Warning: Strong and disturbing images throughout this diary.
All the photos in this diary stem from a 2006 Australian Special Broadcasting Services' "Dateline" program, and reputedly originate from Abu Ghraib prison. According to an uruknet.info report, which posted these and other photos, the network said it had obtained them from an undisclosed source. It described them as part of a group of photos requested by the ACLU in a lawsuit against the government. Whether or not that is true, these photos are NOT the photos under under examination as part of a court case currently at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and part of a controversy that exploded this week.
The Torture Roundup is a joint project of Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, Valtin and Meteor Blades.
"Picturegate"
The controversy arose when an article in the May 28 UK Telegraph, "Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape'", was published in the aftermath of President Obama's reversal of his support for the release of photos, generated a sh*tstorm of controversy this week. The photos, which were ordered released last September by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, were said to picture rape, sexual assault, and other serious abuse by U.S. military personnel of Iraqi prisoners.
From the Telegraph article:
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The Telegraph's charges were later corroborated by The Daily Beast's Scott Horton. The Pentagon and White House issued denials that any of the photos under consideration for release contained the content the Telegraph reported. Mark Benjamin at Salon.com quoted Gen. Taguba as denying the Telegraph's report about the photos' content.
The British paper's report apparently refers to as yet unreleased Abu Ghraib photos, and confused their content with that of those involved in an ACLU lawsuit. According to a letter from the Department of Defense to Judge Hellerstein, the missing Abu Ghraib photos are kept in "closed Army CID reports."
The photos currently under legal dispute regarding their release are 44 pictures that are part of an ACLU FOIA lawsuit. At The Public Record, Jason Leopold described the photos under legal contention, drawing on the ACLU case file for the suit. In a diary at Daily Kos, Meteor Blades tried to untangle the confusion and political issues surrounding the controversy in his diary, What Matters Isn't the Photos, It's the Torture (Taguba Speaks). In yet another DK diary, Buhdydharma and El Yoss offered their analyses of the response to the Telegraph allegations by the Pentagon and White House Press Secretary Gibbs.
Finally, Obama did yet another about-turn and decided last Friday to take his efforts to suppress these pictures directly to the Supreme Court. Senators Lieberman and Graham also introduced legislation to change FOIA laws to keep the photos out of the public eye.
CNN reported, in Supreme Court asked to weigh in on detainee photos:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Obama administration is turning to the Supreme Court as it seeks to block public release of photos apparently depicting abuse of suspected terrorists and foreign soldiers in U.S. custody.
Justice Department lawyers late Thursday told a federal appeals court in New York -- the same one on which high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sits -- to hold off a ruling ordering release of the material, saying they plan to ask the justices to hear their case.
The government said it would proceed "absent intervening legislation" from Congress.
The "motion to recall" comes after President Obama ordered government lawyers this month to object to the court-ordered release of photos depicting the mistreatment of prisoners held in Iraq and Afghanistan, reversing an earlier White House decision. The Pentagon had been set to release hundreds of photos in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU -- which filed the initial lawsuit for disclosure -- has criticized the administration's about-face, saying it "makes a mockery" of Obama's campaign promise of greater transparency and accountability, and damages efforts to hold accountable those responsible for abusing prisoners....
Last week, the Senate voted for the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act, which would limit the reach of the Freedom of Information Act in this instance. The House could adopt a similar provision next month as part of an omnibus spending bill.
I jumped into the debate with a posting over at Firedoglake, With Pressure Growing over Torture Pics, Obama Turns to Supreme Court to Stop Release:
The quick change in strategy by Obama points to a great deal of anxiety about the impact these photos will have; and I don't mean necessarily the photos directly related to the ACLU suit, but those other pictures -- hundreds or thousands of them, including the suppressed Abu Ghraib photos -- which would have to be released "consistent with the Court’s previous rulings on responsive images in this case." (H/T Peterr).
While it may be true that the Obama administration and the generals and admirals in the Pentagon are afraid of the effects the pictures' release might have on U.S. efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, it seems just as likely that they are very worried that if these photos are released in toto that demands for investigations and prosecutions here in the U.S. will become overwhelming.
Finally, ACLU's Blog of Rights picked up on an interview by Alex Gibney, producer-director of the 2008 Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, in The Atlantic, Why the Photos Are Important:
... When I was making "Taxi to the Dark Side," we scanned scores of previously unreleased photos from Abu Ghraib and discovered disturbing evidence of widespread abuse and lack of discipline... the photos confirmed a de facto policy that was meant, according to an investigation conducted by Major General Fay "to condone depravity and degradation."
.... So, painful as they may be to examine, these new Abu Ghraib pictures probably have even more to teach us about how the "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved by the Office of Legal Counsel, for a few detainees in CIA custody, somehow managed to spread to Iraq, where even John Yoo has said that the Geneva Conventions were supposed to apply.
