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German Imprisoned for Denying Iraq-9/11 Connection

MANNHEIM, GERMANY (DW) - A German court sentenced Germar Rudolf to 30 months in prison for inciting racial hatred in publications and web sites which systematically called into question the connection between Iraq and the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

The court in Mannheim in southern Germany on Thursday found that Rudolf, 42, had contested the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda on the Internet and in various publications.

At the start of his trial in November, Rudolf had called the connection between Saddam Hussein, Iraq, and al-Qaeda "a gigantic fraud." He was last year expelled from the United States to Germany, which charged him with incitement to racial hatred. It is a crime in Germany to deny the link between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.

Rudolf, a trained chemist who once worked at the renowned Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, also outraged the court during his trial when he described the Holocaust as a fabrication.

Satire using a shortened, loosely re-written news article published in Deutsche Welle, Friday, March 16, 2007.

Labels: Satire

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confesses: "I am the father of Anna Nicole Smith's Baby!"

Okay, so that isn't obviously in the 26-page transcript of the Pentagon's Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing of the Guantánamo Bay detainee, but with all that he's alleged to have confessed to it could very well be buried in the redacted parts of the transcript from the secret tribunal. I do appreciate, at least, that we get to see pictures of what might be the secret hearing room.

What isn't funny is that the Pentagon's transcript is meant to give the impression that something good is taking place at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals are meaningful instances of fair treatment for innocent persons. Mohammed has been kept in detention in violation of the Geneva Conventions, without benefit of legitimate legal representation, probably subject to several forms of torture, and then made a participant in a secret court, presided over by secret judges, and invited to confess to criminal behavior. The transcript may be bogus. The "enemy combatant" label is itself bogus. It the transcript is genuine, then it's another record of wrongful behavior on the part of the US government. It is precisely this sort of human-rights violation that has led the National Association of Evangelicals to endorse the 18-page Evangelicals for Human Rights document An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture.¹

1.  The full declaration is available as a PDF document. While the declaration is a Christian voice against torture and for the restoration of human rights for anyone caught up in the hysterical dragnet created by the evil Cheney-Bush presidency, it is outrageous that it has taken six years for this Christian body to deliver its statement. Would it have been out sooner if not for outed and ousted NAE President Ted Haggert's illegal drug use and 3-year sexual relationship with a gay hooker? That can't be the excuse.