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Torture Headlines:
CIA will not be prosecuted for torture
UN: Not arresting CIA torture agents breaks International Law
Ten 'torture' techniques blessed by Bush Administration
Key players in the Bush 'torture' memos
President Obama releases documents showing CIA 'torture' during Bush-era
Obama shields CIA officers over US 'torture'
Memos describe CIA's harsh interrogation program
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16 April 2009
President Obama exempts CIA 'torture' staff
US President Barack Obama has said that CIA agents who used harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects during the Bush era will not be prosecuted.
The assurance came as memos were released detailing the range of techniques the CIA was allowed to use during the Bush administration.
Amnesty International said the Department of Justice appeared to be offering a "get-out-of-jail-free card" to individuals who were involved in acts of torture.
The Centre for Constitutional Rights, which has championed the legal rights of the "war on terror" detainees, also expressed its disappointment.
"It is one of the deepest disappointments of this administration that it appears unwilling to uphold the law where crimes have been committed by former officials," it said in a statement.
The Obama administration did not say that protection would extend to CIA agents who acted outside the boundaries laid out in the memos, or to those non-CIA staff involved in approving the interrogation limits.
That leaves open the possibility that those lawyers who crafted the legal opinions authorising the techniques, one of whom is now a federal judge, could yet face legal action.
But it seems that the Obama administration does not want any prosecutions and would like the matter closed.
Announcing the release of the four memos, Attorney General Eric Holder said the US was being "consistent with our commitment to the rule of law".
"The president has halted the use of the interrogation techniques described in these opinions, and this administration has made clear from day one that it will not condone torture," he said.
The four secret memos detail the legal justification for the Bush-era CIA interrogation programme, whose methods critics say amounted to torture.
Mr Obama gave an assurance that "those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice... will not be subject to prosecution".
One of the documents contained legal authorisation for a list of specific harsh interrogation techniques, including pushing detainees against a wall, facial slaps, cramped confinement, stress positions and sleep deprivation.
The memo also authorises the use of "waterboarding", or simulated drowning, and the placing of a detainee into a confined space with an insect.
Critics of the Bush-era interrogation programme say the newly-released memos provide evidence that many of the methods amount to torture under US and international law.
"Bottom line here is you've had crimes committed," Amnesty International analyst Tom Parker told the BBC.
"These are criminal acts. Torture is illegal under American law, it's illegal under international law. America has an international obligation to prosecute the individuals who carry out these kind of acts."
Mr Parker said the decision to allow the use of insects in interrogation was reminiscent of the Room 101 nightmare described by George Orwell in his seminal novel, 1984.
The release of the memos stems from a request by civil rights group the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
UN expert criticizes US torture decision
VIENNA — United Nations top torture investigator said President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who used questionable interrogation practices violates international law. Manfred Nowak said the United States has committed itself under the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture a crime and to prosecute those suspected of engaging in it.
Obama assured CIA operatives they would not be prosecuted for their rough interrogation tactics of terror suspects under the former Bush administration.
Nowak also says that a comprehensive independent investigation is needed, and that it is important to compensate victims.
Ten 'torture' techniques blessed by Bush Administration
In this August 1, 2002 memo to John Rizzo, the acting general counsel of the CIA, Jay S Bybee of the US Department of Justice approves ten methods of "enhanced interrogation" on the suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah
These ten techniques are: (l) attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap (insult slap), (5) cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress positions, (8) sleep deprivation, (9) insects placed in a confinement box, and (10) the waterboard.
You have informed us that the use of these techniques would be on an as-needed basis and that not all of these techniques will necessarily be used.
The interrogation team would use these techniques in some combination to convince Zubaydah that the only way he can influence his surrounding environment is through co-operation. You have, however, informed us that you expect these techniques to be used in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.
Moreover, you have also orally informed us that although some of these techniques may be used more than once, that repetition will not be substantial because the techniques generally lose their effectiveness after several repetitions. You have also informed us that Zubaydah sustained a wound during his capture, which is being treated.
Based on the facts you have given us, we understand each of these techniques to be as follows.
Attention grasp
The attention grasp consists of grasping the individual with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion. In the same motion as the grasp, the individual is drawn toward the interrogator.
Walling
For walling, a flexible false wall will be constructed. The individual is placed with his heels touching the wall. The interrogator pulls the individual forward and then quickly and firmly pushes the individual into the wall. It is the individual's shoulder blades that hit the wall.
During this motion, the head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a c-collar effect to help prevent whiplash. To further reduce the probability of injury, the individual is allowed to rebound from the flexible wall. You have orally informed us that the false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock or surprise the individual. In part, the idea is to create a sound that will make the impact seem far worse than it is and that will be far worse than any injury that might result from the action.
Facial hold
The facial hold is used to hold the head immobile. One open palm is placed on either side of the individual's face. The fingertips are kept well away from the individual's eyes.
Facial slap
With the facial slap or insult slap, the interrogator slaps the individual's face with fingers slightly spread. The hand makes contact with the area directly between the tip of the individual's chin and the bottom of the corresponding earlobe. The interrogator invades the individual' s personal space. The goal of the facial slap is not to inflict physical pain that is severe or lasting. Instead, the purpose of the facial slap is to induce shock, surprise, and/or humiliation.
Cramped confinement
Cramped confinement involves the placement of the individual in a confined space, the dimensions of which restrict the individual's movement. The confined space is usually dark.
The duration of confinement varies based upon the size of the container. For the larger confined space, the individual can stand up or sit down; the smaller space is large enough for the subject to sit down. Confinement in the larger space can last up to eighteen hours; for the smaller space, confinement lasts for no more than two hours.
Wall standing
Wall standing is used to induce muscle fatigue. The individual stands about four to five feet from a wall, with his feet spread approximately to shoulder width. His arms are stretched out in front of him, with his fingers resting on the wall. His fingers support all of his body weight. The individual is not permitted to move or reposition his hands or feel.
Stress positions
A variety of stress positions may be used. You have informed us that these positions are not designed to produce the pain associated with contortions or twisting of the body, Rather, somewhat like walling, they are designed to produce the physical discomfort associated with muscle fatigue. Two particular stress positions are likely to be used on Zubaydah: (1) sitting on the floor with legs extended straight out in front of him with his hands raised above his head; and (2) kneeling on the floor while leaning back at a 45 degree angle. You have also orally informed us that through observing Zubaydah in captivity, you have noted that he appears to be quite flexible despite his wound.
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation may be used. You have indicated that your purpose in using this technique is to reduce the individual's ability to think on his feet and, through the discomfort associated with lack of sleep to motivate him to cooperate. The effect of such sleep deprivation will generally remit after one or two nights of uninterrupted sleep.
You have informed us that your research has revealed that, in rare instances, some individuals who are already predisposed to psychological problems may experience abnormal reactions to sleep deprivation.
Even in those cases, however, reactions abate after the individual is permitted to sleep. Moreover, personnel with medical training are available to and will intervene in the unlikely event of an abnormal reaction. You have orally informed us that you would not deprive Zubaydah of sleep for more than eleven days at a time and that you have previously kept him awake for 72 hours, from which no mental or physical harm resulted.
Confinement with insects
You would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us that he appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him, You would, however, place a harmless insect in the box. You have orally informed us that you would in fact face a harmless insect such as a caterpillar in the box with him.
Waterboarding
Finally, you would like to use a technique called the "waterboard" in this procedure, the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet.
