Posted on 14 November, 2009 by Mathias Vermeulen
On November 11th, 2009, the New York Times reported that in December 2007, top executives at Blackwater (currently known as Xe) authorized cash payments up to $1 million to Iraqi officials with the intent to buy silence and support from the Iraqi government over the Nisour Square shootings on September 16th, 2007, in which 17 [...]
Filed under: Accountability, Contractors, Iraq | Leave a Comment »
Posted on 16 September, 2009 by Mathias Vermeulen
Jens David Ohlin (Cornell Law School) has posted The Torture Lawyers (Harvard International Law Journal, Forthcoming) on SSRN.
Laurence R. Helfer (Duke Univ. – Law) and Emilie Hafner-Burton have a new piece on “Opting Out: Derogations from Human Rights Treaties in National Emergencies“
Peter Margulies (Roger Williams University School of Law) has posted The Wages of Playing [...]
Filed under: Academic, Accountability, Afghanistan, CIA, China, Contractors, Detention, EU, Intelligence, Intelligence sharing, Iraq, Jordan, Military commissions, Radicalisation, Rendition, Secrecy, Torture, UK | Leave a Comment »
Posted on 13 September, 2009 by Mathias Vermeulen
[JURIST] A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a lawsuit brought against private contractors by Iraqi plaintiffs alleging torture at the Abu Ghraib prison. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that federal law concerning “combatant activities” preempted the state tort claims brought by the former detainees. Redefining the test set [...]
Filed under: Accountability, Contractors, Immunity, Turkey | 1 Comment »
Posted on 31 August, 2009 by Mathias Vermeulen
Justice Department releases Helgerson report further detailing CIA abuses and tight control over them in ACLU FOIA suit
A court ordered the long-awaited release of the 2004 report by C.I.A Inspector General John L. Helgerson on the CIA’s interrogation techniques after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit of the ACLU. The IG’s report is the most [...]
Filed under: Accountability, Afghanistan, CIA, Contractors, Detention, Immunity, Intelligence, Intelligence sharing, Interrogation, Rendition, Secrecy, Torture, United States | 9 Comments »
Posted on 11 August, 2009 by Mathias Vermeulen
[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Monday affirmed the conviction of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contractor on assault charges related to the abuse of an Afghan detainee. The court found that the district court had properly exercised maritime and territorial jurisdiction [18 USC § 7 text] over the actions [...]
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Posted on 4 August, 2009 by Mathias Vermeulen
A group of United Nations independent experts on mercenaries voiced concern yesterday over the limited scrutiny of private security contractors by the United States Government, calling on greater transparency to prevent impunity for human rights violations.
“The responsibility of the State to protect human rights does not stop with contracting or subcontracting,” the UN Working Group [...]
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