundreds of thousands of people marching down Broadway in lower Manhattan in a huge demonstration against the war and in support of other policy change to "turn our country around."

Nobel Prize address by Harold Pinter

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 07:52:01 -0500

Harold Pinter – Nobel Lecture

Art, Truth & Politics

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

Washington Post conceals sites of probable torture

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 14:14:14 -0500

The Consequences of Covering Up
Washington Post withholds info on secret prisons at government request

Reported by FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting November 4, 2005

On November 2, the Washington Post carried an explosive front-page story about secret Eastern European prisons set up by the CIA for the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

While the Post article, by reporter Dana Priest, gave readers plenty of details, it also withheld the most crucial information--the location of these secret prisons--at the request of government officials.

JOIN FAST NOV. 1: OPPOSE TORTURE OF HUNGER-STRIKING PRISONERS AT GUANTANAMO

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:33:47 -0500

The Shalom Center joins with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in asking people of good conscience, regardless of background or affiliation, to join for one day of the Ramadan fast from sunrise to sunset on November 1, 2005 to --

Protest the dire plight of the men illegally imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay,

Call on the Administration and Congress to deal clearly and honorably with the issues at Guantánamo.

Demand an immediate end to the tortures NOW being imposed on prisoners who are protesting through hunger strikes, against the denial of their human rights.

We also invite everyone who can to attend a noontime vigil in front of the Department of Justice in Washington D.C. on November 1.

Why Torture is OK

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:38:11 -0400

By Maura Stephens
Education for Peace in Iraq Center

Oct 21, 2005

Imagine that you are on your way to work, coffee in hand, one December morning when three men in United States military uniforms, armed with guns, approach you. They say your name; you acknowledge it.

One of them slams you in the chest, knocking your briefcase and coffee to the ground, but not before the hot beverage spills on your hand, burning you. The men throw a heavy plastic black hood over your head. You can see nothing. It is very hard to breathe. You are confused and scared out of your mind. You do not have any idea what these men might want. What happened to the quiet day you were expecting? How can you get word to your family? Nobody knows where you are. They will be paralysed with worry.

Afghan Detainee's Leg Was 'Pulpified,' Witness Says

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 12:25:55 -0500

Lianne Hart for the L.A. times, 3/24/2005
Published Wednesday 23 March 2005

Ft. Bliss, Texas - An Afghan detainee in U.S. custody was so brutalized before his death that his thigh tissue was "pulpified," a forensic pathologist testified Tuesday at a preliminary hearing for a military police officer charged in the 2002 assault.