UNITED STATES admits human rights shortcomings in UN report

WASHINGTON The Obama administration has told the United Nations that America’s human rights record is less than perfect but stressed that the U.S. political system has built-in safeguards that promote improvements.In its first-ever report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on conditions in the United States, the State Department said Monday that some Americans, notably minorities, are still victims of discrimination. Despite success in reforming such inequities as slavery and the denial of women’s right to vote, the department said, considerable progress is still needed.”Although we have made great strides, work remains to meet our goal of ensuring equality before the law for all,” it said.

The report noted that although the U.S. now has an African-American president and that women and Hispanics have won greater social and economic success, large segments of American society suffer from unfair policies and practices.High unemployment rates, hate crime, poverty, poor housing, lack of access to health care and discriminatory hiring practices are among the challenges the report identified as affecting blacks, Latinos, Muslims, South Asians, Native Americans and gays and lesbians in the United States.

The report, which drew on meetings that U.S. officials held with various groups around the country since January, also cited concerns from civil rights activists and citizens related to immigration and racial profiling by law enforcement agencies.The 29-page report was submitted to the Human Rights Council on Friday but was not published until Monday. Members of the council, which the United States joined only last year, are required to submit reviews of their rights records. The report was the first “Universal Periodic Review” produced by the U.S.

In one of his first moves to reach out to the international community, President Barack Obama decided that the U.S. should run for a seat on the council. The Bush administration had shunned the panel for years over its alleged disproportionate criticism of Israel and membership that includes repressive regimes.The report’s findings were cautiously welcomed by human rights activists but will likely draw fire from conservatives who opposed joining the council. They said the U.S. should not be judged by countries with poor human rights records.

The administration sought to rebuff such criticism in the report, saying its participation in the review was not an acknowledgment “of commonality with states that systematically abuse human rights.” It also said the report did not reflect “doubt in the ability of the American political system to deliver progress for its citizens.”At the same time, it said that the U.S. welcomed “observations and recommendations” from council members “that can help us on that road to a more perfect union.”

The American Civil Liberties Union praised the administration for engaging with the council but said the report neglected to address key areas where the U.S. has not met its human rights obligations. Those areas include inhumane prison conditions, racial disparities in death penalty cases, and abuses in the immigration detention system.”It is time for the U.S. to match its human rights rhetoric with concrete domestic policies and actions and create a human rights culture and infrastructure that promote American values of equality and justice for all,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program.(AP)

Arizona immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom

Arizona’s strict new immigration law escalates, immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom, where their legal challenges have successfully sunk other high-profile laws against illegal migrants.The American Civil Liberties Union, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center are set to announce in Phoenix on Thursday plans to challenge the measure.

The law, which is set to take effect in mid-summer, makes it a state crime for illegal migrants to be in Arizona, requires police to check for evidence of legal status and bars people from hiring or soliciting work off the streets.

The key legal issue, according to lawyers on both sides, will be one that also was at the center of the court fight over Proposition 187 in California whether the state law interferes with the federal government’s duty to handle immigration.The announcement of legal action, one of several expected as attorneys across the country scrutinize the law for weaknesses, comes after days of frantic e-mails, conference calls and lengthy strategy sessions. Attorneys haven’t finalized when a court challenge would be filed, but said it would be before the law takes effect.

“The entire country has been galvanized,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “People within the legal community are trying to figure out what we can do…. We have seen an enormous amount of energy responding to this.”

Attorneys who successfully challenged laws against illegal immigrants in California, Texas and elsewhere argue that the Arizona law faces a similar fate because of the federal/state issue. Immigrant advocates also argue that the law could violate guarantees of equal protection if selectively enforced against certain ethnic groups.”The Arizona law is doomed to the dustbin of other unconstitutional efforts by local government to regulate immigration, which is a uniquely federal function,” said Peter Schey, a Los Angeles attorney who led both successful challenges to the 1975 Texas law denying illegal migrant children a free public education and the 1994 California initiative that would have barred public services to illegal migrants. Schey said he also planned to file a separate lawsuit.

But the attorney who helped write the Arizona law said he carefully crafted the measure to avoid those constitutional issues.Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor who handled immigration law and border security under U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft during the Bush administration, said the law does not seek to regulate immigration but merely adds state penalties for what are already federal crimes.

