33.

ABC News: The Blotter

CIA Rendition:

The Smoking Gun Cable

November 06, 2007 2:33 PM

By Stephen Grey

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/cia-rendition-t.html

34

Hersh:

children raped at Abu Ghraib,

Pentagon has videos

35

Inside the CIA's notorious

"black sites"

Exhibit I: Rendering of Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah's first cell in Afghanistan (based on Bashmilah's own drawings).

By Mark Benjamin

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/14/bashmilah/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65k0K0Th3bk&eurl=

Complete video at: fora.tv Lawyer and journalist Mahvish Khan reads a suicide note from a terrorism suspect held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Mahvish Khan discusses

"My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me."

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan is a recent law school graduate and journalist. She has been published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media. She is the author of the book,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ufVGyHb0Gc

 

 

Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects

C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.

The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The New York Times reported in 2007 that Mr. Mohammed had been barraged more than 100 times with harsh interrogation methods, causing C.I.A. officers to worry that they might have crossed legal limits and to halt his questioning. But the precise number and the exact nature of the interrogation method was not previously known.

The release of the numbers is likely to become part of the debate about the morality and efficacy of interrogation methods that the Justice Department under the Bush administration declared legal even though the United States had historically treated them as torture.

President Obama plans to visit C.I.A. headquarters Monday and make public remarks to employees, as well as meet privately with officials, an agency spokesman said Sunday night. It will be his first visit to the agency, whose use of harsh interrogation methods he often condemned during the presidential campaign and whose secret prisons he ordered closed on the second full day of his presidency.

C.I.A. officials had opposed the release of the interrogation memo, dated May 30, 2005, which was one of four secret legal memos on interrogation that Mr. Obama ordered to be released last Thursday.

Mr. Obama said C.I.A. officers who had used waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods with the approval of the Justice Department would not be prosecuted. He has repeatedly suggested that he opposes Congressional proposals for a “truth commission” to examine Bush administration counterterrorism programs, including interrogation and warrantless eavesdropping.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has begun a yearlong, closed-door investigation of the C.I.A. interrogation program, in part to assess claims of Bush administration officials that brutal treatment, including slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in standing positions for days and confining them in small boxes, was necessary to get information.

The fact that waterboarding was repeated so many times may raise questions about its effectiveness, as well as about assertions by Bush administration officials that their methods were used under strict guidelines.

A footnote to another 2005 Justice Department memo released Thursday said waterboarding was used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the C.I.A. rules permitted.

The new information on the number of waterboarding episodes came out over the weekend when a number of bloggers, including Marcy Wheeler of the blog emptywheel, discovered it in the May 30, 2005, memo.

The sentences in the memo containing that information appear to have been redacted from some copies but are visible in others. Initial news reports about the memos in The New York Times and other publications did not include the numbers.

Michael V. Hayden, director of the C.I.A. for the last two years of the Bush administration, would not comment when asked on the program “Fox News Sunday” if Mr. Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times. He said he believed that that information was still classified.

A C.I.A. spokesman, reached Sunday night, also would not comment on the new information.

Mr. Hayden said he had opposed the release of the memos, even though President Obama has said the techniques will never be used again, because they would tell Al Qaeda “the outer limits that any American would ever go in terms of interrogating an Al Qaeda terrorist.”

He also disputed an article in The New York Times on Saturday that said Abu Zubaydah had revealed nothing new after being waterboarded, saying that he believed that after unspecified “techniques” were used, Abu Zubaydah revealed information that led to the capture of another terrorist suspect, Ramzi Binalshibh.

The Times article, based on information from former intelligence officers who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Abu Zubaydah had revealed a great deal of information before harsh methods were used and after his captors stripped him of clothes, kept him in a cold cell and kept him awake at night. The article said interrogators at the secret prison in Thailand believed he had given up all the information he had, but officials at headquarters ordered them to use waterboarding.

He revealed no new information after being waterboarded, the article said, a conclusion that appears to be supported by a footnote to a 2005 Justice Department memo saying the use of the harshest methods appeared to have been “unnecessary” in his case.

FACT SHEET: Vice President Cheney Debunked 5.22.09

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/usls/2009/alert/452/index.htm

Today, former Vice President Cheney continues his pro-torture public relations tour with a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.  His listeners can expect to hear more arguments for the use of torture and abuse.  What they won’t hear from Vice President Cheney is that national security experts overwhelmingly disagree with his assessment about the value of resorting to abusive policies.  Those with experience conducting interrogations, leading forces in the military, and doing the work of keeping America safe overwhelming reject the use of torture. 

Vice President Cheney says torture prevented attacks following 9/11. Repeatedly, Vice President Cheney has said that information gained by torturing detainees has been crucial in helping the government “defeat or disrupt all further attempts to strike the homeland” (ABC News, Dec. 16, 2008). He says without torture, “we would have been attacked again” (Politico.com, Feb. 4, 2009). Cheney even goes so far as to say that removing the ability to use torture is making the nation less safe. He said Obama is making choices that “raise the risk to the American people of another attack.” (CNN, March 15 2009.)

• Vice President Cheney Debunked: FBI Director Robert Mueller says that isn’t the case. When Vanity Fair asked if torture prevented additional attacks, Mueller said “I don’t believe that has been the case.” (Vanity Fair, Dec. 16, 2008).
• Vice President Cheney Debunked: Interrogator says the use of torture has led to American deaths in Iraq.  Military interrogator Matthew Alexander says that it is torture that is recruiting for the enemy: “I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq… It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.” He goes on to quantify the costs of torture: “The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.” (Washington Post, Nov. 30, 2008)
• Vice President Cheney Debunked:  “This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it. (Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar, Washington Post Op-Ed, May 17, 2009)

Vice President Cheney says that crucial information has been revealed through torture. “Well, I would say that the key to what we did was to collect intelligence against the enemy. That’s what the terrorist surveillance program was all about, that’s what the enhanced interrogation program was all about.”(CNN, March 15 2009)

• Vice President Cheney Debunked: Experienced interrogators says torture doesn’t “work”.  Fifteen former interrogators from both the CIA and FBI stated in a statement that “the use of torture and other inhumane and abusive treatment results in false and misleading information, loss of critical intelligence, and has caused serious damage to the reputation and standing of the United States.” (“Top Interrogators Declare Torture Ineffective in Intelligence Gathering,”  June 24, 2008)
• Vice President Cheney Debunked: Even Jesse Venture knows that the information revealed through torture cannot be relied upon. As Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota, puts it, “You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.” Jesse Ventura has in fact been water boarded in preparation for his service in Vietnam. He says, from personal experience, that it constitutes torture. (CNN, May 12, 2009)
• Vice President Cheney Debunked: Abu Zabaydah said he gave up false information simply to stop being tortured. In his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, the tribunal president asked him: “So I understand that during this treatment, you said things to make them stop and then those statements were actually untrue, is that correct?” Abu Zubaydah replied: “Yes.” (Combatant Status-Review Tribunal” at Guantánamo, March 27, 2007)

Vice President Cheney claims that a “wartime situation” justifies torture. Cheney says that after 9/11, methods of law enforcement were no longer applicable. After 9/11, he said it was a “wartime situation.” Such a situation, according to Cheney, justifies using all your “intelligence resources, your military resources, your financial resources, everything you can in order to shut down that terrorist threat against you.” According to Cheney, the wartime situation justifies the use of torture. (CNN, March 15, 2009)

• Vice President Cheney Debunked: General David Petraeus rejects torture. In a letter to his troops in Iraq, General Petraeus clearly states that torture is not only illegal, but also not useful and not necessary: “Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly extreme physical action can makes someone “talk;” however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manuel (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.” (Letter to the Troops, May 10, 2007).

Former Vice President Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney, justifies torture in the context of a ticking time bomb situation. She says “We are talking about a situation when there are imminent threats against the united states so if you to me, this guys has got information that is going to save your kid’s life and my kids’ lives, that is going to keep this country safe, but we gotta water board him to get it, I got no problem with that.” (MSNBC, May 12, 2009)

• Liz Cheney Debunked Ticking time bomb situations are fictional, according to a former CIA officer. A retired senior CIA officer said in an interview with David Rose that “Nobody in intelligence believes in the ticking bomb. It’s just a way of framing the debate for public consumption. That is not an intelligence reality.” In his article, Rose reported that the officer said that inside the CIA, “there was hardly any argument about the value of coercive methods” (Vanity Fair, Dec. 16, 2008)

No Justice for Canadian Rendition Victim Maher Arar

Court Refuses to Hold US Officials Accountable for Complicity in Torture Abroad

Law School Study Finds Evidence Of Cover-Up After Three Alleged Suicides At Guantanamo In 2006

By Scott Horton
Special to the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/07/law-school-study-finds-ev_n_382085.html

On the night of June 9-10 in 2006, three prisoners held at the Guantánamo prison's Camp Delta died under mysterious circumstances. Military authorities responded by quickly ordering media representatives off the island and blocking lawyers from meeting with their clients. The first official military statements declared the deaths not just suicides -- but actually went so far as to describe them as acts of "asymmetrical warfare" against the United States.

