“Guantánamo Prisoners” Visit Torture Professor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday January 9, 2013
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“Guantánamo Prisoners” Visit Torture Professor at UC Berkeley

12:00 Noon, THURSDAY January 10, 2013
UC Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall)
Room 105

One day before the 11th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. prison at Guantánamo, Bush Regime attorney John Yoo will lecture at Berkeley Law (on “Obamacare,” at a program sponsored by the Federalist Society).

With over 160 prisoners still held at Guantánamo today, including dozens legally cleared for release yet who remain behind bars there, protesters will visit the UC campus to raise public awareness of Yoo’s role as principal legal architect of the torture program initiated under Bush. Members of World Can’t Wait, Code Pink and other anti-torture organizations will wear the orange jumpsuits of the prisoners at Guantánamo, Bagram and other U.S. torture chambers.

The protesters continue to demand that John Yoo face investigation by the University of California under its own faculty code of conduct, and be fired as unfit to teach law after having participated in crimes including the planning, ordering and commission of illegal torture. The protesters say Yoo and all the other “Bush-Cheney Torture Team members” should be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, following international legal precedent set aftere World War II at the Nuremberg tribunals, and despite the Obama administration’s refusal to do so.
Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley has angered protesters and legal experts alike with his refusal to challenge Yoo’s UC employment. Edley, who was Barack Obama’s law professor at Yale, has claimed that “academic freedom” shields Yoo’s work as a government attorney whose legal work enabled illegal torture and rendition programs under color of law.

Stephanie Tang of World Can’t Wait argues that Yoo’s work at the Bush-Cheney Office of Legal Counsel, not his speech or teaching before or after those two years, was criminal. “Yoo’s work also led to further crimes which continue today because these illegal programs did not end with Bush. Obama is continuing the torture, rendition -- and even expanding it all, so that now we see targeted assassination and weekly presidential ‘kill lists,’ ” she said yesterday.

Simultaneous protests take place this week in Washington, D.C. and other cities, and outside the CIA’s headquarters in Virginia. For information about these events, and for legal and political background on the demands to CLOSE GUANTÁNAMO NOW, go to http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/torture/8101-eleven-years-of-guantanamo-andy-worthington-visits-the-us-to-campaign-for-the-prison-s-closure

ENDS

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