Under the legal doctrine of “concurrent enforcement,” he said, states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, he said, the courts have upheld efforts by Arizona, California and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal migrants.Kobach, who is running as a Republican candidate for Kansas secretary of state, also dismissed claims that the bill will result in racial profiling. He said he took care to include an explicit ban on using “race, color or national origin” as the sole basis for stopping someone to ask for papers.

“I anticipate that anyone who challenges the law will throw everything but the kitchen sink at this to see if it will stick,” Kobach said. “But this is consistent with federal law.”Indeed, immigrant advocates raise several legal questions. The portion of the law that prohibits laborers from soliciting work in public places is particularly vulnerable, said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF.

The organization has successfully challenged similar laws in Arizona and California. In 2008, a federal judge ruled that an Arizona town could not enforce an anti-solicitation ordinance that advocates said infringed upon the free speech rights of day laborers.In addition, there probably will be due process claims because police officers won’t know who would be eligible for immigration relief, Saenz said. Many arrested won’t have the opportunity to make their claims in immigration court.”There are a lot of people who are going to be arrested and swept into this dragnet who have every right to be in this country,” he said.

Even before lawsuits are filed, immigrant advocates are seeking a commitment from federal officials that they will not enforce the law.On Tuesday, Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee that the law could distract the agency from using its resources to go after serious criminals.”We have concerns that at some point we’ll be responsible to enforce or use our immigration resources against anyone that would get picked up in Arizona,” said Napolitano, who noted that she had vetoed similar measures as Arizona governor.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder also said this week that he was considering a possible legal challenge to the law.Another lawsuit may come from one of Arizona’s own elected officials. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said this week that he planned to file a lawsuit.”I have under the charter the ability given to me by the people to file a lawsuit on behalf of the people,” Gordon said Tuesday to cheers from a packed City Council meeting and one angry cry of “socialism!”

As both sides gear up for their legal battle, the wild card is the panel of judges who will end up deciding the case.Judges have ruled differently on key immigration questions. In 2007, a federal judge ruled that a Pennsylvania city couldn’t punish landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and employers who hire them. A federal judge also ruled against a Texas measure that sought to ban landlords from renting to illegal migrants.Advocates didn’t succeed, however, in getting the courts to block another Arizona law, which shuts down businesses for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. In 2008, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to stop the law before it took effect, saying that businesses and immigrant rights groups hadn’t shown an adequate need for delaying enforcement.

Schey said he is not confident that legal challenges against the Arizona case would prevail in today’s political and legal climate. The U.S. Supreme Court is a very different panel today than it was when a narrow majority of 5 to 4 struck down the 1975 Texas law denying free education to unauthorized migrant children.”It’s a far cry from a slam-dunk case,” Schey said. “It’s a very close call with the current composition of the Supreme Court. What’s really needed here is federal leadership.”

But Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Irvine’s law school dean, argued that the Arizona law is a far more brazen attempt to regulate immigration than either the Texas or Proposition 187 cases. The Texas law was overturned primarily on equal protection grounds while the California law was struck down as an unconstitutional attempt to usurp federal immigration responsibility.”It is so firmly established that only the federal government can control immigration that I don’t see it,” he said, referring to chances that courts would uphold the Arizona law. “Even with a conservative court and a lot of sympathy to Arizona’s concerns, I don’t see it.”

Arizona's strict new immigration law escalates, immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom

Arizona’s strict new immigration law escalates, immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom, where their legal challenges have sunk other high-profile laws against illegal migrants. The Los Angeles attorney who successfully challenged Texas and California efforts to bar illegal migrants from public services said this week that the Arizona law was similarly doomed because it unconstitutionally attempts to usurp federal jurisdiction to regulate immigration and could violate guarantees of equal protection with selective enforcement against certain ethnic groups.The law makes it a state crime for illegal migrants to be in Arizona and requires police to check for evidence of legal status.

“The Arizona law is doomed to the dustpan of other unconstitutional efforts by local government to regulate immigration, which is a uniquely federal function,” said Peter Schey, president of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles. But the attorney who helped write the Arizona law said he carefully crafted the measure to avoid those constitutional issues. Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor who handled immigration law and border security under U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft during the Bush administration, said the law does not seek to regulate immigration but merely adds state penalties for what are already federal crimes.

Under the legal doctrine of “concurrent enforcement,” he said, states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, he said, the courts have upheld efforts by California, Arizona and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal migrants.