Now a 58-page study prepared by law faculty and students at Seton Hall University in New Jersey starkly challenges the Pentagon's claims. It notes serious and unresolved contradictions within a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) report -- which was publicly released only in fragmentary form, two years after the fact -- and declares the military's internal investigation an obvious cover-up. The only question is: of what?

Law Professor Mark Denbeaux, who directed the study, said in an interview that "there are two possibilities here. Either the investigation is a cover-up of gross dereliction of duty, or it is a cover-up of something far more chilling. More than three years later we do not know what really happened." (Read a Q&A with Denbeaux: "'The Most Innocent Explanation Is That This Is Gitmo Meets Lord Of The Flies'".)

The new study exposes how the NCIS report purports that all three prisoners on the prison's Alpha Block did the following to commit suicide:

• Braided a noose by tearing up their sheets and/or clothing.
• Made mannequins of themselves so it would appear to the guards they were asleep in their cells.
• Hung sheets to block the view into the cells.
• Stuffed rags down their own throats well past a point which would have induced involuntary gagging.
• Tied their own feet together.
• Tied their own hands together.
• Hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling.
• Climbed up on to the sink, put the noose around their necks and release their weight, resulting in death by strangulation.

The study also notes that there has never been any explanation of how the three bodies could have hung in the cells, undiscovered, for at least two hours, when the cells were supposed to be under constant supervision by roving guards and video cameras.

Disturbingly, these facts were collected within the NCIS report -- but without discussion or any effort to make conclusions based on them. Was that because the facts did not fit the conclusions that military leaders had already offered the public and that the investigators were therefore struggling to support -- namely that the prisoners committed suicide? It is not even clear that it would be physically possible for the prisoners to commit suicide consistent with these facts.

Iraqis Tortured at Secret Baghdad Prison, says Watchdog

Beatings, electric shocks and rape commonplace according to Human Rights Watch interviews with detainees

by Mark Tran

Iraqis held at a secret prison in Baghdad were routinely tortured using whips, electric shocks and rape, according to an investigation by Human Rights Watch.

A soldier closes the gate at an Iraqi-run prison in Baghdad. Human Rights Watch says the torture of detainees at a secret prison was routine. (Photograph: Karim Kadim/AP)

The organisation said it had interviewed 42 men who were among about 300 detainees transferred from the secret facility in the old Muthanna airport in west Baghdad to al-Rusafa into a special block of 19 cage-type cells over the past several weeks. The existence of the secret prison was revealed in the Los Angeles Times.

All the detainees interviewed, Human Rights Watch said, described the same methods of torture.

"The jailers suspended their captives handcuffed and blindfolded upside down by means of two bars, one placed behind their calves and the other against their shins. All had terrible scabs and bruising on their legs. The interrogators then kicked, whipped and beat the detainees. Interrogators also placed a dirty plastic bag over the detainee's head to close off his air supply. Typically, when the detainee passed out from this ordeal, his interrogators awakened him with electric shocks to his genitals or other parts of his body."

Human Rights Watch called on the Iraqi authorities to hold a thorough investigation into the allegations, which come at a time of heightened political uncertainty and tension after close parliamentary elections last month. The former prime minister Ayad Allawi, whose cross-sectarian coalition won a surprise victory, today called for the formation of an impartial caretaker government to prevent the country from sliding into violence and counter what he says are efforts by the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to change the results.

US officials fear that the disclosure of a secret prison in which Sunni Arabs were systematically tortured would not only become an international embarrassment, but would make it harder for Maliki to put together a viable coalition government.

Human Rights Watch said the stories of torture were credible and consistent, with most of the 300 detainees displaying fresh scars and injuries that they said were a result of routine and systematic torture. All were accused of aiding and abetting terrorism, and many said they were forced to sign false confessions.

"The horror we found suggests torture was the norm in Muthanna," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The government needs to prosecute all of those responsible for this systematic brutality."

The men interviewed said the Iraqi army detained them between September and December 2009 after sweeps in and around Mosul, a stronghold of Sunni militants, including al-Qaida in Mesopotamia. They told Human Rights Watch that torture was most intense during their first week at Muthanna. Well-informed sources told Human Rights Watch that the secret facility was under the jurisdiction of Maliki's military office.

One 24-year-old detainee, called I, said he was raped numerous times with a broomstick and pistol. An interrogator told him that they would rape his mother and sister if he did not confess. During another beating, interrogators hit him so hard that he lost several front teeth.

Red Cross confirms

secret Afghan jail

Posted Tue May 11, 2010 6:35pm AEST

The Red Cross has confirmed reports there is a second secret detention centre at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

The base is already home to the Parwan Detention Facility, which holds prisoners detained by US forces.

The ICRC says there is another structure on the Bagram air base where detainees are being held and, that since August 2009, the US authorities have been notifying it of names of people detained there.

In recent weeks, the BBC has logged the testimonies of nine former prisoners who say they were held at the facility.

They said they were deprived of sleep by US military personnel there.

In response to these allegations, Vice Admiral Robert Harward, in charge of US detentions in Afghanistan, denied the existence of such a facility, or abuses, and said the Parwan detention facility - the main jail in the area - was the only detention facility in Afghanistan.

- BBC

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/11/2896559.htm?section=justin

Text version follows:

TORTURE, INTERROGATION AND INTELLIGENCE

What I want you to keep in mind as you read this is that we are to assume the following situation: We have somebody in our custody, who we believe has knowledge of an impending terrorist attack, and we think that attack could be VERY serious, but we have less than five days to find out what this person knows about the impending attack.

In this piece, I'm going to specifically address using drugs known as "truth serums" as the means by which we get the intelligence that we need. Some would call this a form of torture.

I want you to know that I don't glory torture for its own sake. I accept it as a means to survival.

To digress for a moment, and to add a little humor to it, I don't get any pleasure inflicting pain on anybody, unless you're a quarterback. I hate quarterbacks. I was a linebacker. Quarterbacks live a charmed life. Think about it. A quarterback never had zits as a kid. He never sweat. He always got the best looking cheerleader. He or his parents always had the best car. The teachers and coaches would let him get away with murder, and yet call him a saint. He always had his picture on the front cover of the football guide and the game-day program. He was the class valedictorian. He never had to dig ditches in 100-degree heat in the summer to make money. Even during practice, he got to wear a different color jersey from anybody else. He could sit down, kneel down, slide down, fall down, lie down, down the damn ball or throw it away, and if you even breathed on him you got penalized 15 yards for roughing the quarterback. I ask you, when was the last time you ever saw any official at any football game -- peewee through the pros -- ever throw flag on anybody for roughing the linebacker? I rest my case.

When Israel suffers a terrorist attack, almost invariably they retaliate within 24 hours. The reason that they can do this is that they have the world's best human intelligence (humint), and they know how to interrogate people. Their intelligence is so good and they keep it so current that they know who has attacked them, and they already have plans in existence for retaliation. Their humint sources are not just Israelis, but actual members of the society on which they are spying. They use humint and supplement it by signal intelligence (sigint). We do it just ass-backwards, because we CAN'T do it the way the Israeli's do it -- we simply do not have enough people on the ground. It takes $500,000-1,000,000 and 3-5 years to train and put in place a good humint source (assume this is an American hired by, say, the CIA, to try and infiltrate some terrorist group). NOTHING that is going on at present can quickly change this equation or situation. Forget the hearings, the posturing, the proposals, the realignments, the debate. It's all based on the INCORRECT assumption that we already have the tools, they just need to be rearranged. We do NOT have all the tools and no flow chart or organization chart can change that.

The Geneva Convention was not signed by any terrorist group. No terrorist should be provided any protection whatsoever under the Geneva Convention.

We are supposed to be a nation of laws. If you are not a United States citizen, don't expect protection of our laws.

Therefore, no terrorist -- whether running free or in custody -- is entitled to any protection under any international law to which we are a signatory or law of the United States.

Most of what follows is what I have learned from Israelis, South Koreans, Russians, as well as Americans.

I want to address several fallacies of interrogation.

Fallacy #1. Torture never works, because a prisoner will tell the interrogators whatever they want to hear just to stop the torture.

That's based on a faulty assumption. That faulty assumption is that, if you act on the fabricated intelligence provided by the prisoner, and then you find out that it is not correct, that the prisoner does not have to pay a price for lying. Before you ask the prisoner for information, you tell that prisoner that if he or she lies, you will torture the prisoner, the family, the friends, the parakeet, whomever. And then do it.

Fallacy #2. Any prisoner can outwit his or her interrogators.

This doesn't work with interrogators who are members of a free society, and have very good to excellent intelligence sources to confirm and verify what a prisoner says.

Part of this fallacy was created as a result of what our American POWs told their North Vietnamese interrogators, when those POWs were held in and around Hanoi during the Vietnam War.

