Victims of Guantanamo will be compensated for having been illegally and immorally abused. Victims of the British at Guantanamo. Will be compensated by the British.
The government has agreed to pay millions of pounds in compensation to former Guantánamo Bay detainees following weeks of negotiations between lawyers for the government and the former prisoners.
One victim will receive more than a million British pounds.
Human rights campaigners expressed frustration that details of the cases would not be revealed in court. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "It's not very palatable but there is a price to be paid for lawlessness and torture in freedom's name."
And the U.S.? For starters, even the very conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron is not buying Bush's rationalizing his war crimes.
Earlier this month former US president George Bush claimed that controversial interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, had protected the UK from further terrorist attacks. Cameron rejected the comments.
And there's also this bit of news:
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will probably remain in military detention without trial for the foreseeable future, according to Obama administration officials.
The administration has concluded that it cannot put Mohammed on trial in federal court because of the opposition of lawmakers in Congress and in New York. There is also little internal support for resurrecting a military prosecution at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The latter option would alienate liberal supporters.
It's complicated. So, let's just forget about that whole due process thing.
The administration asserts that it can hold Mohammed and other al-Qaeda operatives under the laws of war, a principle that has been upheld by the courts when Guantanamo Bay detainees have challenged their detention.
The rules of war apparently apply even when no war has been declared and the enemy is a concept rather than an actual foreign nation. Good thing we have right wing courts to uphold such a "principle," which apparently comes in handy when due process becomes too complicated.
When was Gitmo going to be closed, again?