ppab said...Padilla and Transitional Justice

From an earlier thread came a comment which I immediately deleted because I thought the topic deserved a post and thread of its own:

ppab said...
Thu Feb 22, 05:38:00 PM EST

Expert: Padilla Unable to Stand Trial

Read the article and you'll see this at the end:

During cross-examination, prosecutor John Shipley pointed to a test administered by Hegarty in which Padilla scored "zero" on the portions indicating post-traumatic stress disorder. Those segments involved questions about flashbacks, nightmares, depression and other symptoms.

"Nothing in this test supports your diagnosis at all, isn't that correct?" Shipley asked.

"No," Hegarty replied, noting that the test answers were only one component of her decision.

That Hegarty is Angela Hegarty, of Human rights fame and NGO intrigue, presumably:

She's into stuff like, you know, Transitional Justice.

Its an interesting read as this stuff seems one part activism one part litigation.

Also, consider the strategies:

#Trials and Prosecution: The first and usually the most preferred choice. It is a criminal justice or judicial approach, either undertaken domestically, internationally or what has become known in recent years as the hybrid. From its historical trace to the ‘Nuremberg Trials’ recent examples have included the Sierra Leone’s Special Court, the International Tribunal for Rwanda and Yugoslavia and in the last few years the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), assuming a universal jurisdiction;

#Truth Commission: A non-judicial or quasi judicial approach, it has become very common and popular in recent transitional societies. It investigates the past to determine the full extent and nature of past abuses through truth-telling process; forge reconciliation; develop reparations packages; memorialize and remember victims; and make proposals for the reform of abusive state institutions in order to prevent future violations. They include both national (Argentina in 1983, Chile 1990, South Africa in 1995, Ghana in 2002) and international (El Salvador in 1992, Guatamala in 1997, East Timor in 2001, Sierra Leone in 2002.);

# Lustration and/or Vetting: This include purging the public services and especially the security sector, a process of excluding corrupt, abusive and incompetent officials from working in the public sector. This strategy has been common in Eastern Europe, such as former Czechoslovakia. Vetting is a process of examination and evaluation to eliminate corrupt and abusive officials through due process. This process furthers accountability, democratization and credibility of institutions; and

# Institutional Reform: Reform of abusive public institutions such as the police, military and security intelligence establishments, the Judiciary, prisons, amendments of obnoxious and abusive laws as well as constitutions.

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I don't know anything about Ms. Hegarty beyond what ppab has noted for us and of course, one can hardly fault the tranzie Lawyers for trying anything to keep their client out of court. That is after all, what they are paid to do. It is disheartening though, to hear them spread their propaganda and outright lies throughout the world compliments of our "friends" at the BBC World Service and the Guardian UK. For the left, it is essential that Jose Padilla not stand trial. As long as he can be painted as a broken hollow shell, Padilla is a powerful tool for the left as this article from the Guardian UK illustrates. In Padilla, the propagandists have a real life victim of the "systematic and routine torture" employed by the evil Bush Administration. A public trial where Padilla is shown as not so broken, hollow and docile is not in their best interest.