Hellerstein: Three for Three

Fed. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein was new to me when I heard about his order that photos and films of Abu Ghraib abuse cases be released, but he's been on the case for quite some time.

In August 2004, according to Cooperative Research:

After an oral argument in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein orders the Pentagon and other government agencies to comply with the Freedom of Information Act and provide the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups documents about detention and interrogation activities regarding prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. The government must comply by August 23, the court orders.

And a few months later, in December:

Five agencies, under an agreement worked out by US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, release approximately 9,000 pages of internal reports, investigations, and e-mails containing information about prisoner abuse in Cuba, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The massive disclosure marks the end of a more than 13-month long effort (see October 7, 2003) by five human rights groups to access the documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents demonstrate that the abuses were far more widespread and systemic than previously acknowledged by the government. The documents include information about numerous abuses, such as threatened and mocked executions, thefts of private property, physical assaults, shocking detainees with electric guns, the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo, shackling detainees without food and water, and murder. In many of the cases, the Army chose to punish offenders with non-criminal punishments rather than court-martial them. Reporting on the disclosure, the Washington Post notes, “The variety of the abuse and the fact that it occurred over a three-year period undermine the Pentagon's past insistence ... that the abuse occurred largely during a few months at [Abu Ghraib], and that it mostly involved detainee humiliation or intimidation rather than the deliberate infliction of pain.” [Washington Post, 12/22/2004]

This is a man who has seen the results of his actions -- rioting, death, US soldiers at risk -- and that's all just fine with him.

Born in the mid-thirties in New York, educated entirely at Columbia, appointed by Clinton: Can you say "out of touch liberal?"

Update: Hellerstein is also handling a lawsuit brought by 9/11 families against Boeing, an airport security firm, the World Trade Center and others. He's behaving the same way on that case:

On December 20, 2004, Hellerstein said he would deny a government request to delay a review of whether certain CIA internal files related to Iraq should be made public. [1] Judge Alvin Hellerstein's comments marked a victory for the ACLU and other groups seeking information about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and in Iraq. (source)