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| Name |
Creator |
 Abu Ghraib
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David Passaro
torture defendant
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C.I.A. Says Approved Methods of Questioning Are All Legal
Porter J. Goss, the director of central intelligence, told Congress that all interrogation techniques used "at this time" were legal but declined, when asked, to make the same broad assertion about practices used over the past few years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/international/19intel.html |
skews_me
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Torture
State of the Notion
http://www.geocities.com/skews_me_too/torture.html |
skews_me
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'Assassination ban doesn't stop CIA from killing terrorists'
The assassination ban, contained in the Executive Order 12333, "would not bar the use of lethal force in self-defence, for example, in appropriate cases against members of al-Qaeda planning attacks against the United States," Goss told lawmakers in written replies to their questions.
http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=90400 |
skews_me
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'Treat these detainees like dogs'
"You have to have full control," [Brigadier General Janis] Karpinski quoted [Major General Geoffrey] Miller as saying. There can be "no mistake about who's in charge. You have to treat these detainees like dogs." (So far 109 soldiers have been sanctioned, 32 of them in courts-martial.)
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/jj20050318.shtml |
skews_me
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Another suspect says CIA tortured him
Thirty-four-year-old Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer born in Syria, says he was arrested at JFK airport after a family vacation with his wife and children a year after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He says he was flown on a private jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. There, he says, an interrogator tortured him for 10 months. He is one of at least 150 suspects taken secretly since 9/11 to countries like Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Jordan for questioning — all countries cited last week by the State Department for torturing prisoners.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7120650/ |
skews_me
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Bush Gave CIA Expansive Interrogation Power-Paper
The Bush administration gave the CIA extensive authority to send terrorism suspects to foreign countries for interrogation just days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, The New York Times reported. A half a dozen current and former officials told the New York Times the Bush administration may have turned a blind eye to torture.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=7816923 |
skews_me
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Bush defends "rendition", says suspect not knowingly handed over to torture
President Bush is defending the C-I-A's controversial "rendition" program, saying America always gets assurances that terror suspects won't be tortured before they're sent to other countries. And he says the practice of capturing potential terrorists and sending them to their country of origin is necessary "in the post-September Eleventh world."
http://www.eyewitnessnewstv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3086135 |
skews_me
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Bush visits the CIA: reassuring America’s Murder Inc.
Congressional Republicans have rejected calls for special hearings of the House and Senate intelligence committees to review the mounting evidence that kidnapping, torture and even murder of prisoners is standard practice for the CIA. Only one CIA agent, contract employee David Passaro, has been charged with a crime related to post-9/11 activities—in his case, the killing of a prisoner in Afghanistan who was beaten to death. At least one other CIA officer is under investigation for a killing at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The CIA station chief in Baghdad was removed from his post in December 2003, the New York Times reported February 28, at least in part because of the death of two prisoners who had been interrogated by agency employees. The same article in the Times revealed: “The agency has referred some cases to the Justice Department for a review of possible criminal charges under the federal torture law, which forbids extreme interrogation tactics, and under civil rights laws more commonly used in police brutality prosecutions.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/cia-m09.shtml |
skews_me
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CIA Avoids Scrutiny of Detainee Treatment
Afghan's Death Took Two Years to Come to Light; Agency Says Abuse Claims Are Probed Fully
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2576-2005Mar2.html |
skews_me
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CIA Flying Suspects To Torture?
In recent years, well over 100 people have disappeared or been "rendered" all around the world. Witnesses tell the same story: masked men in an unmarked jet seize their target, cut off his clothes, put him in a blindfold and jumpsuit, tranquilize him and fly him away. Some are taken to prisons infamous for torture. And a few may have been rendered by mistake.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/20/60minutes/main710396.shtml |
skews_me
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CIA Flying Suspects To Torture?
