divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/40836?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+A+toxic+legacych=World+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=Guantanamo+Bay+%28News%29%2CObama+White+House+%28News%29%2CBarack+Obama+%28News%29%2CUS+foreign+policy%2CUS+news%2CHuman+rights+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CUS+Electionsc6=Julian+Borgerc7=2008_12_04c8=1128354c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Guant%C3%A1namo+Bayc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FGuant%C3%A1namo+Bay" width="1" height="1" //divpEver since January 11 2002, when the first 20 prisoners were flown in from Afghanistan in orange jumpsuits and shackles, the Guantaacute;namo Bay detention camp has been a hefty burden around the Bush administration's neck. /ppThe defence secretary at the time, Donald Rumsfeld, picked the Cuban enclave as the "least worst place" to hold captives accused of terrorism. But the effort to run a camp outside the reach of US or international law, so that "enemy combatants" could be held indefinitely without charge, steadily corroded America's standing in the world. The images of the inmates languishing in small metal cages in Camp X-Ray, the rudimentary first phase of the complex, and the steady stream of reports of human rights abuses, have taken a daily toll. The camp's existence has angered and embarrassed Washington's closest allies, and become a recruitment tool for its enemies. /ppNearly six years on, there is no debate over whether "Gitmo" should be closed - only how. As it approaches the end of its term, the Bush administration is anxiously attempting to dispose of its own toxic legacy. John Bellinger, the state department's top lawyer, has been trying to persuade other governments to accept detainees cleared for release. More than 500 have already been sent back to their homelands or to third countries, but there are still 250 prisoners left who cannot go home for fear of persecution and who no one else will accept. They are now Barack Obama's problem./ppThe president-elect has frequently stated his intention to close Guantaacute;namo. In an interview since the election, he repeated that pledge, saying it was "part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world". But the question of what to do with the remaining inmates still divides his ideologically diverse national security and justice teams./ppObama's inaugural speech on January 20 will be closely scrutinised around the world for signs of how bold or cautious he decides to be. His policy on Guantaacute;namo will be widely seen as a benchmark for his intentions as president. /ppA report by a non-partisan panel of US security and human rights experts, entitled Closing Guantaacute;namo: From Bumper Sticker to Blueprint, estimates that the camp could be emptied within a year if the Obama administration decided on a clean break from Bush policies and devoted enough resources to the job. The report advocates the establishment of an independent commission to review the cases of all the detainees, to assess the evidence against them and order the immediate release of the innocent./ppThe first task will be to complete the Bush administration's effort to find homes for the 150-200 prisoners who, according to lawyers familiar with their stories, have no case to answer but who cannot be sent back to their native countries for fear they would be victimised, tortured or killed. /ppThe clearest example of inmates stuck in this limbo are the 17 Uighurs, separatists from a Muslim minority in China who were seized in Pakistan during the Afghan war. They have all been cleared for release by the US authorities, most as long ago as 2003, but have so far not been accepted by any third countries. Albania agreed to take in five other Uighur detainees in 2006, but has refused to take any more. /ppBellinger's efforts to find any other government to receive the Uighurs have been undermined by the adamant refusal of the US authorities to allow them to live in America because of the presumed threat they pose to the US, in part because of presumed animosity caused by six years of detention without charge. Obama's envoys may find they have better luck than Bellinger./pp"I don't think anyone is inclined to do this administration any favours, but Obama will find he has a lot of goodwill to draw on," a European diplomat says. But that goodwill will be greatly enhanced if the new administration stops fighting the resettlement of inmates in the US./ppA second category of prisoners will be referred for prosecution outside Guantaacute;namo, but that raises the question of whether that prosecution should be conducted by military courts martial in the US or the civilian legal system. That will be a decision that goes to the philosophical heart of the issue - should the US approach terrorism as a military threat or as a criminal enterprise, or some hybrid of the two? Obama has refrained from using the phrase "war on terror", but he is said to be under pressure from the more conservative national security experts on his team to leave his options open and not bind himself with the procedural constraints of the civilian judiciary./ppOn the other side of the debate is a "rule of law" camp within the embryonic administration which argues that anything short of a complete return to constitutional normality would rob Obama of the international goodwill he might otherwise gain by scrapping Guantaacute;namo./ppThat debate underlies the toughest dilemma the new administration is likely to face on closing the offshore camp: whether there should be a third category of prisoners, deemed too dangerous to release but too difficult to prosecute. The evidence against them