North Vietnam was a closed society. That society only heard and saw what their leaders wanted them to hear and see. Our prisoners' Code of Conduct was changed in response to the brutal torture that our POW's endured.

Our POWs held out under that torture as long as they could. When they could hold out no longer, they made up something to stop the torture. Incredibly, and to show you how stupid and uninformed the North Vietnamese were, our POWs made up names of superior officers. These names included General Mills (the cereal company), Major Domo, Captain Video, etc. The North Vietnamese interrogators dutifully wrote down this information, smiled smugly, and assumed that they had extracted critical information from their prisoners.

In this sense, yes, the prisoners did outwit the interrogators. In contrast, when our POWs were interrogated by Russians, Cubans, East Germans, and Bulgarians, when they tried to pull the same stunt as they did with the North Vietnamese, our guys were beaten, starved, and tortured unmercifully. Our guys said that you could fool North Vietnamese, but don't even think about trying it with those other guys.

Fallacy #3. Torture as a means of interrogation is generally not accepted throughout the world.

In point of fact, within the last three years, more than three-quarters of all countries in the world have practiced torture as a means of interrogation. This applies to their own citizens, as well as foreigners, whether combatants or not.

Bleeding hearts just don't get it. On the one hand, they kept telling us to allow the weapons inspectors in Iraq more and more and more time and more and more and more time to uncover weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, once the President declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, the bleeding hearts started screeching that the rebuilding and democratization of Iraq wasn't happening fast enough. On the third hand, they run their hands at how quickly we had placed prisoners into detention facilities. This herky-jerky, stop-and-go, inconsistency is nothing more than political opportunism.

Even the ACLU got involved, not on behalf of Americans, but on behalf of our enemies. If you didn't know this, read this and burn it in your memory: The ACLU was founded by a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. You should never again wonder why the ACLU is trying to tear apart the moral and legal fiber of this country.

Fallacy #4. These things called "truths serums" don't really work.

They do work to varying degrees of success.

There are three primary truth serums.

Here they are.

Scopolamine (scopolamine hydrobromide; first word pronounced: skoh-PAW-lah-mean), also known by another name -- hyoscine (hyoscine hydrobromide). It is colorless, odorless and tasteless. Its clinical uses are primarily as a sedative, and applied locally (directly) as a mydriatic, which causes the pupil of the eye to dilate. When used as a sedative, the primary uses are to combat vertigo and motion sickness. When used with morphine and pentobarbital, to a woman in labor, it produces a "twilight sleep." It is also used as a premedication preliminary to surgery anesthesia.

Since scopolamine completely blocks the formation of memories, unlike most date-rape drugs used in the United States and elsewhere, it is usually impossible for victims to ever identify their aggressors (or interrogators, if you were a prisoner).

To use scopolamine most effectively to get a prisoner to tell you what he or she knows, the key is where you inject it, and in what amounts. Normally it is introduced into the body by a transdermal patch or intravenously in the arm. However, if you inject it into the spine (amount classified), it causes absolutely incredible pain, accompanied by violent convulsions and seizures. If injected into the spine in the appropriate amount, more than 95% of all prisoners will tell the truth -- not something fabricated to stop the pain -- within 24 hours (Source: classified).

A far milder form of psychological abuse involves exposing prisoners (intravenously or orally) to sodium pentathol—commonly known as "truth serum." Sodium pentathol is an ultra-short-acting barbiturate that depresses the central nervous system, slows heart rate, and lowers blood pressure. In the relaxed state produced by the drug, subjects are more susceptible to suggestion and are therefore easier to interrogate. The drug does not actually guarantee that prisoners will tell the truth, however. Often, it makes subjects "gabby" without revealing any important information.

Sodium amythal, also known as a type of "truth serum," with its clinical application in psychoanalysis, is used primarily to help in memory recovery and dealing with "false" memories. If you can confuse the prisoner as to what is a real memory and what is a false memory, you might be able to crack their resistance to telling the truth. However, if the prisoner is smart, he or she will simply shut up and you'll get nothing from them.

What is interesting is that a prisoner could have been subjected to a truth serum singularly, or two or three over enough time given the appropriate washout of the prisoner's system, and flatly state that he or she did not tell his or her interrogators anything. From his or her perspective, he or she is telling the truth -- because he or she has no memory of telling interrogators anything. That's the truth in his or her own mind, but it is not the fact of the situation.

In terms of training individuals to resist the three aforementioned truth serums, it is easiest to train someone to resist the sodium amythal, followed by sodium pentathol. There is no known training that will allow anyone to resist scopolamine, when injected into the spine in the correct amount.

What you don't want to do is "stack" scopolamine with sodium pentathol and sodium amythal. "Stacking" means adding one drug on top of another before the previous drug(s) has/have washed out of the system. You stack on somebody, you'll kill them.

When time is not a consideration, and when used in conjunction with skilled interrogators on a prisoner who has not been trained to resist the effects, sodium pentathol and sodium amythal will get you the truth in approximately 10% to one third of the cases. When the truth absolutely positively has to be there within five days, forget them – use scopolamine injected into the spine.

I don't honestly know if we have used any of these truth serums on Saddam Hussein. Too bad if we didn't. My clearance doesn't extend that high. For those of you who don't know -- and to oversimplify it -- there are four different levels of security clearances. They are: secret; top-secret; top-secret/code word; beyond top-secret/code word. The words "code word" could be something like UMBRA. So if I had that level, I would be cleared top-secret/UMBRA, which means I would be allowed to see or hear anything that is secret, top-secret, and -- separately -- anything that a classified under the code word UMBRA.

In 1909, before World War I, there were a number of terrorist attacks on the United States forces in the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, by Muslim extremists. General "Black Jack" Pershing was the appointed military governor of the Moro Province. He captured 50 terrorists and ordered them to be tied to posts for execution. Since all the prisoners were Muslim, he asked his men to bring two pigs and slaughter them in front of the prisoners. He then proceeded by dipping bullets into the pig’s blood.

In the process he executed 49 of the terrorists by firing squad. Then, the soldiers dug a big hole in the ground and dumped in the terrorists’ bodies and covered them in pig’s blood and viscera. The last man was set free. For 42 years there was not a single Muslim attack anywhere in the world.

His rationale was quite simple and effective. Since a radical Muslim is willing to give his life for his religion in a Jihad war, killing him would not make much difference. He would be seen as a martyr (shahada).

But the General knew that all Muslims believe in eternal life after death with 72 virgins waiting for them in paradise. He also knew that those that embrace Jihad usually prepare themselves physically and spiritually in case they die in combat.

Since the pig is considered forbidden food (haram) in Islam, Pershing introduced this variable to thwart their hopes to enter Allah’s kingdom. The pig’s blood automatically nullified any prior purification by contaminating their bodies.

My interrogation technique is quite simple. I follow General Pershing’s example and order a pig to be slaughtered near the prisoner. The blood of the animal run's freely toward the prisoner's feet. He will immediately lift his knees to avoid making contact with it. I fill a syringe with the pig’s blood and threaten to inject him in the arm. The prisoner will talk -- and quickly.

Fair? Depends on your perspective. Effective? Extremely.

A century ago, General Pershing’s quick thinking installed a great fear in a large sector of the Muslim population in Mindanao putting an end to any type of subversion in an Island that resents the presence of non-Muslims.

Last, here are a few tips in terms of determining if who you have in custody really is a Muslim: Since most of the concentration is on Islamic terrorism, these are a few signs that very few people know about.

A serious Muslim that prays 5 times a day has a small dark discoloration on his forehead.

If he wears jewelry, it has to be silver and not gold -- usually a silver ring with a space inside where there is a passage from the Koran.

Another important pointer comes from physical anthropology, and deals with faces and body structures. A real Muslim keeps his left hand away from his food, usually under the table.

Bottom line: there are effective ways to get the truth from a prisoner under interrogation. Some work better than others. When drugs are used, both the person administering the drug, as well as the interrogator, must be expert at their profession. When time is the most important consideration, you're left with very few options. Whatever the situation, KNOW YOUR ENEMY.

What I say here are my own opinions, based upon fact. They are not to be construed as the policy or official position of APUS. As always, you are free to accept or reject anything I say, and verify it by any means you wish.

Thank you.  Doc

===================

orture, interrogation and intelligence

Torture Sours

U.S.-Canadian Right-Wing Lovefest

By Sarah Anderson, AlterNet.

Posted January 29, 2007.

A U.S. Ambassador lashed out against a foreign official last week for standing up to the Bush administration -- and it wasn't against Hugo Chavez or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or any of the other usual suspects.

It was Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day -- a fundamentalist creationist, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights hawk who once spoke at a "Canadians for Bush" rally. At the onset of the Iraq war, he published a pro-Bush letter in the Wall Street Journal with Stephen Harper, who would become Canada's prime minister in 2006. Day and Harper blasted their own government's opposition to the U.S. invasion and lauded the Bush administration's "fundamental vision of civilization and human values."