The individual's feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it covers both the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth and nose, air flow is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth. This causes an increase in carbon dioxide level in the individual's blood. This increase in the carbon dioxide level stimulates increased effort to breathe. This effort plus the cloth produces the perception of suffocation and incipient panic," i.e., the perception of drowning.
The individual does not breathe any water into his lungs. During those 20 to 40 seconds, water is continuously applied from a height of twelve to twenty-four inches. After this period, the cloth is lifted, and the individual is allowed to breathe unimpeded for three or four full breaths. The sensation of drowning is immediately relieved by the removal of the cloth. The procedure may then be repeated. The water is usually applied from a canteen cup or small watering can with a spout.
You have orally informed us that this procedure triggers an automatic physiological sensation of drowning that the individual cannot control even though he may be aware that he is in fact not drowning. You have also orally informed us that it is likely that this procedure would not last more than 20 minutes in anyone application.
We also understand that a medical expert with SERE experience will be present throughout this phase and that the procedures will be stopped if deemed medically necessary to prevent severe mental or physical harm to Zubaydah. As mentioned above, Zubaydah suffered an injury during his capture. You have informed us that steps will be taken to ensure that this injury is not in any way exacerbated by the use of these methods and that adequate medical attention will be given to ensure that it will heal properly.
Key players in the Bush 'torture' memos
Abu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah was one of the first senior al-Qaeda suspects to be captured. At the time he was said to have been one of the masterminds of the September 11 attacks, US officials claimed he was al-Qaeda's third in command.
The Palestinian-born man was captured in Pakistan, in March 2002, and then interrogated in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. According to US officials he has given information that foiled major terror attacks, however he has never been charged with any crime and remains in custody.
In a Red Cross report on Guantánamo Bay this year he was quoted saying of his waterboarding: "I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then, I still lose control of my urine when under stress".
"I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop,” he said.
John Rizzo
The current Acting General Counsel, John Rizzo, has worked for the CIA for more than 30 years.
The documents published by President Obama yesterday show that on at least three occasions Mr Rizzo asked the US Justice Department for explicit confirmation that the “enhanced interrogation” techniques employed by CIA agents did not breach the Bush Administration’s definition of torture.
Jay. S Bybee
The Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel signed the Justice Department memo from August 2002 approving the CIA’s interrogation techniques. Three years later he was promoted to become a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeal by President Bush.
Steven G. Bradbury
Soon after signing a memo to the CIA in May 2005 approving “enhanced interrogation” techniques, President Bush nominated him to become the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. Democrats in the Senate stymied that move and Mr Bradbury left the Justice Department at the end of the Bush Administration.
President Obama releases documents showing CIA 'torture' during Bush-era
But Obama ruled out prosecutions, saying the US needed a time of reflection, not retribution
President Obama last night released documents detailing the harsh CIA interrogation techniques that had been kept secret by the Bush Administration as he declared that it was time to move beyond "a dark and painful chapter in our history".
Four memos published yesterday showed that terror suspects had been subjected to tactics such as being slammed against walls wearing a special plastic neck collar, kept awake for up to 11 straight days, simulated drowning known as "waterboarding" and being placed in a dark, cramped box.
The CIA also approved exploiting one detainee's fear of insects by putting caterpillars in the box with him. Others were kept naked and cold for long periods, denied food, shackled for prolonged periods or had their family threatened.
Many senior figures in the Obama Administration, as well as human rights groups, believe that such practices amounted to torture.
Both the President and Attorney General Eric Holder, however, reassured CIA operatives yesterday that those involved in the interrogations would not face criminal prosecution so long as they had adhered to the legal advice given to them at the time from the Justice Department.
"Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past," said the President. "This is a time for reflection, not retribution."
CIA Dicrector Leon Pannetta told employees that the interrogation practices had been approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration and that they had nothing to fear if they had followed the rules. "You need to be fully confident that as you defend the nation, I will defend you," he said.
The techniques were used against 14 detainees that the US considered to have high intelligence value after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks between 2002 and 2005. These included the alleged al-Qaeda mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who had initially refused to answer questions about other plots against the US.
Bush Administration officials believe that the "enhanced interrogations" subsequently used on him helped avert further attacks including one to crash a hijacked airliner into a tower in Los Angeles.
The memos, however, show just how much effort went into squaring the techniques with the letter, if not the spirit, of international laws against torture. Interrogators were told not to allow a prisoner's body temperature or food intake to fall below a certain level, because either could cause permanent damage. Passages describing forced nudity, slamming into walls, sleep deprivation and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees were interspersed with complex legal arguments about what constituted torture.
One memo authorised a method for combining multiple techniques, a practice that human rights lawyers claim crosses the line into torture even if any individual methods did not.
Although some sections were still redacted last night, the CIA had unsuccessfully argued for large parts of the documents to be blacked out. General Michael Hayden, who led the CIA during the Bush Administration, said: "If you want an intelligence service to work for you, they always work on the edge. That's just where they work." Foreign partners will be less likely to co-operate with the US because the release shows that it "can't keep anything secret".
Mr Obama, however, said that much of the information had already been widely publicised and it was important to emphasise that the programme no longer exists as it once did. Withholding the memos, he suggested, "could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States".
The documents were disclosed to meet a court-approved deadline in a legal case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's impossible not to be shocked by the contents of these memos," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer. "The memos should never have been written, but we're pleased the new administration has made them public."
Obama shields CIA officers over US 'torture'
AFP - US President Barack Obama has assured CIA agents involved in tough terror interrogations they will not be prosecuted as he released graphic memos detailing methods approved by the Bush White House.
In documents published Thursday, George W. Bush-era legal officials argued that the tactics such as simulated drowning, face slapping, the use of insects to scare prisoners and sleep deprivation did not amount to torture. "This is a time for reflection, not retribution," Obama said.
The four memos offered a stunning glimpse inside the covert interrogation program introduced after the September 11 attacks in 2001, which critics say amounted to torture, and Obama said undermined America's moral authority.
The documents argued that a long list of coercive techniques did not equal torture since they did not inflict severe mental or physical pain.Detailing methods used to question Al-Qaeda terror suspects, the memos reveal the use of dietary manipulation, forced nudity, facial and abdominal slaps, and the use of confined or "stress positions" for suspects.
In one technique known as "walling," interrogators could push a suspect against a false wall, so his shoulder blades make a slamming noise and lead him to think the impact is greater than in reality.
The memos also show interrogators asked for a ruling on whether the placing of a harmless insect in a cramped box with Al-Qaeda terror suspect Abu Zubaydah -- who had a bug phobia -- equated to torture.
The technique "certainly does not cause physical pain" and therefore could not be termed as torture and should be permissible, one of the memos said.
Similarly, techniques including waterboarding or simulated drowning, walling and sleep deprivation also fell short of torture, the memos said.Another memo details a "prototypical interrogation," which begins with a detainee stripped of his clothes, shackled and hooded, "with the walling collar over his head and around his neck."
Human rights groups reacted with dismay to Obama's decision to shield interrogators from prosecution.
"The Department of Justice appears to be offering a get-out-of-jail-free card to individuals who, by US Attorney General Eric Holder's own estimation, were involved in acts of torture," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International.
In a statement, Obama said the tactics adopted by the administration of his predecessor "undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer."
He said he was releasing the documents to avoid "an inaccurate accounting of the past," which would "fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States."
"In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution," he said in a statement.
"The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world," he said.
Dennis Blair, the director of National Intelligence, said the torture memos must be read in the context of the "horror" of the September 11 attacks.
"Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing," he said. "But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos and those guidelines."
He pledged, however, that Washington would not use similar methods in the future.
