Torture

Time For UK Government To Come Clean On Ties To US Torture Program

February 16, 2022 John Kiriakou, Covert Action Magazine. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Human Rights, Torture, United Kingdom (UK), US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

We Americans have had a painful and difficult national debate over the past 20 years relative to torture. Torture was official U.S. government policy from 2002 until at least 2005, and that iteration was not formally outlawed until passage of the McCain-Feinstein Amendment in 2015. (The torture program was a highly-classified secret from 2002 until I revealed it in a nationally-televised interview in December 2007.) In truth, torture has been illegal in the U.S. since at least the end of World War II. In 1946, the U.S. Government executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American prisoners of war. In January 1968, the Washington Post ran a front-page photograph showing an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner.

Student Granted Bail After Protesters Threaten To Render Kingdom ‘Ungovernable’

February 6, 2022 Pavan Kulkarni, People's Dispatch. Resist! Prisons, Student Activism, Swaziland, Torture

A court in the city of Manzini granted bail to Colani Maseko, the president of Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS) on Friday, February 4. The student leader had been arrested on January 31 and charged with sedition. His bail came a day after the SNUS marched to the Manzini regional police headquarters and held a demonstration on February 3. A cross section of Swaziland’s pro-democracy forces, including the banned political parties, trade unions, and youth organizations, attended the action. Outside the police headquarters, protesters at the demonstration openly threatened to render the kingdom “ungovernable” until the release of Maseko and all other political prisoners of Africa’s last absolute monarchy.

National Faith Groups Call On Congress And President To Close Guantanamo Bay Prison

January 13, 2022 National Religious Campaign Against Torture. Resist! Guantanamo Bay, Interfaith Organizing, Joe Biden, Prison, Torture

Washington, DC – On Tuesday, Jan. 11, twenty-nine national faith groups sent a letter to President Biden and all Members of Congress calling on them “to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and to ensure that all of the people held there are either released, agree to a plea deal, or receive a fair trial in a federal court.” Rev. Ron Stief, Executive Director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, released the following statement: “For twenty years our country has held people without charge or trial in Guantanamo. Some of the people we still hold there were tortured by the U.S. after they were captured. Others have been cleared to leave Guantanamo yet remain imprisoned there, indefinitely detained without trial.

Guantanamo Bay: ‘Ugly Chapter Of Unrelenting Human Rights Violations’

January 12, 2022 the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Educate! Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Prisoner rights, Torture

Geneva - On the 20th anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, UN experts* condemned the facility as a site of “unparalleled notoriety” and said its continued operation was a stain on the US Government’s commitment to the rule of law. “Twenty years of practising arbitrary detention without trial accompanied by torture or ill treatment is simply unacceptable for any government, particularly a government which has a stated claim to protecting human rights,” said the independent experts, appointed by the Human Rights Council. “As a newly elected Member of the Human Rights Council, the experts again call on the United States to close this facility and close this ugly chapter of unrelenting human rights violations.”

A Torture Survivor Speaks At The Guantanamo Military Commissions

November 5, 2021 Scott Roehm, Just Security. Educate! Guantanamo, Human Rights, Legal System, Torture

“I have a story that I have waited almost two decades to tell, so I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to my statement.” For the next two hours, Majid Khan spoke to a panel of military jurors, and to his family—especially his father and sister, who had hugged their son and brother that morning for the first time in nineteen years and sat just feet away in the spectator gallery, visibly suffering through the horror of what they heard. Mr. Khan described brutality and its effects even beyond the heinous acts detailed in the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 oversight study of the CIA torture program. Torture inflicted by medical personnel stood out. He explained that he was raped by CIA medics – under the guise of both “rectal feeding” and “rectal rehydration,” the latter using a “green garden hose,” with one end connected to a faucet and the other forcibly inserted into his rectum.

US Military Jurors Decry Guantanamo Detainee Torture

November 1, 2021 Al Jazeera. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Torture

Seven United States military officers have written a letter urging clemency for Guantanamo Bay detainee Majid Khan, calling his account of torture at so-called CIA black sites a “stain on the moral fiber of America”. The seven officers were part of an eight-member military jury that on Friday issued a sentence of 26 years in prison to Khan for his support of al-Qaeda in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Khan had previously pleaded guilty in 2012 to serving as a courier for the group and helping to plan attacks. The letter from the officers, which was sent to a senior official reviewing the case, was published by the New York Times on Sunday. They were identified only by their juror numbers.

Biden Tells Supreme Court Publicly Documented Torture Is A State Secret

October 10, 2021 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Educate! Biden administration, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Supreme Court, Torture

When Abu Zubaydah was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002, the George W. Bush administration falsely characterized him as chief of operations for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s number three man. For the next four years, the CIA sent Zubaydah to its “black sites” in Thailand and Poland where he was viciously tortured. In 2006, Zubaydah was taken to Guantánamo, where he remains to this day. He has never been charged with a crime. The torture of Abu Zubaydah is thoroughly documented in the 2014 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In fact, several of the justices at the October 6 Supreme Court oral argument in United States v. Zubaydah referred to his treatment as “torture.” Zubaydah’s lawyers detailed the torture he suffered in their brief (which referenced the Senate torture report) as follows...

