William Fisher

A major rights watchdog warned the United States, Arab League, and European Union against transferring detainees to prisons in Egypt and cautioned them not to seek or accept Egyptian government assurances that prisoners will not be tortured or abused. Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a report released Wednesday, said Washington, Arab, and European governments have … Continue reading “Rights Group: Repatriated Egyptian Detainees Face Torture”

Fifty current and former employees of U.S. national security agencies are demanding that Congress end government retaliation against those who expose national security blunders. Leaders of the new group, known as the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), have stepped up their efforts to win protection since testifying late last month before congressional committees in the … Continue reading “Security Whistleblowers Demand End to Retaliation”

Cherif Bassiouni, the top U.N. human rights investigator in Afghanistan until his job was eliminated at Washington’s behest, has caused a stir by accusing the United States of obstructing, then ousting him in a bid to cover up abuses by its personnel. Even so, he delivered a grim report on the Asian country. The Egyptian-born … Continue reading “UN Afghanistan Envoy’s Sacking Highlights Abuses, Secrecy”

NEW YORK – A Muslim scholar who was issued and then denied a visa to teach in the United States because of alleged ties to terrorists has called for an immediate moratorium on corporal and capital punishment and dialogue aimed at creating less repressive Muslim societies. Other scholars of Islam gave the idea a mixed … Continue reading “Muslim Scholar Urges Halt to Extreme Punishments”

A leading human rights group demands that the U.S. government launch a sweeping inquiry into the torture of Iraqi and other prisoners by U.S. troops, and that it name a special prosecutor to probe high-ranking officials’ possible role in alleged abuses. Human Rights Watch, in a new report assailing some conclusions of previous investigations, said … Continue reading “Watchdog Demands US Torture Inquiry”

The Halliburton corporation, already the Iraq war’s poster child for "waste, fraud, and abuse," has been hit with a new double whammy. A report from the U.S. State Department accuses the company of "poor performance" in its $1.2 billion contract to repair Iraq’s vital southern oil fields. And a powerful California congressman is charging that … Continue reading “Double Trouble for Halliburton”

NEW YORK – Three influential civil rights groups charged Wednesday that border control tactics used by the Department of Homeland Security discriminate against U.S. citizens solely on the basis of their religion and ethnicity, in violation of the U.S. Constitution. In simultaneous news conferences held in New York City and Buffalo, on the Canadian border, … Continue reading “Religious Profiling Sparks Federal Lawsuit”

The Republican majority on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee suffered a stunning defeat today in its efforts to confirm the nomination of Undersecretary of State John Bolton as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In a surprise move during an unusually rancorous meeting of the committee, Republican Senator George Voinovich of Ohio told … Continue reading “Republican Defector Scuttles Bolton – for Now”

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military’s most senior leaders, want Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to approve new guidelines that will formalize the George W. Bush administration’s policy of imprisoning so-called enemy combatants without the protections of the Geneva Conventions and enable the Pentagon to legally hold "ghost detainees," a human rights group is … Continue reading “Pentagon: Detainees? What Detainees?”

The man who famously said the United Nations headquarters could lose 10 stories and "it wouldn’t make a bit of difference" appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today as U.S. President George W. Bush’s nominee to be Washington’s next ambassador to the very same world body. But the John Bolton who testified in the … Continue reading “Bolton Ducks and Weaves as Dems Come Out Swinging”