That conservative lovefest is now over. Last week Day and U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins exchanged the most hostile tit-for-tat to date over the case of Maher Arar. In 2002, U.S. authorities detained Arar, a Canadian citizen, at JFK airport. After accusing him of having links to al Qaeda, they sent him to Syria, where he was tortured for nearly a year before being released without charge.

After an exhaustive inquiry, an independent Canadian commission cleared Arar of any terrorist ties last fall. On Jan. 26, the Ottawa government announced it would apologize for its role in the debacle and compensate Arar to the tune of about U.S. $8.5 million, plus legal fees.

But while the Canadian government has now admitted that Arar is indeed the innocent computer engineer and father of two he always said he was, the Bush administration continues to insist that Arar belongs on its "no-fly" list of terrorism suspects. This has meant that Arar, who spent 10 months in a gravelike underground cell, continues to live under a cloud of secret accusations.

Despite his ideological affinity for President Bush, Prime Minister Harper has not been oblivious to the fact the U.S. government is about as popular among Canadians today as it was when the Americans invaded in the War of 1812. In October, he was moved to ring up Bush and ask him to "come clean" about the Arar affair. He even went so far as to ask that Bush acknowledge "the deficiencies and inappropriate conduct that occurred in this case." That, of course, was as likely as the president admitting to shirking his National Guard duties during the Vietnam War.

The most U.S. Justice Department officials offered to do was brief the Canadians on the dirt they supposedly had gathered about Arar from their own sources. When this finally occurred last week, Stockwell Day, Canada's version of our Homeland Security chief, promptly declared it bogus.

"We've looked at all their information and there is nothing that materially changes our position," Day told reporters. "Mr. Arar is not a threat, nor is his family."

That provoked Ambassador Wilkins to spout that it was "presumptuous for him to say who the United States can and cannot allow into our country."

Day's direct contradiction of U.S. officials was indeed a bit of a shocker in the relatively calm history of U.S.-Canadian diplomacy. Yes, there was that flamboyant Pierre Trudeau who ticked off Nixon by chumming around with Castro, but he and the American Cold Warrior in chief were natural adversaries. When Bush can no longer count on alter egos like Day and Harper, you know something is seriously amiss.

It's funny, though, how a strong desire to cover one's legal behind can trump all other interests, be they ideological, economic or moral. And Maher Arar is suing the U.S. government for violating protections in our own laws against torture. The case was dismissed on national security grounds a year ago, but an ongoing appeal could get a boost if the Bush administration were to admit that Arar is not a threat.

Given the executive branch's self-interest in stonewalling, the best hope for Maher Arar lies in the U.S. Congress. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., now chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently lacerated Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, saying it was "beneath the dignity of this country, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured [Video]" On the House side, Edward Markey, D-Mass., has introduced a bill that would ban altogether the practice of "extraordinary rendition," or sending detainees to countries known for routinely practicing torture, like Syria.

Now they should crank up the heat by thumbing their noses at the "no-fly" list and flying themselves to Canada to take testimony directly from Arar. They should also consult with Justice Dennis O'Connor, who headed the Canadian government's commission on the case, and other Canadian officials. This would be a powerful statement to the world that the Bush administration will not stand in the way of their efforts to seek the truth. It's too late to prevent the nightmare endured by Maher Arar and other victims of torture caused by the Bush administration. But it's not too late to prevent other young men from the same fate.

George Knapp

Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Las Vegas Now

Bush bars cruel, inhuman treat of terrorism suspects

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/20/bush.terrorism.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush signed an executive order Friday prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects

The White House declined to say whether the CIA currently has a detention and interrogation program, but said that if it did it must adhere to the guidelines outlined in the executive order. The order targets captured al Qaeda terrorists who have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders.

"Last September, the president explained how the CIA's program had disrupted attacks and saved lives, and that it must continue on a sound legal footing," White House press secretary Tony Snow said. "The president has insisted on clear legal standards so that CIA officers involved in this essential work are not placed in jeopardy for doing their job -- and keeping America safe from attacks."

The executive order was the result of legislation Bush signed in October that authorized military trials of terrorism suspects. The court system was designed to protect classified information and eliminated some of the rights defendants are guaranteed in civilian and military courts.

It also gave Bush wide latitude in interrogating and detaining captured enemy combatants. While it outlines specific war crimes such as rape, the legislation said the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of international standards set by the Geneva Conventions when authorizing less severe interrogation procedures.

The Supreme Court had ruled in June 2006 that trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law, so Bush urged Congress to change the law. He also insisted that the law authorize CIA agents to use tough methods to interrogate suspected terrorists.

The United States has been criticized by European allies and others around the world over interrogation techniques such as "waterboarding," in which prisoners are strapped to a plank over water and are made to fear that they may be drowned. Critics also have complained that the CIA has run secret prisons on European soil and mistreated prisoners during clandestine flights in and out of Europe.

Bush has repeatedly said that the United States does not practice torture but has not spelled out specific banned procedures.

Leonard Rubenstein, director of Physicians for Human Rights, said the executive order was inadequate.

"What is needed now is repudiation of brutal and cruel interrogation methods. General statements like this are inadequate, particularly after years of evidence that torture was authorized at the highest levels and utilized by U.S. forces," he said.

The White House did not detail what types of interrogation procedures would be allowed. But it did offer parameters, saying any conditions of confinement and interrogation practices could not include:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/10/09/cia.rendition/

Supreme Court refuses to hear CIA kidnapping allegation

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A German citizen who alleges the CIA mistakenly kidnapped, detained and interrogated him was denied a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court when the justices rejected his appeal for review Tuesday.

At issue was whether Khaled el-Masri's lawsuit against the U.S. government could proceed, or whether the Bush administration could block it under the "state secrets" privilege in the name of preserving national security.

The court gave no reason for its move.

El-Masri alleged he was abducted in Macedonia on New Year's Eve 2003 and taken to a U.S.-run detention facility in Afghanistan as part of a secret program aimed at suspected terrorists.

"I was humiliated, I was beaten, I was drugged," the Lebanese-born man told CNN last year. "After five months, they simply took me back and dropped me like a piece of luggage in the woods of Albania."

U.S. officials told CNN the Bush administration privately has confirmed to Germany the man was captured by mistake, but it has not made a public admission.

Tuesday's announcement means el-Masri's lawsuit is moot, but the issue of the state secrets privilege is still percolating in the courts, with a number of pending lawsuits.

The justices are considering a related case dealing with the administration's warrantless wiretap program, where international calls into the United States can be secretly monitored. The government has refused to reveal details of the program to a broad range of journalists, academics and advocacy groups that claimed U.S. officials illegally tapped their calls.

With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, el-Masri sued the CIA and private air charter companies that operated the overseas flights. He sought monetary damages, a public apology and an explanation for why he was detained.

Lower federal courts all rejected el-Masri's legal claims.

The U.S. government said acknowledging el-Masri's detention or even discussing details of the program would compromise national security. In a legal brief filed with the high court, Justice Department lawyers wrote, "The United States can neither confirm nor deny petitioner's allegations."

The ACLU had called the government state secrets privilege in this case a hollow argument because President Bush publicly discussed that the United States was holding some terrorism suspects overseas in secret locations.

El-Masri's German attorney called the U.S. high court's refusal to get involved a "judicial disaster."

Speaking from his office in Ulm, Germany, Martin Gnjidic said, "The verdict highlights that the American executive branch can commit the most severe in human rights violations with no judicial oversight."

Gnjidic said the decision creates a "lawless environment" in which intelligence groups such as the CIA can operate.

"The world is watching," another el-Masri attorney, Ben Wizner, said last November, when the case was argued in a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia. "But they are not watching to learn the secrets of our intelligence methods. They are watching to see if the United States of America can give justice to an innocent victim of its anti-terror policies."

The Alien Tort Statute allows noncitizens to bring claims in federal court for "violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." The law has been used in recent years to bring lawsuits about alleged human rights abuses against the government, the military or private companies.

It is not known how many terror suspects have been detained under the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program in which they are moved to other countries. Also unclear is whether the detainees were interrogated primarily by American agents or by agents of another country's intelligence apparatus.

"I think it's hard to argue that this is within the bounds of international law; after all, it's a kind of kidnapping," said Arthur Hulnick, a former CIA officer and a professor at Boston University. "On the other hand, it's one of the few good weapons that the intelligence community has for pre-empting some of the terrorists."

Although el-Masri lost his bid before the Supreme Court, he has the option of raising his claims before the International Court of Justice, which handles cases over governments' treatment of foreigners as well as treaty obligations. He also has gone before the German courts for relief, Gnjidic said.

The administration has made a strong legal claim of broad executive authority to fight global terrorism. Federal courts have issued mixed rulings on the extent of that authority in cases dealing with domestic electronic surveillance and with the rights of terror suspects held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Supreme Court has twice ruled in favor of the rights of Guantanamo detainees to protest in federal court their imprisonment and the rules for trying them before military commissions. Oral arguments in a third such case will be held later this year.

