Top Story
- British Government makes 'unprecedented' apology for Binyam torture cover-up.
Government lawyers have been forced to make a humiliating apology to the High Court for concealing 13 crucial intelligence documents about the torture of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed.
Now it has admitted the papers do exist, the Government has handed them over to the court, although their exact contents remain secret.
But it is known that they do show MI5’s complicity in Mohamed’s torture went further than previously suspected – and contain the damaging admission that a senior MI5 officer known as Witness A gave ‘incorrect’ evidence at a hearing last year.
(More Top News on flip)
Top Stories Continued
- Independent review uncovers cover-up evidence.
THE government has apologised to two High Court judges after discovering that an MI5 officer misled them over the case of a British terrorist suspect allegedly tortured while in America’s extraordinary rendition programme.
Lawyers for David Miliband, the foreign secretary, said it was "a matter of great regret" that during "a full and independent review of the case" they had uncovered 13 new documents suggesting that the official account of Britain’s knowledge of what was happening to Binyam Mohamed was inaccurate.
- Valtin broke the story this morning. The page has been decreed turned – Time to move on folks, who needs justice from independent investigations anyhow?
AXELROD: Well, the president has said, if there were agents of the United States government acting on legal advice that what they were doing was legal and appropriate, that they should not be prosecuted.
If people acted outside the law, that's a different issue. But the main point is the president has banned these enhanced interrogation techniques. We have turned the page on this episode in our history. We have so many challenges in front of us, in terms of our national security, our relations in the world.
- No time to investigate Bush, but time for US to probe interview Guantanamo prisoner gave Al-Jazeera. (Of course, US also investigating prisoner’s lawyer for redacted letter sent Obama about how his client was tortured. Looks like move-on policy a tad one-sided.)
A Guantanamo Bay prisoner gave an unprecedented interview with a Middle East television network during his weekly call to his family, telling Al-Jazeera he was beaten by guards for refusing to leave his cell.
It was the first time a Guantanamo prisoner has given a news media interview, though many have spoken to the media after their release.
Mohammed el Gharani, a native of Chad, alleged he was severely beaten by guards for refusing to leave his cell, in the interview with an Al-Jazeera network journalist for an interview the network reported on its Web site. He spoke with journalist Sami al-Haj, who previously was imprisoned for six years at Guantanamo.
The military does not allow interviews with Guantanamo prisoners, saying to do so would violate the Geneva Conventions.
- Guantánamo Detainee Phones Al Jazeera From Prison.
Given the opportunity to make a phone call from the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a detainee awaiting release reportedly phoned Al Jazeera to complain about his treatment.
In a video report ... posted on the Arab broadcaster’s English-language Web site on Tuesday, Mohammed El Gharani (whose name is transliterated differently by Al Jazeera) told a journalist for Al Jazeera, Sami al-Hajj, who was himself detained for six years in Guantánamo, that he had recently suffered abuse from guards at the prison.
According to Al Jazeera, Mr. Gharani said that guards had used tear gas on him when he refused to leave his cell and he had been beaten. The text of a written report on Al Jazeera’s Web site says that the detainee "said in a phone call to Al Jazeera that the alleged ill-treatment ’started about 20 days’ before Barack Obama became U.S. president and ’since then I’ve been subjected to it almost every day.’"
Mr. Gharani’s claim that he was abused at the detention facility in recent months echoes a statement by a [now former prisoner Binyam Mohamed] who was released to British authorities.
- Polish media uncover evidence of CIA prison. H/T to Magnifico
The new information suggests that in December 2001, Poland designated 20 secret service agents to help in Washington's new war on terror and leased part of a military base in Stare Kiejkuty in the northwest of the country to the US.
Clandestine US flights to the nearby Szymany airport begn in December 2002. At least five subsequent flights by a suspicious Gulfstream jet landed in Szymany in 2003.
...The European Commission has in the past said that any EU country found to be in violation of basic human rights could face sanctions. Previous probes by the European Parliament and the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe also accused Poland of collusion but found no hard evidence.