Memos describe CIA's harsh interrogation program
AP - The journey into the CIA's most extreme interrogation program began in darkness.
Blindfolded, hooded and wearing earmuffs, suspected terrorists were shackled and flown to secret interrogation centers. The buildings themselves were quiet, clinical and designed to fill prisoners with dread. Detainees were shaved, stripped and photographed nude.
The questioning began mildly, a shackled detainee facing a non-threatening CIA interrogator. But for detainees who refused to cooperate, the interrogation escalated in terrifying ways.
Few people have ever witnessed the process, which was designed to extract secrets from "high value" suspects during the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks on the U.S. But Justice Department documents, which the Obama administration simultaneously released and repudiated Thursday, describe the process from darkness to waterboarding in skin-crawling detail.
Prisoners were naked, shackled and hooded to start their interrogation sessions. When the CIA interrogator removed the hood, the questioning began. Whenever the prisoner resisted, the documents outlined a series of techniques the CIA could use to bring him back in line:
_ Nudity, sleep deprivation and dietary restrictions kept prisoners compliant and reminded them they had no control over their basic needs. Clothes and food could be used as rewards for cooperation.
_ Slapping prisoners on the face or abdomen was allowed. So was grabbing them forcefully by the collar or slamming them into a false wall, a technique called "walling" that had a goal of fear more than pain.
_ Water hoses were used to douse the prisoners for minutes at a time. The hoses were turned on and off as the interrogation continued.
_ Prisoners were put into one of three in "stress positions," such as sitting on the floor with legs out straight and arms raised in the air to cause discomfort.
At night, the detainees were shackled, standing naked or wearing a diaper. The length of sleep deprivation varied by prisoner but was authorized for up to 180 hours, or 7 1/2 days. Interrogation sessions ranged from 30 minutes to several hours and could be repeated as necessary and as approved by psychological and medical teams.
Some of these techniques, such as stripping a detainee naked, depriving him of sleep and putting a hood over his head, are prohibited under the U.S. Army Field Manual. But in 2002, the Justice Department authorized CIA interrogators to step up the pressure even further on suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah.
Justice Department lawyers said the CIA could place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box. Because Zubaydah appeared afraid of insects, they also authorized interrogators to place him in a box and fill it box with caterpillars (that tactic ultimately was not used).
Finally, the Justice Department authorized interrogators to take a step into what the United States now considers torture, waterboarding.
The Bush administration approved the use of waterboarding, a technique in which Zubaydah was strapped to a board, his feet raised above his head. His face was covered with a wet cloth as interrogators poured water over it.
The body responds as if it is drowning, over and over as the process is repeated."
We find that the use of the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death," Justice Department attorneys wrote. "From the vantage point of any reasonable person undergoing this procedure in such circumstances, he would feel as if he is drowning at the very moment of the procedure due to the uncontrollable physiological sensation he is experiencing."
But attorneys decided that waterboarding caused "no pain or actual harm whatsoever" and so did not meet the "severe pain and suffering" standard to be considered torture.
President Barack Obama has ended the CIA's interrogation program. CIA interrogators are now required to follow Army guidelines, under which waterboarding and many of the techniques listed above are prohibited.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8003537.stm
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Friday, 17 April 2009
Thursday, 16 April 2009
US Soldier Murdered Iraqi Prisoners
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U.S. Soldier Guilty of Murdering Iraq Detainees
15 April 2009
U.S. Court finds John Hately guilty of killing four bound and blindfolded Iraqis.
A U.S. Army Sergeant was found guilty Wednesday of the murder of four detainees in Iraq in 2007, but acquitted in the death of a fifth. John E. Hatley, 40, was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, but cleared on one count of obstruction of justice. Had entered a plea of not guilty, showed no emotion as the verdict from the eight-member jury was read out. He embraced his wife and soldiers from his former unit afterwards.
Hatley had been accused of involvement in two separate incidents. The first involved the shooting of a wounded detainee who medics said was close to death on or about January 3, 2007.
The second shooting -- of four blindfolded detainees -- allegedly took place in March or April 2007 in or near southwest Baghdad. Hatley was the highest ranking of three soldiers to face trial for killing the four detainees who, prosecutors say, were shot "execution style".
Private Michael Leahy, a combat medic, and Sergeant First Class Joseph P. Mayo were found guilty in March and sentenced to life and 35 years in prison respectively, with the possibility of parole.
An exact date and location have not been determined for the second shooting, however, and the bodies, which witnesses said were dumped into a canal, have never been found.
At the time, Hartley's unit was coming to terms with a fatal sniper attack on another sergeant a few weeks earlier.
The men were stationed at a highly exposed combat outpost in West Rashid, one of the most violent Baghdad neighbourhoods at the time.
Most civilian deaths in Iraq from executions
The most common cause of death for civilians in the first five years of the Iraq war was execution after being kidnapped, according to a report published Wednesday by an independent casualties monitor. Iraq Body Count (IBC), a group supported by researchers from the United States and Britain, said that such killings accounted for 33 percent of all civilian deaths in the five years after the 2003 US-led invasion. Based on a systematic survey of media accounts the group found that at least 19,706 people were kidnapped and executed during that period and that the remains of 5,760 of them, nearly one third, showed signs of torture.
The second leading cause of death was small arms gunfire, which killed 11,877 people. Suicide bombers killed 8,708 people during the same period and car bombs killed 5,360.
In the months after the invasion Iraq erupted with a fierce insurgency that briefly united Sunni and Shiite Muslims before it was convulsed by a wave of gruesome sectarian killings that peaked in 2006. At the height of the violence armed gangs were abducting, torturing and executing dozens of people each day. Bodies were frequently found with bruises, burns, and holes drilled into them with power tools. In the last two years US and Iraqi forces have allied with local tribes and former insurgents to bring a fragile calm to most areas, but armed groups continue to carry out sporadic attacks across the country.
The survey was conducted by IBC and researchers at Kings College and the University of London. It was to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday.
The researchers excluded more than 10,027 deaths that took place during periods of "prolonged violence" including the first weeks of the invasion and the US assault on the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah in November 2004.
U.S. Soldier Guilty of Murdering Iraq Detainees
15 April 2009
U.S. Court finds John Hately guilty of killing four bound and blindfolded Iraqis.
A U.S. Army Sergeant was found guilty Wednesday of the murder of four detainees in Iraq in 2007, but acquitted in the death of a fifth. John E. Hatley, 40, was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, but cleared on one count of obstruction of justice. Had entered a plea of not guilty, showed no emotion as the verdict from the eight-member jury was read out. He embraced his wife and soldiers from his former unit afterwards.
Hatley had been accused of involvement in two separate incidents. The first involved the shooting of a wounded detainee who medics said was close to death on or about January 3, 2007.
The second shooting -- of four blindfolded detainees -- allegedly took place in March or April 2007 in or near southwest Baghdad. Hatley was the highest ranking of three soldiers to face trial for killing the four detainees who, prosecutors say, were shot "execution style".
Private Michael Leahy, a combat medic, and Sergeant First Class Joseph P. Mayo were found guilty in March and sentenced to life and 35 years in prison respectively, with the possibility of parole.
An exact date and location have not been determined for the second shooting, however, and the bodies, which witnesses said were dumped into a canal, have never been found.
At the time, Hartley's unit was coming to terms with a fatal sniper attack on another sergeant a few weeks earlier.
The men were stationed at a highly exposed combat outpost in West Rashid, one of the most violent Baghdad neighbourhoods at the time.
