Torture

The Dark Past Of Biden’s Nominee For National Intelligence Director

December 31, 2020 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Drones, Intelligence, Joe Biden, Torture

Former acting CIA Director Mike Morell, who has disingenuously argued for years that he had nothing to do with the agency’s torture program, but who continued to defend it, has taken himself out of the running to be President-elect Joe Biden’s new CIA director. The decision is a victory for the peace group Code Pink, which spearheaded the Stop Morell movement, and it’s a great thing for all Americans. Now, though, we have to turn our attention to Biden’s nominee to be director of national intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines. Haines is certainly qualified on paper to lead the Intelligence Community.

Nils Melzer Asks Trump To Pardon Assange

December 23, 2020 Wikileaks, Consortium News. Resist! Julian Assange, Pardon, Torture, Trump

Geneva – A UN human rights expert today issued an open letter to U.S. President Donald Trump, asking him to pardon Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been held in Belmarsh high security prison since his arrest by British authorities inside the Embassy of Ecuador in London in April 2019. A British court is set to rule on 4 January whether Assange should be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution and, if convicted, up to 175 years in prison for the publication of secret documents through the whistleblower platform WikiLeaks in 2010. This is the text of the letter from Nils Melzer, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Torture Victims And Advocates Oppose Biden National Security Nominees

December 22, 2020 Witness Against Torture. Organize! CIA, Joe Biden, National Intelligence, Torture

Washington, DC - Today, torture survivors and their advocates released an Open Letter urging President-Elect Biden not to nominate torture defender Mike Morell for CIA Director and asking the Senate not to approve Biden’s nominee Avril Haines, a torture enabler, as Director of National Intelligence. The letter was also delivered this morning to members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as President-Elect Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris. Signatories include: Mansoor Adayfi, a writer from Yemen imprisoned for 14 years without charge at Guantanamo Bay, where he was force fed for two years; Moazzam Begg, a British-Pakistani ex-Guantanamo detainee...

Misconduct In Public Office In The Assange Case

November 16, 2020 Rod Driver, WISE Up Action. Resist! Court abuse, Julian Assange, Torture, Wikileaks

Both Snow and Taylor showed extreme bias against Julian. Their hearings were about Julian seeking asylum at the Ecuadorean Embassy in 2012, which meant that he had not complied with his bail conditions relating to earlier hearings. Under UK law, you do not have to comply with your bail conditions if you have a good reason. When Julian asked for asylum, it was based on the risk that he could be extradited to the US. The Ecuadorean authorities accepted this as a reason for granting him asylum. This is self-evidently a reasonable excuse for not complying with bail conditions.

Solitary Confinement Increases Risk Of Premature Death After Release

October 15, 2020 Andrea Fenster, Prison Policy Initiative. Educate! Premature Death, Prison, Solitary Confinement, Torture

A recently published study of people released from North Carolina prisons confirms what many have long suspected: solitary confinement increases the risk of premature death, even after release. Personal stories, like those of Kalief Browder’s isolation and subsequent suicide, are canaries in the coal mine. Underneath seemingly isolated events, researchers now find that solitary confinement is linked to more deaths after release from prison. These preventable deaths aren’t outliers; in the U.S., where the use of solitary confinement is widespread, an estimated 80,000 people are held...

Assange Faces ‘Torturous’ Months In Tiny Cell If Extradited

September 29, 2020 Press Association. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Torture, United States

The 49-year-old is fighting extradition to the US on charges related to leaks of classified documents allegedly exposing war crimes. Assange’s defence have claimed he is a “high” suicide risk, having already spent 16 months in top security Belmarsh jail in south London. On Monday, the Old Bailey heard from witnesses with experience of the Alexandria Detention Centre in Virginia, Assange’s likely pre-trial destination if he was extradited. The court heard that due to his high profile and his perceived national security risk, he could be placed in an administrative segregation (ad seg) unit.

Day Five: Julian Assange Case

September 15, 2020 AssangeDefense.org. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Torture, Wikileaks

Paused last week due to a COVID19 scare, Julian Assange’s extradition hearing resumed today with witness testimony from Eric Lewis, chairman of the board of Reprieve and a lawyer who “represents Guantanamo and Afghan detainees in litigation, seeking redress and accountability for torture and religious abuse while in US custody.” Lewis confirmed that before being asked to provide expert testimony on this case, he opined in the press that he believes Assange shouldn’t be extradited or prosecuted, and while he handled the facts objectively in providing his witness statement, those are still his views today.

Torturing Assange: An Interview With Andrew Fowler

August 21, 2020 John Kendall Hawkins, Counterpunch. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Torture, Wikileaks

Andrew Fowler is an Australian award-winning investigative journalist and a former reporter for the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners programs. and the author of The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and WikiLeaks’ Fight for Freedom. This is an updated edition of his 2011 account of the rise and political imprisonment of Assange. Much of that account explained how Assange seemingly inevitably moved toward an adversarial positioning against American imperialism abroad. He was a tonic for the indifference expressed by so many ordinary Americans in the traumatic aftermath of 9/11 and the rise of the surveillance state. Boston Legal’s Alan Shore (James Spader) seems to sum it up succinctly. His updated version discusses the torture Assange is currently undergoing at Belmarsh prison in Britain.