Kobach, who is running as a Republican candidate for Kansas secretary of state, said he took care to include an explicit ban on using “race, color or national origin” as the sole basis for stopping someone to ask for papers.

“I anticipate that anyone who challenges the law will throw everything but the kitchen sink at this to see if it will stick,” Kobach said. “But this is consistent with federal law.” As both sides gear up for their legal battle, the wild card is the panel of judges who end up deciding the case. Judges have ruled differently on key immigration questions.

Even as judges have upheld state employer sanction laws, they have struck down laws banning illegal immigrants from renting property, most recently in Texas last month.Schey himself said he is not confident that legal challenges against the Arizona case would prevail in today’s political and legal climate. The U.S. Supreme Court is a very different panel today than it was when a narrow majority of 5-4 struck down the 1975 Texas law banning unauthorized migrant children from public schools, he said. “It’s a far cry from a slam-dunk case,” Schey said. “It’s a very close call with the current composition of the Supreme Court. What’s really needed here is federal leadership.”

Barack Obama's national security team singled out one man from its list of most-wanted terrorists, Baitullah Mehsud,leader of the Pakistani Taliban

WASHINGTON In the early months of his presidency, President Barack Obama’s national security team singled out one man from its list of most-wanted terrorists, Baitullah Mehsud, the ruthless leader of the Pakistani Taliban. He was to be eliminated.Mehsud was Pakistan’s public enemy No. 1 and its most feared militant, responsible for a string of bombings and assassination attempts. But while Mehsud carried out strikes against U.S. forces overseas and had a $5 million bounty on his head, he had never been the top priority for U.S. airstrikes, something that at times rankled Pakistan.”The decision was made to find him, to get him and to kill him,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said, recalling weeks and months of “very tedious, painstaking focus” before an unmanned CIA aircraft killed Mehsud in August at his father-in-law’s house near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

It was not the first airstrike on Obama’s watch, but it marked the first major victory in his war on terrorism, a campaign the administration believes can be waged even more aggressively than its predecessor’s. Long before he went on the defensive in Washington for his handling of the failed Christmas Day airline bombing, Obama had widened the list of U.S. targets abroad and stepped up the pace of airstrikes.Advances in spy plane technology have made that easier, as has an ever-improving spy network that helped locate Mehsud and other terrorists. These would have been available to any new president. But Obama’s counterterrorism campaign also relies on two sharp reversals from his predecessor, both of which were political gambles at home.Obama’s national security team believed that the president’s campaign promise to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq would have a side benefit: freeing up manpower and resources to hunt terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Intelligence officials, lawmakers and analysts say that approach is showing signs of success.

Obama also has sought to reach out to Islamic allies and tone down U.S. rhetoric, a language shift that critics have argued revealed a weakness, in an effort to win more cooperation from countries like Yemen and Pakistan.For example, though Pakistan officially objects to U.S. airstrikes within its border, following the Mehsud strike, the U.S. has seen an increase in information sharing from Pakistani officials, which has helped lead to other strikes, according to the senior law enforcement official. He and other current and former officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.Pakistan’s cooperation is key to U.S. counterterrorism efforts because much of the best intelligence still comes from Pakistan’s intelligence agency. Ensuring that cooperation has been a struggle for years, in part because Pakistan wants greater control over the drone strikes and its own fleet of aircraft, two things the U.S. has not allowed.

“The efforts overseas are bearing fruit,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a strident critic of Obama’s domestic counterterrorism policies who said Obama has at times shown himself even more aggressive than Bush in his use of force overseas. “I give them generally high marks for their efforts to capture and kill terrorists in Pakistan, and they’re pushing the envelope in Yemen.”CIA drones, the remote-controlled spy planes that can hunt terrorists from miles overhead, are responsible for many of the deaths. Drone strikes began increasing in the final months of the Bush administration, thanks in part to expanded use of the Reaper, a newer generation aircraft with better targeting systems and greater, more accurate firepower.

Obama has increased their use even further. A month after Mehsud’s death, drone strikes in Pakistan killed Najmiddin Jalolov, whose Islamic Jihad Union claimed responsibility for bombings in 2004 at U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan. Senior al-Qaida operatives Saleh al-Somali and Abdallah Sa’id were killed in airstrikes in December. And Mehsud’s successor at the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, died following an attack last month.Intelligence officials and analysts say the drawdown of troops in an increasingly stable Iraq is part of the reason for the increase in drone strikes. The military once relied on drones for around-the-clock surveillance to flush out insurgents, support troops in battle and help avoid roadside bombs.