60 Minutes has videotaped a secret jet the Central Intelligence Agency is said to be using to deliver terror suspects to countries known for torturing people. The CIA...says it does not knowingly receive intelligence obtained by torture.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/04/60minutes/main678155.shtml |
skews_me
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CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA...has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents. The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions. The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country. Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html |
skews_me
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CIA head won't exonerate agency of torture
The new head of the CIA says he is not sure the agency's interrogation methods since Sept.11, 2001, have conformed to U.S. laws against torture. Porter J.Goss did, however, tell the Senate Armed Services Committee [17 March 2005] current CIA interrogation methods were legal and no methods now in use constituted torture, the New York Times said [18 March 2005].
http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=87549 |
skews_me
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CIA in torture scandal
The CIA has a long history of employing the use of torture and even had a guidebook on methods of extraction of information that has now been revoked. The book had a section on what it called the “Theory of Coercion” in which the “judicious” application of violence – both physical and psychological – is advocated for.
http://www.africaonline.co.zw/mirror/stage/archive/050320/national13461.html |
skews_me
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Concern over CIA link with prisoner torture
Persistent attempts by Democrats on the US Senate Intelligence committee to hold hearings on rendition have been thwarted by its Republican majority.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Global-Terrorism/Concern-over-CIA-link-with-prisoner-torture/2005/03/08/1110160830699.html?oneclick=true |
skews_me
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Descriptions of Techniques Allegedly Authorized by the CIA
Forced standing and sleep deprivation, Exposure to cold, Waterboarding
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/21/usdom12071.htm |
skews_me
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Documents Describe U.S. Pact on Iraq Ghost Detainees
The U.S. military in Iraq and the CIA signed an agreement on keeping "ghost detainees" off the books and concealed from international observers, Pentagon documents made public on [10 March 2005] indicated. Notifying the Red Cross and assigning a prisoner number are required under the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. It is U.S. policy that the Geneva Conventions apply in Iraq. The Red Cross monitors treatment of war prisoners.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7870955 |
skews_me
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Europe to probe CIA flights
Planes allegedly operated by the CIA have been spotted at airports in Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden as well as Morocco.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1839437,00.html |
skews_me
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Europeans probe CIA role in detentions -report
European authorities are investigating whether CIA agents broke local laws by detaining suspected terrorists on European soil and taking them to other countries where torture is practiced, the Washington Post reported. European authorities investigating the practice face many practical and legal hurdles to filing criminal charges against U.S. agents, including the question of whether they are protected by diplomatic immunity and the matter of determining their identity.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N12497086.htm |
skews_me
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Ex-CIA lawyer calls for law on rendition
A former general counsel of the CIA is calling for Congress to legislate on three controversial areas of the war on terror: interrogation, detention and rendition. Jeffrey Smith, who was the CIA's top lawyer 1994-95, told United Press International that it was time to end the uncertainty and secrecy surrounding these three practices and provide a legislative basis for them.
http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=82337 |
skews_me
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Eyes on the CIA
"Plane spotters" -- hobbyists who photograph airplanes landing or departing local airports and post the pix on the Internet -- made it possible for CIA critics to assemble details of a clandestine transport system the agency set up to secretly move cargo and people-including terrorist suspects-around the world. (See also Photos section)
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/02-27-2005/0003098193&EDATE= |
skews_me
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FBI Documented Complaints of Koran Abuses in 2002, ACLU Says
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation documented complaints by prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center claiming guards mistreated the Koran, the American Civil Liberties Union said. Documents released [25 May 2005] by the FBI include previously undisclosed interviews with prisoners who described incidents of abuse, including a 2002 allegation that guards flushed a Koran down a toilet. "The United States government continues to turn a blind eye to mounting evidence of widespread abuse of detainees held in its custody," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero, according to the organization's Web site. According to the FBI documents, a detainee interviewed in August 2002 said guards had flushed the Koran in the toilet. Others reported the Koran being kicked, withheld as punishment, and thrown on the floor, and said they were mocked during prayers, the ACLU said on its Web site.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=ac483toX2HpM&refer=top_world_news |
skews_me
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FBI memo reveals torture concerns
