British Arab Lawyers’ Association

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WITH AN order to close Guantánamo, the Obama administration has acted quickly to move away from the Bush administration’s policies in what it called the “war on terror.” But much more needs to be done to undo the damage to America’s reputation abroad-not just in the Muslim world-and to lessen the chances of starting another chapter in the erosion of America’s civil liberties. And not all measures will be difficult. For starters, President Barack Obama should follow the lead of Britain’s Gordon Brown, who, upon becoming prime minister, stopped using the phrase “war on terror.”

The concept of a “war on terror,” was “misleading and mistaken,” the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, wrote in the Guardian recently. Calling for a “war on terror,” he went on, “implied that the correct response was primarily military. . . . We must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating it. . . .”

The CIA destroyed 92 videotapes of terror-suspect interrogations, according to a court document filed by the government on Monday. The disclosure marks the first time the specific number of tapes has been made public.

• Court looks at whether Palestinians can bring case
• International pressure grows over conflict

The international criminal court is considering whether the Palestinian Authority is “enough like a state” for it to bring a case alleging that Israeli troops committed war crimes in the recent assault on Gaza.

The deliberations would potentially open the way to putting Israeli military commanders in the dock at The Hague over the campaign, which claimed more than 1,300 lives, and set an important precedent for the court over what cases it can hear.

As part of the process the court’s head of jurisdictions, part of the office of the prosecutor, is examining every international agreement signed by the PA to decide whether it behaves - and is regarded by others - as operating like a state.

Lieutenant-Colonel Darrel Vandeveld had been a prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay for one year when he went to seek advice from a priest. He wondered whether he should resign from a legal system he had come to believe was a sham, but he expected to hear he should stick with it and work within the system.

The priest offered no such advice. Instead he told the lawyer: “Quit. Do not co-operate with evil.”

Britain faces fresh accusations that it colluded in the rendering and alleged torture of a second UK resident now being held at Guantanamo Bay. The new claims bring further pressure on ministers to come clean about the scale of the Government’s complicity in the rendition and torture of dozens of terror suspects captured by the Americans after 9/11.

PARIS — A United Nations human rights official, investigating practices at Guantánamo Bay, has concluded that evidence obtained from the interrogations there is tainted and that foreign law enforcement and intelligence officials who took part in those interrogations violated their legal obligation to reject the use of torture and arbitrary detention.

The official, Martin Scheinin, is the special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, an unpaid position created in 2005 by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

“When evidence is obtained through cruel and inhumane treatment, we will be faced with situations where the courts decide they don’t have proper evidence,” Mr. Scheinin said in a telephone interview. “There may be suspicions of terrorism, but evidence is tainted, so courts have only one option, to drop the case. They should have thought about that from the beginning, but didn’t.”

GAZA LIES in ruins. After 22 days of ruthless Israeli aerial bombardment and ground assault, a survey of the carnage is as enraging as it is numbing: at least 1,285 Palestinians have been killed; 895 were civilians, including 280 children and 111 women. Another 167 of the dead were civil police officers, mostly killed on the first day of the bombing as they were graduating from a training course. Twenty-four hundred houses were completely destroyed, and 20,000 partially. Other infrastructure destroyed includes 28 public civilian facilities (ministries, municipalities, governorates, fishing harbors, and Palestinian Legislative Council buildings), 29 educational institutions (including Gaza’s Islamic University and American High School), 30 mosques, 10 charitable societies, 60 police stations and 121 industrial, and commercial workshops. There are reliable reports that Israel used the banned chemical weapon white phosphorus, which on contact with skin burns all the way to the bone.

The British government, after years of denying it had any role in the U.S. policy of “extraordinary rendition,” acknowledged yesterday that two prisoners its military forces turned over to U.S. custody in Iraq five years ago were subsequently sent to a U.S. prison in Afghanistan.

Brussels: Sherif el-Mashad, a 32-year-old Egyptian with a knack for carpentry, moved to Italy in 1997 in search of a better life. Having obtained the necessary permits, he began working in a restaurant before setting up a small business near Lake Como.

In July 2001, two months before the September 11 terrorist attacks against the US, he bought a round-trip ticket to Afghanistan, where he said he intended to spend some time doing charity work.

Photos and reports on Gaza on TV, in newspapers and Internet websites, remind one of German cities, such as Hamburg and Dresden, following the Allied bombing during World War II. Scenes of destruction in Gaza streets and neighborhoods in 2009 resemble those of Beirut’s southern suburbs in 2006. In both events, totally or partially destroyed buildings and infrastructure, and slaughtered civilians were standard outcomes of Israeli attacks.

Many late-night TV documentaries of World War II battles show German cities, flattened by Allied bombings in 1942-45, shell-shocked civilians, wandering among the ruins, looking for family members if they are still alive, and searching for morsels of food and shreds of clothing to stay alive in the bitter cold winter.