Man Who Sought Truth in Mass Murder Teigin Case Dies in Tokyo

FORGET FORGET FORGET

"But something is wrong, very wrong..."

The Google Alert notified me a few days ago that, according to The Japan Times, a 54-year-old Japanese man, Takehiko Hirasawa, died alone and unheralded in Suginami Ward, Tokyo. Cause of death is unknown. When the crime that obsessed him most of his adult life occurred, he had not yet been born. He was not yet the son of two fathers. He was not yet the head of the Society to Save Sadamichi Hirasawa.

He was no one any of you were likely to have heard of. (I see The Wrongful Convictions Blog noticed Takehiko's death, though.) Nor would you likely have known about those who died in the criminal events that pursued Takehiko's conscience, all 12 of them. Nor was the story of his adopted father, sent to death row where he would never be executed, even after over 30 years, likely known to many of you, as past crimes fade like letters written upon a mystic writing pad.

The date of the crime was January 26, 1948. It was by all accounts a most extraordinary event. The intervention of the Americans into the Tokyo police investigation was documented by William Triplett in his 1985 book, The Flowering of the Bamboo. The crime story made the U.S. press over the years, only to repeatedly slip and slosh back into the inky depths of press oblivion.

Here's what went down: in the western Tokyo district of Shinjuku, 16 people had been at a Tokyo branch of the Teikoku Ginko bank (abbreviated as "Teigin"). It was closing time on a wet afternoon, the streets muddy, the city still reeling from the massive incendiary bombings by the Americans less than three years before. Now the Americans were the occupiers. Japanese imprisoned abroad during the war were still trickling back into Japan. Some of them were war criminals. Some had belonged to a notorious but ultra-secret military unit involved in biological warfare experimentation and operations.

"And now I look him in his face. It is round, very round. Like an egg."

Much later... Much, much later, decades later, we would learn the U.S. had a hand in covering up this BW unit, known as Unit 731. (Actually, there turned out to be many such units scattered throughout the Japanese Army, and included contacts at prestigious universities and medical schools.) We learned that thousands of prisoners had been experimented on, inoculated with disease, shot with poisoned bullets, exposed to germ bombs, forced to impregnate each other with syphilis, subjected to vivisection (dissected alive).

Only later, much, much later, would we learn that Japanese biological warfare operations would kill hundreds of thousands in China during World War 2. It was by far the greatest sustained use of BW in warfare up to that time, but it was hidden, giving the lie to the supposed truth that no huge conspiracy could ever succeed for long. (For most scholarly treatment of the entire historical event, though still incomplete on its own, see Sheldon Harris's book, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up.)

FORGET

"This serum is very strong and if it touches your teeth or gums it can cause great damage. So please listen and watch carefully as I demonstrate how to swallow the serum safely."

A man came to the bank. He wore an armband that identified him as a health official. He said he was a doctor. There had been a dysentery outbreak and he was working with the Americans to prevent an outbreak. Would each bank worker please take the specially-derived antidote please? The workers looked at the bottles the "doctor" had brought. They were marked in English "First Drug" and "Second Drug." They drank, and within minutes, 12 were dead. The "doctor," who also drank from the bottles but apparently was unfazed by their contents, disappeared with a small amount of cash. One woman staggered into the street and gathered the attention of stunned pedestrians.

The investigation was huge, and the Tokyo press, like all reporters, were hungry for a big story. The Japanese cops went to the Americans, who still controlled censorship over the Japanese press in Jan. 1948. Would they help suppress this story? They would, replied the Americans. (See Triplett's documents at the rear of his book.)

"Now drip the liquid onto your tongues."

FORGET FORGET FORGET

There was one other wrinkle. The cops were getting tips. According to sources, the killer was linked to Unit 731 (or perhaps an affiliated unit). This was inconvenient to say the least, because only months before, the U.S. had solidified a deal with Gen. Shiro Ishii, the head of Unit 731, and his associates and workers, to hide the evidence of their crimes in exchange for extensive debriefings about what they had discovered about using BW agents on humans. They were also getting slides of human tissues from Unit 731's experiments, at least 8,000 such slides, which were sent on to researchers at Ft. Detrick.