Most civilian deaths in Iraq from executions
The most common cause of death for civilians in the first five years of the Iraq war was execution after being kidnapped, according to a report published Wednesday by an independent casualties monitor. Iraq Body Count (IBC), a group supported by researchers from the United States and Britain, said that such killings accounted for 33 percent of all civilian deaths in the five years after the 2003 US-led invasion. Based on a systematic survey of media accounts the group found that at least 19,706 people were kidnapped and executed during that period and that the remains of 5,760 of them, nearly one third, showed signs of torture.
The second leading cause of death was small arms gunfire, which killed 11,877 people. Suicide bombers killed 8,708 people during the same period and car bombs killed 5,360.
In the months after the invasion Iraq erupted with a fierce insurgency that briefly united Sunni and Shiite Muslims before it was convulsed by a wave of gruesome sectarian killings that peaked in 2006. At the height of the violence armed gangs were abducting, torturing and executing dozens of people each day. Bodies were frequently found with bruises, burns, and holes drilled into them with power tools. In the last two years US and Iraqi forces have allied with local tribes and former insurgents to bring a fragile calm to most areas, but armed groups continue to carry out sporadic attacks across the country.
The survey was conducted by IBC and researchers at Kings College and the University of London. It was to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday.
The researchers excluded more than 10,027 deaths that took place during periods of "prolonged violence" including the first weeks of the invasion and the US assault on the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah in November 2004.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
US Doctors Torture Suspects
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Red Cross says doctors helped CIA "torture"
By Jane Sutton - Reuters - Tue Apr 7, 2009 4:04pm EDT
MIAMI (Reuters) - Health workers violated medical ethics when they helped interrogate terrorism suspects who were tortured at secret CIA prisons overseas, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.The medical workers, thought to be doctors and psychologists, monitored prisoners while they were mistreated at CIA prisons and advised interrogators whether to continue, adjust or halt the abuse, the ICRC said in a report based on interviews with 14 prisoners in 2007.
One prisoner alleged that medical personnel monitored his blood oxygen levels while he was subjected to waterboarding, a simulated drowning designed to induce panic and widely considered to be torture, the ICRC said.Other prisoners said that as they stood shackled with their arms chained above their heads, a doctor regularly measured the swelling in their legs and signaled when they should be allowed to sit down.The ICRC interviewed 14 men who had been held in secret CIA prisons overseas before being sent to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006.The 14 are considered by the United States to be "high-value" al Qaeda suspects who plotted or carried out mass murders, including the September 11 attacks and the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings. They had been held by the CIA, most for more than three years, in extreme isolation and had not been allowed contact with each other when the ICRC interviewed them at Guantanamo in November 2007.The ICRC said their claims had credence because they gave similar accounts of their treatment, including the actions of medical monitors whose names they never learned.The ICRC monitors compliance with the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war captives and keeps its reports secret, sharing them only with the detaining government.The report, written in 2007, was posted on the New York Review of Books website on Monday night by journalist Mark Danner, who has not said publicly how he obtained it."VIOLATED ETHICAL DUTY"He first published excerpts last month, including a portion in which the ICRC concluded the al Qaeda captives' treatment in the CIA prisons "constituted torture" and violated international law.The report alleges collars were placed around some prisoners' necks and used to slam their heads against the walls, and that they were forced to stand with their arms shackled above them for two or three days and left to urinate or defecate on themselves.The prisoners told the ICRC they were beaten and kicked, left naked for long periods, subjected to sleep deprivation, loud music, cold temperatures, rape threats and forced shaving. Some said they were denied solid food unless they cooperated with interrogators and one said he was confined in a crouching position in a box too short to stand in.A previously undisclosed portion of the report concluded that medical workers who monitored or took part in the interrogations had violated their ethical duty to do no harm, preserve dignity and act in patients' best interest.The ICRC said "any interrogation process that requires a health professional to either pronounce on the subject's fitness to withstand such a procedure, or which requires a health professional to monitor the actual procedure, must have inherent health risks." "As such, the interrogation process is contrary to international law and the participation of health personnel in such a process is contrary to international standards of medical ethics," the ICRC concluded.The "high-value" captives quoted in the report are still at the Guantanamo prison, which President Barack Obama has ordered shut down by January 2010, and debate continues over what should be done with them.A military judge released a statement last month in which some of them bragged that they were "terrorists to the bone".Bush administration officials have said the "enhanced interrogation" of those prisoners produced information that helped thwart attacks but have never provided specifics.(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Jackie Frank)
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE53668720090407
Medics joined CIA 'torture' sessions: Red Cross
WASHINGTON (AFP)
US medical personnel took part in CIA torture sessions in a "gross breach of medical ethics," the Red Cross concludes in a confidential report leaked this week.Medical officers monitored and sometimes participated in waterboarding terror suspects, and were present when the detainees were slammed into walls, subjected to temperature extremes or deprived of food and sleep for days, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The allegations were featured in a February 2007 report partially leaked by the New York Review of Books last month and posted for the first time in its entirety on the magazine's website Monday.ICRC spokesman Bernard Barrett confirmed to AFP the authenticity of the leaked report, which had been intended only for high-ranking US government officials.A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the report.The 40-page document is based on ICRC interviews with 14 "high-value" detainees sent to the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2006, following spells at secret CIA detention centers abroad.In the interviews, detainees told the ICRC that medical workers took part in torture and fine-tuned the harshness of treatment.They at times "gave instructions to interrogators to continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods," detainees say in the ICRC report.One medical official told detainee Encep "Hambali" Nuraman: "I look after your body only because we need you for information," the report said.It said the health personnel's alleged participation "constituted a gross breach of medical ethics and, in some cases, amounted to participation in torture and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."Their main role was "to serve the interrogation process, and not the patient," the Red Cross noted. "In so doing, the health personnel have condoned, and participated in ill-treatment."Alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said that his oxygen and pulse were monitored when he was waterboarded, and that the simulated drowning was stopped on several occasions at the request of a health person.Walid bin Attash, a detainee who had had one leg amputated, said a person he assumed to be a doctor checked his healthy leg for swelling while he was held with his arms shackled above his head.The medical attendant eventually ordered bin Attash to be allowed to sit on the floor.At least five copies of the report had been shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007, but were barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the organization's neutrality."We deplore that a confidential report was made public," Barrett said. "It was only intended to be shared with senior officials in the US government."The report is a new embarrassment for the former administration of president George W. Bush. It said that beyond the ill-treatment of the 14 prisoners interviewed, their detention amounted to "arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearance, in contravention of international law."Shortly after taking office in January, President Barack Obama banned the use of torture and ordered the closure of all CIA detention facilities.Obama has so far been cool on calls for enquiries into alleged abuses under his predecessor, but he has not ruled out possible prosecutions.CIA spokesman George Little noted that the White House has ordered agents to "not use interrogation techniques outside the Army Field Manual."He also said that no one acting "on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time" faced investigation or punishment.
Call It Torture
by Dan Froomkin - 16 March 2009 - Washginton Post 1:20 PM ET
Here's another good reason to have some sort of authoritative public reckoning of the Bush administration's dark legacy: Until we deal with it once and for all, it will come back to haunt us time and time again. The latest reminder of horror is now upon us, from the mouths of brutalized detainees and in the form of a conclusion by the International Red Cross -- the world's authority on the subject -- that their treatment undeniably amounted to torture.