may be in the form of intelligence material that cannot be disclosed in court, or that falls short of legal proof. Confessions would also be ineligible if they were obtained under torture, as in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks who was "waterboarded" (subjected to simulated drowning) by the CIA. And few if any of the inmates of Guantaacute;namo were reminded of their right not to incriminate themselves, which is standard police practice./ppThe Bush administration has been seeking international agreement for a new form of preventative detention that would allow inmates in this third category to be held in the US and abroad. "The problem is you've got 200-plus very dangerous people, and the question is what do you do with them. And these are people who say regularly: 'If I'm let out of here, I will go immediately and start killing Americans again,'" Condoleezza Rice, the outgoing secretary of state, said during a visit to London this week. She argued that "even though you know that this person is a future threat, we don't really have a legal framework for that, which is why it's been done within a war framework. But if you don't hold a person who you know is a future threat, then you risk the deaths of thousands of innocents. So I do think that this is something for the international community to take up."/ppThere is little sign, however, that the international community has any appetite for such a departure from established human rights law. The decision on preventative detention will be Obama's alone. Several of his advisers and allies, liberals included, think that terrorism is such a pernicious threat, and the security risks of releasing suspects are so great, that new legislation allowing for preventative detention is unavoidable. The political risk of a released inmate carrying out an attack are also enormous. Such an event could prove crippling to a new administration. /ppOn the other hand, any new system of preventative detention would be seen around the world as Guantaacute;namo redux, human rights lawyers say. It would be every bit as effective as an al-Qaida recruiting tool, and would perpetuate the extremists' self-image as warriors rather than mere criminals. Within the internal debate under way in the transition team, liberal activists want foreign governments to lobby Obama against creating a new legal limbo. /ppIt is one of the toughest decisions the new president has in his in-tray. What Obama decides will say a lot about his presidency. Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and author of the Closing Guantaacute;namo report, says it is uncertain which way Obama would lean. But she adds: "My sense is the president-elect has taught courses in the constitution in one of the most reputable law schools in country. He ran on opting back into the international system. The idea of going for a new legal regime that will result in more years in litigation is not going to appeal. It will not be the clean break he needs to make."/ph2A history of the prison camp/h2p· January 11 2002: First prisoners arrive/pp· February 27 2002: First hunger strike begins/pp· April 29 2002: The first prison, Camp X-Ray, closes, replaced by a more solid concrete construction, Camp Delta/pp· November 10 2003: US Supreme Court agrees to hear appeals from inmates that they are being held illegally/pp· February 13 2004: Bush administration agrees to establish review panels to establish whether inmates still pose a threat/pp· March 19 2004: Five British detainees freed/pp· February 16 2006: The UN calls for the closing of Camp Delta, arguing that the treatment of some inmates amounts to torture/pp· June 10 2006: Three inmates hang themselves/pp· June 21 2006: President Bush first expresses the wish to close the camp/pp· September 6 2006: Fourteen "high-value" detainees are transferred from secret CIA prisons around the world to Guantaacute;namo, including Khaled Sheikh Mohamed, Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh, three alleged planners of the 9/11 attacks/pp· June 12 2008: US Supreme Court rules that inmates have the right to challenge their incarceration in the US courts/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/guantanamo"Guantánamo Bay/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/obama-white-house"Obama White House/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barackobama"Barack Obama/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usforeignpolicy"US foreign policy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/humanrights"Human rights/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/DnF9th1tAua-YMzXf_qz88giof4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/DnF9th1tAua-YMzXf_qz88giof4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/35029?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Man+blamed+for+Darfur+says+I+am+at+peace+with+myselfch=World+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=Sudan+%28News%29%2CHuman+rights+%28News%29%2CWar+crimes+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Simon+Tisdallc7=2008_12_04c8=1128339c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Sudanc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FSudan" width="1" height="1" //divpThe man accused by the international criminal court of planning, organising and directing an orgy of violence against civilians in Darfur that left up to 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million homeless has angrily protested his innocence, calling the allegations part of a political plot by the western powers to recolonise Sudan./ppIn an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Ahmad Muhammad Harun, Sudan's minister of state for humanitarian affairs, said he defied the ICC and the international community to do their worst and vowed never to give himself up to the tribunal./ppHarun claimed the evidence against him was concocted and unreliable. And he described the court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, as a disgrace to the legal profession who should be sacked. "My conscience is clear. I have no regrets," Harun said. "What I have done was legal, it was my responsibility, it was my duty. I am content. I am at peace with myself."