Were Chicago’s Police Torture Reparations From 5 Years Ago Implemented?

May 24, 2020 Flint Taylor, Truthout. Organize! Chicago, Police abuse, Reparations, Torture

The Chicago reparations movement offers a shining example to movements across the country, and in the past few years, activists in other cities have pursued their own calls for reparations. In Little Rock, Arkansas, the family of Eugene Ellison, a man fatally shot by the police, together with the largest police violence settlement in Little Rock history, obtained an official apology from the city manager at a ceremony where a memorial bench was dedicated to Ellison. In New Orleans, the City settled 17 police violence cases that were representative of the official lawlessness that reigned before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced the $13.3 million settlement at a press conference after a prayer meeting with the victims and families.

Fortress On A Hill: Rebecca Gordon And American Nuremberg

May 9, 2020 Danny Sjursen, Fortress on a Hill. Educate! Moral injury, Podcast, Torture, War crimes

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular and author of American Nuremberg: The Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post 9/11 War Crimes, stop by the podcast to discuss torture and moral injury in the post 9/11 world, her experiences in Nicaragua and South Africa, how past presidents paved the way for Donald Trump, and over-classication in the intelligence community. Rebecca Gordon received her B.A. from Reed College and her M.Div. and Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory from Graduate Theological Union. She teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of San Francisco and for the university’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good. Previous publications include Letters From Nicaragua, Cruel and Usual: How Welfare “Reform” Punishes Poor People, and Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States.

Police Torture In Chicago

March 1, 2020 Eve Ottenberg, Counterpunch. Educate! Chicago, Police abuse, Racism, Torture

The Chicago police department has a problem. They say it’s fixed, but local African American residents can’t be blamed for being skeptical. The problem is torture. And of course the Chicago PD is not one bad apple in the nation’s police departments, because when it comes to police brutality, the whole barrel is rotten. Chicago is just an extreme case. “Between 1972 and 1991, approximately 125 African American suspects were tortured by police officers in Chicago,” Princeton anthropology professor Laurence Ralph writes in his new book “The Torture Letters: Reckoning With Police Violence.” More than 400 cases currently await investigation by the Illinois torture inquiry and relief commission, “which also gets three to five new torture claims each week.” From 2004 to 2016, Chicago police paid $662 million in police misconduct settlements.

Chile: 3,765 Injured,10,000 Detained Protesters Since October

February 23, 2020 Telesur English. Educate! Chile, Neoliberalism, Police violence, Torture

Four months of protests in Chile against the neoliberal policies of Sebastian Piñera's government has resulted in more than 3,700 people injured, 951 filed complaints of torture and 195 for sexual violence, according to updated figures released Tuesday by the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH). According to the agency, from Oct. 17 to Feb. 18, some 3,765 people were injured, of whom 445 suffered eye injuries. The data was gathered directly by its officials through observations of demonstrations, police stations, and health centers. The organization reported that 2,122 people were injured by shots from different types of ammunition, with pellets being the most commonly used, causing 1,681 injuries.

Doctors For Assange Demand An End To His Torture & Medical Neglect

February 20, 2020 Doctors for Assange, Popular Resistance. Resist! Julian Assange, Political Prisoner, Torture, Wikileaks

Ahead of Julian Assange’s upcoming extradition hearing on February 24, a letter by a group of doctors representing 117 physicians and psychologists from 18 nations calls for an end to the psychological torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. Published in the pre-eminent medical journal The Lancet, the letter expresses concern over Julian Assange’s fitness for his legal proceedings while suffering the effects of ongoing psychological torture. A copy of the letter has been sent to the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Marise Payne. This follows the doctors’ earlier letter of December 16 2019, calling on Minister Payne to bring Julian Assange home to Australia for urgent medical care. A copy has also been sent to the UK Government, which the doctors accuse of violating Julian Assange’s human right to health.

Torture Rears Its Ugly Head at Guantánamo, It Should Be Closed

February 12, 2020 By Andy Worthington on his blog Educate! Guantanamo, Prisons, Torture

2020 has, to date, been noteworthy for how much attention has been focused on Guantánamo, the US naval base in Cuba that is home to the “war on terror” prison established in January 2002, and also to the inappropriately named Camp Justice, where trial proceedings for some of the men held in the prison take place. First up was the 18th anniversary of the opening of the prison, on January 11, when campaigners from numerous NGOs and campaigning groups — including Close Guantánamo — held a rally outside the White House to call for the prison’s closure.

The Inversion Of Human Rights In Brazil

February 9, 2020 Jacob Blanc, NACLA.org. Educate! Brazil, Dictatorship, Legal System, Torture

Aluízio Palmar, a Brazilian journalist, human rights activist, and former political prisoner, is being sued for defamation by his own torturer. The physical and psychological torture happened 40 years ago, when Palmar was imprisoned by the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. But it was only last month, in a climate defined by Brazil’s right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, that Palmar’s abuser felt emboldened to file the suit. Like thousands of others under the military regime, Palmar was subjected to various forms of torture: electrocution, simulated drowning, and the infamous “parrots perch” where he was strung up on a pole with his hands and feet tied together, his body dangling below, crouched and suspended in the air.

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