The Americans knew, too, that some of the experiments had likely been conducted on U.S. and British POWs at Mukden POW camp, and possibly other sites. They had kept the whole affair out of the Tokyo International Military Tribunal, even as similar crimes were being prosecuted at Nuremberg. But the "Teigin Incident" threatened to blow the whole story.

Commander in Chief, Far Eastern Command (May 47): "Data already obtained from Ishii and his colleagues have proven to be of great value in confirming, supplementing and complementing several phases of U.S. research in BW, and may suggest new fields for future research.... the only known source of data from scientifically controlled experiments showing the direct effect of BW agents on man.... The BW information obtained from Japanese sources should be retained in intelligence channels and should not be employed as 'war crimes' evidence."

But the tale of the bizarre bank killings wouldn't die. The press kept at it. The police needed to find someone to charge with the crime. They found someone. Sadamichi Hirasawa, a painter and sometime pornographer who had no experience with the military or chemistry, unless it was on how to mix a drink. He was interrogated for hours on end and confessed, though he swiftly withdrew his confession as coerced. Too late. Evidence was concealed at trial. The confession was ruled valid by the court. In the end, Sadamichi Hirasawa was sentenced to death.

But that was not the end of the story. There were appeals, denials of appeals, and after many years, a decided policy by the Japanese government never to sign an actual death warrant for Sadamichi's hanging. Appeals and decades both passed. Hirasawa died on Japan's death row in 1985. The New York Times noticed the event.

He was 95 years old, and maintained his innocence to the end. Long before he died, in 1962 a famous Japanese writer, Tetsuro Morikawa, founded a Society to Save Hirawawa. According to Triplett, "The Society filed sixteen appeals for retrial and four appeals for pardon. All had been rejected."

Astoundingly, when his health failed, Tetsuro had his son Takehiko become adopted by Sadamichi, as the latter needed "relatives" if further appeals were to be pursued. In fact, as The Japan Times story makes clear, there was still an active appeal on file, which may (or may not, as the vagaries of the law go) be moot now that Takehiko is dead.

And so it was that Takehiko Morikawa became Takehiko Hirasawa. (Morikawa died in 1983.)
"-- and now I see everyone rushing for the sink, for the tap, for the water, and now I am rushing for the sink, for the tap, for the water, and now I see people falling to the floor... people coughing, people retching, people vomiting, and now I can feel people pushing past me... and now the light is leaving us, leaving us here..."

VERGESSEN FORGET

But perhaps the reader wants to know why Takehiko's death has any significance now. I cannot tell the reader that. It is already written: in the news about threats of use of biological and chemical weapons by terrorists, by the forgotten tales of use of such weapons by the U.S. and their allies, by some small number of historians who will not let the truth die.

Even a portion of the U.S. government got into the act, late in the game then, long ago now, as judged by many for whom 9/11 "changed everything."  With 9/11 it seemed as if a veil descended on all that went before it, erasing much of history, so those in power could get away with their crimes.

But before 9/11, in 1999, there were hearings. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who castigated Edward Snowden for the release of documents showing U.S. wrong-doing, helped sponsor the Japanese Imperial Army Disclosure Act of 1999. More information to come out. But not the name of the man who killed a dozen innocent people in one of the strangest poisoning killings on record. That name is not known. Could it have been Sadamichi Hirasawa? Takehiko Hirasawa spent his life trying to prove it was not so.

Takehiko Hirasawa is dead, following his mother by almost a year. The police have ruled out foul play, although it is clear the investigation has not even been completed. Japan is rearming. The US is telling us to fear BW from Syria and Iran (see this Washington Post article from October). The US is pushing experimentation on children to develop an anthrax vaccine to "protect" the US from biological weapons attack.

The victims at the Teikoku Ginko bank call out to us across the decades.

"I am falling, I am falling, I am falling into the grey-ness, I am falling, falling and falling away, away from the light...."

