Lawyers with the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) have also collected accounts that Americans in Iraq engaged in looting money, jewellery and other valuables from people's houses during night time raids.

The accusations have led to a federal class action suit on behalf of the Iraqi detainees against the CACI and Titan corporations, two private contractors operating in Iraq. "We filed the suit because it doesn't look like Congress is going to do anything," says Jeffrey Fogel, legal director for CCR, one of several firms representing the plaintiffs. "We want to use the lawsuit to find out what's really going on at the US detention centres." CCR is at the forefront of challenges to the Bush administration's methods and tactics in the "war on terror." "In terms of militarism and the Constitution, we are living in perhaps the most dangerous period in American history," says CCR President Michael Ratner. "My friends who lived through the McCarthy period of the early 1950s say they have never seen anything like it. The Bush administration is using the war on terrorism to scare people and to make huge inroads on civil liberties."

Last June, CCR successfully represented Guantanamo detainees before the US Supreme Court. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court rejected the Bush administration's claim that it could hold foreign detainees at Guantanamo without judicial review and agreed that foreign terrorist suspects can use the US legal system to challenge their detention. "The Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's position that it could maintain a law­free-zone in Guantanamo," explained Judge John Gibbons, who argued the case for CCR. "This means that our clients will finally be able to get their day in court. The president doesn't have absolute power in the war on terrorism." Gibbons is a former Chief Judge for the US Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. The CCR and other critics of the Bush administration contend that the Bush administration is violating the Geneva Convention and the U.S. Constitution, but administration officials have said that the president, as commander in chief, has the exclusive authority to decide what to do with "enemy aliens" captured abroad during a war. At the same time, the administration says the war on terrorism is not a true war and, therefore, Bush's military commanders need not abide by the terms of the Geneva Convention and its rules for prisoners of war.

Brigadier General Thomas Hemingway, a senior U.S. military official, told reporters at the Pentagon on August 26 that the military commissions are "designed to expeditiously and fairly try people consistent with our national security concerns." Hemingway serves as legal adviser to the Appointing Authority for the Office of Military Commissions that is hearing the cases of prisoners at Guantanamo detained on charges that they committed war crimes by aiding Taliban or al-Qaeda members in fighting against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

In the past two months the Bush administration has done its best to ignore the Court's decision. "The Bush administration has dug in its heels and is fighting us every inch of the way," Ratner claims. "We represent more than 70 detainees at Guantanamo, but since the ruling, only one of our attorneys has gotten in to see our clients there. The Bush administration is trying to make the detainees go through what they call 'Combatant Status Review Tribunals.' It's treating the Supreme Court decision as if it was a suggestion rather than a ruling."

CCR has thrived on tough legal battles since the legendary William Kuntsler and three other attorneys founded it in 1966. Its client list has included the Black Panthers, the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement, prisoners involved in the 1970s Attica prison revolt, and defendants in the Chicago 7 trial of the late 1960s. "We believe in the creative use of the law to foster social change," Ratner explains. "We are unique in that respect. Historically, we have had strong ties to progressive political movements."

CCR has a staff of 20 lawyers, seven full-time, as well as several volunteer lawyers, interns, and foreign law fellows. Funding comes from private donors, foundation grants, and occasional attorney fees. "We have moved further into the area of civil liberty issues," Fogel says. "Prior to 9/11, we represented people with whom we normally agreed. But we don't even know our Guantanamo clients. We have never met them, and I don't think we would agree with them even if we got to know them." Ratner adds, "Given what our government started doing after 9/11 in terms of the rule of law, it was important to move in a new direction. Besides, at that time, none of the traditional civil liberty organisations were willing to join us in representing the cause."

In the year after 9/11, the CRR was virtually alone in opposing administration policies. The office received hundreds of hate e-mails, saying things like: "I want the Taliban to go to your home and eat your children" and "Wouldn't it be nice to be a guard at Abu Ghraib." "We couldn't get another organisation to help us with the Guantanamo case," Ratner recalls. "We had to call upon death penalty lawyers because they are used to handling unpopular cases and aren't afraid of anything." Today, CCR is working on terrorism-related issues with more than 40 organisations, including some of the country's leading law firms.

"A lot of unofficial information coming from the military at Guantanamo indicates that many of the detainees have no value to the US government, but the Bush administration is embarrassed by what is happening there, and it won't let the detainees go," Ratner explains. "Our country says it believes in fair play and that everyone should have the right to a lawyer, a fair trial and the opportunity to appear before an impartial judge to prove they are not guilty," Fogel adds. "Yes, some of the prisoners should be detained, but that determination should be made in a court of law."

In early 2002, Bush declared that the Geneva Convention didn't apply to Guantanamo, Fogel notes. "But he did so over the objections of Colin Powell and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That's come out through the Bush administration memos that have been leaked to the press. Powell and the Generals were worried about what might happen in the future to our troops if we didn't abide by the Geneva Convention. They feared that enemy might abuse or torture our prisoners, if they were captured or detained." CCR also charges that the CIA is covertly playing a key role in interrogating prisoners detained around the world. "We know the CIA has a covert policy in which they send people for interrogation to third countries where interrogation techniques are used that the CIA can't legally employ," Ratner says.

The case of Maher Arrar is a prime example. In December 2003, the US government arrested Arrar, a Canadian citizen, at JFK airport in New York and deported him to Syria. Arrar charged that the Syrians imprisoned and tortured him, accusing him of terrorist activity, before releasing him. Canada is investigating the incident, and Arrar is suing the US government. "What the US government did to Arrar was outrageous," Ratner says. "He shouldn't have been detained, but then the CIA let Syria, which the US government has identified as a human rights abuser, do its dirty work." CCR also says that the US Congress has failed to provide effective oversight. On August 4, it sent a 115-page report to the House Armed Services Committee, detailing the experiences of the Guantanamo detainees and calling for an independent commission to investigate allegations of abuse.

The report highlighted testimony by Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, and Rhuhel Ahmed, all from the United Kingdom, who were detained in Afghanistan in November 2001 and returned to Britain more than two years later. British authorities quickly released them, and they have never been charged with a crime.

Their accounts echo the practices used in Iraq. CCR's report outlines the sexual humiliation the three prisoners experienced while Gen. Geoffrey Miller, a key figure in the Abu Ghraib scandal, was at Guantanamo. "The prisoners would be stripped naked and forced to watch videotapes of other prisoners, who in turn had been ordered to sodomise each other," the report says. "The sexual humiliation was reserved for those who would be most impacted by it -- those who had been brought up strictly in their Muslim faith."

To date, CCR hasn't received a response from the Armed Services Committee. According to Ratner, "That tells us that Congress is basically worthless. Look at what it's done! It committed to the Patriot Act without taking a close look at it and got fooled into supporting the Iraq War because of weapons of mass destruction that never were and ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam that never was. They (the Bush administration) are using the techniques of the Inquisition, and they aren't going to stop if they can get away with it."

Will the situation change if John Kerry is elected? "I'm not happy with all of Kerry's positions," Ratner says, "but I don't think he will keep (the country) moving in the direction of a police state."

Ron Chepesiuk is a Visiting Professor at Chittagong University and a Research Associate with the National Defence College in Dhaka.