US clears drug cure for death row inmates

By Duncan Campbell

Los Angeles, California, Oct. 8— Convicted murderers with severe mental health problems can be forced to take drugs that would make them clinically sane so that they can be executed, the US Supreme Court has ruled.

Opponents of the death penalty yesterday described the court’s decision to uphold an earlier ruling on the issue — without debating it — as shocking.

The case concerns Charles Singleton who, in 1979, killed a grocery shop worker in Arkansas. He was convicted and sentenced to death later that year.

While awaiting execution, Singleton’s mental health deteriorated to such an extent that he believed his victim was still alive, that the authorities had implanted a device in his ear and that his jail cell was under the control of demons.

Because a prisoner has to be technically sane before being executed, the court was asked to decide whether Singleton could be given psychotropic drugs to qualify to be put to death. His lawyers argued that the drugs should not be administered as the only medical purpose of doing so would be to prepare the prisoner for execution.

This year an appeals court in St Louis ruled that it was acceptable to give Singleton the drugs, although the decision was not unanimous. A dissenting judge, Gerald Heaney, said: “I believe that to execute a man who is severely deranged without treatment and arguably incompetent when treated is the pinnacle of ... the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance.” At issue is whether such action amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment” under the US constitution. In 1986 the supreme court ruled that it was cruel and unusual to execute someone if they did not know why they were being executed or even that they were about to be executed.

Another crucial concern is whether a doctor would administer the drug and what the ethical implications would be for the doctor. The ruling could mean that paramedics would have to be specially trained to give the medication.

Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said yesterday that because the Supreme Court had upheld the decision without a debate the door was open for a further appeal.

“It is somewhat shocking that someone whose mental condition is so bad that you have to pump them up, so to speak, so that you can put them on the table [is allowed to be executed],” Dieter said. “It seems to be the epitome of cruel punishment and the invasion of the human body.

“I hope at some time there will be a debate [in the Supreme Court] and I hope that this will get a full hearing.”

Dieter said he was aware of only three or four prisoners who had been spared the death penalty because they were considered mentally incompetent. Many people on death row suffered from mental illness of some sort, ranging from depression and alcoholism to schizophrenia, but this did not often prevent their execution.

“I read a lot of mitigating circumstances and mental illness is often part of the description,” Dieter said.

In a separate death penalty dispute, there is growing debate about the lethal injection itself.

Medical experts have argued that while a person being executed may appear serene, it is possible they are in severe pain but unable to cry out because they have been paralyzed. A case brought by a prisoner awaiting execution claims that pancuronium bromide, the chemical compound used in some states, leaves the prisoner conscious but unable to communicate.

Lethal injection is now the favored method of execution in states which permit the punishment. Nebraska, which electrocutes prisoners sentenced to death, is the only one of the 38 states which have the death penalty not to use the method. In some states the prisoner is given a choice, which can include a firing squad (in Utah), a gas chamber or hanging.

Source: Guardian (UK)

Pentagon caught in biowarfare sting

By Hans de Vreij

Oct. 9 — The US Defense Department has sold via the Internet surplus equipment that could theoretically be used to manufacture biological weapons. The findings of an official investigation come as a serious embarrassment to the Pentagon, which has been conducting a vigorous campaign to prevent biological weapons falling into terrorist hands following the Sept. 11 attacks. The ball started rolling after an undercover operation by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the US Congress.

The General Accounting Office used unconventional methods to investigate the alleged sale of sensitive material by the Pentagon. It set up front companies both in the United States and in several countries abroad, including Egypt and the Philippines. These companies ordered excess materials from the US Defense Department through the Internet. The items thus acquired could be used for the production of biological warfare agents, the GAO report says.

Germ warfare

The equipment included a so-called incubator, an apparatus used for multiplying bacteria and viruses, and evaporators, capable of turning nasty substances such as anthrax and deadly fungi into easily deployable powdered form.

From its surplus stocks, the Pentagon also sold more harmless items that could nevertheless be useful for potential manufacturers of biological warfare agents. These included protective suits and laboratory equipment.

Iraq

The GAO criticizes the Pentagon for failing to undertake any action to win more information about the front offices in Egypt and the Philippines, two countries where terrorist groups are thought to be active. Pentagon officials indirectly admitted their mistake by halting the sale of the controversial surplus items after earlier hearings on biological and chemical weapons tools.

