US court rejects 9/11 abuse lawsuit

US court rejects 9/11 abuse lawsuit

english.aljazeera.net

The US supreme court has ruled that senior Bush-era officials cannot be sued over the alleged abuse of a man detained in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

(visit the link for the full news article)

In a five-to-four decision, the justices on Monday overturned a lower court decision allowing a Pakistani man held after the attacks to sue John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Javaid Iqbal was arrested in November 2001 on an immigration violation and jailed for five months in a maximum-security prison in New York.

He says he was held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day for several months with the light always on, and that he was subjected to repeated strip searches, beatings and verbal abuse.

Iqbal sought to have the justices recognise an established pattern of mistreatment of and discrimination against Muslim detainees by administration officials under George Bush, the then US president, as they conducted the so-called "war on terror"

It is disgusting that we have high ranking officials condemning torture, speaking out against it....but actually facing consequences? Sorry, bud, you're out of luck. We said we don't like torture, isn't that enough?

english.aljazeera.net
(visit the link for the full news article)

I think that this article is not getting the attention it deserves.

The repercussions of this decision are huge...is basically giving these high ranking officials a green light to do as they please in regards to human rights as long as they can claim that they didnt knew anything about nothing.

It is embarrassing in the face of all we hear right now about torture debate that this decision came down.

[edit on 18-5-2009 by Bunch]