Torture

Chicago Rally Demands State’s Attorney Free Torture Survivors

December 3, 2024 Gabe Miller, Fight Back! News. Resist! Chicago, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Illinois, Torture, Wrongful Imprisonment

Chicago, IL – On the morning of Monday, December 2, about 30 demonstrators, led by survivors of wrongful convictions and their loved ones, gathered in below-freezing temperatures outside the downtown Chicago office of incoming Cook County State's Attorney Eileen Burke to demand she free torture survivors and the wrongfully convicted. Speakers gave testimony, chanted, and held signs that reinforced their demands. Burke has a lot of work to do to keep up with her predecessor Kim Foxx, who freed over 300 survivors of wrongful conviction and police torture during her eight years in office.

Iraqi Abu Ghraib Torture Victims Win $42 Million In Lawsuit

November 28, 2024 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. Resist! Abu Ghraib, CACI, CIA, Iraq, Legal System, Torture, Victory

Three Iraqi survivors of U.S. torture won a major victory in early November when a jury in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Virginia awarded each of them $3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million in punitive damages to be paid by American defense contractor CACI, which was responsible for the cruel and inhumane treatment that they endured in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison more than two decades ago. The judgment is notable for several reasons. First, it is the first time that a U.S. defense contractor has ever been successfully sued for managing a torture program.

ICC Issues Arrest Warrants For Netanyahu And Gallant

November 21, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. Resist! Accountability, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza, Genocide, ICC, International Criminal Court, Starvation, Torture, War crimes, Yoav Gallant

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued on 21 November arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza, in a landmark move coming several months after the court’s top prosecutor filed applications for their arrest. “Today … Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (‘Court’), in its composition for the Situation in the State of Palestine, unanimously issued two decisions rejecting challenges by the State of Israel (‘Israel’) brought under articles 18 and 19 of the Rome Statute (the ‘Statute’).

From Guantanamo To Abu Ghraib: Female Participation In Prisoner Abuses

November 18, 2024 Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. Educate! Abu Ghraib, Accountability, Guantanamo, Legal System, Torture, US military, Women

As a retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel with 13 years on active duty and 16 in the Reserves, I became interested in the topic of women involved in prisoner abuses when so many U.S. women at all levels were linked to the prisons or prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Cuba, and Iraq. In reading press articles about detentions, incarcerations, and the abuse and torture of prisoners identified as threats to national security, I was struck by the number of women who had some role in the detentions -- women in the U.S. military, civilian women in various U.S. government agencies and civilian women contractors.

Jury Finds US Military Contractor CACI Guilty Of Abu Ghraib Torture

November 14, 2024 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Resist! Abu Ghraib, CACI, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Legal System, Torture

Iraqi torture survivors won a major jury verdict against CACI, a United States military contractor that was responsible for their cruel and inhuman treatment at Abu Ghraib more than twenty years ago. The jury awarded the three survivors—Salah Al-Ejaili, a journalist, Suhail Al-Shimari, a middle school principal, Asa’ad Zuba’e, a fruit vendor—$3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million in punitive damages. This was the second trial for Iraqi torture survivors. As The Dissenter previously covered, the first trial in August ended in a mistrial.

USAID Officials Take ‘Daily Meetings’ At Israel’s Sde Teiman Torture Camp

October 16, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. Educate! Genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Torture, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Officials from the US’s main humanitarian agency attend daily meetings on an Israeli military base that also hosts the notorious Sde Teiman torture camp for Palestinian detainees from Gaza, The Guardian reported on 15 October. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is tasked with working with Israeli officials, the UN, and international NGOs to bring humanitarian assistance into Gaza as part of the Joint Coordination Board (JCB). According to three officials with the agency, USAID officials have been attending meetings as part of the JCB at the Sde Teiman base in southern Israel since 29 July.

Deal Or No Deal?

October 3, 2024 Andrew P. Napolitano, Consortium News. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, George W. Bush, Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Pentagon, Torture

The case of the Gitmo plea agreement keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. A few weeks ago, we learned that a plea agreement had been entered into by way of a signed contract among the retired general in the Pentagon who is supervising all Gitmo prosecutions, the Gitmo defendants and defense counsel, and the military prosecutors. The agreement, as we understand it from sources who have seen it, provides that in return for a guilty plea, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others will serve life terms at Gitmo, rather than be exposed at trial to the death penalty. The guilty plea is to include a public and detailed recitation of guilt.

‘Gross Human Rights Violations’ At ICE Detention Center

September 10, 2024 Joe Piette, Workers' World. Educate! Detention Centers, Human Rights, ICE, Immigrant Rights, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Torture

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - When immigrants are picked up from their communities and eventually detained at Moshannon Valley Processing Center, Pennsylvania’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, they are forced to endure “punitive, inhumane and dangerous conditions.” The charge of “widespread human rights violations” was made in a report by the Stephen and Sandra Sheller Center for Social Justice, with support from the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union. Entitled “In the Shadow of the Valley: The Unnecessary Confinement and Dehumanizing Conditions of People in Immigration Detention at Moshannon Valley Processing Center,” the report was released at a press conference at Temple University Beasley School of Law on Sept. 4.

