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30 October 2015

American Justice

Well, it's taken only 13 years for the CIA and the FBI to decide that they have no evidence with which to charge Shaker Aamer. Now he's been returned to the UK.

I despair at the way in which the USA, the self-styled beacon of Democracy for the rest of the world can throw out every tenet of natural justice that they are supposed to espouse, when it is done in the name of National Security.

To my mind, it is not good enough for you to be thrown into prison and subjected to torture (and by the way how does that square with the American Rule of Law?) solely on the grounds that you might have committed a criminal act. There is either evidence to support that, or there isn't. If there isn't then there is no justification for depriving you of your liberty. Once you accept that particular perversion of justice, then all sorts of people can be banged up for any old trumped-up charge and left to rot in prison.

Surely, that was the way of the old Soviet Union. It is the way of all tyrannical regimes. It should not be the way of a so-called civilized democracy.