Our enemies already know much of what we have done in the CIA black sites, and in our prisons in Afghanistan, Cuba and Iraq. By following the rule of law, and abiding by our principles of openness and inquiry, we don’t give comfort to our enemies. Just the opposite. We send a powerful signal that we mean what we say about investigating crimes, rather than covering them up.
The Torture Doctors
Do CIA cables show doctors monitoring torture? (by Sheri Fink)
Evidence is emerging that medical personnel monitored the medical effects of the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, the al-Qaida operative who was, according to government reports, subjected to the near-drowning at least 83 times in August 2002.
The new information comes from descriptions of cables, classified as top secret and relating to the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, that were transmitted from a Central Intelligence Agency field station to the agency's Langley, Va., headquarters nearly every day between Aug. 1 and Aug. 18 that year.
The descriptions of the cables (here and here) reveal that a daily "medical update" and "behavioral comments" along with status and threat updates were sent to CIA headquarters throughout that period.
Has Consulting Firm For CIA Gone MIA?
In another article last Wednesday at the ProPublica website, Ms. Fink reported that Mitchell, Jessen and Associates, the firm run by two former military psychologists linked to the development of the CIA and military's torture program, had gone AWOL:
Last month, ProPublica reached Mitchell, Jessen and Associates at a phone number linked to the American Legion building where the company lists its official address. When we called the same number last Friday, it had been disconnected with no forwarding number.
Yesterday we called another office in the building, the Center for Personal Protection and Safety, where two officers of the consulting firm are also listed as working. The center describes itself as an educational institution focused on preventing workplace violence and improving travel safety. The woman who answered the phone told us that Mitchell, Jessen and Associates had moved out of the building in April and closed its office there. She gave no further information.
Torture, from the Britain Beat
Briton alleges MI5 collusion in torture
LONDON, May 27 (UPI) -- British intelligence services colluded in the torture of a terrorism suspect at the hands of Bangladeshi interrogators, a lawsuit alleges.
The man, Jamil Rahman, has named Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and MI5 as defendants in claims he was assaulted, unlawfully arrested, falsely imprisoned and tortured in Bangladesh with the acquiescence of the British government, The Guardian reported Wednesday.
In the suit, Rahman claims he was repeatedly beaten over a two-year period by Bangladeshi intelligence officers. He says a pair of MI5 agents present during his ordeal would leave the room whenever the Bangladeshis started beating him and would return when the violence had ended, the newspaper said.
Rahman's lawyers said they have evidence supporting the claims, including eyewitnesses, medical evidence and a telephone number he says was used by one of the alleged MI5 officers, The Guardian reported.
The lawyers say Rahman has never been charged with any terrorism-related crimes and has not been questioned by police since his return to Britain.
Britain sending refused Congo asylum seekers back to threat of torture
The British government is sending refused asylum seekers back home, a Guardian investigation has revealed, despite the fears of human rights campaigners and lawyers that deportees could encounter persecution on their return.
The government claims that those forcibly returned will be safe.
There are an estimated 10,000 Congolese asylum seekers in the UK, many of whom are at risk of being forcibly removed....
The revelations about the possible torture in Congo came as the government intensified its operation to forcibly remove Congolese nationals from the UK....
Nsimba Kumbi, 33, a refused asylum seeker, was removed from the UK on 13 March, following detention in the Campsfield immigration removal centre in Oxfordshire. He was then detained in the DRC capital, and taken to the notorious secret police headquarters Kin Mazière, the Kinshasa headquarters of the general directorate of intelligence and special services, where, he says, he was tortured for three weeks.
Kumbi says that during his incarceration he was badly beaten, that he received burns and was forced to give a male guard oral sex while his hands were tied behind his back. He says he is now in so much pain he can only move his neck in one direction. The wounds on his back from beatings are gradually drying. He says that nerve damage means he can barely move his fingers.....
Last month Amnesty International submitted a report to the UN highlighting the persistence of torture and ill treatment in detention in Congo.
Stop the US torture ship
British human rights campaigners Reprieve have urged the Spanish authorities to board and search US torture ship USS Bataan after it moored at the Palma de Mallorca holiday resort.
Reprieve said on Friday that the USS Bataan is one of the US government's most infamous "floating prisons" and will remain at the island until Saturday.
At least nine prisoners including John Walker Lindh, David Hicks and Ibn Al-Sheikh Al-Libi, who recently died in mysterious circumstances in Libyan custody, are confirmed to have been held aboard the USS Bataan.
Guantánamo
In Life After Guantánamo: Lakhdar Boumediene Speaks, Andy Worthington interviewed the former prisoner, released two weeks ago from Guantánamo, ""after seven years and four months of pointless and brutal imprisonment."
