Torture

Demasking The Torture Of Julian Assange

June 28, 2019 Nils Melzer, Medium.com Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Julian Assange, Repression, Torture

I know, you may think I am deluded. How could life in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard ever amount to torture? That’s exactly what I thought, too, when Assange first appealed to my office for protection. Like most of the public, I had been subconsciously poisoned by the relentless smear campaign, which had been disseminated over the years. So it took a second knock on my door to get my reluctant attention. But once I looked into the facts of this case, what I found filled me with repulsion and disbelief.

CIA Has Covered Up Torture For Decades. Will Torturers Ever Be Prosecuted?

June 28, 2019 By Aisha Maniar, Truthout.org Educate! CIA, Torture

CIA Director Gina Haspel made a rare public appearance on April 18 when she spoke at Auburn University. Haspel reflected on her 34-year career with the agency, but failed to mention the years she spent involved in its extraordinary rendition program. She was quickly interrupted by a member of the audience: “Do you remember the thrill of the CIA black sites you tortured people in and the evidence you destroyed? Tell these young children, tell them who you tortured. You know their names: They’re still in Guantánamo Bay.”

UN Torture Report: ‘Demonized’ Assange Has Faced ‘Psychological Torture’

June 2, 2019 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Julian Assange, Torture, United Nations, Wikileaks

The UN special rapporteur on torture has issued a stinging rebuke to the United States, Great Britain, Sweden and Ecuador for “deliberately” exposing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to years of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” which can only be described as “psychological torture.” “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Nils Melzer said...

Assange Suffering ‘Psychological Torture’: UN Expert

June 1, 2019 Staff, Timeslive.co.za Educate! Julian Assange, Torture, United Nations, Whistleblowers, Wikileaks

Julian Assange has been subjected to drawn-out "psychological torture", a UN rights expert said on Friday, accusing the United States, Britain, Ecuador and Sweden of "collective persecution" of the WikiLeaks founder. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, Nils Melzer, also warned that if London agrees to an extradition request from Washington, Assange risked the death penalty. Melzer visited the Australian whistleblower in a London prison on May 9, nearly a month after his arrest at Ecuador's embassy where he had been holed up for seven years.

ICC Refuses To Investigate Crimes In Afghanistan, U.S. Torture

April 14, 2019 Center for Constitutional Rights. Educate! Afghanistan, Criminal Justice, ICC, Torture

April 12, 2019, Paris, The Hague, New York – In what human rights groups call an appalling decision, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II decided not to grant the Prosecutor’s request to open an investigation into alleged crimes committed in Afghanistan and on the territory of other States Parties implicated in the U.S. torture program. Tens of thousands of victims in Afghanistan, along with victims of U.S. torture, had urged the ICC to authorize the investigation. Despite finding that requirements were met as regards both jurisdiction and admissibility, the Pre-Trial judges decided that authorizing an investigation would not serve “the interests of justice”...

Witness Against Torture Activists Arrested For Sit-In At Senator McConnell’s Office

January 11, 2019 Witness Against Torture, Popular Resistance Resist! Guantanamo Bay, Torture, Wars and Militarism

Four human rights activists were arrested today and charged with unlawfully demonstrating inside Senate office buildings after sitting-in at the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. They were among a group of about twenty-five Witness Against Torture activists who entered the office at 3:00 p.m. Many were clad in orange jumpsuits resembling those worn by prisoners in Guantanamo. They delivered a letter requesting McConnell’s assistance on two matters concerning human rights violations.

Psyched At The American Psychological Association

October 21, 2018 Michael Brenner, Consortium News. Educate! American Psychological Association, Guantanamo, Torture

This never-say-die persistence moved them, and their supporters, to make one more valiant attempt to reverse the course of justice by presenting to the APA Council of Representatives a plan to lift the ban on military psychologists (who number 525) from treating prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, where the U.S. is still holding 48 foreign ‘terrorists.’ That population may increase if Trump’s stated idea of filling some empty billets is acted upon. It was pushed hard by the Pentagon with the endorsement of the old guard.

Gina Haspel CIA Torture Cables’ Dates And Times Declassified

October 19, 2018 Staff, Nsarchive.gwu.edu Educate! CIA, Torture

Washington, D.C., October 18, 2018 – The National Security Archive’s Freedom of Information lawsuit against the CIA has won release of the previously censored dates and times on cables sent by future CIA director Gina Haspel when she commanded a CIA black site in Thailand in 2002 where interrogators tortured and waterboarded an al-Qaeda suspect, according to the new documents posted on the Archive’s Web site today. The new versions of the Haspel cables now provide a detailed chronology of the CIA torture, which began on “Day One” of the suspect’s confinement at the site, November 15, 2002, and continued even after his removal to a different black site, in Poland, on December 4, 2002.