Palestinians Endure ‘Guantanamo-Like’ Conditions In Israeli Torture Camps

July 29, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. Educate! Crimes against humanity, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Report, Torture

A new report from The Washington Post published on 29 July details Israel’s torture, starvation, and killing of Palestinians in its prison system in a manner resembling the notorious US prison in Guantanamo Bay. Based on eyewitness accounts from former prisoners and autopsies carried out by Israeli authorities, The Post reports that “One Palestinian inmate died with a ruptured spleen and broken ribs after being beaten by Israeli prison guards. Another met an excruciating end because a chronic condition went untreated. A third screamed for help for hours before dying.” The three prisoners are among at least 12 Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel to die in Israeli jails since 7 October.

US Military Contractor Finally Goes On Trial For Abu Ghraib Torture

April 20, 2024 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Resist! Abu Ghraib, CACI, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Iraq, Torture, US military

A civil trial against CACI Premier Technology, a United States military contractor that allegedly engaged in torture at Abu Ghraib prison, begins today in Alexandria, Virginia. Nearly 16 years ago, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a lawsuit on behalf of four Iraqi torture survivors. CACI repeatedly sought to derail the case through various legal maneuvers. One Iraqi torture survivor was dismissed from the lawsuit, and CACI International successfully had their company removed as a defendant.

West Papua: The Torture Mode Of Governance

March 28, 2024 Julie Wark, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Cold War, colonization, History, Indonesia, President Sukarno, Torture, United Nations (UN), War crimes, West Papua

Budi Hernawan said it ten years ago: “torture in Papua … has become a mode of governance.” It hasn’t stopped. It’s got worse. It’s got worse precisely because it’s a mode of governance accepted and blessed by the international “community” whose neoliberal politics of extraction means extermination of anything and anyone getting in its way. It’s got worse just now because Israel’s genocide, ecocide, starvation, and torture in Palestine isn’t only distracting attention from these practices in smaller and more remote places but also showing that it’s okay, it’s part of our system, you can do it with impunity because it’s all part of a bigger plan.

Last Days Of Julian Assange In The United States

March 16, 2024 Matt Kennard, Consortium News. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Extradition, Julian Assange, Torture

Babar Ahmad was extradited from Britain to the United States in 2012 on charges of providing material support to terrorism because of two articles published on his website backing the Taliban government in Afghanistan. He spent eight years fighting the extradition, but when it eventually happened he flew across the Atlantic on an executive jet from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk. He had no idea what was coming next. “I think it was, like, a 12-seater plane,” Ahmad tells me. “Three sections of four seats. So there’s two big seats facing each other. Big, square, comfortable leather seats.” Outside it was pitch black.

Alliance Unites To Free Survivors Of Torture And Wrongful Conviction

March 4, 2024 Kobi Guillory, Fight Back News! Resist! Chicago, Illinois, Police, Police abuse, police brutality, Torture

Chicago, Illinois – “You can't throw a stone and not hit someone who is affected by police torture and wrongful conviction here in Chicago, the torture capital of the United States,” said Merawi Gerima, a co-chair of the Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Torture (CFIST.) Gerima was speaking at the annual People's Hearing on Police Crimes on Saturday, February 24, at the office of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) in Woodlawn neighborhood on the predominantly Black South Side.

An Ex-CIA Agent Looks Back At 22 Years Of Torture At Guantanamo Bay

January 11, 2024 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. Educate! CIA, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Torture

January 11 marks the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the prison component of the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Cuba. The U.S. military has been at Guantánamo for decades, of course, but the idea to use the isolated base as a prison where men — and in some cases boys — who had never been formally accused of a crime could be held forever, came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002. In the intervening years, presidents and members of Congress of both parties have ignored civil rights, civil liberties and human rights to keep this abomination open. It’s up to the rest of us to demand its destruction.

I Was The Only US Official Imprisoned Over The Torture Program

September 26, 2023 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. Educate! Accountability, CIA, Guantanamo Bay, History, Human Rights, Torture

I was the only person associated with the CIA’s torture program who was prosecuted and imprisoned. I never tortured anybody. But I was charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage, for telling ABC News and the New York Times that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been approved by the president himself. I served 23 months in a federal prison. It was worth every minute. There is certainly no easy fix to this situation. The New York Times reported in March 2022 that prosecutors had opened talks with attorneys representing Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and four co-defendants to negotiate a plea agreement that would drop the death penalty in exchange for sentences of life without parole and promises that the men would be allowed to remain in Guantanamo.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources