Rights groups rap Bush on detainees
WASHINGTON, June 26 (UPI) -- Two leading civil rights groups accuse the Bush administration of misusing the American system of due process following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union plan to issue a report Monday calling on Congress to establish tougher civil liberties safeguards, the New York Times reported Sunday.
The report concluded that 70 suspects -- one-fourth of them American citizens, and all but one Muslim men -- were jailed, in many cases, for weeks or months at a time in American facilities without being charged with a crime, the Times said. Just seven of the men ended up being charged with supporting terrorism, and four have been convicted so far, the new report found.
The report concluded that many of the suspects who were held as material witnesses were "thrust into a Kafkaesque world of indefinite detention without charges, secret evidence, and baseless accusations."
The Times said aides to U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, said he would introduce legislation to retrain the government's ability to detain material witnesses indefinitely.
U.S. gas prices rose an average 8 cents
ATLANTA, June 26 (UPI) -- After a two-month decline, U.S. gasoline prices rose 8 cents over the past two weeks, a survey released Sunday showed.
The Lundberg Survey found the average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline rose to $2.21 a gallon -- 7 cents below the all-time high set April 8, CNN reported.
The main reason for the increase in gasoline prices was the rising price of crude oil, which set an all-time high Friday, said Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey, an independent market research firm.
"Supply is plentiful. Even with the rising prices, U.S. demand for gasoline has surged," said Lundberg. "Economic growth has allowed us to absorb these higher prices."
The survey of 7,000 U.S. gas stations Friday, found the highest average price for a gallon of regular gas was $2.46 in Honolulu. The lowest average price was in Charleston, S.C., where drivers paid $2.04 for a gallon of self-serve regular.
Two released in Aruba missing case
ORANJESTAD, Aruba, June 26 (UPI) -- Aruban legal official Paul Van Der Sloot and disc jockey Steve Croes were ordered released from custody in the investigation of the disappearance of a teen.
The two were ordered released in the absence of sufficient evidence to continue holding them, a court clerk said in a statement.
The other three suspects -- Joran Van Der Sloot, 17; Satish Kalpoe, 18; and his brother, Deepak Kalpoe, 21 -- would remain in custody for an additional eight days, the court clerk said.
The hearing Sunday had been postponed from Saturday because a judge being flown in from the nearby island of Curacao had his flight delayed.
No charges have been filed in the May 30 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, 18, of Alabama.
David Kock, defense attorney for Satish Kalpoe, said police have scrutinized cell phone records and Internet traffic as part of the investigation, CNN reported.
Kock said Joran Van Der Sloot called Deepak Kalpoe about 2:40 a.m. the morning Holloway disappeared and, according to Deepak Kalpoe's statements, Joran Van Der Sloot told him he had left Holloway on the beach and was walking home. Kock said Joran Van Der Sloot text-messaged Deepak Kalpoe about 40 minutes later that he had arrived
FBI head Gray felt Deep Throat 'bretrayal'
NEW YORK, June 26 (UPI) -- L. Patrick Gray, the acting director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal, says he felt betrayed when he learned his former deputy was Deep Throat.
Gray, speaking publicly for the first time about the matter, said on ABC's "This Week" he felt "like I was hit with a tremendous sledgehammer" when Mark Felt disclosed recently he was the source for much of the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post.
Gray, 88, said Felt told him repeatedly he was not Deep Throat. He said he now realized he failed to stop leaks from the FBI during Watergate because it was Felt's responsibility to stop them, the New York Times reported.
"I think he fooled me, if you want to put it that way," said Gray, "by being the perfect example of the FBI agent that he was."
Gray was named interim FBI director when J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. He resigned in 1973, after it was revealed that he turned over raw FBI reports to White House Counsel John Dean, and burned files taken from the White House safe of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt.
