US Internal Politics and Isreal [Zionist] LobbyIsrael and Palestine
Most agree that the US is key to resolving the conflict but what are the US internal political ramifications? Is the US held hostage to its own internal politics and religious pressures? Recent discussion has brought the "Israel Lobby" more clearly into focus ...
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Documents show new secretive US prison program isolating Muslim, Middle Eastern prisoners
Documents show new secretive US prison program isolating Muslim, Middle Eastern prisoners | Jennifer Van Bergen | Published: Friday February 16, 2007Program in apparent violation of federal law
The US Department of Justice has implemented a secretive new prison program segregating "high-security-risk" Muslim and Middle Eastern prisoners and tightly restricting their communications with the outside world in apparent violation of federal law, according to documents obtained by RAW STORY.
Quietly implemented in December, the special "Communications Management Unit" (CMU) at a federal penitentiary in Indiana targeting Muslim and Middle-Eastern inmates was not implemented through the process required by federal law, which stipulates the public be notified of any new changes to prison programs and be given the opportunity to voice objections. Instead, the program appears to have been ordered and implemented by a senior official at the Department of Justice.
In April of last year, the US Federal Bureau of Prisons -- part of the Department of Justice -- proposed a set of strict new regulations and, as required, there was a period of public comment. Human rights and civil liberties groups voiced strong concerns about the constitutionality of the proposed program.
The program originally proposed was said to be applicable only to terrorists and terrorist-related criminals. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), however, along with a coalition of other civil liberties groups, objected to the language of the regulation as too broad, and potentially applicable to non-terrorists and even to those not convicted of a crime but merely being held as "witnesses, detainees, or otherwise."
After pushback from civil rights groups, the program appeared to have been dropped by the Prisons Bureau, with coalition groups believing that they had made their case regarding Constitutional rights. Yet documents obtained by RAW STORY show that a similar program, the CMU, was surreptitiously implemented in December 2006. ...