A salient detail is that in the case of Iraq, findings of comparable laboratory materials and protective clothing were presented as evidence that the country was still actively pursuing a biological weapons program.

International rules

US sources stress that the surplus items at issue are also readily available on commercial markets, but this is only partly true and certainly doesn’t apply to sales to customers in sensitive countries. Besides, orders for incubators of a specific quality and size should at least have set off some alarm bells in Washington.

According to the Dutch government, the items in question feature on a list of strategic goods that require a specific export license. They also appear on a list drawn up by the Australia Group, a consultative gathering of Western industrial nations committed to preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Their rules also apply in the United States. Uncontrolled Internet sales to customers in Egypt and the Philippines, fake or not, should therefore never have occurred.

Source: Radio Netherlands

US Muslims warn of new govt. crackdown

By Emad Mekay

Washington, DC, Oct. 8 (IPS)— Muslims in the United States say that the way they are now being treated here qualifies them to be characters in Arthur Miller’s famous novel, The Crucible, a classic story of innocent villagers accused of crimes and sins they did not commit.

Set in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, The Crucible tells the story of villagers preoccupied by a fear of the devil due to their severe Puritan belief system. In the story, because of mass hysteria brought about by the witchcraft scare, 19 innocent people are hanged on the signature of a deputy governor, who has the authority to try, convict, and execute anyone he deems sinful.

“This novel represents deeply and honestly the plight of Muslim and Arab rights and liberties in the United States at present,” said an Oct. 8 press release from the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Muslims have been subjected to forms of scrutiny and discrimination after the Sept. 11 attacks on US landmarks, attributed to Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida group.

In June, a report by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute (MPI), an influential think tank, found that the round-up and detention of hundreds of Muslims after the attacks were particularly abusive.

It said that the government’s effort to depict some of those who were detained as “terrorists” was simply wrong. The only charges brought against nearly all of them were actually for routine immigration violations or ordinary crimes.

A report released in July by CAIR found that anti-Muslim incidents in the United States increased by 15 percent over the previous year because of the anti-Muslim fervor in the United States.

Incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment rose from 525 confirmed incidents in the 2002 report to 602, according to the study.

Muslims say that the government is partly to blame for actions that led to wider suspicion of Muslims, including the March 2002 raids on Muslim families and businesses in Virginia and Georgia, the compulsory special registration program for Muslim visa-holders, and the questioning of thousands of Iraqi-Americans.

“Many people had their homes raided, many had been confronted by the FBI which requested information, many people have been subpoenaed for grand jury investigations, organizations have had their finances looked at and, to various degrees, mosques have been asked to provide lists of their worshippers to the FBI,” said Raeed Tayeh, of the Muslim American Society in Washington.

Yet Muslim groups say the past few months saw a new twist — a shift towards targeting of Muslim community leaders, who were trying to empower Muslims, and of pro-Palestine activists.

Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, who directs the Washington-based advocacy group the American Muslim Council (AMC), was arrested last week as he returned to the United States from London. The FBI says he made unauthorized visits to Libya, which violated sanctions against the North African nation.

Muslim groups however say that the arrest was made at the behest of self-described experts on Islam like the Jerusalem Post columnist Daniel Pipes and his protegé Steven Emerson, author of the book American Jihad. Both are widely seen in the American Muslim community as anti-Islam.

Pipes had written in June against the AMC, saying that the FBI should put the organization under surveillance, ascertain its funding sources, look over its books, and check its staff’s visa status.

In July, Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a University of Mississippi graduate who had called for an independent Palestinian state, was arrested after FBI agents brought immigration charges against him. But his advocates claim that the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington politically motivated the case.

Also earlier this year, a University of Southern Florida professor, Sami Al-Arian, who was one of the most vocal supporters of Muslim political empowerment and a man who had met with administration officials and dozens of members of Congress, was accused of being the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“The government says it has nine years of evidence, but yet again why they did they sit on such evidence for nine years?” said Tayeh. “This is the pattern we are alluding to.”

Muslim Americans say have also suffered targeting under the USA PATRIOT Act. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says that the act was passed only 45 days after the Sept. 11 attacks with little debate in Congress.

