NEW YORK (Reuters) -- A top Spanish court has moved toward starting a probe of six former Bush administration officials including ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in connection with alleged torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, The New York Times said on Saturday.

The criminal investigation would focus on whether they violated international law by providing a legalistic justification for torture at the U.S. detention camp in Cuba, the Times said.

. . . The other Americans named are William Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; Jay Bybee, Yoo's former boss at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and David Addington, chief of staff and legal adviser to ex-Vice President Dick Cheney.

March 29, 2009
by Sander Hicks
http://sander.gnn.tv

NYPD Central Booking (212) 374-3921

NEW YORK, NY -- Last night, in an attempt to get Mayor Bloomberg to answer questions about the Mayor's alleged neglect of 9/11 First Responders, three activists from the nation-wide "9/11 truth" group We Are Change were suddenly arrested and held over night in Central Booking.

The Mayor had been at the Times Square Hilton for a fund-raising event. The activists claim they were not asked to leave the premises, and were illegally arrested.

"All of the members of WeAreChange immediately complied with all instructions given by the security detail so that they could exit the building but within seconds arrest orders were given. According to WeAreChange camera operators, there is video of these unlawful arrests as it appears that in some cases there were no warnings given and some people were simply arrested just for being in the lobby of the hotel." Members of We Are Change also allege that police engaged in unnecessary brutality. Three video cameras were confiscated.

Some people have written to ask whether we've completely lost our collective mind... "Do you really think this Congress--who has refused to investigate or even talk about 9/11 crimes for all these years--is suddenly going to divulge honest information about their lack of oversight of National Emergencies, and act to terminate it just because you send them a letter?!" Well, uhm, not really, no. But, do we think some (continued)...

Sunday March 29, 2009 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld's Passionate Eye Showcase

Watch a :52 min promo here:

An investigation into the deadly world of germ weapons, Anthrax War begins in New York in the days following 9/11. Anthrax-laced letters, mailed to media and U.S. senators, killed five people and spread fear and panic throughout the nation.

For filmmaker Bob Coen, who was raised in Zimbabwe where the former white regime has been accused of unleashing anthrax against the black population, biological weapons have a deep personal meaning. He embarks on a journey that raises troubling questions about the FBI's investigation of the 21st century's first act of biological terrorism.

Coen's investigation takes him from the U.S. to the U.K. and from the edge of Siberia to the tip of Africa. In a rare interview, Coen confronts "Doctor Death" Wouter Basson, who headed Project Coast, the South African apartheid-era bio-warfare program. Project Coast used germ warfare against select targets within the country's black population.

by Rory Eastburg
March 24, 2009
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

A Manhattan federal court will hear oral arguments Wednesday on whether more than a million pages of documents related to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks should remain sealed.

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the United States District Court in New York City will hear arguments from The New York Times and the Reporters Committee, as well as victims' families and attorneys for the aviation industry defendants.

The documents come from lawsuits the families of certain Sept. 11 victims brought against airlines and related defendants. According to a statement from the plaintiffs' attorneys, more than a million documents remain sealed by an overbroad protective order that allowed the defendants to unilaterally designate vast numbers of documents as containing confidential trade secrets.

. . . "My mother went through the most public murder you could imagine . . . and I've been putting up with this crap for seven years," Keating said of his refusal to settle his case out of court.

Keating's 72-year-old mother, Barbara, a Framingham native, died aboard American Airlines Flight 11.

Keating is making legal history today, along with the families of Mark Bavis, 31, and Sara Low, 28, by asking Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in Federal District Court in Manhattan to lift the order keeping all the evidence hidden.