Mark Danner, one of the great chroniclers of the Bush administration, somehow obtained a copy of the international organization's confidential report based on its interviews with the 14 "high value detainees" who were held in the CIA's network of secret prisons for periods ranging from 16 months to almost four and a half years.His article in the New York Review of Books is harrowing, deeply disturbing -- and an absolutely essential read. He also published a shorter version as a New York Times op-ed yesterday.The report, which made the rounds of the CIA and the White House two years ago, offers a damning portrait of cruelty. From the statements of individual detainees who had never been allowed to speak to each other, a clear method emerges based on forced nudity, isolation, bombardment with noise and light, deprivation of sleep and food, forced standing, repeated beatings and countless applications of cold water including, of course, waterboarding.The ICRC's conclusion is inescapable: "The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."As Danner tells NPR: "Its determination that these activities were torture is absolutely definitive, absolutely authoritative. These activities were torture. The International Committee of the Red Cross says so, and they use the definitions in treaties the United States has signed on to."Compare this with, for instance, former president George W. Bush's September 6, 2006, speech, in which he for the first time publicly acknowledged the existence of the secret prisons and what he called the CIA's "alternative set of procedures" for interrogation. "These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty obligations," he said. "The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful. I cannot describe the specific methods used -- I think you understand why -- if I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary."Here is what Abu Zubaydah, the first al Qaeda operative to be captured and tortured, told the ICRC, via Danner: "'I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.'"The prisoner was then put in a coffin-like black box, about 4 feet by 3 feet and 6 feet high, 'for what I think was about one and a half to two hours.' He added: The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.'"By the time al Qaeda operative Walid bin Attash was captured a year later, Danner writes, the CIA was instead using "a plastic collar, which seems to have been a refinement of the towel that had been looped around Abu Zubaydah's neck."Here is alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed describing his waterboarding: "I would be strapped to a special bed, which could be rotated into a vertical position. A cloth would be placed over my face. Cold water from a bottle that had been kept in a fridge was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe.... The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about one hour. Injuries to my ankles and wrists also occurred during the water-boarding as I struggled in the panic of not being able to breath. Female interrogators were also present...and a doctor was always present, standing out of sight behind the head of [the] bed, but I saw him when he came to fix a clip to my finger which was connected to a machine. I think it was to measure my pulse and oxygen content in my blood. So they could take me to [the] breaking point."And don't think these actions and many others can't be traced directly back to the White House. They can.In December 2007, FBI agent John Kiriakou, who participated in Zubaydah's capture and early questioning, told ABC News that every decision leading to the torture of CIA detainees was documented and approved in cables to and from Washington. And last April, ABC News reported that top Bush aides, including former vice president Cheney, micromanaged interrogation tactics from the White House basement."The high-level discussions about these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were so detailed," ABC's sources said, "some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic." Those discussions started right after Zubaydah's capture in the spring of 2002. According to ABC, the CIA briefed the White House group on its plans to use aggressive techniques against Zubaydah and received explicit approval.Techniques that created damage short of "the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function" were later authorized in an August 2002 Justice Department memo, known as the Torture Memo.For his part, Danner traces it all back to the administration's message after 9/11 that the gloves were to come off. "It is no accident that two of the administration's most powerful officials, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, served as young men in very senior positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations. They had witnessed firsthand the gloves going on and, in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, they argued powerfully that it was those limitations — and, it was implied, not a failure to heed warnings — that had helped lead, however indirectly, to the country's vulnerability to attack."And so, after a devastating and unprecedented attack, the gloves came off. Guided by the President and his closest advisers, the United States transformed itself from a country that, officially at least, condemned torture to a country that practiced it. And this fateful decision, however much we may want it to, will not go away, any more than the fourteen 'high-value detainees,' tortured and thus unprosecutable, will go away. Like the grotesque stories in the ICRC report, the decision sits before us, a toxic fact, polluting our political and moral life."Danner writes about "the dark moral epic of the Bush administration, in the coils of whose contradictions we find ourselves entangled still." And there are many such contradictions. Among them: "Consider the uncompromising words of Eric Holder, the attorney general, who in reply to a direct question at his confirmation hearings had declared, 'waterboarding is torture.' There is nothing ambiguous about this statement — nor about the equally blunt statements of several high Bush administration officials, including the former vice-president and the director of the CIA, confirming unequivocally that the administration had ordered and directed that prisoners under its control be waterboarded."Another major theme of Danner's piece is that, despite the repeated assertions of the Bush administration, there's no evidence that, at long last, any of this torture did us any good at all. That's another point I couldn't agree with more. "In the wake of the ICRC report one can make several definitive statements," Danner writes: "1. Beginning in the spring of 2002 the United States government began to torture prisoners. This torture, approved by the President of the United States and monitored in its daily unfolding by senior officials, including the nation's highest law enforcement officer, clearly violated major treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, as well as US law."2. The most senior officers of the US government, President George W. Bush first among them, repeatedly and explicitly lied about this, both in reports to international institutions and directly to the public. The President lied about it in news conferences, interviews, and, most explicitly, in speeches expressly intended to set out the administration's policy on interrogation before the people who had elected him."3. The US Congress, already in possession of a great deal of information about the torture conducted by the administration—which had been covered widely in the press, and had been briefed, at least in part, from the outset to a select few of its members—passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and in so doing attempted to protect those responsible from criminal penalty under the War Crimes Act."4. Democrats, who could have filibustered the bill, declined to do so — a decision that had much to do with the proximity of the midterm elections, in the run-up to which, they feared, the President and his Republican allies might gain advantage by accusing them of 'coddling terrorists.'..."5. The political damage to the United States' reputation, and to the 'soft power' of its constitutional and democratic ideals, has been, though difficult to quantify, vast and enduring. In a war that is essentially an insurgency fought on a worldwide scale—which is to say, a political war, in which the attitudes and allegiances of young Muslims are the critical target of opportunity—the United States' decision to use torture has resulted in an enormous self-administered defeat, undermining liberal sympathizers of the United States and convincing others that the country is exactly as its enemies paint it: a ruthless imperial power determined to suppress and abuse Muslims. By choosing to torture, we freely chose to become the caricature they made of us."Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate write in The Washington Post that "[a]t least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007..."Many of the details of alleged mistreatment at CIA prisons had been reported previously, but the ICRC report is the most authoritative account and the first to use the word 'torture' in a legal context. "The CIA declined to comment. A U.S. official familiar with the report said, 'It is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves.'..."'These reports are from an impeccable source,' said Geneve Mantri, a counterterrorism specialist at Amnesty International. 'It's clear that senior officials were warned from the very beginning that the treatment that detainees were subjected to amounted to torture. This story goes even further and deeper than many us of suspected. The more details we find out, the more shocking this becomes.'"
------
Red Cross says doctors helped CIA "torture"
By Jane Sutton - Reuters - Tue Apr 7, 2009 4:04pm EDT
MIAMI (Reuters) - Health workers violated medical ethics when they helped interrogate terrorism suspects who were tortured at secret CIA prisons overseas, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.The medical workers, thought to be doctors and psychologists, monitored prisoners while they were mistreated at CIA prisons and advised interrogators whether to continue, adjust or halt the abuse, the ICRC said in a report based on interviews with 14 prisoners in 2007.
