And here is info. about the Australia-related case Wackenhut now finds itself in. It also has cases in the US against it about all sorts of misdeeds at the US prisons it helps run.
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/020305/reuters/asia-93037.html AFP · Reuters Tuesday March 5, 6:55 PM Lawyers to sue Australian refugee camp operators By Michael Christie Photo: Reuters Click to enlarge SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian and American human rights lawyers plan to sue a private U.S.-owned company running Australia's controversial detention centres for asylum seekers for allegedly violating human rights. Fernand de Varennes, senior law lecturer at Perth's Murdoch University, said on Tuesday the case would be lodged within weeks in Florida and the lawyers were confident they could win "tens of millions" of dollars in damages for illegal immigrants. The case will allege Australasian Correctional Management -- a subsidiary of private U.S. prison and mental institution operator Wackenhut Corrections Corp -- breached detainees' basic human rights through prolonged arbitrary detention. The company declined to comment. De Varennes said the suit would argue that conditions in Australia's six refugee camps were "cruel, inhumane and degrading". "I actually think there is little doubt that we will win," de Varennes told Reuters in a telephone interview. The lawsuit is being lodged in the U.S. federal court under the U.S. alien tort claims act because Australia does not have a bill of rights protecting human rights. The lawyers have targeted Australasian Correctional Management rather than the government because sovereign states are generally immune from prosecution under the U.S. law. Australia currently has around 2,000 mainly Middle Eastern and Afghan boatpeople detained in the camps, most of which are situated in remote parts of the vast island continent. Under Australian law, all illegal arrivals are held in the guarded camps while their refugee claims are assessed, a procedure that can take months if not years. The mandatory detention policy has been harshly criticised by human rights groups and the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. NOTHING FAIR ABOUT DETENTION "There is nothing fair about locking up hundreds of children, women and men, without charge or a review by a court, simply because they lack a visa," Amnesty International's secretary general Irene Khan said in a speech in Canberra on Tuesday. Faced with rising numbers of boatpeople last year and a tough general election, Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government decided to crack down even harder. Warships now patrol the northern coast and intercept all boats carrying asylum seekers. The boatpeople are then taken to Australian-funded camps in Pacific islands. The uncompromising stand against asylum seekers who Australia accuses of jumping the queue on "official" refugees formally resettled by the United Nations has popular support, and Howard romped back for a third consecutive term at the November ballot. But the conditions of detained illegal immigrants has come under the spotlight this year after hundreds of Afghans and Iraqis went on hunger strike at Woomera, a camp set in the barren desert of South Australia in a former rocket testing range. De Varennes said the lawyers were not as confident about getting Australasian Correctional Management to pay any punitive damages as they were about the outcome of the case itself. It was not clear whether Wackenhut could be held legally and financially responsible for the actions of its Australian subsidiary, he said. But money was not the issue. "It opens the door. It sends a very strong signal that something will have to be changed," de Varennes said.