On 9/11 the Bush administration declared a State of Emergency (SOE), which was formally proclaimed on September 14, 2001, and extended by Bush repeatedly thereafter, most recently on August 28, 2008.¹ Under cover of this SOE, Bush secretly enacted many extreme measures, ranging from suspension of habeas corpus to preparations for martial law in America; all these were undertaken as part of secret so-called "Continuity of Government" (COG) procedures associated with the SOE, and first instituted on 9/11.^{2 and 3}

The National Emergencies Act, one of the post-Watergate reforms so detested by Vice-President Cheney, requires specifically that

Not later than six months after a national emergency is declared, and not later than the end of each six-month period thereafter that such emergency continues, each House of Congress shall meet to consider a vote on a joint resolution to determine whether that emergency shall be terminated.
(50 U.S.C. 1622 (2002)⁴

Last fall one of us appealed on the Internet for the Democrats in Congress to take this statutorily required step, and also to learn what secret COG measures were being enacted under the SOE.⁵ There was no response.

THE LATE President Milosevic's secret police chief and organiser of Serb death squads during the genocidal ethnic cleansing of disintegrating Yugoslavia was the United States' top CIA agent in Belgrade, according to the independent Belgrade Radio B92.

The claim that from 1992 until the end of the decade, Jovica Stanisic, head of Serbia's murderous DB Secret Police, was regularly informing his CIA handlers of the thinking in Milosevic's inner circle has shocked the region.

Stanisic is said to have loyally served his two masters for eight years. He is facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

In the terrifying years of Yugoslavia's internecine wars, he acted as the willing "muscle" behind Milosevic's genocidal campaigns in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia, including Sebrenica.

Declassified documents show U.S. Embassy knew that Guatemalan security forces were behind wave of abductions of students and labor leaders.
National Security Archive calls for release of military files and investigation into intellectual authors of the 1984 abduction of Fernando García and other disappearances
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 273
By Kate Doyle and Jesse Franzblau
English / Español

(Guatemala Documentation Project Home)

(See many significant related postings at the source.)

Washington, DC, March 17, 2009 -- Following a stunning breakthrough in a 25-year-old case of political terror in Guatemala, the National Security Archive today is posting declassified U.S. documents about the disappearance of Edgar Fernando García, a student leader and trade union activist captured by Guatemalan security forces in 1984. The documents show that García's capture was an organized political abduction orchestrated at the highest levels of the Guatemalan government.

Guatemalan authorities made the first arrest ever in the long-dormant kidnapping case when they detained Héctor Roderico Ramírez Ríos, a senior police officer in Quezaltenango, on March 5th and retired policeman Abraham Lancerio Gómez on March 6th as a result of an investigation into García's abduction by Guatemala's Human Rights Prosecutor (Procurador de Derechos Humanos--PDH). Arrest warrants have been issued for two more suspects, Hugo Rolando Gómez Osorio and Alfonso Guillermo de León Marroquín. The two are former officers with the notorious Special Operations Brigade (BROE) of the National Police, a unit linked to death squad activities during the 1980s by human rights groups.

According to the prosecutor Sergio Morales, the suspects were identified using evidence found in the vast archives of the former National Police. The massive, moldering cache of documents was discovered accidentally by the PDH in 2005, and has since been cleaned, organized and reviewed by dozens of investigators. The National Security Archive provided expert advice in the rescue of the archive and posted photographs and analysis on its Web site.Last week, Morales turned over hundreds of additional records to the Public Ministry containing evidence of state security force involvement in the disappearance of other student leaders between 1978 and 1980. As the Historical Archive of the National Police prepares to issue its first major report on March 24, more evidence of human rights crimes can be expected to be made public.

Government Campaign of Terror

The abduction of Fernando García was part of a government campaign of terror designed to destroy Guatemala's urban and rural social movements during the 1980s. On February 18, 1984, the young student leader was captured on the outskirts of a market near his home in Guatemala City. He was never seen again. Although witnesses pointed to police involvement, the government under then-Chief of State Gen. Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores always denied any role in his kidnapping. According to the Historical Clarification Commission's report released in 1999, García was one of an estimated 40,000 civilians disappeared by state agents during Guatemala's 36-year civil conflict.