International reaction to Bush administration torture

Spain's Judge Baltasar Garzon, the most prominent investigative magistrate in the country is opening up a case against former Bush administration officials for the system that they created resulting in torture that was "systematic and ordered at high levels of the US government." Read the article here.

This story is all the more intersting because Spain's court system has already used this "principle of universal justice" in an internationally high profile case against human rights abuses: that against the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. And it was the same Baltasar Garzon who brought the case!

Although Pinochet died before he was convicted of his crimes his case was (in the words of wikipedia) "the first time that several European judges applied the principle of universal jurisdiction, declaring themselves competent to judge crimes committed by former head of states, despite local amnesty laws."

Quite interesting. We will see where this goes.

Rendition and State Secrets - Federal ruling says NO

Hey guys - here you can find the link to the article in the LA Times detailing the case Mohamed vs. Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. The case deals with five men who were abucted in the CIA Extraordinary Rendition program and held for years in secret black sites by the CIA. These men alledge that they were tortured and the Bush administration and now the Obama administration have claimed that the information in the case (apparently including the information of what was done to the men while they were imprisoned) should be considered States Secrets and therefore not allowed into the courtroom.

This is an important issuse that is directly connected with the Bush doctrine but more importantly it is directly connected to the CIA's illegal and inhumane practice of Rendition which has been going on since the Clinton Administration.