/ppThe ICC has charged Harun, in his former capacity as Sudan's minister of state for the interior, with 42 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Darfur in the period from August 2003 to March 2004./ppThe eight-month period witnessed a peak in fighting between rebel and pro-government forces. The large-scale civilian casualties, gross human rights abuses and mass displacement later caused the US government to accuse Sudan's political leadership of genocide and led to UN and EU sanctions against Sudan./ppThe Darfur carnage caused international outrage that has yet to abate as the violence there continues, albeit at a reduced level. Numerous efforts to forge a lasting peace agreement during the past five years have foundered while hundreds of thousands of people remain in refugee camps. Meanwhile, human rights and advocacy groups have added their voices to calls for Harun and other alleged war criminals on both sides to be prosecuted./ppBut Sudan is not a party to the ICC. It has so far ignored UN security council demands that it cooperate with the court and surrender Harun and his co-accused, Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, an alleged Janjaweed leader also known as Ali Kushayb. /ppICC judges are currently considering a request by Moreno-Ocampo for an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity also relating to events in Darfur./ppSpeaking in his ministry's smart new offices in Khartoum, Harun said the ICC was in effect conducting a political vendetta against Sudan that had little or nothing to do with justice. /ppstrongRelaxed and confident/strong/ppThroughout the interview, Harun, a tall 43-year-old dressed in a smart charcoal suit and open-necked shirt, appeared mostly relaxed and confident. Occasionally his eyes flashed with anger as he discussed the accusations against him./pp"We believe the ICC has digressed from its main objective and become part of the international political conflict. It is another phase of international colonisation. It targets mainly the Africans. It reminds us of the 19th century when the white people were dominating here in Africa./pp"The main aim of the white people in Africa at that time, the British and the Europeans, was to disseminate their culture and their traditions. Under the flag of attractive slogans, so many things happened. Now there is a new imperial era but this time it is led by the United States and supported by the Europeans."/ppHarun, a trained lawyer from the Bargo tribe in western Sudan and a former judge, argued that UN security council resolution 1593 that referred Darfur to the ICC in 2005 was discriminatory because it exempted citizens of the US, which like Sudan is not a party to the ICC's founding treaty, from action by the court. For this reason, the ICC prosecutor was ignoring the "first principle" of equality before the law./pp"This is a discriminatory prosecution. It is also discriminatory because the ICC is targeting only African countries," Harun said. "Also, any serious investigation should begin on the ground, in theatre, in Darfur. And witnesses who are part of the problem should not be taken into consideration. They are not reliable sources."/ppSuggesting the ICC investigation was superfluous as well as politically motivated, Harun said a national investigation committee created by Bashir had examined many senior officials over their roles in Darfur. "I was one of them. I gave answers to all their questions. No action was taken. There was no evidence, so there was no reason to take action."/ppHarun added that any future move to indict Bashir, or any backroom deal in which he himself might be handed over to the ICC in return for Bashir being granted immunity, would only prove his contention that the ICC proceedings were political. In such circumstances, he said, he would never voluntarily surrender himself. And nor was he prepared to meet Moreno-Ocampo if the latter came to Khartoum./pp"The prosecutor has brought his profession into disrespect. He is not welcome in Sudan ... He should be replaced. This is what we are requesting. I add my voice to the voices of the international society because he is insulting the profession of justice and insulting African countries."/ppAsked to explain his actions in Darfur in 2003-4, Harun said he had faced an internal, essentially local conflict between Darfurian tribes that quickly transformed into a political conflict with encouragement from forces outside the province./ppRebel leaders Minni Minnawi, Abd al-Wahid Muhammad Nur, and Abdallah Abbakar initially called themselves the Darfur Liberation Movement, he said. But this later became the Sudan Liberation Movement as external actors got involved./ppThe Darfur rebellion, also fuelled by Khalil Ibrahim's opposition-backed Justice and Equality Movement, threatened the stability of the Sudanese state as a whole, for example by undermining the 2005 North-South comprehensive peace agreement which was then nearing fruition, Harun said. The government had no choice but to act./pp"The policy and tactics of the government, like any other government when things like this are happening, is to begin by mobilising./pp"We have a security reserve force - the Popular Defence Forces - to respond to those attacks, a paramilitary force. Some people call the PDF by different names, some call it militia, others are calling it Janjaweed. But it is a formal force and it works under the directions of the army."