Dramatic and newsworthy testimony was offered yesterday by witnesses, including former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray and retired US Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinsky (who was in charge of the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq), testifying before the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in its session yesterday in New York. www.bushcommission.org/

Jurors heard first-hand reports of children as young as seven years old being held captive at Guantanomo Bay and of systematic torture there and in Iraq and Uzbekistan. Also of the unreported rapes and suicides of women soldiers serving in Iraq, also of reckless pollution of the great lakes and arctic territories attributed to the policies of the government's policies that favor industry and big business over the interests of citizens.

Barbara Olshansky, an attorney representing inmates at Guantanomo Bay Prison on Cuba, where an estimated 500 prisoners are currently incarcerated, some of them for more than five years without charges having been filed, told a shocked audience of more than 350 attendees that nearly half the prisoners have been on a hunger strike for months, and that many have been beaten and are now at what she termed the "danger stage," being force fed through their nostrils while strapped to gurneys. Olshansky, alerting the audience that she would come as close to the margin of permissible revelations as possible without endangering her own freedom under strict government restrictions, said she knew of at least one case of a seven year old child being held at Guantanomo and of other adolescents whose presence was only made known after they passed the age of sixteen.

She has been fighting, she said, to have speedy trials for anyone facing charges and for the innocent to be released immediately. Inmates also complain of lack of proper medical attention and minors, she says, have been isolated and inmates face great natural difficulty being seen by family, as Guantanomo is on an island in the Caribbean and most of their families reside in the Middle East. Family members, she reports, have been told they are permitted to plan funerals for the inmates.

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray testified of his experience in a country he described as having "possibly the worst government in the world," a recipient of billions of dollars in US aid, and former site of a major US military installation, and a member of the "coalition of the willing" that joined Britain and the United States in the Iraq war. Sixty percent of Uzbekistan's population lives in slavery, he said, earning the equivalent of seven cents per 12-hour day as captives on cotton plantation, the country being one of the world's leading exporter of cotton. Torture is commonplace in the police state he told a stunned audience, where people are literally boiled alive. He said he saw with his own eyes evidence of torture and murder. The CIA and Britain's MI6 routinely accept intelligence provided, he says, by Uzbek security forces who torture their prisoners, even to death.

Murray resigned his post, he has said, rather than continue in the employ of a government that condones torture and that wages illegal war.

Murray brought the audience to its feet when he declared; "You cannot build security on evil," and "I am quite willing to die rather than to have someone else tortured on my behalf."

Retired US Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinsky, deposed by law professor Marjorie Cohn, spoke of her experience as commander of the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, scene of the shocking torture photos that resulted in the convictions of a small number of enlisted personnel last year.

Karpinski, who was blamed by the administration for the scandal, told of how responsibility for interrogations at her prison were taken from her and was handed to the CIA and private contractors. Based on her observations and what she was told, she testified that it is her conclusion that the orders for the torture regimens originated in the office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, with the active participation of his subordinates and Army Generals assigned to Iraq with specific instructions to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib, meaning to introduce torture methods already being carried out in Guantanomo Bay. She said the Sgt. Grainer, one of a small number of enlisted personnel convicted and imprisoned for the Abu Ghraib tortures, was specifically requested by the command for duty at the Iraqi torture prison, and assigned to the night shift, where the abuses were carried out.

In interviews afterward, Karpinski said there have been a large number of unreported suicides among soldiers serving in Iraq, that the fatality statistics reported to the media by the pentagon do not include suicides, deaths in accidents or deaths from illness. She said women serving in the military in Iraq have been raped while using external latrines in the middle of the night where male soldiers lurk in wait for them, and that several women have died in their sleep from dehydration owing to their decision to drink no water after late afternoon in a country where temperatures average 120 degrees, in order to avoid having to get up in the middle of the night to use the latrines. None of these have been reported by the press, she notes.

Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, in a compelling presentation, told of the routine pollution of the waters of the great lakes, the pollution of fisheries regularly used by Native Americans from runoffs from various industrial sites. Soil and water are contaminated by mercury, dioxins, wood pulp and other foreign substances at "dangerous levels," endangering the health and lives of people who fish the waters and who farm on the lands that adjoin them. Dangerous levels of PCB's, he reports, are being found in the breast milk of pregnant indigenous women. He blames the industry-friendly policies of the Bush administration for endangering the health and lives of indigenous peoples in particular who inhabit these northern territories. Other offenses he cited include the spraying of artificial snow on the peaks of eleven sacred mountains for recreational purposes, and the well-documented oil spills in arctic regions. And in Alaska destruction of the ozone layer, he testified, has produced a rise in the numbers of people with cataracts and immune deficiency ailments. He blamed contamination of lake waters with aluminum runoff on the operators of a GM manufacturing plant.

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The International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration held its second session Jan. 20-22 in NYC at Riverside Church (Friday & Saturday) and Columbia Univ. Law School (Sunday). The first session offered shocking evidence of the scope and depths of crimes this regime has committed.

The Commission has indicted the Bush administration on 5 counts: 1) Wars of Aggression, 2) Torture and Indefinite Detention, 3) Destruction of the Global Environment, 4) Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights, 5) Knowing Failure to Protect Life During Hurricane Katrina. It brings together powerful testimony from the victims of this regime to experts and activists, to defectors from the regime, and applies rigorous standards in prosecuting its indictments. Witnesses include: Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former head of Abu Ghraib prison; Craig Murray, resigned British ambassador to Uzbekistan; Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, Ray McGovern, ex CIA.; Katrina victims...and more.