Relatives Of Chile’s Disappeared Are Exposing Dictatorship-Era Torturers

October 14, 2018 Ramona Wadi, Waging Nonviolence. Create! Chile, Dictatorship, Pinochet, Torture

The return of the right wing to power in Chile has come at the expense of those still seeking justice for crimes committed during the 17-year U.S.-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which ended in 1990. Former President Michelle Bachelet’s failure to close the luxury five-star prison of Punta Peuco that houses ex-torturers and military agents convicted of crimes against humanity has led to repercussions during the first year of Sebastian Pinera’s presidency. Over the years, the Chilean military has lobbied for “understanding” the context in which torture and disappearances occurred, in order to procure release for convicted agents of the dictatorship.

Kavanaugh Is The Wrong Nominee For Our Times

September 30, 2018 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance Newsletter Abortion, Brett Kavanaugh, NSA, Sexual Assault, Torture, Women's Rights

The Kavanaugh confirmation process has been a missed opportunity for the United States to face up to many urgent issues on which the bi-partisans in Washington, DC are united and wrong. Kavanaugh's career as a Republican legal operative and judge supporting the power of corporations, the security state and abusive foreign policy should have been put on trial. The hearings could have provided an opportunity to confront the security state, use of torture, mass spying and the domination of money in politics and oligarchy as he has had an important role in each of these.

Why Do We Tolerate Kavanaugh’s Complicity With Torture?

September 29, 2018 Ted Rall, Counterpunch.org Educate! Brett Kavanaugh, Electoral Politics, Supreme Court, Torture

Liberal Democrats are out to get Brett Kavanaugh. They are right to be; he is dangerous. Confirming Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court would lock in a right-wing majority for a generation. Abortion rights would be imperiled, true, but his rulings would also impact us in countless ways no one can predict: privacy, technology, balance of powers, corporate influence. What’s weird is how the “Resistance” is going after the nominee: they’re #MeToo-ing him. They’re only #MeToo-ing him. One woman says he tried to rape her when she was 15 and he was 17. Another says that he pulled out his penis and shoved it in her face at a college party. U-S-A! Best country ever! At this writing a third accuser waits in the wings. If true these are—obviously, undeniably, absolutely—nasty acts.

Open Letter To The United Nations As Trump Scheduled To Chair Security Council Meeting

September 23, 2018 William Curtis Edstrom, Popular Resistance Resist! Torture, United Nations, Wars and Militarism

I am writing to request that both the 1) member states of the General Assembly and 2) member states of the Security Council hold hearings, debate and vote on an effective plan of action against various crimes that have been committed by people working for the government of the US that are of significance to the global community. These crimes include

Newly Released Documents Show Gina Haspel Oversaw Torture, & Sen. Burr Knew

August 14, 2018 Ray McGovern, Consortiumnews.com Educate! Government, State Violence, Torture

Newly released declassified documents prove once and for all that CIA Director Gina Haspel oversaw torture in Thailand, which the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee knew all along. Newly released official documents obtained by the National Security Archive showing that CIA Director Gina Haspel directly supervised waterboarding at the first CIA “Black Site” simply confirm what Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) already knew as he orchestrated the charade that was Haspel’s confirmation hearing. Burr allowed her to “classify” her own direct role in waterboarding and other torture techniques so that it could be kept from the public and secure her confirmation—-further proof that this Senate oversight committee has instead become an overlook committee.

EU Anti-Torture Ruling Shows Need For UK Public Inquiry

June 2, 2018 Reprieve.org, Popular Resistance Resist! European Union (EU), Torture, United Kingdom (UK)

WASHINGTON - In a significant anti-torture ruling, the European Court Of Human Rights has held that Lithuania and Romania violated the rights of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri by allowing them to be detained at CIA ‘black sites’ on European soil. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was subjected to "inhuman treatment” at the secret prison in Romania, which operated from 2003-2005. Abu Zubaydah was tortured at a black site in Lithuania that the CIA ran from 2005-6. The new CIA director, Gina Haspel, oversaw the torture of Mr al Nashiri at a CIA black site in Thailand in 2002. Romania and Lithuania also allowed the CIA to transfer the men to other prisons, the judges found, exposing them to “a foreseeable serious risk of further ill-treatment”.

Haspel Is Not The Problem. The CIA Is The Problem.

May 30, 2018 Ron Paul, Ronpaulinstitute.org Create! CIA, Torture, US Imperialism

As a general rule, when Dick Cheney favors a foreign policy position it’s best to be on the opposite side if you value liberty over war and authoritarianism. The former vice president’s enthusiastic endorsement of not only Gina Haspel as CIA director but of the torture program she oversaw should tell us all we need to know about Haspel. Saying that Haspel would make a great CIA director, Cheney dismissed concerns over the CIA’s torture program. Asked in a television interview last week about the program, Cheney said, “if it were my call, I’d do it again.” Sadly, the majority of the US Senate agreed with Cheney that putting a torturer in charge of the CIA was a good idea. Only two Republicans – Senators Paul and Flake – voted against Haspel. And just to confirm that there really is only one political party in Washington, it was the “yes” vote of crossover Democrats that provided the margin of victory.

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