One Guantanamo Trial That Will Be Held in New York

[The Blue Flower]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/one_guantanamo_trial_that_will_be_held_in_new_york_20110405/

By Amy Goodman

On the same day President Barack Obama formally launched his re-election campaign, his attorney general, Eric Holder, announced that key suspects in the 9/11 attacks would be tried not in federal court, but through controversial military commissions at Guantanamo. Holder blamed members of Congress, who he said “have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States.” Nevertheless, one Guantanamo case will be tried in New York. No, not the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any of his alleged co-conspirators. This week, the New York state Supreme Court will hear the case against John Leso, a psychologist who is accused of participating in torture at the Gitmo prison camp that Obama pledged, and failed, to close.

...

John Francis Leso is a U.S. Army major, formerly chief of the clinical psychology service at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. According to CJA, Dr. Leso “led the first Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) at ... Guantanamo from June 2002 to January 2003,” where he “co-authored an interrogation policy memorandum that incorporated illegal techniques adapted from methods used by the Chinese and North Korean governments against U.S. prisoners of war.”

Reisner filed a complaint with the New York state agency that governs licenses of psychologists, the New York Office of Professional Discipline (OPD), asking for an investigation and appropriate disciplinary action. He took this route, Reisner told me, because “health professionals are privy to private information, to weaknesses, to psychological and physical compromises, and they are privy to that information because they take an oath not to abuse that information to cause harm. So when health professionals use that very information ... to cause harm, we want to make sure that those people are held accountable and have their licenses revoked, if necessary.”

The OPD declined to investigate, so Reisner is seeking a court order to force the agency to do so.

more at link

[gratuitous]

1. Note that this is a state court, not federal court, case

And at the risk of repeating myself, it is supremely craven to give up on one's principles when the chips are down. If the Constitution is to mean anything, it has to be applied even when the Republicans might say rude things. The president and the attorney general are supposed to be running the Department of Justice; why did they cede control to the House Republicans? If the Constitution isn't durable enough to govern our country, let's get a statement of principles that is. Or let's get some elected leaders who actually believe in what's written there, and who will honor their oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[EFerrari]

3. K&R