Evidence has emerged that there was concern within the FBI about the legality of transferring terror suspects to countries that use torture in interrogations. A memo was obtained by Newsweek in which a former New York City prosecutor who worked for the FBI as a supervisor at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba wrote of his concern over the legality of "extraordinary rendition." The Defense Department has acknowledged shipping 65 suspects to other countries for interrogation. The author of the Nov. 27, 2002, memo to FBI lawyers says the renditions "could be seen as a conspiracy to violate" the U.S. Torture Statute. The memo also objected to techniques such as exploiting "phobias" like "the fear of dogs" or dripping water "to induce the misperception of drowning." A senior FBI official, who asked not to be identified told Newsweek the memo was not an official bureau legal conclusion, and said its author was at Guantanamo to advise on interrogation techniques, not to render legal opinions.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20050801-08393400-bc-us-torture.xml |
skews_me
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Flight to torture: where abuse is contracted out
The US Congress has uncovered many...cases. Mr Bush has, for the first time, admitted sending terrorist suspects abroad for interrogation, and authorities in Sweden, Italy and Germany are investigating alleged CIA kidnappings on their own soil. Rendition was begun under President Reagan but was used sparingly. After the September 11 attacks, Mr Bush gave the CIA wide licence to send terrorist suspects abroad without prior approval. Off the record, officials say that 150-200 suspects have been rendered since then.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1542390,00.html |
skews_me
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Former CIA Official: Terror Suspects Sent Overseas for Interrogation
A former CIA official has acknowledged the United States has sent terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation. The former head of the CIA's unit in charge of pursuing al-Qaida Mike Scheuer...said a process known as rendition began during the Clinton administration. Under the process, officials say suspects have been sent to countries including Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-03-07-voa4.cfm |
skews_me
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Gonzales Defends Transfer of Detainees
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales [7 March 2005] defended the practice of "extraordinary rendition," the process under which the United States sometimes transfers detainees in the war on terrorism to other nations where they may undergo harsh interrogation, trial or imprisonment. The administration "can't fully control" what other nations do, according to accounts of his remarks by wire services. He added that he does not know whether countries have always complied with their promises.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15130-2005Mar7.html |
skews_me
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Group Exposes CIA's 'Dark Prison' in Afghanistan
Amid efforts by a bipartisan coalition in Congress to ban torture and inhumane treatment of detainees in the "war on terror," a major U.S. human rights groups charged [19 Dec 2005] that Washington ran a secret prison in Afghanistan where suspected terrorists were held in total darkness for days and even weeks at a time from 2002 until at least last year. New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the prison was known by the inmates as the "dark prison" or "prison of darkness" where they were chained to the walls, deprived of food and drinking water, and continuously subjected to loud heavy-metal or rap music apparently designed to disorient them and break down their will. Their shackles often made it impossible to lie down or sleep, and interrogations carried out apparently by civilian U.S. personnel – presumed to be Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives – included slaps and punches. Guards at the prison were mostly Afghan, according to the report. According to HRW, the prison was off-limits to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) or other independent agencies. The CIA is believed to be holding between 24 and 36 alleged "high-value" targets, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, incommunicado at secret sites around the world. Many of these individuals were initially seized in foreign countries and taken across international borders for interrogation.
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8280 |
skews_me
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Group Says U.S. Sent Up to 150 to Possible Torture Sites
The Bush administration has acknowledged that renditions have occurred, but officials at the CIA and elsewhere have not definitively said how many captives may have been detained by the United States in one country, then clandestinely flown to a third nation. Former CIA Director George J. Tenet has said his agency took part in more than 70 renditions before Sept. 11, but he has not made clear whether any involved sending detainees to countries that permitted torture.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-renditions24apr24,1,3934831.story?coll=la-headlines-world |
skews_me
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Guardsman: CIA beat Iraqis with hammer handles
CIA officials used a sledgehammer handle to beat various prisoners in Iraq, and one official, whose name is classified, would often brag about his abuse of prisoners, according to testimony in a closed session of a military hearing. The transcript, obtained...by The Denver Post under a court order, was of a March [2005] hearing to determine whether three Fort Carson Army soldiers should stand trial for the death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush during an interrogation in 2003. In the March hearing, Sgt. 1st Class Gerold Pratt of the Utah National Guard said he saw classified personnel use a 15-inch wooden sledgehammer handle to hit prisoners. While identifying information in the transcript is redacted in most cases, an exchange between Pratt and a defense attorney show that the CIA was involved.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_2892191 |
