Tribunals For Detainees Charged with 9/11

Human Rights Watch is calling for trials of "enemy combatants," accused of organising the 9/11 attacks in 2001, to take place in federal courts, not military tribunals. US federal courts prohibit the use of coerced confessions.

Instead, the tribunals will accept statements and evidence obtained through the catalogue of what's become "common sense" in the war on terror.

This has included sleep deprivation for weeks, attack dogs, threats to the families of detainees, waterboarding (mock drowning that has been prosecuted as torture by the US for more than 100 years), forced enemas, detainees being forced into painful physical positions (known as stress positions), forced exercises, dousing naked prisoners with ice water in rooms chilled to fifty degrees Fahrenheit, forced standing for 40 hours, and sexual humiliation.

David Miliband talks a good game about "creating a consensus around a set of rules, norms and shared values that reflect our common humanity ... It starts with universal values of human dignity and human rights, democratic accountability and checks on arbitrary power."

If Miliband wants to talk about "universal human dignity," we can't have the US as our "special relationship," with no conditions, no matter what they do to their prisoners.