..from my posting this afternoon at Night's Lantern's "Suppressed news" page, www.nightslantern.ca/bulletin.htm#jul15 :
"Fort Bragg California: Charles B. Gittings, who created the "Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions," (see links) a valid and valuable response to the crimes of Guantanamo Prison Camp and other violations of international law by government, died July 14, 2010 of cancer. His sense of history, loyalty to his country and roots, faith in a continuity of justice, confronted what were initially Bush administration betrayals of the Geneva Conventions at a time when the Justice Department, and most in the U.S. legal profession and law schools kept silent or furthered the alleged crimes. Charly's work strengthened the exceptions. Honour and respect, Charles Gittings. The Project continues."
J.B.Gerald
Gerald and Maas Night's Lantern
The Philadelphia Enquirer
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/obituaries/20100716_Charles_B__Gittings___Detainee_advocate__57.html
Charles B. Gittings | Detainee advocate, 57
Charles Benjamin Gittings Jr., 57, who for nearly nine years campaigned to shut the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and ran a website dedicated to stopping what he saw as prisoner abuse in the war on terror, died Wednesday.
He died at his home in Fort Bragg, Calif., after a long battle with cancer.
Although he was not a lawyer, he had a lifelong interest in military tactics and law that led him to become a resource to some of the nation's greatest experts in the field.
"How very wrong it seems that Charlie is gone and that Guantanamo continues," said Thomas Wilner, a Washington lawyer who represented Guantanamo Bay prisoners and often sought Mr. Gittings' advice on their legal rights.
Eugene Fidell, a professor of military law at Yale Law School, said that "when the history of this era is written, Charlie's contribution and tenacity will be remembered."
Not long after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Gittings created the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, a website that compiled torture memos, court filings, amicus briefs, and other evidence of alleged war crimes.
His evidentiary material often was used by lawyers representing detainees to challenge the Bush administration's justification for harsh treatment and lengthy detentions without trial.
"I thought things would get a lot better under Obama," he said in a recent interview. "But they're still having these illegal kangaroo courts and the so-called military commissions, and they're still doing indefinite detentions without charges. And those are war crimes."
Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/obituaries/20100716_Charles_B__Gittings___Detainee_advocate__57.html#ixzz0uMfAg1mM
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