skews_me
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History of medical involvement in torture--then and now
Torture still exists today. Modern torture is becoming more scientific, often with doctors’ help or complicity. Anniversaries of antitorture declarations are proudly celebrated despite the fact that torturers are still at work. Explanation of the original function of torture will clarify why doctors have been involved in torture since the 16th century and how the former role of doctors differed from their present participation in torture.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11377667&dopt=Abstract |
skews_me
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How the CIA tortures some prisoners
One former detainee told ABC, “They would not let you rest, day or night. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Don’t sleep. Don’t lie on the floor.” The detainees were also forced to listen to rap artist Eminem’s music that was so foreign to their ears that it made them frantic. The CIA sources described a list of six “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top Al Qaeda men incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorised to use the techniques: 1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him. 2. The Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear. 3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage. 4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions. 5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. 6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2005%5C11%5C22%5Cstory_22-11-2005_pg7_52 |
skews_me
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Human Rights First Calls for Full Accounting of CIA Interrogation Practices
The Central Intelligence Agency continues to resist an accounting of interrogation methods it employs and its role in detention and abuse of prisoners held in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and other secret locations. CIA Director Porter Goss and Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17, 2005 on a range of issues including a still unreleased CIA Inspector General report on detainee abuses and renditions. Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has oversight over the CIA, has deflected calls for a formal Committee inquiry into allegations of abuse. A number of investigations have examined the roles of various military units and the armed forces in general in the growing scandal of detainee abuses but no report on the role of the CIA has yet been completed. Several military investigators have complained of the lack of CIA cooperation. Military investigations noted that the CIA’s presence within military detention facilities confused military interrogators on which interrogation guidance was controlling and that CIA agents transferred already abused detainees to military detention centers. “In a democracy no government agency can be immune from congressional oversight. The CIA must come clean on its role in hiding ghost detainees, its interrogation methods and the scope of its involvement in abuses,” said Elisa Massimino, Human Rights First Washington Director. “The intelligence committees are approaching dereliction of duty in their failure to launch a formal inquiry into these matters.”
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/2005_alerts/etn_0323_cia.htm |
skews_me
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More Than 100 Die in U.S. Custody in Iraq
At least 108 people have died in U.S. custody in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and roughly a quarter of the cases have been investigated as possible U.S. abuse, according to government data provided to The Associated Press. The 108 figure, based on information supplied by Army, Navy and other government officials, includes deaths attributed to natural causes.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/03/16/national/w111607S94.DTL |
skews_me
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Navy Officer Found Not Guilty in Death of an Iraqi Prisoner
A Navy Seal lieutenant was acquitted [27 May 2005] on charges that he had struck a detainee in Iraq in 2003 and failed to restrain his men from hitting the prisoner, who later died at Abu Ghraib prison. The jury of six Navy officers deliberated for three hours before clearing the defendant, Lt. Andrew K. Ledford, of any misconduct in connection with his platoon's capture of the detainee, Manadel al-Jamadi, in November 2003. Mr. Jamadi died after he was turned over to the C.I.A. for interrogation. The lieutenant's five-day trial raised questions about the extent to which C.I.A. personnel participated in the abuse against Mr. Jamadi and whether the agency's interrogation methods contributed to his death. By exonerating Lieutenant Ledford, the jury dismissed the contention that his conduct the night of the capture amounted to negligence and conduct unbecoming an officer when he failed to stop his men from repeatedly hitting, kicking and poking Mr. Jamadi while he was bound and hooded. The defendant insisted that he had not seen his men abusing the prisoner and he denied a separate allegation that he had personally hit Mr. Jamadi once at the urging of his men. Prosecutors did not offer a single witness who testified to having seen the punch, and instead relied on a confession that Lieutenant Ledford said he had been pressured into signing and later renounced, in which he admitted to the single punch. Although C.I.A. personnel worked closely with Lieutenant Ledford's platoon in capturing Mr. Jamadi and other suspected insurgents in Iraq, testimony about the agency's role was largely closed to the public to protect classified information. The effect of shielding the C.I.A.'s role was to leave large gaps in the story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/28/national/28seal.html |
skews_me
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Outsourcing Torture
John Radsan, the former C.I.A. lawyer, offered a reply of sorts. “As a society, we haven’t figured out what the rough rules are yet,” he said. “There are hardly any rules for illegal enemy combatants. It’s the law of the jungle. And right now we happen to be the strongest animal.”