FORGET FORGET FORGET

[The italicized text is taken from David Peace's novelization of the Teigin Incident, Occupied City. The text in bold is from a document reproduced in the appendix to Triplett's book, labelled as from the War Crimes Office, Judge Advocate General's Office, US War Department. -- This posting was cross-posted at The Dissenter/FDL]

"I'm your great big butter and egg man from way down south"

Louis Armstrong Hot Five & May Alix, "Big Butter and Egg Man from the West," 1926 jazz song by Percy Venable.

Armstrong is, as he tells May Alix, "different," as he's "a big butter and egg man from way down in the South", with a coronet on his lip....

FDL Book Salon: "Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War"

The following is reposted from the October 13 Firedoglake Book Salon I hosted. The guests were Allen Hornblum, Judith L. Newman, and Gregory J. Dober, co-authors of Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War.

The Book Salon was well-received and with over 200 comments, it was a lively and informative discussion. Posted here is my introduction to the Salon.

Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America is a crucially important work, closer to today’s headlines than we might like to admit.

From the well-known scandals at New York’s Willowbrook State School and Massachusett’s Fernald Developmental Center – both covered in the book – to more recent revelations about use of orphans and babies as guinea pigs in HIV and herpes-related experiments, stories related to informed consent and safety regarding use of children by medical and psychological researchers continue to haunt the practice of science.

By both federal regulations and widely accepted ethical doctrine, children are recognized as especially vulnerable members of the population. There are many laws and regulations that were written to protect them from the adult world, and that recognize their special status as protected individuals in society.

But those kinds of protections, including those written into laws meant to protect children as objects of medical or scientific experimentation, have repeatedly broken down, or been ignored.

Last March a special Presidential bioethics commission approved a limited and conditional set of trials of anthrax vaccine on children. While the approval was made subject to certain “safeguards,” anthrax vaccine critic Dr. Meryl Nass wrote, the commission’s decision was nevertheless “a green light to test a dangerous anthrax vaccine in children, and a second green light to test other ‘countermeasures’ in children, to circumvent existing FDA standards.”

Allen Hornblum and his co-authors, Penn State professor Judith Newman and writer Gregory Dober, would know all about this. Their book is a plea for humanist ethics in science and medicine as opposed to the political and economic expediency that too often dominate mainstream medical science.

Hornblum has trod similar ground before. In 1999 he authored Acres of Skin, a book that exposed the use of unethical experimentation on prisoners, a practice that continued for many decades. The lessons of that book – and even some of the actors involved, like Holmesburg prison doctor Albert Kligman – cross over to the work on children.

Hornblum and his co-authors trace the hideous practice of using children, infants and pregnant women as guinea pigs back to the ideology of the eugenicists in the early 20th century. The authors repeatedly show that these kinds of experiments were not isolated instances of medical or scientific malfeasance, but were part of science’s mainstream culture. (Kudos to academic publisher Palgrave Macmillan for publishing this work.)

A 1961 radiation-related experiment on children conducted at the Wrentham State School for “feebleminded” and “defective boys” in Massachusetts, where children were injected with radioactive iodine, “was coordinated by researchers from Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Boston University School of Medicine, and it was supported by the Radiological Health Division of the US Public Health Service” (p. 145).

Behind the Cold War and eugenicist rationalizations, the authors demonstrate that careerist ambitions and stubborn narcissistic self-aggrandization were contributory causes to the sorry history they describe. Indeed, it is frightening to read over and over how avidly the doctors and scientists followed along, or even led the way in the evisceration of ethics involved.

For decades doctors and scientists had turned to youth warehoused in orphanages, children’s homes and hospitals as apt subjects for medical and other experiments. The children, who could not make any informed consent, were often labeled “feeble-minded,” or were children with Downs Syndrome or cerebral palsy, or were just too poor and illiterate to make any fuss. Their parents often were not notified of the experiments, or they were overtly or subtly coerced to give consent.

As Hornblum, Newman, and Dober wrote: “The sad history of children, especially institutionalized ones, being used as cheap and available test subjects – the raw material for experimentation – started long before the Atomic Age…. Experimental vaccines for hepatitis, measles, polio, and other diseases; exploratory therapeutic procedures such as electroshock and lobotomy; and untested pharmaceuticals such as curare and Thorazine were all tested on children in hospitals, orphanages, and mental asylums as if they were some widely accepted intermediary step between chimpanzees and humans. Occasionally children supplanted the chimps” (p. 9).

