human rights watch

Yesterday’s announcement that the Obama administration will try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 suspects in federal court has been hailed as everything from “an important step forward for justice” by Human Rights Watch to “a step backwards for the security of our country [that] puts Americans unnecessarily at risk” by Senate Minority Leader [...]

Human rights experts say there is a serious risk that some of the Guantanamo detainees cleared for release could face persecution or torture.

The two-minutes-hate dreamed up by the Iranian Revolution to divert public hostility at its repression over to Israel isn’t working this year. The New York Times reports on how the Iranian opposition, again under tremendous threat of repression, chooses its own destiny:
Conservatives had warned against using the annual pro-Palestinian march, known as Quds Day, as [...]

On Monday a federal court judge ordered the Department of Defense to release a 47-year-old father of two with a heart condition who it has imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for the past seven years without justification.

The latest in high-minded criticism from National Review’s in-house conspiracy theorist Andy McCarthy. He’s infuriated because Jennifer Daskal from Human Rights Watch is working at the Justice Department, as she — get the smelling salts ready — worked for years to bring the Bush administration’s detentions and interrogations regime in line with civilized understandings of [...]

The Wall Street Journal posted a small piece — reprinting a Volokh Conspiracy post from last month — attacking Human Rights Watch for raising money in Saudi Arabia. It’s an alarming claim if, as the implication has it, the NGO is taking cash from the very government it purports to monitor. Sarah Leah Whitson, the [...]

Add Human Rights Watch’s Joanne Mariner to the list of civil libertarians who dissent from the Obama administration’s emerging proposals for preventive detention. This is from a newly released statement from the organization:
“Pursuing a policy of indefinite detention without charge would send the Obama administration down the same misguided path as its predecessor,” said Joanne [...]

What did the human-rights-promotion community think about the Cairo speech? According to vanguard organization Human Rights Watch’s official statement, emailed to me at 4:14 p.m. yesterday, not such great things. This release was titled “U.S./Egypt: Obama Dodged Rights Issue: Generalities Failed to Send Tough Message on Mideast Repression.”
President Barack Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 [...]

So claims Human Rights Watch in a press release.
The former detainee, Rasul Kudaev, has been held for more than three years in pretrial detention in Nalchik, a city in southern Russia, where he is accused of participating in an October 2005 armed uprising against the local government. Human Rights Watch’s investigations into Kudaev’s case found [...]

That’s what Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, and Gabor Rona, international legal director of Human Rights First, said in a conference call with reporters this afternoon, after meeting with the Department of Justice’s Special Interagency Task Force on Detainee Disposition.
“In order to save its ability to conduct military commissions, albeit with these [...]