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6 |
skews_me
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Red Sox partner says CIA chartered his jet
Phillip Morse, a minority partner of the Boston Red Sox, said Sunday that his private jet has been chartered to the CIA and confirmed that it had been flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 500 terrorism suspects are held, as well as other overseas destinations. Between June 2002 and January of this year, the plane has flown to Afghanistan, Morocco, Dubai, Jordan, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic, and it made 82 visits to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, according to the Tribune, which cited records from the Federal Aviation Administration. The plane's charter agent is Richmor Aviation in Hudson, N.Y. Mahlon Richards, a co-owner of Richmor Aviation, said he believes Morse's plane was used to transport only federal workers and said his company had no information that it was ever used to U.S. transport detainees. Asked if he would stop letting the CIA use his plane if he determines it has been involved in renditions, Morse said: "Sure, sure, but ... I don't know how you go about checking that."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0503210228mar21,1,1593500.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed |
skews_me
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Rendition Foes 'Woefully Uninformed,' Former CIA Agent Says
[Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Ed Markey] is the author of the Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act, which would ban rendition by the entire U.S. government. Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, later in the week introduced the Convention Against Torture Implementation Act. It would prohibit the transfer of individuals in United States custody or control to countries known to engage in torture and would also require the State Department to annually produce a list of countries where torture is known to occur. While unveiling his measure, Leahy referred to the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994. Article 3 of the Convention states that "no State Party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture."
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=%5CSpecialReports%5Carchive%5C200503%5CSPE20050321a.html |
skews_me
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Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send Suspects Abroad to Jails
It has long been known that the C.I.A. has held a small group of high-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda in secret sites overseas, and that the United States military continues to detain hundreds of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. The rendition program was intended to augment those operations, according to former government officials, by allowing the United States to gain intelligence from the interrogations of the prisoners, most of whom were sent to their countries of birth or citizenship.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/politics/06intel.html |
skews_me
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Senate Intelligence Chief Denies CIA Tortured
The Republican head of the Senate intelligence committee on [10 March 2005] defended the CIA against charges that it has tortured detainees but quickly faced a unanimous front from Democrats who want the panel to investigate abuse claims. "The intelligence committee is the only committee in the Senate authorized to perform oversight of the intelligence community. If we don't carry out our duties, these important questions won't be answered," [Dem. Sen. John] Rockefeller said.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=7871541 |
skews_me
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Soldier Who Reported Abuse Was Sent to Psychiatrist
An Army intelligence sergeant who accused fellow soldiers in Samarra, Iraq, of abusing detainees in 2003 was in turn accused by his commander of being delusional and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Germany, despite a military psychiatrist's initial judgment that the man was stable, according to internal Army records released [4 March 2005].
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8873-2005Mar4.html |
skews_me
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Terror Suspect's Attorneys Link FBI to Alleged Torture by Saudis
Saudi officials tortured an American student charged with conspiring to kill President Bush "at the direct behest" of the FBI, whose agents did nothing to stop the abuse, attorneys for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali said in court papers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051001463.html |
skews_me
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The American Way of Torture: 'If We're Not in the Room, Who Is to Say?'
From the front page of the December 26 Washington Post, about the Bagram air base: "Those who refuse to cooperate inside this secret CIA interrogation center are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, according to intelligence specialists familiar with CIA interrogation methods. At times, they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights—subject to what are known as 'stress and duress' techniques."
http://www.policenet.com/american_way.html |
skews_me
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The Rendering
"We don't kick the [expletive] out of them," one top Bush official told The Washington Post on Dec. 26, 2002. "We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." In that same article, other Bush honchos boasted about withholding medical treatment from wounded prisoners; knowingly sending prisoners to be tortured in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan ("I do it with my eyes open," said one top agent); and breaking international law as a routine part of interrogations by U.S. operatives. "If you're not violating someone's human rights," said an interrogation supervisor, "you're probably not doing your job." These freely admitted violations included beatings, hooding, exposure, sexual humiliation and the medieval barbarism of strappado: chaining a prisoner with his arms twisted behind his back and suspending him from the ceiling, where the weight of his own body tears at his sockets and sinews.