- Polish CIA black site evidence includes documents from Polish judicial investigation, witness statements.
Reporters of Polish Television and the Rzeczpospolita daily said the evidence included documents and witness statements that were part of a Polish judicial investigation to determine whether the alleged CIA prison undermined the country's sovereignty, the EUobserver reported Wednesday.
The journalists said the Polish government in December 2001 reportedly leased a section of the Stare Kiejkuty military base in northwest Poland to the CIA, and assigned 20 secret agents to assist U.S. officials in anti-terrorist activities.
- Khalid Shaikh Mohammed – I was held in Poland.
The detainee, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, claims that he was held in Pakistan and Afghanistan and then transported to Guantanamo Bay via Poland.
...Mohammed claims in the [International Committee of the Red Cross] report that, after leaving Afghanistan, he arrived in a country with snow on the ground.
"I think the country was Poland. I think this because on one occasion a water bottle was brought to me without the label removed. It had an e-mail address ending in ‘.pl.’ The central-heating system was an old style one that I would only expect to see in countries of the former communist system," reads Mohammed’s full testimony.
Other torture news includes: Abu Ghraib victims can sue contractor torturers; movement to impeach Bybee and disbar, fire Yoo; UN says if US does not prosecute, breach of international law; Judge orders release of Guantanamo prisoner; sleep expert’s research twisted in torture memos, and CIA ordered "unnecessary" torture.
This is a new weekly series with editors Valtin, Meteor Blades and Patriot Daily. If you have not joined Bloggers Against Torture, you’re just one click away!
How Prisoners Were Tortured
- Sleep Expert "Surprised And Saddened" To Find Research Twisted In Torture Memo.
A British professor whose research on sleep was cited in one of the just-released Bush administration torture memos has expressed outrage that his work was used to justify extreme sleep deprivation, including keeping subjects awake for up to 11 days.
In an interview with TPMmuckraker, James Horne, a leading authority in the field of sleep research, said he was "surprised and saddened" to see Bush officials "misrepresent" his research to argue that such sleep deprivation does not cause serious harm to its subjects.
...He explained the crucial difference between his controlled experiments, in which subjects were under no additional stress, and the CIA's use of sleep deprivation on interrogation subjects.
"As soon as you add in any other stress, any other psychological stress, then the sleep deprivation feeds on that, and the two compound each other to make things far worse. I made that very, very clear," he said. "And there's been a lot of research by others since then to show that this is the case."
As for whether such stress could be considered "harmful," Horne was unequivocal. "I thought it was totally inappropriate to cite my book as being evidence that you can do this and there's not much harm. With additional stress, these people are suffering. It's obviously traumatic," he said. "I just find it absurd."
- Bush memos parallel claim 9/11 mastermind’s children were tortured with insects.
In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees.
...At a military tribunal in 2007, the father of a Guantanamo detainee alleged that Pakistani guards had confessed that American interrogators used ants to coerce the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into revealing their father’s whereabouts.
- A summary of the 10 torture methods discussed in DOJ torture memos.
- Cramped Confinement & insects Placed In a Confinement Box (Bybee memo, August 1, 2002)
"You would like to place (Abu) Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us that he appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would however, place a harmless insect in the box. You have orally informed us that you would in fact place a harmless insect such as a caterpillar in the box with him...
"Focusing in part on the fact that the boxes will be without light, placement in these boxes would constitute a procedure designed to disrupt profoundly the senses...
"With respect to the small confinement box, you have informed us that he would spend at most two hours in this box ... For the larger box, in which he can both stand and sit, he may be placed in this box for up to eighteen hours at a time ..."
- "Report: CIA ordered unnecessary torture".
Senior CIA officials ordered that waterboarding and other brutal tactics be used on a suspected terrorist even though interrogators believed he had already said all he knew, a newspaper reported Saturday.
One former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case said Zubaydah already had provided valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsh tactics did not result in a breakthrough. Rather, his captors suffered great distress witnessing his torment, the official said.
"Seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect," the official told the newspaper.
- More Iraqis killed execution-style than in bombings, 29% showed marks of torture.
Executions by insurgents and death squads made up the biggest number of Iraqi civilian deaths in five years of war, while suicide bombers acting as "smart bombs" rivaled aerial bombs for deadliness, a study said.
The study conducted by King's College and Royal Holloway of the University of London, and non-profit group Iraq Body Count, found that of 60,481 civilians killed between March 20, 2003, and March 19, 2008, 33 percent were abducted and executed.
Of those executed in the study group, 29 percent bore marks of torture, such as bruises, drill holes or burns.
- Limbaugh’s Proof That Torture Works: McCain Was ‘Broken By The North Vietnamese’.
On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh responded to the Obama administration’s release of four of the OLC torture memos with a full-throated defense of of torture and its effectiveness for gathering useful intelligence. As evidence of the effectiveness of torture, Limbaugh noted that — in his speech to the Republican National Convention last summer — Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said the North Vietnamese "broke" him while he was a POW. Limbaugh suggested that in saying the North Vietnamese "broke" him, McCain was saying that torture worked.
Evidence of Torture
- Torture memos evidence of lawyers’ complicit role in torture program, showing not just giving legal advice.
While a few technical torture details in the memos were new, much about the techniques themselves had already been public. Indeed, what’s actually new about the memos is that they reveal in unprecedented detail the Bush administration’s effort to legally justify already-known techniques.
... What was actually revealed in yesterday’s memos was the nature of the Bush administration’s efforts to legalize and justify the "harsh interrogation techniques" that we mostly knew about already. And it’s not terribly difficult to imagine why some folks would want those legal efforts kept under wraps.
- Footnote to 2005 OLC memo reveals waterboarding used ‘with far greater frequency than initially indicated.’
But a footnote to a 2005 memo made it clear that the rules were not always followed. Waterboarding was used "with far greater frequency than initially indicated" and with "large volumes of water" rather than the small quantities in the rules, one memo says, citing a 2004 report by the C.I.A.’s inspector general.
- Rights Groups Call on Obama to Declassify Documents on Secret Detention, Rendition, and Torture.
The Obama administration should take immediate steps to declassify and release documents that would allow the American public to understand the truth about the human rights violations committed as part of the U.S. secret detention, extraordinary rendition, and coercive interrogation programs, said three prominent human rights groups today. The groups—Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law—issued their call after receiving declassified documents that contradict previous government documents regarding the role of the Department of Defense (DOD) in secretly detaining individuals in the name of national security.
The more than 2000 pages of newly released documents from DOD and the Department of State (DOS) were obtained through the groups’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against multiple government agencies, which has been ongoing since 2007. Although the documents are heavily redacted, this particular batch suggests that the Bush administration exploited confusion over the term "ghost detainee" to assert that it did not hold such detainees at the same time that the CIA was operating the so-called "High-Value Detainee" program. DOD appears to have used four different categorizations for "ghost" detainees and asserts in "talking points" dated 2004 that it "does not hold ‘ghost’ detainees"—apparently in reference to one of these categories. The documents raise more questions than they answer, since they do not make clear DOD’s role in holding individuals in secret and without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In light of the newly-public report by the ICRC on the CIA’s so-called "High Value Detainee" program, such questions demand immediate answers.
- Bush Memos Suggest Abuse Isn’t Torture If a Doctor Is There.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, which authored the memos, legal approval to use waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other abusive techniques pivoted on the existence of a "system of medical and psychological monitoring" of interrogations. Medical and psychological personnel were assigned to monitor interrogations and intervene to ensure that interrogators didn’t cause "serious or permanent harm" and thus violate the U.S. federal statute against torture [3].
The reasoning sounds almost circular. As one memo [4], from May 2005, put it: "The close monitoring of each detainee for any signs that he is at risk of experiencing severe physical pain reinforces the conclusion that the combined use of interrogation techniques is not intended to inflict such pain."
