Torture

US Human Rights Record Criticized In UN Report

March 29, 2014 Matthew Weaver, www.theguardian.com Educate! Drones, Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, NSA, Torture

The UN has delivered a withering verdict on the US's human rights record, raising concerns on a series of issues including torture, drone strikes, the failure to close Guantánamo Bay and the NSA's bulk collection of personal data. The report was delivered by the UN's human rights committee in an assessment of how the US is complying with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR], which has been in force since the mid 1970s. The UN committee urged the US to overhaul its surveillance activities to ensure they complied with US law and conformed to US obligations under the ICCPR. In its 11-page report, the committee also criticised the US for failing to prosecute senior members of its armed forces and private contractors involved in torture and targeted killings.

Corrected Billboard Defends Transparency At Guantanamo

March 29, 2014 Staff, www.correctionsdepartment.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Guantanamo Bay, Torture

The ad was released from custody two weeks after a landmark lawsuit, Hassan v. Obama, was brought before U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to end force-feeding at Guantanamo Bay. Filed on behalf of Emad Abdullah Hassan, the lawsuit is the first case against forced-feeding since the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that federal courts can hear challenges by detainees to conditions of their confinement. Hassan is a Yemeni national who has been detained at Guantanamo Bay for twelve years despite being cleared for release in 2009. He has been on hunger strike since 2005 and has allegedly experienced over 5,000 forced-feedings, a practice that is violent, abusive and illegal, according to his lawsuit.

SOA Watch Spring Days Of Action Begin Tomorrow

March 29, 2014 Staff, www.soaw.org Organize! Immigrant Rights, Regime Change, Torture

The movement to close the SOA has been tremendously successful in educating broad sectors about the reality of U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America. While SOA Watch started out with a narrow focus of ending the training of repressive Latin American military forces and the closure of the School of the Americas, the scope of our work has broadened over the years. The SOA is part of a broader system of militarism. The institute is not an aberration of U.S. foreign policy but a clear example of it. At the Peoples Movement Assembly (PMA) this Spring, we will place the SOA into the broader political frame. We will explore the intersectionality of social justice movements in the US, and the relationship between militarized US policy, mass incarceration, deportations, the "War on Drugs," etc. Art and culture will be an integral part of the PMA.

79 Year Old Peace Activist Released From Jail Will Keep Protesting

March 24, 2014 Staff www.stopwar.org Educate! Torture

Over the past twelve years consecutive Irish governments have colluded in Washington's campaign of wars from Afghanistan to Yemen, in which up to 2 million people have perished. By allowing the US military to use Irish airspace and Shannon airport to wage these wars we have become a willing accessory to mass murder. We have blood on our hands…we feel we have no alternative but to block the runway at Shannon to highlight Irish involvement in this carnage. On her release from prison, Margaretta D'Arcy said, "President Michael D Higgins has called on Irish citizens to have 'conversations' in public places as part of active citizenship. I have sat on a runway, had a court hearing and gone to prison in an attempt to have this 'conversation'."

The White House Has Been Covering Up Torture for Years

March 18, 2014 Marcy Wheeler www.firstlook.org Create! Barack Obama, Torture

Did the White House order the CIA to withdraw 920 documents from a server made available to Committee staffers, as Senator Dianne Feinstein says the agency claimed in 2010? Were those documents – perhaps thousands of them – pulled in deference to a White House claim of executive privilege, as Senator Mark Udall and then CIA General Counsel Stephen Prestonsuggested last fall? And is the White House continuing to withhold 9,000 pages of documents without invoking privilege, as McClatchy reported yesterday? We can be sure about one thing: The Obama White House has covered up the Bush presidency’s role in the torture program for years. Specifically, from 2009 to 2012, the administration went to extraordinary lengths to keep a single short phrase, describing President Bush’s authorization of the torture program, secret.

CIA Fights with Senate Panel Over Torture, Public Left in Dark

March 9, 2014 Jon Queall, www.commondreams.org Educate! CIA, Torture

As the murkiest details of the torture program created and run by the Bush administration continues to be shielded from public review, the growing controversy over the clandestine and illegal use of techniques by the CIA has now taken center stage in a bureaucratic fight between the agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee charged with its oversight. Given the secretive nature of the issue and parties involved, what has leaked out in reporting and public statements over the last several weeks gives only a vague sense of the fight between members of the committee, the Obama administration, and the CIA but most of it revolves around an investigative panel set up by the Senators on the committee to explore the torture program.