Inside The CIA Plot To Kidnap, Kill Julian Assange

October 1, 2021 Aaron Maté, The Grayzone. Educate! CIA, Julian Assange, Torture, Wikileaks

Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News discusses his team’s reporting on the CIA plot to surveil, kidnap, and even kill Assange — all overseen by Michael Pompeo. In response, Pompeo has called for the prosecution of all the sources involved. The story builds on previous disclosures including a May 2020 exposé by The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal, which revealed that the CIA was working with Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson and the Spanish security firm UC Global to target and surveil Assange in London’s Ecuadorian embassy. Isikoff and Aaron Maté also debate Russia’s role in the Assange controversy, particularly the allegation that Russia stole Democratic Party emails in 2016 and gave them to Wikileaks.

Outrage Over Atrocities Committed Against Alex Saab

September 29, 2021 Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Alex Saab, Torture, US Sanctions, Venezuela

After receiving a letter from the diplomat Alex Saab, the head of the Venezuelan government delegation in the Mexico Talks, Jorge Rodríguez, expressed outrage at the atrocities committed against this representative of Venezuelan diplomacy. In the letter, Saab denounced his subjection to torture in Cape Verde, including psychologically torment. For example, authorities had deprived him of water for days, wrote Saab, “because according to them they must pass the transparent bottles through the x-ray, and the machine is always damaged.”

Scheer Intelligence: A Traitor To Torture

September 10, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! CIA, John Kiriakou, Torture

Once upon a time, a keystone of American exceptionalism was the claim of a moral high ground when it came to how our forces operated abroad, in war or peace, especially when it came to the use of torture, that hallmark of enemies we stamped as evil, primitive and sadistic. The ends were not supposed to justify the means, lest we be no better than our rivals and predecessors. Yet, within months of the 9/11 attacks, frustration with the interrogation of a single alleged enemy agent led to the creation of a sprawling, global CIA-run torture program using violence, sleep deprivation and isolation on more than 100 men. While the program was eventually outlawed and deemed a massive strategic and moral failure, nobody was held legally accountable — except, in a terrible irony, a whistleblower who risked everything to expose it.

The World Is Rid Of Rizzo

August 25, 2021 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! CIA, Human Rights, Torture, Wars and Militarism

Rizzo was the unapologetic godfather of the CIA’s torture program, a monstrous crime against humanity that he defended unabashedly until his death. On the surface, he was a nice enough guy — quick with a smile and a nod. He was dapper, with a well-groomed beard that made him look more like a 19th century businessman in search of a top hat rather than what he was: a seasoned, very political attorney whose job was to lay out the legal justifications for horrific crimes yet to be committed.

Torture sites and mass graves reported in Colombia

June 1, 2021 Dominic Gustavo, WSWS. Educate! Colombia, Latin America, State Violence, Torture

A May 23 report prepared by the human rights organization Justicia y Paz stated that fascistic paramilitary groups, which operate in concert with the far-right and US-backed regime of Colombian President Ivan Duque, have created torture sites and mass graves in an attempt to suppress protests in the city of Cali, which has been the epicenter of continuing countrywide demonstrations.

Call For President Biden To Close Prison At Guantanamo Bay

May 3, 2021 Andy Worthington, Close Guantanamo. Resist! Guantanamo Bay, Joe Biden, Prisoner rights, Torture

In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Anthony Lake, national security adviser to President Clinton from 1993 to 1997, and our co-founder Tom Wilner, who was counsel of record to Guantánamo detainees in the two Supreme Court cases establishing their right to habeas corpus and in the case establishing their right to legal counsel, made a powerful case for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which we’re pleased to be cross-posting below. Yesterday marked the end of the first 100 days of Joe Biden’s presidency, and while we’re aware that the new administration has had a huge workload to deal with after four ruinous years of the Trump presidency, and with the unprecedented challenge of dealing with Covid-19

On Contact: Police Abuse And Torture

May 2, 2021 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Chicago, Legal System, Police abuse, Torture

Chris Hedges discusses police abuse and torture with civil rights attorney Flint Taylor. Taylor’s new book is ‘The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago’. With his colleagues at the People's Law Office, Taylor has argued landmark civil rights cases exposing the corruption and cover-ups within the Chicago Police Department and throughout the city’s political machine, from the alderman to the mayor's office. The book takes the reader from the 1969 murder of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark – and the historic 13-year trial that followed – to the pursuit of chief detective Jon Burge, the leader of a torture ring within the Chicago Police Department that used barbaric methods including electric shock and suffocation to elicit false confessions...

The View From Inside America’s Child Immigrant Detention Shelters

March 10, 2021 Staff, WSWS. Educate! Border Patrol, Joe Biden, Migrant Children, Torture

Across the United States, hiding in plain sight in strip malls and downtown blocks and amid the suburban sprawl, a record number of immigrant children—more than 13,000—are being held in shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. Representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties portray the shelters as safe and even pleasant. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel both said the shelters were “like summer camp.” But several immigrant children to whom the World Socialist Web Site spoke told a different story. These youth, all Central Americans separated from their families after crossing the US-Mexico border, were recently released from child shelters and volunteered to share their experiences on the condition of anonymity.

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