In other words, as long as medically trained personnel were present and approved of the techniques being used, it was not torture.
- CIA Director Asked to Preserve Secret Prisons.
Lawyers for a Guantanamo detainee who claims he was held and tortured in one of the "black site" secret prisons run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is demanding that the CIA preserve cells and interrogation paraphernalia there as evidence of mistreatment.
Military and civilian counsel to Abd Al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri sent a letter to CIA Director Leon Panetta requesting that the CIA "black site" buildings, interrogation cells, prisoner cells, shackles, waterboards and other equipment be preserved for inspection and documentation.
...Al-Nashiri, who is now detained at Guantánamo, was held in the secret CIA prison facilities from 2002 to 2006. While President Obama has ordered the closure of CIA black sites, al-Nashiri’s attorneys are concerned that the CIA intends to destroy the sites, including the buildings and the equipment used to interrogate and torture al-Nashiri and other detainees. They say that would amount to destroying evidence of his mistreatment.
Investigations, Prosecutions and Impeachment
- Abu Ghraib Victims Can Sue Interrogators.
In a ruling that could have widespread implications for government contractors overseas, a federal court has concluded that four former Abu Ghraib detainees, who were tortured and later released without charge, can sue the U.S. military contractor who was involved in conducting prisoner interrogations for the Pentagon in Iraq.
U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1998, denied a motion to dismiss the detainees' claims by the contractor, CACI International. The Arlington, Virginia-based company is a major contractor to the Defence Department.
The former detainees allege multiple violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes and civil conspiracy.
The suit alleges that the CACI defendants not only participated in physical and mental abuse of the detainees, but also destroyed documents, videos and photographs; prevented the reporting of the torture and abuse to the International Committee of the Red Cross; hid detainees and other prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross; and misled non-conspiring military and government officials about the state of affairs at the Iraq prisons.
- CIA torture exemption 'illegal'.
US President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA agents who used torture tactics is a violation of international law, a UN expert says.
The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, says the US is bound under the UN Convention against Torture to prosecute those who engage in it.
..."The United States, like all other states that are part of the UN convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court," Mr Nowak told the Austrian daily Der Standard
- 2 authors of Bush administration torture memos under pressure to be impeached or disbarred.
Two legal officials of Bush administration who wrote torture memos are under pressure to be impeached or disbarred following release of those memos on Friday.
The Los Angeles County Democratic Party adopted a resolution on Saturday to urge the U.S. House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against Judge Jay Bybee, charging him with facilitating the authorization of torture when employed by the United States Department of Justice of Bush administration.
...Copies of this signed resolution will be sent to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. Senate Majority Leader. They will also be sent to every member of the California delegation to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
...Another torture memo writer, John Yoo, who is currently a visiting law professor at the Chapman University School of Law in southern California, also ran into trouble when about 70 professors and other opponents gathered at the Chapman University on Saturday to demand that he be disbarred and fired.
- UN torture monitor says US obliged to go after CIA torturers.
The US would be in breach of international law if it does not prosecute CIA officials for torturing alleged terrorists, the United Nations' monitor on torture Manfred Nowak said in a newspaper interview published Saturday in Austria. The UN Special Rapporteur on torture was reacting to the announcement by US President Barack Obama that CIA operatives who used harsh interrogation tactics authorized by the Bush administration should not be held responsible.
"Like all other contracting states to the UN convention against torture, the US has committed to conduct criminal investigations of torture and to bring all persons to court against whom there is sound evidence," the Austrian human rights expert was quoted as saying by the daily Der Standard.
Nowak said he did not think the president would not go so far as to issue an amnesty law for CIA operatives. Therefore US courts could still try torture suspects.
- Spanish court considers prosecuting Bush officials.
A Spanish judge is considering opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials for violating international law by devising a legal framework to allow torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
The case alleges that the officials knew their actions violated international legal treaties signed and ratified by the United States, including the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture.
It accuses the officials, including former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, of using their expert legal knowledge "to provide coverage for criminal actions that would be committed against prisoners," according to the document filed in the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s national court.