http://207.44.245.159/article8232.htm |
skews_me
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Torture as American as apple pie
Donald Hebb found a form of torture far more effective than drugs or beatings. He could induce a state of psychosis within 48 hours, even in the healthy, well-adjusted students who volunteered to be guinea pigs. "By sitting them in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones, cut off from their senses and sensory stimulation, they soon suffered hallucinations and then breakdown." The CIA also studied the Soviet approach. The KGB's most effective technique: self-inflicted pain. "Simply make someone stand for a day or two. You're not beating them; you say, 'You're doing this to yourself ... co-operate and you can sit down."' Combining the KGB technique with Hebb's discoveries produced a distinctively American style of torture, detailed by the CIA in their KUBARK counterintelligence manual. Refined in the field during the Kennedy years, in Central America and Southeast Asia, the approach was marketed by John F. Kennedy's Office of Public Safety. By 1971 over a million police officers in 47 nations had been trained, including 85,000 in South Vietnam and 100,000 in Brazil.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18538972%255E12272,00.html |
skews_me
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Torture by proxy
For years before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the CIA had occasionally engaged in the practice known in bureaucratese by the creepy euphemism “extraordinary rendition.” But after the attacks in New York and Washington, President Bush gave the agency broad authority to export prisoners without getting permission from the White House or the Justice Department. Rendition has become central to antiterrorism operations at the CIA, which also operates clandestine camps around the world for prisoners it doesn’t want the International Red Cross or the American public to know about. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said that if the United States sends a prisoner abroad, then our nation’s Constitution no longer applies.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?oid=70156&Section=Opinion |
skews_me
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U.S. Admits German Was Detained in Error
U.S. officials admit they erred in detaining a German citizen as an al Qaeda suspect. He was held for five months in an Afghan prison. New York Times reporter David Johnston says Condoleezza Rice, then national security advisor, ordered the prisoner's release.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4617291 |
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U.S. ally Uzbekistan teaches interrogators how to boil suspected terrorists to death
U.S. law and international conventions bar sending prisoners to another nation unless there are strong assurances of humane treatment. The CIA says with a straight face that it gets those assurances before delivering suspects to jailers in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Pakistan—countries that have such abysmal human rights records that promises of decent treatment are a joke. Editorial, Los Angeles Times, March 11 [2005].
http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/2249/The_CIA_s_Kidnapping_Ring |
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U.S. interrogation rules overhauled
The Army is preparing to issue a new interrogations manual that expressly bars the harsh techniques disclosed in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, and incorporates safeguards devised to prevent such misconduct at military prison camps in the future, Army officials said. The new manual, the first revision in 13 years, will specifically prohibit practices like stripping prisoners, keeping them in stressful positions for a long time, imposing dietary restrictions, employing police dogs to intimidate prisoners during interrogations and using sleep deprivation as a tool to get them to talk, the officials said. Military investigations have faulted senior officials -- including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq -- for adding to the confusion by approving, and then rescinding approval, for limited use of harsh techniques that went beyond what was allowed in the manual. Accompanying the new manual, which runs more than 200 pages, will be a separate classified training document that will provides dozens of interrogation scenarios and go into exacting detail on what procedures may or may not be used, and in what circumstances. The interrogations manual applies only to Army forces, but the Army controls the vast majority of detainee operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and Gandy said there had been a concerted effort to synchronize the Army's policies with practices across the other armed services. The new manual would not govern interrogations by the CIA at its detention sites. But in a change, it does expressly prohibit the CIA from keeping unregistered prisoners -- called "ghost detainees" -- at Army prisons like Abu Ghraib. The revamped manual, titled "Human Intelligence Collector Operations," is part of a wide-ranging overhaul of interrogation and detention policies and operations undertaken by the Army, and the military in general.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/politics/11537468.htm |
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U.S. legacy tainted by secret CIA black sites
President Bush says that no captured terror suspects are being tortured, but he wants the CIA exempt from anti-torture legislation. According to a Washington Post story,...the CIA has been operating secret prisons, "black sites," known only to a handful of American officials. The Post also revealed the White House does not want Congress demanding the agency to answer questions about conditions at these sites.
