U.N. diplomat is denied unmonitored meeting with WikiLeaks suspect

[babsbunny]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-diplomat-is-denied-unmonitored-meeting-with-wikileaks-suspect/2011/04/11/AFgfAzLD_story.html?hpid=z3


By Ellen Nakashima, Monday, April 11, 3:46 PM

A United Nations diplomat charged with investigating claims of torture said Monday that he is “deeply disappointed and frustrated” that U.S. defense officials have refused his request for an unmonitored visit with Pfc. Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst accused of passing classified material to WikiLeaks.

Juan E. Mendez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said that his request for a private interview with Manning was denied by the Defense Department on Friday. Instead, he has been told that any visit must be supervised.

[mike_c]

1. this is how we treat the innocent in the U.S.

Never having been tried for any crime, Bradley Manning is of course presumed innocent, right?

on edit: :sarcasm:

[_ed_]

5. Concern about the rule of law is sooo 2007

.

[CelticThunder]

2. Does this remind anyone else of Soviet Russia?

[_ed_]

3. Some insight into solitary confinement

“It’s an awful thing, solitary,” John McCain wrote of his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam—more than two years of it spent in isolation in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cell, unable to communicate with other P.O.W.s except by tap code, secreted notes, or by speaking into an enamel cup pressed against the wall. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” And this comes from a man who was beaten regularly; denied adequate medical treatment for two broken arms, a broken leg, and chronic dysentery; and tortured to the point of having an arm broken again. A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam, many of whom were treated even worse than McCain, reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande#ixzz1JG96Qnab

Anyone who defends this is to the right of Pres Obama's Republican opponent.

[fascisthunter]

4. kinda says it all, right there