See also, Scott Horton has the latest developments on the torture case in Spain, where a high-ranking judge decides which jurist will determine the fate of the Bush Six. Despite the attorney general's efforts to stop the case, it will now proceed early next week.
See also, CCR Applauds Spanish Judge’s Decision to Pursue Case Holding U.S. Torture Conspirators Accountable.
- From 2007, a little reminder why appointing special prosecutor is hard work: Dems briefed on waterboarding in 2002, no objection.
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
... With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
- Ex-CIA chiefs slowed ‘torture memos’ release: Four argued that White House would put intelligence operations at risk – Panetta worried about torture lawsuits, wanted more censorship.
Four former CIA directors opposed releasing classified Bush-era interrogation memos, officials say, describing objections that went all the way to the White House and slowed release of the records.
Former CIA chiefs Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet and John Deutch all called the White House in March warning that release of the so-called "torture memos" would compromise intelligence operations, current and former officials say. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to detail internal government discussions.
...Panetta told Attorney General Eric Holder and officials in the White House that the administration needed to discuss the possibility that the memos' release might expose CIA officers to lawsuits on allegations of torture and abuse. Panetta also pushed for more censorship of the memos, officials said.
- Gen. Taguba: Accountability for torture does not stop at White House door.
While the Obama Administration has "reaffirmed its commitment to valuing human rights and international law" by officially closing CIA black sites and the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Taguba insisted that "there are a lot of stories that have yet to be told."
..."Abu Ghraib emerged from a structure developed by senior officials in the Bush White House and by those who thought it was necessary to blindly advance the Bush administration's goals," the General declared. "Abu Ghraib was not just happenstance. It was a morbid consequence of a policy that emanated from the Office of Legal Counsel and the Justice Department."
Status of Guantánamo Prisoners
- Judge: No threat, release Guantanamo prisoner.
A federal judge, explaining her reasons for ordering in March [opinion not cleared for public disclosure in redacted form until this past Friday] the release of a Guantanamo Bay detainee, ruled that the U.S. government can no longer hold in captivity an individual who does not now pose a threat of terrorist activity. U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle rejected a Justice Department claim that it can continue to hold detainees as long as the "war on terrorism" goes on overseas, whether or not a given individual poses a threat of returning to a battlefield.
Rather, her release order, originally issued without explanation on March 31 (see this earlier post), was based upon her legal conclusion that detention authority stops when the government has decided that an individual is not likely to return to a battlefield or to activity with the terrorist networks of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. That was her interpretation of the resolution Congress passed to allow the U.S. to respond to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — the Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
Additional News
- Egypt seeks arrest of Hezbollah chief re terrorist plot.
Cairo said it may issue charges and move for international arrest warrants for Hezbollah officials amid allegations of a terrorist plot on Egyptian soil.
...Nasrallah admitted that one of the Sinai suspects -- Mohammad Yousef Mansour, or Sami Shihab -- was serving as a Hezbollah intermediary for the Palestinian Hamas but denied allegations of a wider plot.
Muntasir al-Zayyat, a lawyer for Mansour, said his client admitted under torture to smuggling weapons to Hamas and later retracted his statements.
- Eritrea becoming 'a giant prison'.
The Horn of Africa nation is widely using military conscription without end, as well as arbitrary detention of its citizens, says HRW.
Hundreds of Eritrean refugees forcibly repatriated from countries like Libya, Egypt and Malta face arrest and torture upon their return, says the group.
- Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori Convicted of Human Rights Violations - San Francisco Human Rights Organization Call Verdict Victory for Rule of Law Over Rule of Men.
Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years. The historic verdict marks the first time that an elected head of state has been convicted of human rights violations by a national court in his own country.
In a 711-page decision, the three- judge panel found Fujimori guilty for his role supervising the murder, kidnapping, and torture of civilians by a death squad waging a counterinsurgency campaign in the early 1990s.
Thanks for news tips from Valtin and Magnifico