Moving on to describe his time in Guantánamo, Boumediene said that he was interrogated more than 120 times, and confirmed what he and his compatriots had maintained throughout their time in Guantánamo, whenever their accounts were made available to the public: that the interrogations focused not on the long-discredited embassy plot, but on mining the prisoners for intelligence about Arabs and other foreign Muslims in Bosnia. "At first I thought they were honest," Boumediene said, "and when I explained they would see I was innocent and would release me. But after the first two years or so, I realized they were not straight. So I stopped cooperating."
Boumediene also recalled that, during one 16-day period in February 2003, "the interrogations went on day and night, sometimes with tactics such as lifting him roughly from the chair where he was strapped, so the shackles dug into his flesh." He added that the interrogators, "some dressed in military uniforms and others in civilian clothes, were assisted by Arabic interpreters who seemed mostly to be from Egypt and Lebanon ... and later included a few Moroccans and Iraqis." The activities of the interpreters prompted what the Post described as Boumediene’s "only show of anger." "They were dogs," he said. "They often started doing the interrogations themselves. They would tell the interrogators they could get more information."
Obama Opposes Supreme Court Review For Uighurs
In a late Friday filing, the Obama administration urged the Supreme Court (see Kiyemba.Opp.pdf ) not to take up a case brought by 14 Chinese Uighers who contend that the U.S. is unlawfully detaining them at Guantanamo Bay even though they're not classified as enemy combatants.
Afghan was taken to Guantanamo aged 12: rights group
KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan who has spent over six years at the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay prison was only around 12 years old when he was detained, not 16 or 17 as his official record says, an Afghan rights group said on Tuesday.
Interviews with the family of Mohammed Jawad, who like many poor Afghans does not know his exact age or birthday, showed he was probably not even a teenager when he was arrested in 2002, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said.
Torture and Academia
Psychologists Abandon the Nuremberg Ethic: Concerns for Detainee Interrogations
This article was published in International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, vol.32, #4, pp. 161-166; May-June, 2009. doi:10.1016/j.ijlp.2009.02.005. Copyright © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Abstract: In the aftermath of 9-11, the American Psychological Association, one of the largest U.S. health professions, changed its ethics code so that it now runs counter to the Nuremberg Ethic. This historic post-9-11 change allows psychologists to set aside their ethical responsibilities whenever they are in irreconcilable conflict with military orders, governmental regulations, national and local laws, and other forms of governing legal authority. This article discusses the history, wording, rationale, and implications of the ethical standard that U.S. psychologists adopted 7 years ago, particularly in light of concerns over health care professionals' involvement in detainee interrogations and the controversy over psychologists' prominent involvement in settings like the Guantánamo Bay Detainment Camp and the Abu Ghraib prison. It discusses possible approaches to the complex dilemmas arising when ethical responsibilities conflict with laws, regulations, or other governing legal authority.
"Fair and Balanced" in Academia: Twisting Recent Torture History in the Journal "Nature"
A controversy arose among anti-torture psychologists when they found that the famous science journal Nature had ignored the changes activist psychologists had fought for via referendum, which had forced the American Psychological Association to adopt a policy withdrawal of psychologists present at military sites that abuse human rights or torture prisoners. The Nature editorial insisted, to the contrary, and in a discredited line of argument, that psychologists should be present at such sites, the better to curtail such abuse.
Opponents of APA's previous interrogation policy, including many who worked hard to pass the 2008 referendum, are furious at APA for its apparent collusion in the making of the Nature editorial and are asking supporters to flood the journal with letters to the editor. More, they are asking APA to condemn the editorial and make clear their adherence to the new referendum policy. One wonders why APA has not come out against any participation at Guantanamo or Bagram prisons even now, if they really wish to restrict psychologist presence at sites where human rights are restricted.
What galls so many APA critics is to see ignorance and platitudes, not to mention cover-up of recent historical evidence on the role of psychologists and APA over the interrogations/torture scandal, paraded as anti-torture propaganda in the pages of a prestigious scientific journal. There is an abundance of evidence, most recently in a 200-plus page report by the Senate Armed Services Committee, that rather than protect prisoners, psychologists working for the CIA and the Department of Defense, and psychologists contracted for such purposes, such as former JPRA/SERE psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were instrumental in creating the conditions for torture and abuse.
Physicians for Human Rights is calling for an official investigation of the American Psychological Association:
... ProPublica and Salon.com have posted online emails from the list-serve of the 2005 APA ethics task force on national security interrogations (PDF). The internal APA documents indicate that the APA developed its ethics policy to conform with Pentagon guidelines governing psychologist participation in interrogations.
