D.C. Court Rules Torture Legal and Prisoners not Persons

I think my head just exploded into shards.

From McClatchy:

A federal appeals court Friday threw out a suit by four British Muslims who allege that they were tortured and subjected to religious abuse in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a ruling that exonerated 11 present and former senior Pentagon officials.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the detainees captured in Afghanistan aren't recognized as ``persons'' under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they were aliens held outside the United States. The Religious Freedom Act prohibits the government from ``substantially burdening a person's religion.''

``It was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably `seriously criminal' would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants,'' Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in the court's main opinion.

In upholding a lower court's rejection of all the claims but those under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the circuit court said that the interrogation tactics, which Rumsfeld first authorized in 2002, were ``incidental'' to the duties of those who'd been sued."


Torture was "foreseeable"? And so that makes it OKAY?!? What kind of f*ing logic is that?!
Say it with me: ALL HUMANS ARE PERSONS AND ALL PERSONS HAVE RIGHTS.