One prisoner alleged that medical personnel monitored his blood oxygen levels while he was subjected to waterboarding, a simulated drowning designed to induce panic and widely considered to be torture, the ICRC said.Other prisoners said that as they stood shackled with their arms chained above their heads, a doctor regularly measured the swelling in their legs and signaled when they should be allowed to sit down.The ICRC interviewed 14 men who had been held in secret CIA prisons overseas before being sent to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006.The 14 are considered by the United States to be "high-value" al Qaeda suspects who plotted or carried out mass murders, including the September 11 attacks and the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings. They had been held by the CIA, most for more than three years, in extreme isolation and had not been allowed contact with each other when the ICRC interviewed them at Guantanamo in November 2007.The ICRC said their claims had credence because they gave similar accounts of their treatment, including the actions of medical monitors whose names they never learned.The ICRC monitors compliance with the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war captives and keeps its reports secret, sharing them only with the detaining government.The report, written in 2007, was posted on the New York Review of Books website on Monday night by journalist Mark Danner, who has not said publicly how he obtained it."VIOLATED ETHICAL DUTY"He first published excerpts last month, including a portion in which the ICRC concluded the al Qaeda captives' treatment in the CIA prisons "constituted torture" and violated international law.The report alleges collars were placed around some prisoners' necks and used to slam their heads against the walls, and that they were forced to stand with their arms shackled above them for two or three days and left to urinate or defecate on themselves.The prisoners told the ICRC they were beaten and kicked, left naked for long periods, subjected to sleep deprivation, loud music, cold temperatures, rape threats and forced shaving. Some said they were denied solid food unless they cooperated with interrogators and one said he was confined in a crouching position in a box too short to stand in.A previously undisclosed portion of the report concluded that medical workers who monitored or took part in the interrogations had violated their ethical duty to do no harm, preserve dignity and act in patients' best interest.The ICRC said "any interrogation process that requires a health professional to either pronounce on the subject's fitness to withstand such a procedure, or which requires a health professional to monitor the actual procedure, must have inherent health risks." "As such, the interrogation process is contrary to international law and the participation of health personnel in such a process is contrary to international standards of medical ethics," the ICRC concluded.The "high-value" captives quoted in the report are still at the Guantanamo prison, which President Barack Obama has ordered shut down by January 2010, and debate continues over what should be done with them.A military judge released a statement last month in which some of them bragged that they were "terrorists to the bone".Bush administration officials have said the "enhanced interrogation" of those prisoners produced information that helped thwart attacks but have never provided specifics.(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Jackie Frank)
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE53668720090407
Medics joined CIA 'torture' sessions: Red Cross
WASHINGTON (AFP)
US medical personnel took part in CIA torture sessions in a "gross breach of medical ethics," the Red Cross concludes in a confidential report leaked this week.Medical officers monitored and sometimes participated in waterboarding terror suspects, and were present when the detainees were slammed into walls, subjected to temperature extremes or deprived of food and sleep for days, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The allegations were featured in a February 2007 report partially leaked by the New York Review of Books last month and posted for the first time in its entirety on the magazine's website Monday.ICRC spokesman Bernard Barrett confirmed to AFP the authenticity of the leaked report, which had been intended only for high-ranking US government officials.A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the report.The 40-page document is based on ICRC interviews with 14 "high-value" detainees sent to the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2006, following spells at secret CIA detention centers abroad.In the interviews, detainees told the ICRC that medical workers took part in torture and fine-tuned the harshness of treatment.They at times "gave instructions to interrogators to continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods," detainees say in the ICRC report.One medical official told detainee Encep "Hambali" Nuraman: "I look after your body only because we need you for information," the report said.It said the health personnel's alleged participation "constituted a gross breach of medical ethics and, in some cases, amounted to participation in torture and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."Their main role was "to serve the interrogation process, and not the patient," the Red Cross noted. "In so doing, the health personnel have condoned, and participated in ill-treatment."Alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said that his oxygen and pulse were monitored when he was waterboarded, and that the simulated drowning was stopped on several occasions at the request of a health person.Walid bin Attash, a detainee who had had one leg amputated, said a person he assumed to be a doctor checked his healthy leg for swelling while he was held with his arms shackled above his head.The medical attendant eventually ordered bin Attash to be allowed to sit on the floor.At least five copies of the report had been shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007, but were barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the organization's neutrality."We deplore that a confidential report was made public," Barrett said. "It was only intended to be shared with senior officials in the US government."The report is a new embarrassment for the former administration of president George W. Bush. It said that beyond the ill-treatment of the 14 prisoners interviewed, their detention amounted to "arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearance, in contravention of international law."Shortly after taking office in January, President Barack Obama banned the use of torture and ordered the closure of all CIA detention facilities.Obama has so far been cool on calls for enquiries into alleged abuses under his predecessor, but he has not ruled out possible prosecutions.CIA spokesman George Little noted that the White House has ordered agents to "not use interrogation techniques outside the Army Field Manual."He also said that no one acting "on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time" faced investigation or punishment.
Call It Torture
by Dan Froomkin - 16 March 2009 - Washginton Post 1:20 PM ET
Here's another good reason to have some sort of authoritative public reckoning of the Bush administration's dark legacy: Until we deal with it once and for all, it will come back to haunt us time and time again. The latest reminder of horror is now upon us, from the mouths of brutalized detainees and in the form of a conclusion by the International Red Cross -- the world's authority on the subject -- that their treatment undeniably amounted to torture.
Mark Danner, one of the great chroniclers of the Bush administration, somehow obtained a copy of the international organization's confidential report based on its interviews with the 14 "high value detainees" who were held in the CIA's network of secret prisons for periods ranging from 16 months to almost four and a half years.His article in the New York Review of Books is harrowing, deeply disturbing -- and an absolutely essential read. He also published a shorter version as a New York Times op-ed yesterday.The report, which made the rounds of the CIA and the White House two years ago, offers a damning portrait of cruelty. From the statements of individual detainees who had never been allowed to speak to each other, a clear method emerges based on forced nudity, isolation, bombardment with noise and light, deprivation of sleep and food, forced standing, repeated beatings and countless applications of cold water including, of course, waterboarding.The ICRC's conclusion is inescapable: "The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."As Danner tells NPR: "Its determination that these activities were torture is absolutely definitive, absolutely authoritative. These activities were torture. The International Committee of the Red Cross says so, and they use the definitions in treaties the United States has signed on to."Compare this with, for instance, former president George W. Bush's September 6, 2006, speech, in which he for the first time publicly acknowledged the existence of the secret prisons and what he called the CIA's "alternative set of procedures" for interrogation. "These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty obligations," he said. "The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful. I cannot describe the specific methods used -- I think you understand why -- if I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary."Here is what Abu Zubaydah, the first al Qaeda operative to be captured and tortured, told the ICRC, via Danner: "'I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.'"The prisoner was then put in a coffin-like black box, about 4 feet by 3 feet and 6 feet high, 'for what I think was about one and a half to two hours.' He added: The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.'"By the time al Qaeda operative Walid bin Attash was captured a year later, Danner writes, the CIA was instead using "a plastic collar, which seems to have been a refinement of the towel that had been looped around Abu Zubaydah's neck."Here is alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed describing his waterboarding: "I would be strapped to a special bed, which could be rotated into a vertical position. A cloth would be placed over my face. Cold water from a bottle that had been kept in a fridge was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe.... The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about one hour. Injuries to my ankles and wrists also occurred during the water-boarding as I struggled in the panic of not being able to breath. Female interrogators were also present...and a doctor was always