Ecuador doubts a fair US trial for Assange

"Ecuador is a constitutional republic. Recent years have seen both improvements as well as some abuses as regards Ecuador's human rights record.

Corruption of both the judicial and legislative branches of the government continue to hamper the objectives of good governance. The government continues to attack critics while the judicial system arbitrarily denies due process.

The police force uses torture, abuse, and killing of suspects and prisoners. Arbitrary arrest and forced confessions are used as well. Police courts also still claim jurisdiction over human rights cases even though they are supposed to fall under the auspice of civil courts. Those who complained about these irregularities faced death threats from the police."

I'll take my chances with America's justice system over Equador's in a heartbeat.

So you're saying there is no corruption or discrimination in the US justice system??

Which bubble have you been living in??

There's corruption in all countries but countries such as Ecuador take it to a totally different level.

It's hypocritical in the extreme for them to be preaching about fair trials and justice.

How would Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa know what a fair trial looks like?

"So you're saying there is no corruption or discrimination in the US justice system??"

So do you always put words in peoples mouths instead of responding to what they are specifically saying??

The bubble i'm living in, is refraining from knee jerk assumptions, as they frequently come back to bite you in the axx.

@flintis #2

A good advice: Do not fall into the trap of some posters around the threads about Julian Assange. Just agree: Ecuador is the scum of the Earth and the US is an angel. Otherwise, you will wind up in a never ending story of "intelligent" comments.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Tortured Until Proven Guilty: Bradley Manning and the Case Against Solitary Confinement

"Save for the death penalty, solitary confinement is the most extreme sanction allowed by law. Like slavery and every other form of institutionalized inhumanity, it should be banished to the dark annals of American history as an example of what happens when our humanity slumbers.

"Instead, it is being used as a method of terror and coercion by the United States government upon a citizen who has not even been convicted of a crime.

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has been detained in solitary confinement for the last seven months, despite not having been convicted of any crime, having been a model detainee, and having evidenced no signs of violence or even disciplinary misdemeanors. Manning has been kept alone in a cell for 23 hours a day, barred from exercising in that cell, deprived of sleep, and denied even a pillow or sheets for his bed.

"The message of the U.S. government to its citizens in this activity is clear: blow the whistle and your brain will be mutilated before you even have a trial.

Other countries will think twice before accepting extradition requests to a place where inhumane treatment of prisoners is sanctioned. Our moral standing in the world suffers, while the American citizenry, already suspicious of post-9/11 governmental abuses of power, grows even more alarmed. What kind of legitimacy adheres to a judicial hearing when the accused has been subject to sanity-threatening conditions? Trust and faith in American justice will deteriorate as long as such damaging practices continue.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-parramore/tortured-until-proven-gui_b_803018.html

More:

"Since 11 September 2001, and especially since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a series of investigative studies and testimonies have revealed that at least some terrorist detainees have been subjected to torture by US interrogators. The US interrogation facility at Guantanamo Bay has attracted widespread criticism over its alleged use of torture. Indeed, Guantanamo Bay has become almost a byword for abuse, coercion, degradation, and torture. The horrific scandal that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004 further highlighted the lack of constraints over at least some US forces during the interrogation of terrorist suspects".

http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-78.html

"Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything," wrote Salon's Glenn Greenwald. "

"In response, the Marines who run the brig at Quantico, Virginia, where Manning has been held for the past five months, released information detailing his detention, CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports.

They say the 22-year-old Manning is a maximum custody detainee, which means he is held by himself in a cell. He is allowed one hour of recreation (which can be outdoors, weather permitting) and one hour of television each day.

Marines say Manning is allowed reading material and visitors and is allowed to talk to other prisoners -- "as long as the conversation does not interfere with good order and discipline." They insist he is treated no differently than any other maximum custody detainee."

themoron says: Galileo was condemned because he claimed that the Earth was round and not flat.

Those who believe in all the US lies throught its history, don't know anything about US history. More than 186 military interventions, torture procedures in many countries, etc, etc.

Iraq was invaded and Hussein hanged because the US, together with the UK, swore thát Hussein had WOMD.

David Martin is a resonance box from the White House. That is a fact.

God bless America and its lies. Yes! God bless America.

Either Julian and Bradley didn't think through the consequences of their action or they seriously miscalculated. Julian can spend the rest of his life in the Equadorian Embassy. Equador can get thie 15 minutes of fame. Bradley Manning is U.S. Army Private who gave classified documents to WikiLeaks. He is not a civilian. He is subject to the UCMJ. Manning will be lucky to spend the rest of his life as a maximum custody detainee and an object lesson to anyone else inclined to leak classifed documents.

themoron says: Prisoners in Guantanamo were and are not members of the US Army. Or, are they? And what about Abu Ghraib? Just asking, nothing more. I want to be enlightened by the supreme powers of intelligentia.

Anfal Campaign ,

The campaign consisted of eight stages of assault, where up to 200,000 Iraqi troops attacked the area, rounded up civilians, and razed villages. Once rounded up, the civilians were divided into two groups: men from ages of about 13 to 70 and women, children, and elderly men. The men were then shot and buried in mass graves. The women, children, and elderly were taken to relocation camps where conditions were deplorable. In a few areas, especially areas that put up even a little resistance, everyone was killed.

It is estimated that up to 182,000 were killed during the Anfal campaign.

