[Vision2020] Human Rights Activists: Obama Breaks Promise

[tim lohrmann]

Vid. Clip:
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=339853



Story:
Obama Breaks Major Campaign Promise as Military Commissions Resume, Says 
Amnesty International

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=prnw.20090515.DC17891&show_article=1

May 15 12:25 PM US/Eastern
  
Obama Restarting Bush-Era Terror Tribunals
Tribunal Decision Angers Obama’s Liberal Backers
   
Human Rights Organization Reiterates Call for Detainees to be Tried in U.S. 
Federal Courts

WASHINGTON, May 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In response to President Barack 
Obama restarting the military commissions at the U.S.-controlled detention 
facility in Guantanamo Bay, Amnesty International's executive director Larry 
Cox issued the following statement:

"President Obama is reinstating the same deeply-flawed military commissions 
that in June 2008 he called an 'enormous failure.' In one swift move, Obama 
both backtracks on a major campaign promise to change the way the United 
States fights terrorism and undermines the nation's core respect for the rule 
of law by sacrificing due process for political expediency.

"Whatever revisions the Obama administration has made to the commissions do 
not change the fact that the commissions do not provide an adequate standard 
of justice for the detainees nor the victims of terrorism -- they merely mock 
the U.S. Constitution, international laws and undermine fundamental human 
rights standards.

"What happened to President Obama's confidence in the U.S. justice system's 
ability to try detainees? He himself said that 'we need not throw away 200 
years of American jurisprudence while we fight terrorism.'


"U.S. federal courts are a perfectly sound system to try any and all 
detainees. They have brought other terror suspects to justice, and there is no 
reason why these courts cannot continue to do the same."

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist 
organization with more than 2.2 million supporters, activists and volunteers 
in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The 
organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the 
public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and 
dignity are denied.



For more information, please visit: www.amnestyusa.org





SOURCE Amnesty International
Copyright 2009 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.