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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was busy yesterday relaying concerns from Congress to Chinese President Hu Jin Tao regarding human rights abuses in China. At the same time, a shocking court case regarding human rights abuses in the US reached its final days in Chicago. A sentencing hearing began on Wednesday for Former Police Commander Jon Burge, convicted of lying during a 2003 civil lawsuit related to the abuse of prisoners. For decades Jon Burge has been accused of overseeing a police department that used torture to coerce prisoners into confessing to crimes. Shocking testimonials from alleged victims of the abuse claim police used a number of tactics, including suffocating them with plastic bags and forcing gun barrels into their mouths. Allegations of confession by torture in dozens of cases were found to be true in 2006 by a Cook County Prosecutor’s investigation. But no charges could be brought against Burge’s department because the statute of limitations had expired. Jon Burge may get as few as 15 months in prison for perjury. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported on Wednesday that military tribunals at Guantanamo, the infamous site of American-style interrogation and torture, are set to resume for the first time under the Obama administration. On January 22, 2009 the newly inaugurated President Obama signed an executive order to stop new cases from proceeding and promised to close the controversial off-shore prison within a year. At the Obama stated closing Guantanamo would, “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great”. Since then Congress has strongly resisted closing the facility and the President is now reversing course.

GUEST: Bill Quigley, Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights; Valerie Lucznikowska, a member of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Aunt of Adam Arias, killed in World Trade Center Tower #2 on September 11th, 2001

Find out more at www.ccrjustice.org, and www.peacefultomorrows.org.