A prison's a prison, know what I mean?
I did mention Watching Justice before, right? That where I got this press release.
In a letter to President Bush, the American Civil Liberties Union called the prisoner abuses at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq a "predictable result" of American detention policies that have deliberately skirted the rule of law and American values. The ACLU demanded in the letter that the government immediately comply with its seven-month-old Freedom of Information Act request for information on the reported torture of detainees held in the war on terrorism.
"Abu Ghraib wasn't the result of a couple of lone sadists in the military - it was a direct and easily foreseen consequence of detention policies that lack transparency and safeguards against this type of abuse," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. The ACLU also notes that the revelations at Abu Ghraib also shine new light on the 9/11 detainee abuses by the Justice Department, detailed in two internal reports by the department's own inspector general.
The American Civil Liberties Union's website features a collection of materials that focus on the nation's policies for detention of enemy combatants abroad - and the disturbingly similar conditions at many American prisons.
To view the materials on American detention policy on enemy combatants, including at the controversial Abu Ghraib prison, please click here.
To view materials on conditions in U.S. prisons, please click here.