“Without a warrant and without probable cause, the FBI now has the power to access your most private medical records, your library records, and your student records... and can prevent anyone from telling you it was done,” says the ACLU in its description of the PATRIOT Act.

Muslims say they also witnessed a surge in hate crimes and endured continued stereotyping in the popular media - and even at times Islamophobic rhetoric by high-ranking officials and by evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Last week, a Republican representative, Cass Ballenger, claimed the stress of living near the offices of a Muslim civil rights group, CAIR, caused the breakup of his marriage.

In an interview with the Charlotte Observer newspaper, Ballenger said that proximity to CAIR “bugged the hell” out of his wife.

He said his wife also objected to women “wearing hoods” going in and out of CAIR’s Capitol Hill headquarters and he accused the group of raising funds for terrorists.

“Ballenger’s statements are a perfect example of Islamophobic hysteria at the highest levels of government. We view this incident as a direct byproduct of the campaign currently being waged by neo-conservative opinion leaders to marginalize and disenfranchise the American Muslim community,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, CAIR’s director of legal affairs. CAIR says it may take legal action against Ballenger.

A recent incident that sent reverberations through the community in the Washington, DC area was the stabbing from behind of a Muslim woman who was wearing an Islamic headscarf, in a K-Mart parking lot in Springfield, Virginia.

The white male teenage attacker allegedly shouted, “you terrorist pig,” before running away.

Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in response to one of America’s most famous “witch hunts” that took place in his time in the 1950’s

-- McCarthyism-- which hunted down so-called communists and their sympathizers. But now the decades-old novel is resonating with Muslims.

“The novel shows two main sources for hysteria,” said Allaa Baioumi of CAIR. “One of them is fundamentalists in the village. These are the right wing and neo-conservatives now. The other section was people who benefited from the crisis like rich folks who wanted to punish their opponents. Now these are the pro-Israel lobbyists.”

Republicans accused in
bugging of Philly mayor

By Julian Borger

Oct. 11— Democrats have accused the George W. Bush administration of resorting to dirty tricks in a close and bitter election for control of Philadelphia after FBI listening devices were found in the mayor’s office.

The FBI refused to explain the purpose of the bugs found in a routine police sweep of the offices of the mayor, John Street, on Tuesday, less than a month before the election in which Street is being challenged by his Republican rival, Sam Katz. FBI officials admitted the bugs were theirs, but insisted they had nothing to do with the mayoral election. They did not disclose the purpose of their investigation.

The mystery has thrown the Street re-election campaign into turmoil. “It has been confirmed by the US attorney that I am not the target of any federal investigation and that’s very important to me,” the mayor said yesterday.

The FBI refusal to comment further enraged Pennsylvania Democrats, who said the affair left a cloud hanging over Street’s campaign. They questioned whether the timing of the affair was deliberate.

“I would normally say this wasn’t political, but the thing that raises everyone’s suspicions is that the FBI was so eager to say, two nights ago, that this is nothing to do with the political campaign,” the Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell, said. He argued that the FBI had made sure to exonerate Republicans, but did nothing to clear Street.

“We don’t confirm or deny investigations,” Linda Vizi, the spokeswoman for the FBI office in Philadelphia, said. “We have tried to be very fair, and we are limited by Department of Justice guidelines as to what we can say.”

Legal experts said that any decision to send in one of the FBI’s covert “black bag” teams to break into the office of a high-profile politician and plant a bug would have to be approved by John Ashcroft, the Bush administration’s attorney-general.

“Do we believe that the Republican party, both at the federal level and state level, is pulling out every stop to get Pennsylvania in 2004?” said Frank Keel, a spokesman for the Street campaign. “Absolutely. Is the Republican Party capable of dirty tricks? I think that is well documented.”

Both the Republican national committee and the FBI rejected the claim that politics had been involved in the bugging of the mayoral offices. Katz claimed that any “political innuendo” around the affair was unfair.

Street beat Katz by less than 10,000 votes four years ago, and the rivalry has shaped Philadelphia politics ever since.

This year, the contest has been particularly ugly. In August, there was an abortive attempt to firebomb a Katz campaign office, and a Street aide has been charged with intimidation. Street is black and Katz is white, and each has accused the other of trying to make race an issue.

Source: Guardian (UK)