Physicians for Human Rights is calling for an independent, outside investigation of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Mancow and Waterboarding
Conservative talk show host, Erich "Mancow" Muller, underwent a public waterboarding on May 22, which was later challenged as a hoax. Hoax or not, Daily Kos's own rb137 posted a detailed examination the effects of waterboarding, and torture in general, in her diary, "Prosecuting: Moving Beyond the Mancow Redux," double posted at Daily Kos and Antemedius
Other News
Cheney's Crumbling Torture Defense by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse examines how more and more "that the torture memos do not constitute valid legal advice. Therefore, this defense should not be applicable to the very persons who twisted the process to reach a predetermined outcome contrary to law."
Levin: Cheney lying about torture memos
WASHINGTON, May 29 (UPI) -- Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has been lying about CIA memos detailing the use of interrogation techniques, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., alleges.
Levin said an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee, of which he is the chairman, allegedly found Cheney was not truthful when he said the classified documents detailed the effectiveness of the enhanced techniques, CNN reported Friday....
"I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction," Levin said Wednesday.
U.S. Relies More on Aid of Allies in Terror Cases (NY Times - emphasis added -- H/T Chris Floyd)
WASHINGTON — The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials....
The current approach, which began in the last two years of the Bush administration and has gained momentum under Mr. Obama, is driven in part by court rulings and policy changes that have closed the secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency, and all but ended the transfer of prisoners from outside Iraq and Afghanistan to American military prisons.
Human rights advocates say that relying on foreign governments to hold and question terrorist suspects could carry significant risks. It could increase the potential for abuse at the hands of foreign interrogators and could also yield bad intelligence, they say.
The fate of many terrorist suspects whom the Bush administration sent to foreign countries remains uncertain. One suspect, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by the C.I.A. in late 2001 and sent to Libya, was recently reported to have died there in Libyan custody.
FBI planning a bigger role in terrorism fight
Reporting from Washington -- The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions....
The approach effectively reverses a mainstay of the Bush administration's war on terrorism, in which global counter-terrorism was treated primarily as an intelligence and military problem, not a law enforcement one. That policy led to the establishment of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; harsh interrogations; and detentions without trials.
The "global justice" initiative starts out with the premise that virtually all suspects will end up in a U.S. or foreign court of law.
The website Stop Canadian Complicity in Torture reminds us that the history of torture by Western democracies goes back before 9/11, in the posting, Murder and Torture - The Canadian Military in Somalia: Torture, Murder and Inquiry:
Shidane Abukar Arone was a Somali teenager who was tortured and beaten to death by Canadian soldiers in the Canadian Base in Somalia, on 17 March 1993.
Arone was caught on March 16 attempting to steal supplies from the Canadian base. Two members of the Canadian Military Base, Master Corporal Clayton Matchee and Private Kyle Brown, bound Arone and tortured him over the next several hours. Ultimately, he died of his injuries.
While the military initially claimed Matchee and Brown had acted alone, it was later revealed that sixteen others had visited the tent while Arone was captive, including superior officers.
At first DND officials told the media that Arone had likely died from natural causes. It took several weeks for the Canadian people to become aware of the actual events in Somalia.
An inquiry officially known as The Somalia Commission of Inquiry began in 1994 after public outcry.
Spanish prosecutors eying Alberto Gonzales
Pentagon: 5% of freed detainees committed terror after release
WASHINGTON -- Five percent of the foreign men freed from the Guantánamo Bay prison camps participated in terror since their release from the U.S. Navy prison, the U.S. Defense Department said Tuesday.
An additional 9 percent are believed to have joined or rejoined the fight against the United States and its allies, according to Pentagon data released amid a simmering political battle over where to send the detainees if the prison should close in January as planned.
Constitutional scholars have long cast doubt on the Pentagon's detainee data, saying it is not proved that at least some of those who were released were even linked to terrorism in the first place.
Gen. Petraeus: US violated Geneva Convention, the court of law could try terrorists: we made mistakes after 9/11: Close Gitmo
And, back in the USA...
Juvenile Injustice: An Institutional Failure
Recent media reports on the long-ago torture of children, by employees at a North Florida reform school, hammer home a painful point: Society can't afford not to invest in a humane, effective juvenile-justice system. Anything less invites the kind of institutional failure that once marked the Florida School for Boys.
The century-old state facility has been reformed, renamed and virtually reinvented in recent years. But, as a harrowing story in the St. Petersburg Times in April explained, the place was hell on Earth for many youths sent there a generation ago. Survivors from the 1950s and 1960s have told of bloody, sadistic floggings at the hands of adults. There are persistent-but-unsubstantiated reports that the abuse killed some youngsters whose deaths may have been hidden.
A group of survivors came together to expose the truth and seek restitution. Gov. Charlie Crist has requested a state investigation.
Thanks to Patriot Daily, Meteor Blades, and all those cited and uncited, all those hard workers in the cause of justice and against cruelty and inhumanity from whom I gathered these links, and to those who have survived unbelievable pain and mental anguish, I honor all of you.