http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051112/OPINION01/511120315/1014 |
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U.S.: CIA whitewashing torture
A November 18 [2005] ABC News report quoted several CIA officials stating that CIA leadership approved six interrogation techniques in March 2002 for use against detainees held at CIA-run facilities in Afghanistan. The techniques included slaps, sleep deprivation, forced standing, exposure to cold and “waterboarding,” in which interrogators immerse or pour water over a detainee’s face until he believes he will suffocate or drown. Waterboarding is intended to cause a victim to believe he is about to die, and is similar to a mock execution. Earlier this year in March 2005, Goss justified waterboarding as a “professional interrogation technique” during a Senate hearing. Other Bush administration officials, when questioned about waterboarding, have refused to rule it out. Waterboarding is prohibited under international law and domestic U.S. law. Known as the “submarino” in Latin America, where it was used extensively in the 1970s and 1980s, waterboarding has been condemned as torture for decades. Other techniques described in the November 18 ABC News report – prolonged forced standing, sleep deprivation and exposure to cold – are illegal and may possibly amount to torture. These techniques were used by Soviet and North Korean interrogators, and have been reported more recently in Egypt, Burma, Iran and Turkey.
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=10236 |
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US 'plans to transfer Guantánamo detainees'
The US administration is in talks with overseas governments about transferring hundreds of detainees from its Guantánamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, it was reported [11 March 2005]. Under the plan - which faces potential opposition from the CIA - hundreds of detainees could be moved to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen, while others could be freed, it has been reported.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1435798,00.html |
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US suspected of keeping secret prisoners on warships: UN official
The UN has learned of "very, very serious" allegations that the United States is secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships, the UN's special rapporteur on terrorism said. While the accusations were rumours, rapporteur Manfred Nowak said the situation was sufficiently serious to merit an official inquiry.The use of prison ships would allow investigators to interrogate people secretly and in international waters out of the reach of US law, British security expert Francis Tusa said. Some 520 people suspected of terrorism are currently being held without trial at Guantanamo and others are in camps the United States has refused to acknowledge, the human rights organization Amnesty International has said. The United States has said that prisoners considered foreign combattants in its "war on terrorism" are not covered by the Geneva Conventions.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050628/wl_afp/unrightsusattacks_050628194245 |
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United States Army School of the Americas
Interrogation 101
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usamhi/usarsa/ |
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War with the values of a revolution
"Washington’s Crossing", the outstanding book by the Brandeis historian David Hackett Fischer about how George Washington and his troops rescued the American Revolution after British forces and German Hessian mercenaries had routed them in the early battles around New Jersey. What is particularly moving is one of Fischer’s concluding sections, ‘‘An American Way of War,’’ in which he contrasts how Washington dealt with prisoners of war with how the British and Hessian forces did: ‘‘According to the ‘the laws’ of European war, quarter was the privilege of being allowed to surrender and to become a prisoner. By custom and tradition, soldiers in Europe believed that they had a right to extend quarter or deny it. In these ‘laws of war,’ no captive had an inalienable right to be taken prisoner, or even to life itself.’’ American attitudes were very different. ‘‘With some exceptions, American leaders believed that quarter should be extended to all combatants as a matter of right. Americans were outraged when quarter was denied to their soldiers.’’ In one egregious incident, at the battle at Drake’s Farm, British troops murdered all seven of Washington’s soldiers who had surrendered, crushing their brains with muskets. ‘‘The Americans recovered the mutilated corpses and were shocked,’’ wrote Fischer. The British commander simply denied responsibility. ‘‘The words of the British commander, as much as the acts of his men,’’ wrote Fischer, ‘‘reinforced the American resolve to run their own war in a different spirit. Washington ordered that Hessian captives would be treated as human beings with the same rights of humanity for which Americans were striving. The Hessians were amazed to be treated with decency and kindness. At first they could not understand it.’’
