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17 Dec, 2009 01:39

Gitmo detainees denied right to sue the government

The Obama administration is not interested in prosecuting people who carried out torture, says Shane Kadidal from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

He spoke to RT following the rejection by the US Supreme Court of an appeal by four former Guantanamo Bay prisoners seeking to sue the government for torture and psychological abuse.

Kadidal added that this incident also shows that the current administration “is not interested in seeing financial accountability for people who did torture and paying restitution to people who were tortured.”

However, formally the problem is seen as purely legal and even technical – and has nothing to do with politics:

“In the US we give immunity from civil liability for damages for officials who do things in good faith that they think might be legal. So what the government, the Bush administration, argued in this case to the lower court was this: they said, “Look, it wasn’t perfectly clear in the law back in 2004 – when these guys were brought to Guantanamo – that any legal protection existed for non-citizens held in Guantanamo,” Shane Kadidal told RT.

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