Amnesty: Mubarak’s regime must stop flights to torture in Eritrea
I received the following statement from Amnesty International:
The Egyptian authorities are preparing to forcibly return up to 1,200 asylum-seekers to Eritrea. This follows the deportation of 200 people on Thursday evening and 200 others on Wednesday 11 June. Amnesty International has said that the organization fears 180 more might be deported today, late in the evening.
Asylum-seekers returned to Eritrea are at risk of torture and other ill-treatment, particularly those who have fled from compulsory military service. Most are likely to be arbitrarily detained incommunicado in inhumane conditions for weeks, sometimes years.
May’s occupation deaths in Afghanistan outnumber Iraq
From AP:
It’s a grim gauge of U.S. wars going in opposite directions: American and allied combat deaths in Afghanistan in May passed the monthly toll in Iraq for the first time.
AP is also reporting that:
As of Friday, June 13, 2008, at least 447 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures June 7 at 10 a.m. EDT.
Of those, the military reports 310 were killed by hostile action.
Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 65 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, two were the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen.
There were also four CIA officer deaths and one military civilian death.
“Military civilian” by the way means mercenaries. What an oxymoron.
