It's a shame but maybe we do need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.
--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> *A tale of two cases in US “war on terror”: Jose
> Padilla and Chiquita
> Brands*
>
*http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/chiq-m24_prn.shtml*
> *By Bill Van Auken*
> *24 March 2007*
> *
> *
> *Two recent cases prosecuted by the US Justice
> Department involving
> charges of providing material aid to a foreign
> terrorist organization
> have led to startlingly different results for the
> defendants.*
> *In the first, the accused was seized by federal
> agents at a US airport,
> vilified as a mass murderer by the US attorney
> general in a nationally
> broadcast press conference and then held in solitary
> confinement without
> charges or the right to see a lawyer or have contact
> with family members
> for more than three years. During this period, he
> underwent sensory
> deprivation and outright torture that, his lawyers
> argue, left him
> mentally damaged and incompetent to stand trial.*
> *While federal prosecutors now portray the defendant
> as merely a
> low-level courier, working for others, they still
> want to jail him for
> life.*
> *In the second instance, the individual defendants
> have never even been
> named, much less publicly denounced by the attorney
> general. The sole
> mention of the ultimate punishment for their crime
> came in the form of a
> discreet posting on the Justice Department web
> site.*
> *The defendants in this second case are part of a
> major multinational
> operation and admit to funneling millions of dollars
> abroad to finance a
> murderous terrorist organization. Yet they were
> allowed to reach a
> pre-trial plea bargain that included as the penalty
> a fine amounting to
> 0.55 percent of their annual revenue. The
> organization that financed the
> foreign terrorists has boasted publicly that its
> global operations have
> not been affected in the slightest.*
> [snip]
>
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>
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