…Mr Gil-Robles said he was “shocked by the lamentable state” of certain police cells where “detainees even sleep on the floor and are not given any mattress or bed linen”. He said it was a “sad fact” that chronic overcrowding and a lack of money in French prisons “deprived a large number of detainees from exercising their basic rights” and made their incarceration a “double punishment”.

…Le Parisien said the council’s report also criticised the fact that prisoners who misbehaved could be placed in punishment cells for up to 45 days.

…Mr Gil-Robles told France-Info radio: “For me the most important thing is that the prison route is not a route of vengeance but a route to obtain justice – to give criminals a punishment and afterwards allow them to be reintegrated into society … In France that is not possible.”

Mr Gil-Robles had harsh words for France’s immigration policy and the announcement last year by the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, of a 50% rise in expulsions of illegal immigrants.

“The very fact of announcing quotas is a shocking practice,” Mr Gil-Robles said.
guardian.co.uk

A United Nations inquiry has called for the immediate closure of America’s Guantanamo Bay detention centre and the prosecution of officers and politicians “up to the highest level” who are accused of torturing detainees.

The UN Human Rights Commission report, due to be published this week, concludes that Washington should put the 520 detainees on trial or release them.

The Red Cross monitors the centre at Guantanamo monthly
It calls for the United States to halt all “practices amounting to torture”, including the force-feeding of inmates who go on hunger strike.

The report wants the Bush administration to ensure that all allegations of torture are investigated by US criminal courts, and that “all perpetrators up to the highest level of military and political command are brought to justice”.
telegraph.co.uk

JERUSALEM – Hamas derided the United States and Israel on Tuesday following reports they were exploring ways to topple the militants’ incoming government.

Israeli security officials said they were looking at ways to force Hamas from power, and were focusing on an economic squeeze that would prompt Palestinians to clamor for the return of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ ousted Fatah Party. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

But Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said, “There is no such plan.”

The New York Times, citing anonymous U.S. and Israeli officials, reported Tuesday that the United States and Israel were considering a campaign to starve the Palestinian Authority of cash so Palestinians would grow disillusioned with Hamas and bring down a Hamas government.
news.yahoo.com

While the international community busied itself with the disengagement from the Gaza Strip last summer, Israel completed another cut-off process, which went unnoticed; In 2005, Israel completed a process of sealing off the eastern sector of the West Bank, including the Jordan Rift Valley, from the remainder of the West Bank.

Some 2,000,000 Palestinians, residents of the West Bank, are prohibited from entering the area, which constitutes around one-third of the West Bank, and includes the Jordan Rift, the area of the Dead Sea shoreline and the eastern slopes of the West Bank mountains.

Military sources told Haaretz that the moves have been “security measures” adopted by the Israel Defense Forces and have no connection to any political intentions whatsoever.

Restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley were imposed at the start of the intifada and were gradually expanded. But the sweeping prohibition regarding entry into the area by Palestinians was imposed after security responsibility in Jericho was given back to the Palestinians on March 16, 2005.
haaretz.com

A surprise American or Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear sites could cause a large number of civilian as well as military casualties, says a report published today.

The report, Iran: Consequences of a War, written by Professor Paul Rogers and published by the Oxford Research Group, draws comparisons with Iraq. It says the civilian population in that country had three weeks to prepare for war in 2003, giving people the chance to flee potentially dangerous sites. But Prof Rogers says attacks on Iranian facilities, most of which are in densely populated areas, would be surprise ones, allowing no time for such evacuations or other precautions.
guardian.co.uk

The Report: IRAN:
CONSEQUENCES OF A WAR
This briefing paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the likely nature of US or Israeli military action that would be intended to disable Iran’s nuclear capabilities. It outlines both the immediate consequences in terms of loss of human life, facilities and infrastructure, and also the likely Iranian responses, which would be extensive.

An attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure would signal the start of a protracted military confrontation that would probably grow to involve Iraq, Israel and Lebanon, as well as the USA and Iran. The report concludes that a military response to the current crisis in relations with Iran is a particularly dangerous option and should not be considered further. Alternative approaches must be sought, however difficult these may be.

Four U.S. service members were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan today while on patrol with Afghan National Army forces, the military announced today.

The troops were traveling in a Humvee armored vehicle when the attack occurred north of Deh Rahwod in Uruzgan Province.

After the attack, the military said the patrol got into a firefight involving small arms and rocket propelled grenades.

U.S. aircraft were called in to aid forces on the ground, according to a news release issued by the Combined Forces Command in Kabul.

“This is a said and tragic day for all of us,” Brig. Gen. John Sterling, deputy commanding general, said in a statement. “This incident increases our resolve to continue their efforts to ultimate success.”
washingtonpost.com

Two Afghan militiamen killed, six missing in Taliban attack
KABUL: Two militia soldiers working for US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan were killed and six were missing after an attack by Taliban in the volatile south, a commander said Monday.

An eight-member militia convoy came under attack in troubled Helmand province, “Two of our soldiers were killed yesterday as they came under attack by Taliban. We have found two bodies and another six soldiers are missing,” he said.

A purported spokesman for the Taliban militia, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the ambush in Helmand’s Girishk district and said eight soldiers had been killed.

There are regular clashes in Helmand, Afghanistan’s top opium-producing area. More than 40 people were killed there earlier this month in a single day of battles between suspected Taliban and security forces.

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Henry A. Waxman, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Congressmen George Miller and Elijah E. Cummings, and other senior Democrats released a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report today finding that the Bush Administration spent more than $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts in a two and a half year span.

“The government is spending over a billion dollars per year on PR and advertising,” said Congressman Waxman. “Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush Administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States.”
californiachronicle.com

Just a few years ago, World Trade Organisation officials used to act hurt when described by social activists as irresponsible, secretive bureaucrats who trampled over national sovereignty and placed free trade over the environment or human rights. But that was when the global-trade policeman ruled on disputes that had little bearing on Europeans.

The WTO court’s latest ruling will greatly increase the number of people who believe the organisation needs radical reform, if not burial. This week three judges emerged after years of secret deliberation to rule that Europe had imposed a de facto ban on GM food imports between 1999 and 2003, violating WTO rules. The court also ruled that Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg had no legal grounds to impose their own unilateral import bans. “Europe guilty!” shouted the US press. “This is glorious news for the Bush administration,” said one blogger.
guardian.co.uk

More than four-fifths of the wetlands along northern China’s biggest river system have dried up because of over-development, the state media reported yesterday in the latest warning of the dire environmental consequences of the country’s economic growth.

Fifty years ago, the Haihe river and its tributaries formed an ecologically rich area that included 1,465 square miles of wetlands. But in the years since, the expanding mega-cities of Beijing and Tianjin have sucked much of it dry. The Xinhua news agency reported that the wetlands have shrunk to 207 square miles.
guardian.co.uk

A controversial Kuwait-based construction firm accused of exploiting employees and coercing low-paid laborers to work in war-town Iraq is now building the new $592-million U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Once completed, the compound will likely be the biggest, most fortified diplomatic compound in the world.

Some 900 workers live and work for First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting (FKTC) on the construction site of the massive project. Undoubtedly, they have been largely pulled from ranks of low-paid laborers flooding into Iraq from Asia’s poorest countries to work under U.S. military and reconstruction projects.

Meanwhile, their boss, Wadih al-Absi jets back and forth to the United States, dreaming of magazine covers celebrating his rise to a global player in large-scale engineering and construction.
corpwatch.org