/ppUnable to match pro-government forces militarily, the rebels changed tactics and created a humanitarian crisis in Darfur to attract international attention and intervention, he said./ppstrongRebels blamed/strong/pp"They started putting pressure on civilians to move out of villages, they killed their children, women they abducted, they destroyed the infrastructure and means of people's livelihood, and caused the mass migration of people into refugee camps."/ppIn other words, he suggested, it was the rebel groups that were responsible for the civilian massacres, atrocities and mass displacements in 2003-4, not himself or the government. Sudan's government in any case disputes the UN's casualty estimates, claiming only about 10,000 people died./ppReports that he boasted in a 2003 speech that he had "the power and the authority to kill or forgive whoever in Darfur" were fabricated, Harun added. And he insisted his 2004 description of the rebels as "fish" who needed the "water" of the villages to survive (thereby allegedly justifying the destruction of villages) was a distortion of his meaning./ppPeople in Darfur knew the truth, he said, which was why he was still welcome there. "I move freely in Darfur. I have strong support. I am popular in Darfur because they know who protected them."/ppLeaning back in a well-padded armchair with a broad smile on his face, Harun said he was a religious man who had done nothing to offend against God. But he did not claim to have a close relationship with the Almighty./pp"I am not like George Bush. I do not talk to God. In Islam, we believe Muhammad was the last prophet. Since Muhammad, no one can talk to God."/ppAs for the future, he suggested relations between Sudan and the international community would deteriorate further if the ICC persisted with its present course. A total breach with the UN was not out of the question./ppHarun's openly defiant stance underlines how difficult it may be to bring justice to Darfur while avoiding an open confrontation with Sudan and, at one remove, its African Union and Arab League allies. If allowed to continue unanswered, it also threatens the credibility of the ICC./pp"We don't expect anything good from the ICC. But for every action, there will be a response," Harun said. "The ICC will do whatever they want. We will wait and see what they do. We will defend our country as best we can to the best of our ability, according to our opinions."/ph2Backstory/h2pThe stronginternational criminal court/strong was established in strong2002/strong as an independent tribunal to try individuals responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was designed to complement national legal systems, stepping in when a country appeared unable or unwilling to prosecute. More than 100 countries are members./ppAtrocities committed by rebel commanders in the strongDemocratic Republic of the Congo/strong and by the Lord's Resistance Army in strongUganda/strong prompted the opening of the first cases in 2004. Investigations into abuses in Sudan's strongDarfur/strong region began a year later. /ppIn February 2007, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced that Sudanese minister strongAhmad Harun/strong and Janjaweed militia leader strongAli Kushayb/strong were suspected of committing crimes against humanity. The indictment and warrant for their arrests, dated April 2007, specifically accuses Harun of targeting the ethnic African Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit tribes by employing elements of the Sudanese armed forces and Popular Defence Forces paramilitaries, and by "recruiting, arming and funding" irregular Arab militias known as strongJanjaweed/strong/ppAccording to the court, pro-government forces over which Harun exercised command launched a campaign of terror that included "murders of civilians, rapes and outrages upon the personal dignity of women and girls ... and destruction of property and pillaging of towns"./ppThe indictment claims that the campaign was of a "strongsystematic/strong strongand/strong strongwidespread/strong strongnature/strong" conducted "over an extensive period of time... in furtherance of a state or organisational policy consisting in attacking the civilian population"./ppIt goes on: "Ahmad Harun intentionally contributed to the commission of the above-mentioned crimes ... In his public speeches, Harun not only demonstrated he knew the militia/Janjaweed were attacking civilians and pillaging towns and villages but also personally encouraged the commission of such illegal acts."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/sudan"Sudan/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/humanrights"Human rights/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/warcrimes"War crimes/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/99ZPD_i__SILc-p8fgs1R8yAN7A/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/99ZPD_i__SILc-p8fgs1R8yAN7A/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Netbooks are all the rage at the moment, with Asus predicting that it will sell 5 million of its Asus Eee PC netbooks by the end of this year. However, one of the tricky aspects of netbooks is that they have much more limited hardware resources than larger, traditional notebooks. For that reason, it makes sense to put applications on your machine that are both lightweight and powerful. The good news is that many of the best choices are free. In this post, you’ll find 10 ways to pimp out your Windows or Linux netbook, without breaking the hardware resources bank.

