The US Senate overwhelmingly demanded that the administration of President George W. Bush give Congress details on allegations that the CIA flew terrorism suspects around the world to a secret network of clandestine prisons.
The Senate voted 82-9 on Thursday to require National Intelligence Director John Negroponte to provide the Senate and House intelligence committees with details of any such activities.
That was a reaction to a Washington Post story from Nov. 2 that said the CIA has had secret prisons for terror detainees in eight countries, including democracies in Eastern Europe. The Bush administration has refused to confirm whether the prisons exist.
Senators also moved to deny detainees at the US Guantanamo Bay prison the right to challenge their detentions with habeas corpus petitions in federal court, a step critics said could undermine efforts to secure their humane treatment.
Separately, the Senate hopes to complete work next week on an overall defense spending bill. It already includes provisions barring abusive treatment of foreign prisoners and standardizing interrogation techniques. Those provisions are also in the separate US$445 billion military spending bill the Senate passed last month.
The White House has threatened to veto any bill with the restrictions on handling detainees, saying that it would limit the president's ability to protect US citizens and prevent a terrorist attack. Vice President Dick Cheney has vigorously lobbied Congress to drop or modify the detainee provisions sponsored by Republican Senator John McCain.
That has set up a rare challenge of the president's wartime authority by members of his own party. The confrontation comes as Bush is under fire for detention policies at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities.
Democrats and a number of Republicans have rejected Cheney's plan, saying it would be seen as a license for the CIA to engage in torture.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
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