How A CIA Whistleblower Survives Behind Bars

February 11, 2014 Kelley B. Vlahos, www.antiwar.com Educate! Government, Torture, Whistleblowers

"It’s been one year since former CIA analyst and counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou was sentenced to prison for 30 months, the first American official to do time for the government’s torture policies during the Global War on Terror. This is what whistleblower advocates like to point out – and Kiriakou, 49, strongly believes himself – that he is not in jail for doing the torture or even promoting it, but being the first counterterrorism official to acknowledge the use of waterboarding, and then speak publicly against it."

Feinstein Has Abillity To Release Torture Report

January 26, 2014 Jason Leopold, www.pressfreedomfoundation.org Educate! Torture, Wars and Militarism

A report completed more than a year ago by a Senate panel that investigated the CIA’s torture program can only be released by the committee, which maintains complete "control” over the highly classified document, the Justice Department said in a court filing late Friday. The Justice Department made that claim in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit I filed against the agency last September, in which I asked for a copy of the executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) much sought after $40 million torture report. The Justice Department asked a federal court judge Friday to dismiss my case, arguing it does not have the authority to disseminate the report. The Senate Intelligence Committee voted to approve the 6,000-page report, which the panel’s Democratic chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, said, “uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program,” on December 13, 2012.

APA Whitewashes Torture

January 24, 2014 Spencer Ackerman, www.theguardian.com Educate! Human Rights, Torture

"The decision not to pursue any disciplinary measure against John Leso, a former army reserve major, is the latest case in which someone involved in the post-9/11 torture of detainees has faced no legal or even professional consequences. In a 31 December letter obtained by the Guardian, the American Psychological Association said it had “determined that we cannot proceed with formal charges in this matter. Consequently the complaint against Dr Leso has been closed.” But the APA did not deny Leso took part in the brutal interrogation of the suspected 20th 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed al-Qahtani, whose treatment the Pentagon official overseeing his military commission ultimately called “torture”."

Syria ‘Torture’ Report Warrants Careful Read

January 23, 2014 Dan Murphy, www.csmonitor.com Educate! Syria, Torture, Wars and Militarism

The report itself is nowhere near as credible as it makes out and should be viewed for what it is: A well-timed propaganda exercise funded by Qatar, a regime opponent who has funded rebels fighting Assad who have committed war crimes of their own. This is a single source report, from an unidentified man, who is related by marriage (according to a footnote on page 15 of the report) to a similarly unidentified member of the "Syrian National Movement" who "left Syria five days after the civil war against the current Syrian regime had begun and established contact with international human rights groups." The Syrian National Movement has been funded by Qatar and is devoted to Assad's downfall and the source has been working with this unidentified Assad opponent since "around September 2011." And yet the report was rushed into publication due to unspecified "time constraints" that made it impossible to "produce a detailed report regarding the exact injuries present in each image for each individual." The document says "Caesar" was interviewed on Jan. 12, 13 and 18 of this year. The report was provided to reporters yesterday, Jan. 20.

Retired Generals And Admirals Urge President To Close Guantanamo

January 23, 2014 Staff, www.humanrightsfirst.org Educate! CIA, Guantanamo Bay, Torture, Wars and Militarism

Thirty-one of the nation’s most respected retired generals and admirals today sent a letter to President Obama urging him to make good on his executive order to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. They also asked that he set the record straight on torture, a policy he also banned by executive order. Members of the coalition who signed today’s letter stood behind the president on January 22, 2009 – his second day in office – when the orders were signed. Today’s letter comes as Congress and the Obama Administration have made progress toward putting Guantanamo on the path to closure. Progress toward closing Guantanamo continued this month as the Periodic Review Board (PRB), established by executive order in March 2011, concluded its first case. With regard to torture, the retired military leaders urged President Obama to direct his administration, particularly the CIA, to fully cooperate with the Senate intelligence committee to declassify and publicly release the 6000-plus page study that details the post-9/11 CIA rendition, detention, and interrogation program.