Ex-CIA agent:

Waterboarding is Torture

12/11/07

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/11/agent.tapes/

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A former CIA agent who participated in interrogations of terror suspects said Tuesday that the controversial interrogation technique of "waterboarding" has saved lives, but he considers the method torture and now opposes its use.

Ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou says he underwent waterboarding in training and cracked in a few seconds.

1 of 2

Former CIA operative John Kiriakou also told CNN's "American Morning" that he disagrees with a decision to destroy videotapes of certain interrogations, namely of al Qaeda's Abu Zubayda. Kiriakou made the remarks as two congressional committees prepared to grill CIA Director Michael Hayden on the destruction of the tapes and on "alternative" means of interrogation.

Waterboarding begins by placing a suspect on a table with the suspect's feet slightly elevated, said Kiriakou, who was waterboarded several years ago as part of his CIA training. He said he elected not to learn how to perform the technique, which is designed to emulate the sensation of drowning.

Once a suspect is secured on the table, interrogators wrap his or her face in a cellophane-like material, Kiriakou said.

"There is a bladder, or a water source, above the head with water pouring down on the mouth, so no water is going into your mouth, but it induces a gag reflex and makes you feel like you're choking," Kiriakou said. Watch the ex-agent describe the procedure »

Kiriakou said he lasted only a few seconds during his training because his body felt like it was seizing up almost immediately.

"It's entirely unpleasant," Kiriakou said. "You are so full of tension that you tense up, your muscles tighten up. It's very uncomfortable."

Abu Zubayda lasted a little longer, said Kiriakou, but not much.

The former agent, who said he participated in the Abu Zubayda interrogation but not his waterboarding, said the CIA decided to waterboard the al Qaeda operative only after he was "wholly uncooperative" for weeks and refused to answer questions.

All that changed -- and Zubayda reportedly had a divine revelation -- after 30 to 35 seconds of waterboarding, Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique.

The terror suspect, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly gave up information that indirectly led to the the 2003 raid in Pakistan yielding the arrest of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an alleged planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Kiriakou said.

The CIA was unaware of Mohammed's stature before the Abu Zubayda interrogation, the former agent said.

"Abu Zubayda's the one who told us that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was so important in the al Qaeda structure, and we didn't realize at the time how important he was," Kiriakou said.

Abu Zubayda also divulged information on "al Qaeda's leadership structure and mentioned people who we really didn't have any familiarization with [and] told us who we should be thinking about, who we should be looking at, and who was important in the organization so we were able to focus our investigation this way," Kiriakou said.

Abu Zubayda reportedly told the agent who waterboarded him that "Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate because it would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured," Kiriakou said.

Though the information wrenched from Abu Zubayda "stopped terrorist attacks and saved lives," Kiriakou said he opposes waterboarding.

"Now after after all these years, time has passed, and we're more on our feet in this fight against al Qaeda, and I think it's unnecessary," he said.

In a separate CNN interview, Kiriakou said the Justice Department and National Security Council reportedly approved waterboarding and other "alternative" interrogation techniques in June 2002.

"It was a policy decision that came down from the White House," he said.

Despite the executive blessing, Kiriakou and other agents were conflicted over whether to learn the technique, he said.

"One senior officer said to me that this is something you really have to think deeply about," the former agent said, adding he "struggled with it morally."

Kiriakou conceded his position might be hypocritical and said that the technique was useful -- even if he wanted to distance himself from it.

"Waterboarding was an important technique, and some of these other techniques were important in collecting the information," he said. "But I personally didn't want to do it. I didn't think it was right in the long run, and I didn't want to be associated with it."

As for the tapes of the interrogations, Kiriakou -- who claims neither he nor the other CIA agents realized they were being recorded during the Abu Zubayda interrogation -- said he disagrees with the decision to destroy the tapes.

"I don't see the reason to destroy them," Kiriakou said. "There's a possibility that they could be used in a criminal investigation, and frankly, for the historical record, I think it's important to have things like that maintained."

The Justice Department and CIA have announced a preliminary inquiry into the matter. Hayden, the CIA director, is slated to go before congressional committees Tuesday and Wednesday.

Hayden has said the CIA destroyed the tapes "only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries."

Congressional leaders said they were never properly notified about the decision.

ACLU Demands Immediate Release of Inspector General Report on FBI's Role in Illegal Interrogations

Documents Obtained By ACLU Describe Charges of Murder and Torture of Prisoners in Afghanistan

Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection in Kentucky

Take Action: Ensure Due Process for the Incarcerated

The ACLU at the Movies

Idaho Joins the Ranks of Anti-Real ID States

ACLU Challenges Montana's Flawed System for Third Party Ballot Access

Attorney General Mukasey Urges Congress To Create Detainee Rules

Weeks After Prosecutor’s Resignation, US Drops Charges Against 5 Gitmo Prisoners—But Won’t Release Them

A History of Music Torture in the War on Terror

By Andy Worthington, CounterPunch
Posted on December 17, 2008, Printed on December 20, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/113479/

There's an ambiguous undercurrent to the catchy pop smash that introduced a pig-tailed Britney Spears to the world in 1999 -- so much so that Jive Records changed the song's title to "… Baby One More Time" after executives feared that it would be perceived as condoning domestic violence.

It's a safe bet, however, that neither Britney nor songwriter Max Martin ever anticipated that this undercurrent would be picked up on by U.S. military personnel, when they were ordered to keep prisoners awake by blasting earsplitting music at them -- for days, weeks or even months on end -- at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

The message, as released Guantánamo prisoner Ruhal Ahmed explained in an interview earlier this year, was less significant than the relentless, inescapable noise. Describing how he experienced music torture on many occasions, Ahmed said, "I can bear being beaten up, it's not a problem. Once you accept that you're going to go into the interrogation room and be beaten up, it's fine. You can prepare yourself mentally. But when you're being psychologically tortured, you can't." He added, however, that "from the end of 2003 they introduced the music, and it became even worse. Before that, you could try and focus on something else. It makes you feel like you are going mad. You lose the plot, and it's very scary to think that you might go crazy because of all the music, because of the loud noise, and because after a while you don't hear the lyrics at all, all you hear is heavy banging."

Despite this, the soldiers, who were largely left to their own devices when choosing what to play, frequently selected songs with blunt messages -- "Fuck Your God" by Deicide, for example, which is actually an anti-Christian rant, but one whose title would presumably cause consternation to believers in any religion -- even though, for prisoners not used to Western rock and rap music, the music itself was enough to cause them serious distress. When CIA operatives spoke to ABC News in November 2005, as part of a groundbreaking report into the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on "high-value detainees" held in secret prisons, they reported that, when prisoners were forced to listen to Eminem's Slim Shady album, "The music was so foreign to them it made them frantic." And in May 2003, when the story broke that music was being used by U.S. psyops teams in Iraq, Sgt. Mark Hadsell, whose favored songs were said to be "Bodies" by Drowning Pool and "Enter the Sandman" by Metallica, told Newsweek, "These people haven't heard heavy metal. They can't take it."

Approval for the Use of Music Torture in the War on Terror

Depending on people's musical tastes, responses to reports that music has been used to torture prisoners often produces flippant comments along the lines of, "If I had to listen to David Gray's ‘Babylon'/the theme tune from Barney (the purple dinosaur)/Christina Aguilera, I'd be crying ‘torture' too." But the truth, sadly, is far darker, as Hadsell explained after noting that prisoners in Iraq had a problem with heavy metal music.

"If you play it for 24 hours," Hadsell said, "your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down, and your will is broken. That's when we come in and talk to them."

Hadsell, like senior figures in the administration, was blithely unconcerned that "breaking" prisoners, rather than finding ways of encouraging them to cooperate, was not to best way to secure information that was in any way reliable, but the psyops teams were not alone. In September 2003, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, approved the use of music as part of a package of measures for use on captured prisoners "to create fear, disorient … and prolong capture shock," and as is spelled out in an explosive new report by the Senate Armed Services Committee into the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody (PDF), the use of music was an essential part of the reverse engineering of techniques, known as survival, evasion, resistance, escape (SERE), which are taught in U.S. military schools to train personnel to resist interrogation. The report explains:

During the resistance phase of SERE training, U.S. military personnel are exposed to physical and psychological pressures … designed to simulate conditions to which they might be subject if taken prisoner by enemies that did not abide by the Geneva Conventions. As one … instructor explained, SERE training is "based on illegal exploitation (under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War) of prisoners over the last 50 years." The techniques used in SERE school, based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions, include stripping detainees of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, disrupting their sleep, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. It can also include face and body slaps, and until recently, for some who attended the Navy's SERE school, it included waterboarding.

