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Blackwater * Mukasey and Torture * LA 8

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JEREMY SCAHILL
Scahill is author of the bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He just wrote the piece “State to Blackwater: Nothing You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You in a Court of Law.”
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MARJORIE COHN
Currently in Washington, D.C., Cohn recently wrote the piece “Michael Mukasey: Another Loyal Bushie.” She is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of the new book Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law.
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ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman wrote the recent piece “Richardson’s Confirmation, a Guide for Mukasey’s.”

She served on the House Judiciary Committee during Nixon’s impeachment and co-authored the 1973 special prosecutor statute. Holtzman co-wrote (with Cynthia L. Cooper) the 2006 book The Impeachment of George W. Bush.
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DAVID COLE
Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Cole is co-author of the recently-released Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror. He said today: “If the United States is to recover from the damage done by the administration’s past dissembling on torture, we need an Attorney General who can say, clearly and unequivocally, that waterboarding is torture. This is elementary to the rest of the world, and until we recognize that, the United States’s reputation as a country that tolerates torture will continue.”

Today, the government is dropping the “LA 8” case in which it has sought for 21 years to deport a group of Palestinians based on secret “evidence.” Cole, a volunteer attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, was a lawyer in the case and wrote “9/11 and the LA 8.”
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MICHEL SHEHADEH
One of the “LA 8,” Shehadeh said today: “I am extremely happy but do have mixed emotions. … The government was wrong for 21 years. They robbed us, and our families, of the best and most productive years of our lives.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.