Hornblum and his co-authors conclude that while lots of lip service has been given to the promulgation of the Nuremberg code of medical ethics, putting the interests of research subjects and their informed consent before anything was replaced by a Cold War emphasis on “the advancement of science” and “medical progress.” According to the late Yale professor and respected ethicist Jay Katz, quoted in Against Their Will, “the Nuremberg Code ‘was relegated to history almost as soon as it was born.’”

Hornblum and his co-authors trace back the origins of using children in medical experiments to assumptions about the “heroic” in science and medicine; to an ideology of eugenics that took the U.S. by storm in the late 19th and early 20th century; to the exigencies of total war that unfolded during World War II and subsequent Cold War calculations, replacing the protection of children, prisoners, etc. under the titanic clash of different states and social systems.

With reforms leading to the promulgation of more stringent ethical safeguards and the rise of institutional review boards, some of the worst practices fell into disuse. But the authors document use of medical or psychological experiments on children even into the 1990s. They warn, as well, that many of the experiments on children have been moved off-shore, to countries with less oversight, far away from the prying eyes of U.S. media.

Whether it was the U.S. amnesty to the Nazi-like doctors of Japan’s Unit 731, or the kinds of experiments Allen Hornblum has described in U.S. prisons, orphanages and state hospitals, or the recent revelations of post-World War II U.S. Public Health syphilis experiments on illiterate women in Guatemala, or even revelations about the “battle lab in the war on terror” that was the experiments on interrogation and torture at Guantanamo, the reality of what was revealed at Nuremburg challenges our myth of being a “civilized” or humane world.

Human Rights Groups Criticize Obama Administration Delays on Guantanamo Closure

The following is the text of a letter to President Obama decrying the long delay in the implementation of the Administration's promises to act on closing Guantanamo. In fact, since writing the letter, the Obama administration announced that Paul Lewis would be the Department of Defense Special Envoy for the closure of Guantánamo's prison.

I'd like to know more about Lewis's role as Counsel for the House Armed Services Committee, particularly during the time legislation was being drawn up for the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But I doubt we'll see much investigation by the press into these kinds of appointments.

New Rules

Meanwhile, just today, DoD released a new set of rules concerning the Administration's "Periodic Review Board" (PRB) for Guantanamo. (H/T Jonathan Horowitz) A full analysis of this document awaits, but preliminary assessments by human rights legal experts on Twitter see this new set of rules -- released 30 months after promised by President Obama, and over a year after the mandatory date for action on it -- as akin to the PRB that was established for prisoners at Parwan, Afghanistan. My own reading saw them as not too different from the CSRTs from Bush Administration days.

Back in April, 2012, Human Rights Watch made some recommendations for the new PRBs at Guantananmo. Let's see how Obama and the DoD did:

Access to counsel/personal representative.... We urge you to implement procedures guaranteeing all persons held in US military detention access to a lawyer and a judge. Should you choose not to apply this standard universally such that some persons are assigned only a personal representative (a decision we would oppose), we urge you to make clear that communications between a detainee and the personal representative assigned to his case would be kept confidential in a manner similar to the rules governing attorney-client privilege. We further urge you to make clear that private counsel selected by the detainee in accordance with the Executive Order have access to all relevant inculpatory, exculpatory, and mitigating evidence, including classified evidence, provided they have the appropriate clearances.

From my reading of the new PRB process, only a "uniformed military officer (referred to as a personal representative)" will be assigned to assist detainees. Detainees can obtain their own private attorney "at no expense to the government, to assist the detainee in the review process." Nothing is said about confidentiality, but this is not surprising, as the government has gone out of its way to contaminate the military commissions process with intrusive theft, surveillance, and/or outrageous incompetence that amounts to obstruction of a detainee's right to counsel.