The Senate Committee's report, which lays the blame for the implementation of these policies on senior officials, including President George W. Bush, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney's former legal counsel (and now chief of staff) David Addington, and former Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II, makes it clear not only that the use of music is part of a package of illegal techniques, but also that at least part of its rationale, according to the Chinese authorities who implemented it, was that it secured false confessions, rather than the "actionable intelligence" that the U.S. administration was seeking.

The Experiences of Binyam Mohamed and Donald Vance

In case any doubt remains as to the pernicious effects of music torture, consider the comments by Binyam Mohamed, a British resident still held in Guantánamo, who was tortured in Morocco for 18 months on behalf of the CIA, and was then tortured for four months in the CIA's "Dark Prison" in Kabul, and Donald Vance, a U.S. military contractor in Iraq, who was subjected to music torture for 76 days in 2006.

Speaking to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, Mohamed, like Ruhal Ahmed, explained how psychological torture was worse than the physical torture he endured in Morocco, where the CIA's proxy torturers regularly cut his penis with a razorblade.

"Imagine you are given a choice," he said. "Lose your sight or lose your mind."

In Morocco, music formed only a small part of Mohamed's torture. Toward the end of his 18-month ordeal, he recalled that his captors "cuffed me and put earphones on my head. They played hip hop and rock music, very loud. I remember they played Meatloaf and Aerosmith over and over. I hated that. They also played 2Pac, "All Eyez On Me," all night and all day. … A couple of days later, they did the same thing. Same music. I could not take the headphones off, as I was cuffed. I had to sleep with the music on and even pray with it.”

At the Dark Prison, however, which was otherwise a plausible re-creation of a medieval dungeon, in which prisoners were held in complete darkness and were often chained to the walls by their wrists, the use of music was relentless. As Mohamed explained:

It was pitch black, and no lights on in the rooms for most of the time … They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb. … There was loud music, Slim Shady and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this nonstop, over and over. I memorized the music, all of it, when they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. It got really spooky in this black hole. … Interrogation was right from the start, and went on until the day I left there. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off. … Throughout my time, I had all kinds of music and irritating sounds, mentally disturbing. I call it brainwashing.

Vance's story demonstrates not only that the practice of using music as torture was being used as recently as 2006, but also that it was used on Americans. When his story broke in December 2006, the New York Times reported that he "wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the FBI about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading," but that "when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer."

Vance, who was held at Camp Cropper in Baghdad, explained that he was routinely subjected to sleep deprivation, taken for interrogation in the middle of the night and held in a cell that was permanently lit with fluorescent lights. He added, "At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor." Speaking to the Associated Press last week, he said that the use of music as torture "can make innocent men go mad," and added more about the use of music during his imprisonment, stating that he was "locked in an overcooled 9-foot-by-9-foot cell that had a speaker with a metal grate over it. Two large speakers stood in the hallway outside." The music, he said, "was almost constant, mostly hard rock. There was a lot of Nine Inch Nails, including 'March of the Pigs.' I couldn't tell you how many times I heard Queen's 'We Will Rock You.' " He said the experience "sort of removes you from you. You can no longer formulate your own thoughts when you're in an environment like that."

After his release, Vance said he planned to sue Rumsfeld on the basis that his constitutional rights had been violated, and he noted, "Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had." He added that he had written a letter to the camp's commander "stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves."

Musicians Take Action

Last week, Reprieve launched a new initiative, Zero dB (Against Music Torture), aimed at encouraging musicians to take a stand against the use of their music as torture instruments. This is not the first time that musicians have been encouraged to speak out. In June, Clive Stafford Smith raised the issue in the Guardian, and when, in an accompanying article, the Guardian noted that David Gray's song "Babylon" had become associated with the torture debate after Haj Ali, the hooded man in the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs, told of being stripped, handcuffed and forced to listen to a looped sample of the song, at a volume so high he feared that his head would burst, Gray openly condemned the practice. "The moral niceties of whether they're using my song or not are totally irrelevant," he said. "We are thinking below the level of the people we're supposed to oppose, and it goes against our entire history and everything we claim to represent. It's disgusting, really. Anything that draws attention to the scale of the horror and how low we've sunk is a good thing."

In a subsequent interview with the BBC, Gray complained that the only part of the torture music story that got noticed was its "novelty aspect" -- which he compared to Guantánamo['s] Greatest Hits -- and then delivered another powerful indictment of the misappropriation of his and other artists' music.

"What we're talking about here is people in a darkened room, physically inhibited by handcuffs, bags over their heads and music blaring at them for 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "That is torture. That is nothing but torture. It doesn't matter what the music is -- it could be Tchaikovsky's finest or it could be Barney the Dinosaur. It really doesn't matter, it's going to drive you completely nuts.

"No-one wants to even think about it or discuss the fact that we've gone above and beyond all legal process and we're torturing people."

Not every musician shared Gray's revulsion. Bob Singleton, who wrote the theme tune to Barney, which has been used extensively in the War on Terror, acknowledged in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times in July that "if you blare the music loud enough for long enough, I guess it can become unbearable," but refused to accept either that songwriters can legitimately have any say about how their music is used, or that there were any circumstances under which playing music relentlessly at prisoners could be considered torture.

"It's absolutely ludicrous," he wrote. "A song that was designed to make little children feel safe and loved was somehow going to threaten the mental state of adults and drive them to the emotional breaking point?

"The idea that repeating a song will drive someone over the brink of emotional stability, or cause them to act counter to their own nature, makes music into something like voodoo, which it is not.”

Singleton was not the only artist to misunderstand how the use of music could indeed constitute torture -- especially when used as part of a package of techniques designed to break prisoners.

Steve Asheim, Deicide's drummer, said: "These guys are not a bunch of high school kids. They are warriors, and they're trained to resist torture. They're expecting to be burned with torches and beaten and have their bones broken. If I was a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay and they blasted a load of music at me, I'd be like, 'Is this all you got? Come on.' I certainly don't believe in torturing people, but I don't believe that playing loud music is torture either."

Furthermore, other musicians have been positively enthusiastic about the use of their music. Stevie Benton of Drowning Pool, which has played to U.S. troops in Iraq, told Spin magazine, "People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down. I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that."

Fortunately, for those who understand that using music as part of a system of torture techniques is no laughing matter, the Zero dB initiative provides the most noticeable attempt to date to call a halt to its continued use. Christopher Cerf, who wrote the music for Sesame Street, was horrified to learn that the show's theme tune had been used in interrogations. "I wouldn't want my music to be a party to that," he said.

Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine has been particularly outspoken in denouncing the use of music for torture. In 2006, he said to Spin magazine: "The fact that our music has been co-opted in this barbaric way is really disgusting. If you're at all familiar with ideological teachings of the band and its support for human rights, that's really hard to stand." On this year's world tour, Rage Against the Machine regularly turned up on stage wearing hoods and orange jumpsuits, and during a recent concert in San Francisco, Morello proposed taking revenge on President Bush: "I suggest that they level Guantánamo Bay, but they keep one small cell, and they put Bush in there ... and they blast some Rage Against the Machine."

And on Dec. 11, just after the Zero dB initiative was announced, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails posted the following message on his blog:

It's difficult for me to imagine anything more profoundly insulting, demeaning and enraging than discovering music you've put your heart and soul into creating has been used for purposes of torture. If there are any legal options that can be realistically taken they will be aggressively pursued, with any potential monetary gains donated to human rights charities. Thank GOD this country has appeared to side with reason, and we can put the Bush administration's reign of power, greed, lawlessness and madness behind us.

Even James Hetfield of Metallica, who has generally been portrayed as a defender of the U.S. military's use of his band's music, has expressed reservations. In a radio interview in November 2004, he said that he was "proud" that the military had used his music (even though they "hadn't asked his permission or paid him royalties"). "For me, the lyrics are a form of expression, a freedom to express my insanity," he explained, adding, "If the Iraqis aren't used to freedom, then I'm glad to be part of their exposure." Hetfield laughed off claims that music could be used for torture, saying, "We've been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music forever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?"

However, he also acknowledged the reason that the military was using his music: "It's the relentlessness of the music. It's completely relentless. If I listened to a death metal band for 12 hours in a row, I'd go insane, too. I'd tell you anything you wanted to know."

While these musicians have at least spoken out, others -- including Eminem, AC/DC, Aerosmith, the Bee Gees, Christina Aguilera, Prince and the Red Hot Chili Peppers -- remain silent about the use of their work. Britney Spears' views are also unknown, but if her comments to CNN in September 2003 are anything to go by, it's unlikely that she would find fault with it. When Tucker Carlson said to her, "A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?" Britney replied, "Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens." Perhaps she should speak to Pamela Anderson, who recently posted a simple message to Barack Obama on her blog: "Please Shut down Guantánamo Bay -- figure it out -- make amends/stop torture -- it's time for peaceful solutions."

Andy Worthington is a writer and historian and author of The Guantánamo Files.

© 2008 CounterPunch All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/113479/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- CIA Director Leon Panetta has carried through on his pledge to prohibit independent contractors from conducting interrogations of terror suspects.

