Witch Hunts

"Rapley analyzes witch hunts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and finds many of the same elements repeated in more recent miscarriages of justice - the Dreyfus case for treason in late nineteenth-century France, the persecution of the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama for the gang rape of two white girls in the 1930s, and the Guildford and Maguire terrorist prosecutions in Britain in the 1970s. All three cases took place during times of extreme fear and paranoia and in all cases the accused were innocent. Today, argues Rapley, the 'witch' lives on in the 'terrorist.' Pointing to Abu Ghraib…