Access to evidence. The Executive Order provides that a detainee will receive an unclassified summary of the evidence against him, but that his personal representative and private counsel may be provided with other evidence; while not explicit, it appears that classified information may not be available to the detainee. In addition, the representative and counsel may, at the discretion of the PRB, be provided with substitutes or summaries of certain information on national security grounds. The ability of the detainee’s representative and/or counsel (but not the detainee himself) to access classified information does not alleviate the inherent unfairness of a system in which a person may be detained on the basis of information to which he cannot meaningfully respond. Should protection of national security truly require the use of some classified information, the implementing guidelines should make clear that the detainee be provided with as much information as possible and that the information be sufficient to allow him to contest the factual allegations against him.

Moreover, the Executive Order does not provide for a mechanism by which the detainee or his representative can challenge the adequacy of the production of the evidence. We urge you to include in the implementing guidelines a mechanism by which such challenges may be raised to an independent, preferably judicial, authority.

The new PRB rules go to some length to explain how classified information can be withheld for "national security" reasons from "personal representatives" and attorneys for the detainee. Yes, though substitutes or summaries of such information will be provided, DoD states,"The PRB will ensure that any such substitutes or summaries of information are sufficient to provide the personal representative or private counsel with a meaningful opportunity to assist the detainee during the review process."

So in the end, a prisoner held for years in indefinite detention, often with "evidence" that comes from "national security," secret sources that cannot be reviewed directly, will have to rely on the "cross-section of the national security community: that is the PRB to determine whether substitute summaries are adequate for defense. The need for "an independent, preferably judicial, authority" to vet such government claims is nowhere to be found in these new set of rules.

There's much more that could likely be said about these new PRB rules. (For instance, the Parwan PRBs allowed for public hearings, but there's nothing in the Guantanamo PRB process that allows for that.) I'll try and post more later here, or check my twitter feed to see links (@jeff_kaye).

Letter to President Obama

The text below is taken from Josh Gerstein's posting at Politico, where he also supplied his own analysis. However, the link there is for the reader's own use, as a copy of the letter was also sent privately to me.

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

RE: More than Four-Month Delay in Meeting Two of Your Key Commitments on Closing Guantanamo and Ending Indefinite Detention

Dear President Obama:

The undersigned human rights, religious, and civil liberties organizations strongly urge your administration to promptly and fully carry out two key commitments you made as steps toward closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and ending indefinite detention. Specifically, we urge you to 1) appoint an envoy in the Defense Department to lead the effort to close Guantanamo, and 2) direct Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to use his existing statutory authority, including any applicable certifications or national security waivers specified by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (“NDAA-FY13”), to transfer cleared detainees from Guantanamo to foreign countries that will respect their human rights. These actions would help to fulfill your renewed promise to end indefinite detention and close the Guantanamo prison.

More than four months have passed since you delivered your May 23, 2013 speech at the National Defense University, in which you recommitted the United States to the goal of closing the Guantanamo prison. Shortly before that speech, at your April 30, 2013 White House press conference, you committed the United States to ending indefinite detention at Guantanamo, stating: “the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.” You reiterated your commitment to closing the Guantanamo prison last month, in your speech at the United Nations. We greatly appreciate these important statements of a renewed commitment.

However, despite your personal commitment and engagement, the population at Guantanamo over the past four months has been reduced by only two detainees, moving only from 166 to 164. Of the detainees who remain, 84 were cleared for transfer by national security officials more than four years ago.

We are particularly concerned that two of your specific commitments have not yet been met:

Lengthy Delay in Appointment of a Senior Envoy at the Department of Defense: In your National Defense University speech, you stated, “I’m appointing a new senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries.” The White House clarified later that same day that there would be separate envoys for State and Defense. While Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Clifford Sloan as the envoy for State in June, Secretary Hagel has yet to appoint an envoy at the Defense Department. The problems caused by the lack of an envoy at the Defense Department have been compounded by the recent departure of the Pentagon head of Detainee Affairs and the absence of a permanent General Counsel. Vacancies in these critical positions have resulted in a leadership void within the Defense Department, which has delayed decisions and actions needed to reduce the population at Guantanamo by transferring cleared detainees to foreign countries that will respect their human rights.