Beginning in the morning on March 16, 1988 and continuing all night, the Iraqis rained down volley after volley of bombs filled with a deadly mixture of mustard gas and nerve agents on Halabja. Immediate effects of the chemicals included blindness, vomiting, blisters, convulsions, and asphyxiation. Approximately 5,000 women, men, and children died within days of the attacks. Long-term effects included permanent blindness, cancer, and birth defects. An estimated 10,000 lived, but live daily with the disfigurement and sicknesses from the chemical weapons. "

At the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, southern Shiites and northern Kurds rebelled against Hussein's regime. In retaliation, Iraq brutally suppressed the uprising, killing thousands of Shiites in southern Iraq.

As supposed punishment for supporting the Shiite rebellion in 1991, Saddam Hussein's regime killed thousands of Marsh Arabs, bulldozed their villages, and systematically ruined their way of life. The Marsh Arabs had lived for thousands of years in the marshlands located in southern Iraq until Iraq built a network of canals, dykes, and dams to divert water away from the marshes. The Marsh Arabs were forced to flee the area, their way of life decimated."

Damn the U.S. for removing this humanitarian.

Swden is just as corrupt these days as the US and Ecuador et al.

themoron says:

With a special dedication to...

The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source.

Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier's arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture.

"The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence," Mendez writes.

The findings of cruel and inhuman treatment are published as an addendum to the special rapporteur's report to the UN general assembly on the promotion and protection of human rights. They are likely to reignite criticism of the US government's harsh treatment of Manning ahead of his court martial later this year.

Sources: United Nations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un

"Sources: United Nations" (#13)

Would that be the same United Nations that appoints to a women's rights commission a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women deemed to be "immodest."

Or the U.N. gravy train whose peace-keeping forces sat and watched through sprees of gang rape of the people they were supposed to protect?

Find better sources than the U.N. theater of the absurd and the Guardian, a U.N. pulpit.

the moron says:

# 14

It does not matter what kind of sources we (many others and me) have and / or find, you will ALLWAYS have something against it.

This is what is all about: "Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier's arrest at a US military base in May 2010., # 13

And, IGNORANTNICO, there are other 10, at least, sources writing about the investigation.

Now, please do not come again with one of your "INTELLIGENT" comments, such as: "The Guardian, a U.N. pulpit; BBC, another UN pulpit; the New York Times, another bla, bla, bla, bla.

Just inform me, IGNORANTNICO, which sources shall we (others and me) look to please your hate against Julian Assange? Is there in the media wilderness something with the name of "The Cognito News" devoted only to say things against proven facts?

Whom do you not hate? GROW UP or simply vanish!

Please, enlighten me, you master of ignorance.

And, a message to someone else (NOT TO YOU, IGNORANTNICO):

"Damn the U.S. for removing this humanitarian." Oh yes, but of course. The U.S. is a white dove compared to Hussein. Well, let's see:

"On September 8, 2000, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) formally apologized for the agency's participation in the "ethnic cleansing" of Western tribes. From the forced relocation and assimilation of the "sauvage" to the white man's way of life to the forced sterilization of Native Americans, the BIA set out to "destroy all things Indian." Through the exploration of the United States' Federal Indian policy, it is evident that this policy intended to "destroy, in whole or in part," the Native American population. The extreme disparity in the number of Native American people living within the United States' borders at the time Columbus arrived, approximately ten million compared to the approximate 2.4 million Indians and Eskimos alive in the United States today, is but one factor that illustrates the success of the government's plan of "Manifest Destiny."

TWIMC: Search for one of the 53 existing sources.

Now, Massacres committed by the United States

Atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The "Canicattì massacre" involved the killing of Italian civilians by Lieutenant Colonel McCaffrey.

The "Dachau massacre" involved the killing of German prisoners of war and surrendering SS soldiers at the Dachau concentration camp.

In the aftermath of the Malmedy massacre a written order from Headquarters of the 328th US Army Infantry Regiment, dated 21 December 1944, stated: "No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight."

Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974) 70,000 (Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians.

Is this enough? There are tens of cases in which the WHITE DOVE OF PEACE (us) was involved.

There are numerous cases of the slaughter of others by muslims numbering into the millions in the name of islam.

The 80,000,000 slaughtered in India by muslims in the name of the islam, the "religion of peace", is just one example.

I could fill this thread with the others.

They continues to this day.

Since 911, 19,525 factually documented and verifiable acts of terror carried out by islamic terrorists.

A large percentage of those have DELIBERATELY targeted and killed innocent men women and CHILDREN!!! in the name of their allah.

There are many other atrocities throughout history by others as well.

"Is this enough? There are tens of cases in which the WHITE DOVE OF PEACE (us) was involved."

Your blatant racism speaks volumes.

#15. Oh, dear. You're off your meds again.

For the record, I do not hate J.Ass. I think of him as as entertaining, in a creepy sort of way.

themoron says: At # 16

I am not a racist. I like the following races:

1) Mongoloid (Asian and American Indian)

2) Caucasoid (European)

3) Australoid (Australian and oceanic)

4) Negroid (east African black)

5) Capoid (south African black)

I like all the colours in the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, blue, green, indigo, and violet.

I like white and black too.

What I do not like is BS TERRIERS. Or is that a crime? If it is, then, themoron is a racist.