CIA Director Leon Panetta says secret prisons used to detain terror suspects have been closed.

In a message to agency employees on Thursday, Panetta said he had notified the congressional oversight committees about the current CIA policy regarding interrogations.

Besides discontinuing the use of contractors, the director outlined in the message other steps taken in response to executive orders issued by President Obama in January.

The harsh interrogation techniques authorized by the Bush administration will no longer be used. Panetta said questioning of suspected terrorists will follow the approaches authorized in the Army Field Manual.

The director said the agency will "not tolerate, and will continue to promptly report, any inappropriate behavior or allegations of abuse."

He said that included suspects held by Americans or those who might have been transferred to other countries.

The secret prisons used to detain terror suspects have been closed, Panetta said.

Panetta said no individuals have been detained since he became director nearly two months ago. However, he said the "CIA retains the authority to detain individuals on a short-term basis."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein issued a statement in support of Panetta's actions, in particular the decision to drop contractors.

"I am very pleased that Mr. Panetta has announced that contractors will no longer conduct interrogations," said Feinstein, D-California and House speaker, who had previously sponsored legislation to end the process.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/09/panetta.interrogations/

TRUTH OUT

SATURDAY 16 MAY 2009

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been publicly defending torture. 

    It's impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there?

    - Seymour Hersh

    Dick Cheney has been doing a lot of talking lately. From his most recent barrage of public statements, we have gleaned that he loves Rush Limbaugh, doesn't much care for Colin Powell, believes President Obama is about to sell the Sixth Fleet to the Taliban for pennies on the dollar and thinks torture is a nifty and effective tool that saves lives and defends freedom. Really, this isn't anything we haven't heard before from our growly, snarly, face-blasting former vice president. But it does beg the question: What the hell is he up to? NPR's Ron Elving posited the question in a Wednesday article titled "What is Dick Cheney Trying to Accomplish?"

    "The man whom many consider the most powerful veep in history had already been far more vocal and visible than most of his predecessors in retirement," wrote Elving. "This week in particular, the former No. 2 has been out there almost daily, doing talk shows and giving a formal address to the American Enterprise Institute on the importance of interrogation techniques widely considered to be torture. Along the way, he is also unburdening himself of opinions on everything else, from tax policy to the fate of the GOP to the choice of a commanding general in Afghanistan. Once known for his reticence and low profile, the man from Wyoming is suddenly his party's most prominent national figure and audible voice. He is having his catharsis, and having it abundantly."

    As for his motives, Elving states his belief that Cheney's sudden whirlwind tour of every television, radio and newspaper in America has a three-pronged purpose: 1) He is a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, neocon, true believer, who insists on defending the use of torture because he believes it actually works; 2) He is defending the legacy of the administration he basically ran single-handedly for eight years; and 3) He is now liberated from the constraints of White House PR concerns and can speak as freely as he likes.

    Mr. Cheney is not the only one who has been out in the public eye defending the practices of the former administration. His daughter, Liz Cheney, went off like an old barrel of TNT on the cable news shows, going so far as to invoke 9/11 (like father, like daughter) and accuse Obama of supporting terrorism for even considering the release of photographic evidence of the American use of torture against detainees. "I have heard from families of service members, from families of 9/11 victims," she said, "when did it become so fashionable for us to side with the terrorists?"

    The Cheney clan is not known for their restraint when it comes to launching a verbal carpet-bombing campaign, but even for them, this is flame-thrower language. Ron Elving's explanation is almost certainly accurate, but only to a point. His analysis leaves off the one central and defining motive behind Cheney's thunderous defense of himself and the activities of his administration.

    He was scared, I think.

    He was scared the real stuff is going to come out.

    He was scared of the universal damnation that will come down upon him if the truth comes out.

    Finally, I believe he was scared of going to prison.

    But why? The American public has been aware of our use of torture for some time now. The Obama administration has made it all too clear that they have strong reservations about prosecuting the architects of the Bush administration's torture policy, and that any meaningful actions along those lines are highly unlikely to be taken.

    Why, then?

    It is because Cheney knew, when he began his media assault, that the worst of the horrors inflicted upon detainees at his specific command are not yet widely known. If the real stuff comes into full public light, he feared the general outrage will be so furious and all-encompassing that the Obama administration will have no choice but to reverse itself and seek prosecutions of those Bush-era officials who specifically demanded those barbaric acts be inflicted upon prisoners.

    This is not about waterboarding, as gruesome as that practice is. It is not about putting prisoners in confined spaces, or about pushing them, or slapping them, or putting bugs on them or demeaning them and their religious faith.

    It is about this, from July of 2004:

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon's custody more horrific than anything made public so far. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld said. Since then, The Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse. Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it.

Hersh: "Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

    Dick Cheney wanted everyone talking about waterboarding, close confinement, and all the rest of the torture techniques outlined in the recently-released "Torture Memos." Talking about waterboarding is still safe territory for him and everyone else who served his cruel intentions in the Bush administration. They're taking some heat, sure, but the story has been out there for a while and he's not wearing prison stripes yet.

    I know why this caged bird sang. He was terrified of the very real cage that could be waiting to swing open and swallow him up if the true nature of his torture directives became widely known. If the entire country comprehends the awful fact that women and boys were forcibly raped upon his specific orders, Dick Cheney's bets would all be off.

    That was then, however, and this is now. Dick Cheney is breathing a little easier today, and why shouldn't he? President Obama appears to have pretty much let Cheney, along with all the other enables of torture, off the hook.

    "President Obama is seeking to block the release of photographs depicting American military personnel abusing captives in Iraq and Afghanistan, an administration official said Wednesday," reports The New York Times. "The president's decision marks a sharp reversal from a decision made last month by the Pentagon, which reached a deal with the American Civil Liberties Union to release photographs showing incidents at Abu Ghraib and a half-dozen other prisons. 'Last week, the president met with his legal team and told them that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the D.O.D. photos because he believes their release would endanger our troops,' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'And because he believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court.'"

    To me, this means two things.

    The pictures are really, really, really bad, just as Sy Hersh said they would be.

    There will be no punishment, no justice, for acts of barbarous torture undertaken at the specific behest of men like Dick Cheney. The Obama administration has chosen the easier path, chosen to ignore the manifest harm done to this nation and the world by refusing to seek that necessary justice.

    The caged bird sang to stay out of a cage. Now he's free as a bird, and ours is a badly damaged and disgraced country because of it.

Why the Caged Bird Sang

Friday 15 May 2009

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Search

Truthout Originals

·                     Dick Cheney, Patron Saint of Torture-Free

by: Steve Weissman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

·                     Engineering "Trust of the Indigenous Population"

by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

·                     Ex-CIA Official: Agency Brass Lied to Congress About Interrogations

by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report

·                     Afghanistan/Pakistan: Where Empires Go to Die

by: Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

·                     Why the Caged Bird Sang

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Most Popular

·                     Some US Soldiers Forced to Steal Water in Iraq

by: Jeremy Rogalski, KHOU-TV

·                     Why the Caged Bird Sang

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist

TRUTHOUT ORIGINAL

·                     Unfit for Combat

by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

TRUTHOUT ORIGINAL

·                     The Bankrupt Debate Over Bankrupting Our Children

by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

TRUTHOUT ORIGINAL

·                     Prosecuting Torture: Is Time Really Running Out?

by: Elizabeth de la Vega, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

·                     TRUTHOUT ORIGINAL

Fake Rape Photos Re-Emerge Again To Discredit Real Torture Scandal

Copied on  to  the Zebra 3 Report

https://zebra3report.tripod.com/zebra3report/index.blog/1917774/torture-rape-or-is-it-fake/

Yoo's Lawyers Warn of Flood of Political Suits

by Bob Egelko

SAN FRANCISCO -- A ruling that allowed a prisoner to sue former Bush administration attorney John Yoo for devising the legal theories that justified his alleged torture threatens to "open the floodgates to politically motivated lawsuits" against government officials, Yoo's lawyers say.

John Yoo wrote a 2002 Bush administration memo on interrogation of terrorism detainees. (Photo: Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

In papers filed late Monday with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Yoo's new team of private lawyers argued that a judge's refusal to dismiss a suit by inmate Jose Padilla injected the courts into the political arena.

"Threatening executive branch lawyers with personal liability for reaching allegedly incorrect legal conclusions regarding the constitutionality of a president's wartime actions would infringe on the core war-making authority that the Constitution reserves to the political branches," said attorney Manuel Miranda.

Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, was a Justice Department lawyer from 2001 to 2003 and wrote a series of memos on interrogation, detention and presidential powers.

The best known was a 2002 document that said that rough treatment of captives amounted to torture only if it caused the same level of pain as "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death." The memo also said the president may have the power to authorize torture of enemy combatants.

Another Yoo memo said that U.S. military forces could use any means necessary to seize and hold terror suspects in the United States.