OpenOffice Whether your netbook is Linux- or Windows-based, one of the best free downloads you can get is this suite of open-source productivity applications. OpenOffice includes lightweight but robust applications that compete with the expensive Microsoft Office alternatives: Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentations), Base (database), Draw (diagram creator) and Math (editor for math formulas).

PortableApps For Windows-based netbooks, this is a great collection of pre-selected free and primarily open source applications that you can stick on a netbook — or even a USB drive — in one quick download. It includes the portable editions of ClamWin (antivirus), Mozilla Firefox (web browser), Gaim (instant messaging), OpenOffice (office suite), Sudoku (puzzle game), Mozilla Sunbird (calendar/task manager) and Mozilla Thunderbird (email client), among other applications. You can cherry-pick the applications you want, or run the whole suite in under 512MB.

Google Chrome I usually favor Firefox when using a high-end computer or laptop, but on a netbook, Google’s open source Chrome browser is an extremely lightweight browser that is winning lots of speed competitions. It’s only available for Windows for the moment, but will be out in a Linux version early next year.

LXDE The “Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment” is a fast, energy-saving Linux desktop environment maintained by an international community of developers. It has a slick interface and lots of useful features, including tabbed file browsing. Plus, it takes fewer resources than the popular KDE and GNOME Linux desktop environments.

GNOME The GNOME desktop environment is very popular with many Linux users, and is lightweight enough for netbooks. Within GNOME, you get e-mail, groupware, web browsing, file management, multimedia, games and more. The new version 2.24 includes the GNOME Mobile Platform for the first time, which will keep developers focused on mobile applications for GNOME on an ongoing basis.

KDE The K Desktop Environment (KDE) Project is a very good choice for Linux-based netbooks. It includes slick desktop applications, including the Kontact personal information manager, Dragon Player for multimedia applications, and the Konqueror web browser.

RocketDock RocketDock is an animated application launcher that I highly recommend for owners of Windows-based netbooks. It is much faster and more flexible than the object docks on most netbooks, and it has an easy drag-and-drop interface. Check out a video of it here.

TinyResMeter TinyResMeter is a lightweight application for tracking system resources in use. Netbooks, of course, often have stripped down hardware resources, so this is a good way to get on-the-fly views of memory usage, CPU usage and much more. Keeping it on hand will help you stay under the system resource wire.

VLC Media Player Depending what hardware resources you have on your netbook and the media player you currently use, you may occasionally run into problems running video and audio content. VLC Media Player is a lightweight, free and open source media player that will work on either a Windows or Linux netbook. It supports nearly every popular file format and is specifically designed for portability.

Online Hosted Apps. Of course, one of the fundamental concepts behind netbooks is that you can use them with applications that are hosted online. If you don’t already use these, there are excellent, free choices from Zoho and Google Apps. Ulteo gives you 1GB of free online storage, and access to all of the OpenOffice productivity apps online.

Finally, don’t forget that a USB thumb drive can be an excellent adjunct to your notebook. You can get lots of capacity for very little money, and one simple download such as the PortableApps download above can put countless free applications in your pocket for use on your netbook whenever you want.

Image courtesy Asus

International community marks the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian Peoplediv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/WikinewsLatestNews?a=dnGrO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/WikinewsLatestNews?i=dnGrO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/WikinewsLatestNews?a=0hT0O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/WikinewsLatestNews?i=0hT0O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/WikinewsLatestNews?a=L8NhO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/WikinewsLatestNews?i=L8NhO" border="0"/img/a /div