present, standing out of sight behind the head of [the] bed, but I saw him when he came to fix a clip to my finger which was connected to a machine. I think it was to measure my pulse and oxygen content in my blood. So they could take me to [the] breaking point."And don't think these actions and many others can't be traced directly back to the White House. They can.In December 2007, FBI agent John Kiriakou, who participated in Zubaydah's capture and early questioning, told ABC News that every decision leading to the torture of CIA detainees was documented and approved in cables to and from Washington. And last April, ABC News reported that top Bush aides, including former vice president Cheney, micromanaged interrogation tactics from the White House basement."The high-level discussions about these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were so detailed," ABC's sources said, "some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic." Those discussions started right after Zubaydah's capture in the spring of 2002. According to ABC, the CIA briefed the White House group on its plans to use aggressive techniques against Zubaydah and received explicit approval.Techniques that created damage short of "the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function" were later authorized in an August 2002 Justice Department memo, known as the Torture Memo.For his part, Danner traces it all back to the administration's message after 9/11 that the gloves were to come off. "It is no accident that two of the administration's most powerful officials, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, served as young men in very senior positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations. They had witnessed firsthand the gloves going on and, in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, they argued powerfully that it was those limitations — and, it was implied, not a failure to heed warnings — that had helped lead, however indirectly, to the country's vulnerability to attack."And so, after a devastating and unprecedented attack, the gloves came off. Guided by the President and his closest advisers, the United States transformed itself from a country that, officially at least, condemned torture to a country that practiced it. And this fateful decision, however much we may want it to, will not go away, any more than the fourteen 'high-value detainees,' tortured and thus unprosecutable, will go away. Like the grotesque stories in the ICRC report, the decision sits before us, a toxic fact, polluting our political and moral life."Danner writes about "the dark moral epic of the Bush administration, in the coils of whose contradictions we find ourselves entangled still." And there are many such contradictions. Among them: "Consider the uncompromising words of Eric Holder, the attorney general, who in reply to a direct question at his confirmation hearings had declared, 'waterboarding is torture.' There is nothing ambiguous about this statement — nor about the equally blunt statements of several high Bush administration officials, including the former vice-president and the director of the CIA, confirming unequivocally that the administration had ordered and directed that prisoners under its control be waterboarded."Another major theme of Danner's piece is that, despite the repeated assertions of the Bush administration, there's no evidence that, at long last, any of this torture did us any good at all. That's another point I couldn't agree with more. "In the wake of the ICRC report one can make several definitive statements," Danner writes: "1. Beginning in the spring of 2002 the United States government began to torture prisoners. This torture, approved by the President of the United States and monitored in its daily unfolding by senior officials, including the nation's highest law enforcement officer, clearly violated major treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, as well as US law."2. The most senior officers of the US government, President George W. Bush first among them, repeatedly and explicitly lied about this, both in reports to international institutions and directly to the public. The President lied about it in news conferences, interviews, and, most explicitly, in speeches expressly intended to set out the administration's policy on interrogation before the people who had elected him."3. The US Congress, already in possession of a great deal of information about the torture conducted by the administration—which had been covered widely in the press, and had been briefed, at least in part, from the outset to a select few of its members—passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and in so doing attempted to protect those responsible from criminal penalty under the War Crimes Act."4. Democrats, who could have filibustered the bill, declined to do so — a decision that had much to do with the proximity of the midterm elections, in the run-up to which, they feared, the President and his Republican allies might gain advantage by accusing them of 'coddling terrorists.'..."5. The political damage to the United States' reputation, and to the 'soft power' of its constitutional and democratic ideals, has been, though difficult to quantify, vast and enduring. In a war that is essentially an insurgency fought on a worldwide scale—which is to say, a political war, in which the attitudes and allegiances of young Muslims are the critical target of opportunity—the United States' decision to use torture has resulted in an enormous self-administered defeat, undermining liberal sympathizers of the United States and convincing others that the country is exactly as its enemies paint it: a ruthless imperial power determined to suppress and abuse Muslims. By choosing to torture, we freely chose to become the caricature they made of us."Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate write in The Washington Post that "[a]t least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007..."Many of the details of alleged mistreatment at CIA prisons had been reported previously, but the ICRC report is the most authoritative account and the first to use the word 'torture' in a legal context. "The CIA declined to comment. A U.S. official familiar with the report said, 'It is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves.'..."'These reports are from an impeccable source,' said Geneve Mantri, a counterterrorism specialist at Amnesty International. 'It's clear that senior officials were warned from the very beginning that the treatment that detainees were subjected to amounted to torture. This story goes even further and deeper than many us of suspected. The more details we find out, the more shocking this becomes.'"
------
UK abuses in Iraq
--
BBC
5 November 2010
Iraqi civilians systematically abused, court hears
More than 220 Iraqi civilians were subjected to "systemic abuse", including torture, by British soldiers and interrogators in Iraq, the High Court was told on Friday.
Solicitors acting on behalf of the Iraqis submitted video evidence to support their claims.
They are appealing for a judical review of a refusal by Defence Secretary Liam Fox to order a wide-ranging public inquiry into allegations that abuse was widespread.
A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman said a dedicated team had already been set up to investigate.
The Iraqi civilians complain the abuse occurred during the period from March 2003 to December 2008 in British-controlled detention facilities in Iraq following the war to oust Saddam Hussein.
Allegations of mistreatment include sexual abuse, food, water and sleep deprivation, prolonged solitary confinement, mock executions and being denied clothes.
The High Court application is being made by the Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) group.
Over the past few months, the lawyers have documented a mounting number of complaints.
Michael Fordham QC, appearing for the Iraqis, said: "There are credible allegations of serious, inhumane practices across a whole range of dates and facilities concerning British military detention in Iraq."
Referring to the prison which became notorious for allegations of torture and abuse against US soldiers, he asked: "Is this Britain's Abu Ghraib?"
Effective investigation
A MoD spokesman said: "These remain unproven allegations of mistreatment.
"The MoD takes all allegations seriously and has already set up the dedicated Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) to investigate them.
"The IHAT is the most effective way of investigating these unproven allegations rather than a costly public inquiry."
Two public inquiries have already been launched into similar claims.
The first inquiry into the death of 26-year-old hotel worker Baha Mousa in UK military custody in September 2003, began hearing evidence last July.
And last November, the MoD announced details of a second public hearing into allegations that 19-year-old Hamid Al-Sweady and up to 19 other Iraqis were unlawfully killed and others ill-treated at a British base in May 2004.
But the PIL group say the two inquiries only cover a fraction of the cases, and that examining the allegations piecemeal would mean that many cases would never see the light of day.
They also argue that the IHAT group - a mixed team of military police and civilian investigators led by a former senior police officer - lacks the necessary independence to carry out a proper investigation.
Speaking before the start of the hearing at London's Law Court, Phil Shiner, who is representing the Iraqis, said it was nonsense to suggest - as he said the MoD did - that abuse had been confined to a "few bad apples".
He added: "That is absolutely not the case. There are very serious allegations related to very troubling systemic abuse."
The hearing is expected to last three days.
Iraqi eyewitness: Mistreatment by UK troops
The High Court in London will is hearing allegations that 142 Iraqis were mistreated by British forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2008.
Ali Zaki Mousa is one of those who alleges he was mistreated by British forces in Iraq in 2006. He spoke to BBC World Service.
Ali Zaki Mousa, a former taxi driver who lives in Basra, Iraq.
At about 0200 in the morning, while I was asleep with my wife and my little baby daughter, I was woken by the sound of an explosion. British soldiers immediately started firing shots, and smoke and stun grenades, and capsules which looked like ammunition.
My father, he's 62, he'd been sleeping in the front room; he started screaming. I put my little daughter down and I looked around, and then the soldiers started hitting me in the chest and genitals.
The soldiers forced me to kneel facing the wall and tied my hands with plastic handcuffs. Then they started kicking me and swearing at me. They kept using the "f" word and telling me to shut up.