With fewer of those missions required, the U.S. has moved many of those planes to Afghanistan, roughly doubling the size of the military and CIA fleet that can patrol the lawless border with Pakistan, officials said.”These tools were not Obama creations, but he’s increased their use and he has shifted the U.S. attention full front to Afghanistan,” said Thomas Sanderson, a defense analyst and national security fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.The Obama administration has also benefited from stepped-up cooperation with officials in Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homeland of Yemen. Authorities there killed 30 suspected militants in airstrikes in December closely coordinated with U.S. intelligence agencies.

Yemen has had a sometimes rocky relationship with the U.S. and was perceived to have an on-again-off-again approach to fighting terrorism, but officials in Washington are cautiously optimistic about a newly strengthened relationship.Abdullah al-Saidi, Yemen’s ambassador to the United Nations, said his country has always been committed to fighting terrorism. But in a fragmented country beset by a growing al-Qaida presence, a rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south, it wasn’t always easy for the government to openly align with the United States.Washington is trying to make it easier with the promise of more money. But perhaps more important, al-Saidi said, were overtures such as Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, where he sought a “new beginning” with the Muslim world.

Obama has also abandoned terms like “radical Islam” and “Islamo-fascism,” rhetoric that was seen as anti-Muslim by many in the Arab world and which al-Saidi said made it harder for governments to openly cooperate with Washington.”Just the notion of not equating Islam with terrorism, there is a lot of good will toward him,” al-Saidi said. “For the public, it’s easier to say, ‘Well, it’s no longer a hostile power as it used to be.'”Such international successes have largely been drowned out by the controversy that followed the failed bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas. When the FBI read suspected bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his rights and charged him in federal court, Republicans accused Obama of not understanding the country is at war.

“They’re trying to be tougher than Bush overseas but different from Bush at home,” Graham said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. They really got the right model for Pakistan and Yemen, but they’re really tone deaf at home.”After Obama missed his own deadline to close the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and backtracked on a plan to prosecute 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York courthouse, Republicans saw the Detroit case as an opportunity to renew questions about Obama’s national security credentials, Republican strategist Kevin Madden said.Madden said that Obama’s stepped-up strategy overseas doesn’t resonate with voters, and Republicans gain little in an election year by acknowledging where they agree with the White House strategy.

“National security politics is driven by events more than it’s driven by long-term trends,” he said.Or, as Graham put it: “What resonates with people is what happens in Detroit, more than what happens on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”The White House says it see no conflict between broadening the attacks overseas and sticking with the U.S. judicial system at home, where hundreds of people have been convicted on terrorism charges since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”The president believes that we need to use all elements of American power to defeat al-Qaida, including the strength of our military, intelligence, diplomacy and American justice,” White House spokesman Ben Rhodes said. “We only weaken ourselves when we fail to use our full arsenal.”(AP)

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico Former Gitmo detainees help al-Qaida grow in Yemen

Abu al-Hareth Muhammad

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico As a prisoner at Guantanamo, Said Ali al-Shihri said he wanted freedom so he could go home to Saudi Arabia and work at his family’s furniture store.Instead, al-Shihri, who was released in 2007 under the Bush administration, is now deputy leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a group that has claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempted bomb attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.His potential involvement in the terrorist plot has raised new opposition to releasing Guantanamo Bay inmates, complicating President Barack Obama’s pledge to close the military prison in Cuba. It also highlights the challenge of identifying the hard-core militants as the administration decides what to do with the remaining 198 prisoners.Like other former Guantanamo detainees who have rejoined al-Qaida in Yemen, al-Shihri, 36, won his release despite jihadist credentials such as, in his case, urban warfare training in Afghanistan.He later goaded the United States, saying Guantanamo only strengthened his anti-American convictions.

“By God, our imprisonment has only increased our persistence and adherence to our principles,” he said in a speech when al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula formed in Yemen in January 2009. It was included in a propaganda film for the group.Al-Shihri and another Saudi released from Guantanamo in 2006, Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, appear to have played significant roles in al-Qaida’s expanding offshoot in Yemen. While the extent of any involvement in the airliner plot is unclear, al-Rubaish, 30, is a theological adviser to the group and his writings and sermons are prominent in the group’s literature.