Padilla was arrested in Chicago in 2002 and accused of plotting with al Qaeda to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb." He was held as an enemy combatant in a Navy brig for three years and eight months, then was taken out of the brig and charged with taking part in an unrelated conspiracy to provide money and supplies to Islamic extremist groups. He was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Padilla's suit against Yoo covers his time in the brig. He says the government detained him illegally, denied him contact with the outside world for nearly two years, kept him for lengthy periods in darkness and blinding light, subjected him to temperature extremes, confined him in painful stress positions and threatened him with death.

Padilla says Yoo, a member of a Bush administration planning group known as the "war council," reviewed and approved his detention in the brig and provided the legal cover for his abusive treatment. His suit seeks a token $1 in damages, plus legal fees.

In his June 12 ruling, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco said government lawyers, like any other officials, are "responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their conduct." He said Padilla had a right to sue the "alleged architect of the government policy" on enemy combatants.

The Justice Department, which had represented Yoo in the case, then withdrew and was replaced by private attorneys. They argued in Monday's appeal that Yoo, as a legal adviser to the president, had not been responsible for the decision to detain Padilla, for the conditions of his confinement, or for "any alleged violation of Padilla's rights."

In response, Padilla's lawyers said Yoo's arguments were the same ones White had already rejected. "Lawyers can't aid and abet their clients' crimes," they said in a statement. "And they can't aid and abet their clients' involvement in torture."

The appeals court has not set a hearing date in the case.

Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on Torture for 6 Bush-Era Officials

LONDON — A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said.

The case, against former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others, was sent to the prosecutor’s office for review by Baltasar Garzón, the crusading investigative judge who ordered the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The official said that it was “highly probable” that the case would go forward and that it could lead to arrest warrants.

The move represents a step toward ascertaining the legal accountability of top Bush administration officials for allegations of torture and mistreatment of prisoners in the campaign against terrorism. But some American experts said that even if warrants were issued their significance could be more symbolic than practical, and that it was a near certainty that the warrants would not lead to arrests if the officials did not leave the United States.

The complaint under review also names John C. Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who wrote secret legal opinions saying the president had the authority to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, and Douglas J. Feith, the former under secretary of defense for policy.

Most of the officials cited in the complaint declined to comment on the allegations or could not be reached on Saturday. However their defenders have said their legal analyses and policy work on interrogation practices, conducted under great pressure after the 2001 terrorist attacks, are now being unfairly second-guessed after many years without a terrorist attack on the United States.

The court case was not entirely unexpected, as several human rights groups have been asking judges in different countries to indict Bush administration officials. One group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, had asked a German prosecutor for such an indictment, but the prosecutor declined.

Judge Garzón, however, has built an international reputation by bringing high-profile cases against human rights violators as well as international terrorist networks like Al Qaeda. The arrest warrant for General Pinochet led to his detention in Britain, although he never faced a trial. The judge has also been outspoken about the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

Spain can claim jurisdiction in the case because five citizens or residents of Spain who were prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have said they were tortured there. The five had been indicted in Spain, but their cases were dismissed after the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that evidence obtained under torture was not admissible.

The 98-page complaint, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, is based on the Geneva Conventions and the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which is binding on 145 countries, including Spain and the United States. Countries that are party to the torture convention have the authority to investigate torture cases, especially when a citizen has been abused.

The complaint was prepared by Spanish lawyers, with help from experts in the United States and Europe, and filed by a Spanish human rights group, the Association for the Dignity of Prisoners.

The National Court in Madrid, which specializes in international crimes, assigned the case to Judge Garzón. His acceptance of the case and referral of it to the prosecutor made it likely that a criminal investigation would follow, the official said.

Even so, arrest warrants, if they are issued, would still be months away.

Gonzalo Boye, the Madrid lawyer who filed the complaint, said that the six Americans cited had had well-documented roles in approving illegal interrogation techniques, redefining torture and abandoning the definition set by the 1984 Torture Convention.

Secret memorandums by Mr. Yoo and other top administration lawyers helped clear the way for aggressive policies like waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, which the C.I.A. director, the attorney general and other American officials have said amount to torture.

The other Americans named in the complaint were William J. Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; Jay S. Bybee, Mr. Yoo’s former boss at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and David S. Addington, who was the chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Yoo declined to comment on Saturday, saying that he had not seen or heard of the petition.

Mr. Feith, who was the top policy official at the Pentagon when the prison at Guantánamo was established, said he did not make the decision on interrogation methods and was baffled by the allegations. “I didn’t even argue for the thing I understand they’re objecting to,” he said.

But Mr. Boye said that lawyers should be held accountable for the effects of their work. Noting that the association he represents includes many lawyers, he said: “This is a case from lawyers against lawyers. Our profession does not allow us to misuse our legal knowledge to create a pseudo-legal frame to justify, stimulate and cover up torture.”

Prosecutions and convictions under the Torture Convention have been rare.

Reed Brody, a lawyer at Human Rights Watch who has specialized in this issue, said that even though torture was widely practiced, there were numerous obstacles, including “a lack of political will, the problem of gathering evidence in a foreign country and the failure of countries to pass the necessary laws.”

This year for the first time, the United States used a law that allows it to prosecute torture in other countries. On Jan. 10, a federal court in Miami sentenced Chuckie Taylor, the son of the former Liberian president, to 97 years in a federal prison for torture, even though the crimes were committed in Liberia.

Last October, when the Miami court handed down the conviction, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey applauded the ruling and said: “This is the first case in the United States to charge an individual with criminal torture. I hope this case will serve as a model to future prosecutions of this type.”

The United States, however, would be expected to ignore an extradition request for former officials, although other investigations within the United States have been proposed. Calls for the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation have so far been resisted by the Obama administration, but for more than four years, the Justice Department ethics office has been conducting its own investigation into the work of Mr. Yoo and some of his colleagues.

While the officials named in the complaint have not addressed these specific accusations, Mr. Yoo defended his work in an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal on March 7, warning that the Obama administration risked harming national security if it punished lawyers like himself.

“If the administration chooses to seriously pursue those officials who were charged with preparing for the unthinkable, today’s intelligence and military officials will no doubt hesitate to fully prepare for those contingencies in the future,” Mr. Yoo wrote.

Scott Shane and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 5, 2009
Because of an editing error, an article last Sunday about a Spanish judge’s criminal inquiry into allegations that six Bush administration officials broke international laws banning torture misidentified, in some copies, a foreign defendant in a Miami federal case brought under a law that allows the United States to prosecute torture in other countries. The defendant in that case, concerning torture committed in Liberia, was Chuckie Taylor, also known as Charles Arthur Emmanuel, the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor — not the former president himself.

Innocent

Guantánamo

Torture Victim

Fouad al-Rabiah

Is Released in Kuwait

Thursday 10 December 2009

http://www.truthout.org/1210093

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: takomabibelot / Flickr)

Psychologists face Guantanamo abuse claim

Complaints allege psychologists had role in Guantanamo detainee abuse

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
AP News

Jul 07, 2010 18:30 EDT

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0707/psychologists-guantanamo-abuse-claim/

Introducing The Definitive List Of The Remaining Prisoners In Guantanamo

CIA prisoner activity investigation low on member state's political agenda

Article | March 28, 2012 - 1:32pm | By Rachel Kiser

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2Qvye2/www.neurope.eu/

During a public hearing in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs at the European Parliament on 27 March, representatives of Amnesty International said European countries lacked the political will to carry out in-depth investigations pertaining to the alleged CIA's illegal detention and transfers of prisoners within Europe.

Amnesty International representative Julia Hall highlighted Lithuania’s refusal to resume a pre-trial investigation last fall despite information that Abu Zubaydah, who has been at Guantanamo Bay for the past 10 years, might have been brought to Lithuania to Morocco on a 2005 flight. The prosecutor general’s office stated the new information was not enough to trigger the resurrection of the investigation.

Finland has also refused to launch an in-depth investigation into flights linked to the U.S. secret detention and rendition program, and flights to Lithuania, even though it has made plenty of documents public.

Denmark, the country that currently holds the EU presidency, has plead ignorance to flights related to the US program, despite the fact that a Bucharest-Palanga-Copenhagen flight was mentioned in the conclusions of a parliamentary investigation in Lithuania.

Norwegian authorities have also claimed the US government has assured them there is nothing questionable about flights between Bergen and Oslo mentioned in the context of the U.S. secret detention and rendition program. The country was satisfied with the US explanation there is nothing suspicious.

Amnesty International said a resolution should require member states to conduct human rights probes regarding complicity in the CIA operations, afford redress to the victims and reform any agency that allowed abuses to take place.

The Council of Europe has estimated that 1,245 CIA-operated flights have passed over the continent, but an accurate number may be impossible to figure. In a 2007 probe, Swiss politician Dick Marty accused 14 European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centres or carry out rendition flights over their territories between 2002 and 2005.

 (posted here on joe-anybody.com 3/38/12)