I was beaten heavily around the eyes and my face became all swollen. One soldier pointed his rifle at my mouth; then they beat me heavily in the back around my kidneys using their rifle butts. The following morning I noticed there was blood in my urine.
Later on I found out that while I was in detention, British soldiers carried out intrusive searches of our women, including my relatives. They also beat my elderly father and my brother.
Then they blindfolded me and pulled me outside in my sleeping clothes and barefoot, and forced me to get into a tank. Then we were taken to Basra airport.
During the investigation with me in Basra International Airport, they accused me and some of my neighbours of being affiliated with militias and they said our area was under the control of militias.
They pulled me out of the tank and forced me to kneel with my head down and my hands tied behind my back. It was incredibly painful.
The more I screamed the more they kicked me. They tightened the plastic handcuffs further, and honestly they were very painful.
The time must have been about 0330 to 0400 in the morning when the soldiers started to beat the detainees in Basra airport one after the other, and I was one of them; they then interviewed us individually in a tent.
[They] accused me of being a member of the militias and that is not true. They threatened to remove my nails using pincers, and they threatened to remove my underwear and to force me to sexually assault myself using a bottle.
I was eventually released after I'd been in detention for 12 months.
[I was never charged,] except the accusation that me and my brothers were linked to the militias.
My father died recently and his body carried the marks of wounds as a result of beatings and punches from British soldiers.
I have my daughter, she was born before the detention. Now, 5 years on, I can't have any more children, and I still have the marks of the beatings on my back, around my kidneys and on my genitals.
Psychologically, I can't cope with any pressure from my wife or my child; if my wife talks to me about things I can't manage, I lose my temper and I beat her. All this is caused by the beating and the abuse I was subjected to by the British forces.
When the British forces first came into Iraq, the Iraqi people were so delighted at the defeat of Saddam the dictator, but then when British forces started behaving so badly, not only me, but all the Iraqi people, changed their view of the British troops.
We used to look at them as people who had come to help us, but they completely turned against us - with their tanks shooting in the streets, and the continued arrests without any legitimate or legal cause or proof. To us now they are no more than a pack of savage wolves.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11696329
----------------------------
BBC
5 November 2010
Iraqi civilians systematically abused, court hears
More than 220 Iraqi civilians were subjected to "systemic abuse", including torture, by British soldiers and interrogators in Iraq, the High Court was told on Friday.
Solicitors acting on behalf of the Iraqis submitted video evidence to support their claims.
They are appealing for a judical review of a refusal by Defence Secretary Liam Fox to order a wide-ranging public inquiry into allegations that abuse was widespread.
A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman said a dedicated team had already been set up to investigate.
The Iraqi civilians complain the abuse occurred during the period from March 2003 to December 2008 in British-controlled detention facilities in Iraq following the war to oust Saddam Hussein.
Allegations of mistreatment include sexual abuse, food, water and sleep deprivation, prolonged solitary confinement, mock executions and being denied clothes.
The High Court application is being made by the Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) group.
Over the past few months, the lawyers have documented a mounting number of complaints.
Michael Fordham QC, appearing for the Iraqis, said: "There are credible allegations of serious, inhumane practices across a whole range of dates and facilities concerning British military detention in Iraq."
Referring to the prison which became notorious for allegations of torture and abuse against US soldiers, he asked: "Is this Britain's Abu Ghraib?"
Effective investigation
A MoD spokesman said: "These remain unproven allegations of mistreatment.
"The MoD takes all allegations seriously and has already set up the dedicated Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) to investigate them.
"The IHAT is the most effective way of investigating these unproven allegations rather than a costly public inquiry."
Two public inquiries have already been launched into similar claims.
The first inquiry into the death of 26-year-old hotel worker Baha Mousa in UK military custody in September 2003, began hearing evidence last July.
And last November, the MoD announced details of a second public hearing into allegations that 19-year-old Hamid Al-Sweady and up to 19 other Iraqis were unlawfully killed and others ill-treated at a British base in May 2004.
But the PIL group say the two inquiries only cover a fraction of the cases, and that examining the allegations piecemeal would mean that many cases would never see the light of day.
They also argue that the IHAT group - a mixed team of military police and civilian investigators led by a former senior police officer - lacks the necessary independence to carry out a proper investigation.
Speaking before the start of the hearing at London's Law Court, Phil Shiner, who is representing the Iraqis, said it was nonsense to suggest - as he said the MoD did - that abuse had been confined to a "few bad apples".
He added: "That is absolutely not the case. There are very serious allegations related to very troubling systemic abuse."
The hearing is expected to last three days.
Iraqi eyewitness: Mistreatment by UK troops
The High Court in London will is hearing allegations that 142 Iraqis were mistreated by British forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2008.
Ali Zaki Mousa is one of those who alleges he was mistreated by British forces in Iraq in 2006. He spoke to BBC World Service.
Ali Zaki Mousa, a former taxi driver who lives in Basra, Iraq.
At about 0200 in the morning, while I was asleep with my wife and my little baby daughter, I was woken by the sound of an explosion. British soldiers immediately started firing shots, and smoke and stun grenades, and capsules which looked like ammunition.
My father, he's 62, he'd been sleeping in the front room; he started screaming. I put my little daughter down and I looked around, and then the soldiers started hitting me in the chest and genitals.
The soldiers forced me to kneel facing the wall and tied my hands with plastic handcuffs. Then they started kicking me and swearing at me. They kept using the "f" word and telling me to shut up.
I was beaten heavily around the eyes and my face became all swollen. One soldier pointed his rifle at my mouth; then they beat me heavily in the back around my kidneys using their rifle butts. The following morning I noticed there was blood in my urine.
Later on I found out that while I was in detention, British soldiers carried out intrusive searches of our women, including my relatives. They also beat my elderly father and my brother.
Then they blindfolded me and pulled me outside in my sleeping clothes and barefoot, and forced me to get into a tank. Then we were taken to Basra airport.
During the investigation with me in Basra International Airport, they accused me and some of my neighbours of being affiliated with militias and they said our area was under the control of militias.
They pulled me out of the tank and forced me to kneel with my head down and my hands tied behind my back. It was incredibly painful.
The more I screamed the more they kicked me. They tightened the plastic handcuffs further, and honestly they were very painful.
The time must have been about 0330 to 0400 in the morning when the soldiers started to beat the detainees in Basra airport one after the other, and I was one of them; they then interviewed us individually in a tent.
[They] accused me of being a member of the militias and that is not true. They threatened to remove my nails using pincers, and they threatened to remove my underwear and to force me to sexually assault myself using a bottle.
I was eventually released after I'd been in detention for 12 months.
[I was never charged,] except the accusation that me and my brothers were linked to the militias.
My father died recently and his body carried the marks of wounds as a result of beatings and punches from British soldiers.
I have my daughter, she was born before the detention. Now, 5 years on, I can't have any more children, and I still have the marks of the beatings on my back, around my kidneys and on my genitals.
Psychologically, I can't cope with any pressure from my wife or my child; if my wife talks to me about things I can't manage, I lose my temper and I beat her. All this is caused by the beating and the abuse I was subjected to by the British forces.
When the British forces first came into Iraq, the Iraqi people were so delighted at the defeat of Saddam the dictator, but then when British forces started behaving so badly, not only me, but all the Iraqi people, changed their view of the British troops.
We used to look at them as people who had come to help us, but they completely turned against us - with their tanks shooting in the streets, and the continued arrests without any legitimate or legal cause or proof. To us now they are no more than a pack of savage wolves.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11696329
----------------------------
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