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=67105 |
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War with the values of a revolution
Of all the stories about the abuse of prisoners of war by American soldiers and CIA agents, surely none was more troubling and important than the March 16 [2005] report by my New York Times colleagues Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt that at least 26 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 — in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide.
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=67105 |
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What I Head About Iraq
Detainees 27, 30 and 31 were stripped of their clothing, handcuffed together nude, placed on the ground, and forced to lie on each other and simulate sex while photographs were taken. Detainee 8 had his food thrown in the toilet and was then ordered to eat it. Detainee 7 was ordered to bark like a dog while MPs spat and urinated on him; he was sodomised with a police stick while two female MPs watched. Detainee 3 was sodomised with a broom by a female soldier. Detainee 15 was photographed standing on a box with a hood on his head and simulated electrical wires were attached to his hands and penis. Detainees 1, 16, 17, 18, 23, 24 and 26 were placed in a pile and forced to masturbate while photographs were taken. An unidentified detainee was photographed covered in faeces with a banana inserted in his anus. Detainee 5 watched Civilian 1 rape an unidentified 15-year-old male detainee while a female soldier took photographs. Detainees 5 and 7 were stripped of their clothing and forced to wear women’s underwear on their heads. Detainee 28, handcuffed with his hands behind his back in a shower stall, was declared dead when an MP removed the sandbag from his head and checked his pulse.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/wein01_.html |
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What I Heard About Iraq
I heard a soldier describe what they called ‘bitch in a box’: ‘That was the normal procedure for them when they wanted to soften up a prisoner: stuff them in the trunk for a while and drive them around. The hoods I can understand, and to have them cuffed with the plastic things – that I could see. But the trunk episode – I thought it was kind of unusual. It was like a sweatbox, let’s face it. In Iraq, in August, it’s hitting 120 degrees, and you can imagine what it was like in the trunk of a black Mercedes.’ I heard a marine at Camp Whitehorse say: ‘The 50/10 technique was used to break down EPWs and make it easier for the HET member to get information from them.’ The 50/10 technique was to make prisoners stand for 50 minutes of the hour for ten hours with a hood over their heads in the heat. EPWs were ‘enemy prisoners of war’. HETs were ‘human exploitation teams’.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/wein01_.html |
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White House Has Tightly Restricted Oversight of C.I.A. Detentions
The White House is maintaining extraordinary restrictions on information about the detention of high-level terror suspects, permitting only a small number of members of Congress to be briefed on how and where the prisoners are being held and interrogated, senior government officials say. Some Democratic members of Congress say the restrictions are impeding effective oversight of the secret program, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency and is believed to involve the detention of about three dozen senior Qaeda leaders at secret sites around the world. By law, the White House is required to notify the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of all intelligence-gathering activities. But the White House has taken the stance that the secret detention program is too sensitive to be described to any members other than the top Republican and Democrat on each panel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/national/06detain.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1112818743-cclFac0A6u0IPxslqiMeVA |
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White House restricts information on CIA terror suspect detentions:report
The New York Times reported [6 April 2005]: About three dozen senior al Qaida leaders are believed to have been detained by the CIA at secret sites around the world, the report quoted senior government officials as saying. Since the CIA first took custody of al Qaida members in 2002, the detention effort has been classified as a "special access program," a category that puts it off limits even to most of thosewith top secret security clearances. The only lawmakers on the twopanels the White House has permitted to be briefed on the issue have been the chairmen and ranking minority members, the report said. The authority to classify information rests with the White House and its designees, and the tools of Congress to challenge such designations are limited to the power it controls over the federal budget, according to the report. The main reason for the secrecy was to prevent information about where the prisoners were being held from being publicly disclosed, as such a disclosure would almost certainly cause host governments to force the CIA to shut down the detention operations being carried out on their soil, the report quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-04/06/content_2796250.htm |
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Within C.I.A., Worry of Prosecution for Conduct
There is widening unease within the Central Intelligence Agency over the possibility that career officers could be prosecuted or otherwise punished for their conduct during interrogations and detentions of terrorism suspects, according to current and former government officials.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/international/27intel.html |
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