Delays in Transferring Detainees out of Guantanamo Due to Internal Administration Disagreements on Scope of Existing Statutory Authority: In the National Defense University speech, you also stated, “To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries.” Many of our groups wrote to you on April 11, 2013 to urge you to use your existing statutory authority to “transfer the remaining detained men to their home countries or other countries for resettlement, or to charge them in a court that comports with fair trial standards.” Your press conference and speech more than four months ago expressed your determination to do so.

Despite your order to fully use existing authority to transfer cleared detainees, some administration officials have an exceedingly cramped view of that authority. As a result, after more than four months only two detainees have been transferred out of the 166 men who were held at Guantanamo on the day of your speech.

While we recognize that transfer restrictions in the NDAA-FY13 had needlessly complicated some transfers, the NDAA-FY13, if it again becomes applicable, includes a waiver that provides that the Secretary of Defense can waive the most onerous certification requirements if the government has taken steps to substantially mitigate risk. Particularly for the 84 men who have long been cleared for transfer, there is no reason why the Departments of Defense and State cannot work swiftly towards transferring all of them to foreign countries that will respect their human rights.

The Chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have expressed their frustration with the overly narrow view of the NDAA-FY13 transfer provisions taken by some administration officials. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin wrote to the White House Counsel, on May 6, 2013, explaining that “more than a year ago, I successfully fought for a national security waiver that provides a clear route for the transfer of detainees to third countries in appropriate cases, i.e., to make sure the certification requirements do not constitute an effective prohibition.” Similarly, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon wrote in the Washington Post on May 2, 2013 that the certification requirements were not a prohibition. The Senate Armed Services Committee itself, in its committee report for the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2014, wrote, “the committee emphasizes that the certification requirements [in the NDAA-FY13] were never intended to constitute an absolute prohibition on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to countries other than the United States.” Other senior members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have made similar comments.

The statutory waiver authority created enough flexibility in the certification requirements that there should have been far more than two detainees transferred during the more than four months since your speech. Your order to fully use your existing authority to transfer cleared detainees “to the greatest extent possible” appears to have been largely thwarted by some administration officials applying exceedingly narrow interpretations of that authority, and of the certification requirements. Their interpretations defy a plain reading of the statute and cut against the stated intent of both its authors and the Senate committee of jurisdiction.

While we join your administration in strongly supporting statutory changes to the transfer provisions, which are included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014, as reported by the Senate Armed Services Committee, there is no reason to wait for a change in the law. Enactment of the transfer provisions in the Senate bill is important because it will restore much more of your authority to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo, but you already have significant transfer authority under the NDAA-FY13, if the provision again becomes applicable.

A number of countries are clearly interested in receiving transferred detainees, and have the ability to reintegrate detainees back into society. Unless a detainee objects to a transfer based on a fear of denial of human rights, including a fear of treatment that would violate the Convention Against Torture, the United States should transfer detainees to these countries. In fact, the list of governments seeking the return of their citizens is long, and includes important allies of the United States. Leaders of these countries - including British Prime Minister David Cameron - have made public statements to that effect. In addition to these calls, your lifting of the moratorium on transfers of Yemeni detainees should allow for transfer of the majority of already cleared detainees. There is no reason for further delay in the transfer overseas of many of the detainees.

In both your press conference and speech more than four months ago, you eloquently and forcefully argued why the United States must prioritize the work to close the Guantanamo prison and end indefinite detention, and you set out some concrete steps toward that end, including the two steps discussed in this letter. We strongly support you in your commitment to close the Guantanamo prison and end indefinite detention. It is in this effort to support you that we want to make clear our concern that the more than four-month delay in your administration carrying out two key steps could jeopardize your ability to close the Guantanamo prison and end indefinite detention during your presidency.

Thank you for attention to these concerns.

Sincerely,
American Civil Liberties Union
Amnesty International USA
Appeal for Justice
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for the Victims of Torture
Constitution Project
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Defending Dissent Foundation
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Human Rights Watch
International Justice Network
Japanese American Citizens League
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
National Religious Campaign Against Torture
Presbyterian Church (USA)
Physicians for Human Rights
Win Without War