CIA Top Lawyer: Could Have Easily Stopped Torture, But Didn’t

January 7, 2014 John Rizzo, www.politico.com Educate! CIA, Torture, Wars and Militarism

The CIA torture program under President Bush should have been considered a war crime and a violation of US law and people like the author of the article should be prosecuted for their role. It is distressing to see someone who used his law license to provide legal cover for this illegal activity profiting from the torture program. In fact, I filed Bar complaints against Rizzo and other lawyers who worked for President Bush and President Obama urging their disbarment or other punishment for using their legal license to authorize these crimes. Here's a video of a press conference we organized to discuss these issues. One point that Rizzo makes in the article below that I do agree with, replacing the torture program with a murder program is ironic (to put it kindly). Certainly President Obama approving the murdering of people, making the president and the military prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner is also a war crime. While we like to think that this is a new post-9/11 reality in the Untied States, the reality is their is a long history of CIA torture going all the way back to nearly the founding of the CIA. As the School of the Americas Watch has documented torture has been part of the US training of dictators and military officials for decades. During the Clinton administration the senate ratified and the president signed the Convention Against Torture in 1994 as well as the War Crimes Act in 1996 but it started the 'rendition program' which had US officials bringing suspects to other governments to be tortured. The rendition program was approved by Attorney General Eric Holder when he worked in the Clinton Department of Justice.

CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: Resumes Letters From Prison

January 7, 2014 Kevin Gosztola, www.dissenter.firedoglake.com Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Torture, Whistleblowers

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who is serving a thirty-month jail sentence in the federal correctional institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, has resumed writing letters from prison after the Bureau of Prisons failed to give him nine months in a halfway house to finish out his sentence. Firedoglake had been publishing Kiriakou’s “Letters from Loretto.” The last letter published, however, was in August of last year. Now, in a new letter, thanking several groups and individuals who have supported him while serving his sentence in prison, he writes, “I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch so long. After my last letter, I thought I had come to an understanding with the prison administration: stop writing ‘Letters from Loretto’ and be put in for nine months of halfway house. Nine months would have seen me leave here on August 1, 2014. So I stopped writing.” “Rather than twiddle my thumbs and hope for the best, I decided to start writing again. God bless the Constitution and its First Amendment,” he adds. Kiriakou has maintained since going to prison that was to be sent to a camp with lower security. It was recommended by the judge and prosecutor in his case. But a “Bureau of Prisons bureaucrat deemed him a ‘threat to public safety,’” and he was sent to do his time in the medium security section of Loretto. Kiriakou asks for your help to resolve this.

Torture Whisleblower John Kiriakou Needs Your Help

December 22, 2013 CODE PINK, www.codepink.org/ Petitions and Online Actions Torture, Whistleblowers

John Kiriakou remains the only person from the Bush Administration era to have been incarcerated, or even tried, over issues related to torture. His crime? Blowing the whistle on it. In 2012 the Obama Administration brought charges against John because of his conversations with journalists about US torture and his supposed disclosure of an undercover agent. Since entering prison, John has released a series of letters detailing his conditions and thoughts. Now he needs your help! Nine months into his 30-month sentence, John is seeking to be granted at least nine months in a halfway house so that he may "resume productive contributions to society." He has put a call out to all supporters to help him push for a halfway house transfer by writting letters to the Bureau of Prisons residential reentry director, Erlinda Hernandez, and Federal Bureau of Prisons director Charles Samuels. Let's make sure he knows that the peace community supports him.

Unending Torture

December 16, 2013 Jeffrey St. Clair, www.freedetainees.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Guantanamo Bay, Torture

It was shortly after five on a Saturday morning last April. The prisoners in the communal cellblock at Camp 6 in Guantanamo Bay Prison had just gathered for morning prayers. Suddenly the overhead lights went out, the cell doors slammed shut and tear gas canisters exploded in the room. Military guards charged into the cellblock, firing shotguns loaded with plastic bullets toward the huddled detainees. Three men fell to ground, writhing in pain from being struck by the ‘non-lethal’ ammunition. The other prisoners, most of whom had long been cleared for release, were forced onto the floor with guns pointed at their heads and kept prone on their bellies for the next three hours. According to Guantanamo officials, the action was launched to quash a protest by the detainees, who had placed blankets over the surveillance cameras in their cells.

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