After the group’s first attack outside Yemen, a failed attempt on the Saudi counterterrorism chief in August, al-Rubaish cited the experience in Guantanamo as a motive.”They (Saudi officials) are the ones who came to Guantanamo, not to ask about us and reassure us, but to interrogate us and to provide the Americans with information – which was the reason for increased torture against some,” he said in an audio recording posted on the Internet.Pentagon figures indicate that al-Shihri and al-Rubaish are a small if dramatic minority among the released detainees: Overall, 14 percent of the more than 530 detainees transferred out of Guantanamo are confirmed or suspected to have been involved in terrorist activities since their release.

Still, three other Saudis released from Guantanamo under the Bush administration surfaced with al-Qaida in Yemen over the last year. They include field commander Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, who later surrendered and was handed over to Saudis, and two fighters who were killed by security forces: Youssef al-Shihri and Fahd Jutayli. All five men passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program praised by U.S. authorities before crossing the southern border into Yemen.At least one Yemeni from Guantanamo apparently rejoined the fight.

A Yemen Defense Ministry newspaper said last week that Hani al-Shulan, who was released in 2007, was killed in a Dec. 17 air strike that targeted suspected militants.At Guantanamo, some of the men had played down their links to terrorism.

Said al-Shihri, who is now formally known as the secretary general of the al-Qaida branch, told American investigators that he traveled to Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to aid refugees, according to documents released by the Pentagon.The file also says he received weapons training at a camp north of Kabul and was hospitalized in Pakistan for a month and a half after he was wounded by an airstrike.Although he allegedly met with extremists in Iran and helped them get into Afghanistan, he claimed he went to Iran to buy carpets for his store. He said that if released, he wanted to see a daughter born while he was at Guantanamo and try to work at the family store in Riyadh, according to the documents.In contrast, Youssef al-Shihri, who was killed in October near the Yemeni border with Saudi Arabia, openly declared rage against America to his captors at Guantanamo. He is not related to Said al-Shihri.

“The detainee stated he considers all Americans his enemy,” according to documents from his Guantanamo review hearings. “Since Americans are the detainee’s enemy, he will continue to fight them until he dies. The detainee pointed to the sky and told the interviewing agents that he will have a meeting with them in the next life.”The U.S. has repatriated 120 Saudi detainees from Guantanamo, including some still considered to pose a threat, in part because of confidence the Saudi government can minimize the risk. The Saudi rehabilitation program encourages returning detainees to abandon Islamic extremism and reintegrate into civilian life.

The deprogramming effort – built on reason, enticements and counseling – is part of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter extremist ideology. Returning detainees have lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and sociologists at secure compounds with facilities such as gyms and swimming pools.Bruce Hoffman, a security studies professor at Georgetown University, stressed that the large majority of those going through the program have not rejoined extremist groups.

“It’s unrealistic to say none of them will return to terrorism,” he said. “Is two too many? I don’t know how to make that judgment. But you have to look at it in the broader perspective … There’s also a risk in imprisoning people for life and throwing away the key.”For the roughly 90 Yemeni detainees remaining at Guantanamo, the recent terror plot’s Yemeni roots will add new layers of scrutiny to any transfers. Repatriation talks with the Yemeni government have stalled for years over security issues, with the U.S. sending back only about 20 Yemenis out of concern over the impoverished nation’s ability to contain militants.

U.S. Congress members have called on the Obama administration to stop releasing any detainees to Yemen or other unstable countries.”I have read the classified biographies of the detainees to be released. They are dangerous people. I am troubled by every one of the detainees who is being sent back,” said U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican.Six Yemenis were sent home from Guantanamo in December, and detainees’ attorneys say about 35 more have already been cleared for release by an administration task force. They are the largest group left at Guantanamo, so finding new homes for them is key to Obama’s pledge to close the prison. Their attorneys are not optimistic about the transfers going through.

“I’m fearful that will grind to a halt after the events of Christmas Day,” said Rick Murphy, a Washington attorney who represents five Yemenis at Guantanamo.Obama has vowed not to release any detainee who would endanger the American people.A senior administration official said the U.S. has worked with Yemen’s government to ensure that “appropriate security measures” are taken when detainees are repatriated. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss bilateral talks.(AP)