Today's news is talking about the existence of tapes of the interrogation of Ramzi Binalshibh, conducted at the CIA black site near Rabat, Morocco.
The Rabat black site has long been known. The knowledge is mostly at the level of scattered reports in the foreign press, scattered photographs of the place. At official U.S. levels, the Moroccan site is one of the more fiercely protected of our secrets.
Recently, details about the Moroccan black site have become a bit clearer. Just before the breaking of the interrogation tape story, there has been an increased "chatter" about Morocco.
The prisoner transfer flight, outlined in documents and interviews, visited five CIA prisons in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, Morocco and Guantanamo Bay.
The flight plan was so poorly thought out, some in the CIA derisively compared it to a five-card straight revealing the program to outsiders: Five stops, five secret facilities, all documented.
The flight logs were compiled by European authorities investigating the CIA program.
CIA moved Gitmo suspects in 'game to hide detainees from the courts', AP, August 6, 2010
In the story of the monthly scalpel slicing of Binyam Mohamed's penis, CIA officials have always been lurking, shadowy, in the background.
On the day that Mohamed was delivered to Morocco, on the day of the first penis slicing, John Yoo wrote a memo. This memo is still secret. The memo is known to have asserted, essentially, that laws and treaties against torture have no effect:
Moreover, as U.S. declarations during CAT's ratification make clear, the Convention is non-self-executing and therefore places no legal obligations under domestic law on the Executive Branch, nor can it create any cause of action in federal court. Letter for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, 1 (July 22,2002).
Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States, John Yoo, March 14, 2003 (the "Torture Memo"), p. 47
Very close to this time, the waterboarding plan for Abu Zubaydah was being developed, with John Yoo's involvement. The merciless waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, and the merciless penis slicing of Binyam Mohamed, can be considered the among the worst of our torture. Yoo's memo, the day of the penis slicing, attempted to absolve and allow them both.
At this same time, JPRA/SERE backporting, the intellectual foundation of our torture techniques, was being further systemicized and institutionalized and implemented as doctrine.
Generally, around this time, questions of how to avoid prosecution were very much in the air.
In December 2005, as the Detainee Treatment Act was being debated in Congress, John Yoo asserted that the president may order the crushing of the testicles of a child. This was one of the greater What the Fuck? moments in our national discourse on torture, and in fact one of the greater What the Fuck? moments in the whole history of our republic.
John Yoo knew what he was talking about, in not being able to rule out even testicle crushing, of children. John Yoo understood the why, of not being able to rule it out.
We tortured the children of war on terror captives, as a repeated technique. In Pakistan, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's sons, boys under 10, were tortured with insects on their legs:
He and MAJID were detained in the same place where two of KHALID SHEIK MOHAMMED's young children, ages about six and eight, were held. The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.
Ali Khan statement
Binyam Mohamed's penis was sliced, as repeated technique:
I suffered the razor treatment about once a month for the remaining time I was in Morocco, even after I'd agreed to confess to whatever they wanted to hear. It became like a routine. They'd come in, tie me up, spend maybe an hour doing it. They never spoke to me. Then they'd tip some kind of liquid on me - the burning was like grasping a hot coal. The cutting, that was one kind of pain. The burning, that was another.
Binyam Mohamed
Doug Cassel's question, in the debate with John Yoo, got to the heart of our limits on torture. There are none.
Torture can be redefined to mean "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." By that standard, crushing of testicles certainly counts. Slicing of a penis certainly counts. Waterboarding certainly counts. But the standard is of no use: nothing can be prosecuted or enforced. Not, that there is no law. But that there is no remedy. Lack of remedy is a prime government defense strategy, to this day.
If John Yoo, a legal architect of the system, had acknowledged the most minimal of restraints and limits, there would have been international law repercussions. Our duty to investigate and prosecute would have most strongly kicked in. Government refusal to prosecute, and as intentional and considered policy, requires a government implausible deniability refusal to say, as intentional and considered policy.
Who Sliced Binyam Mohamed's Penis?
Binyam Mohamed was at the black site in Rabat, Morocco, at the same time that Ramzi Binalshibh was at the black site in Rabat, Morocco. The release of the information about Binalshibh's interrogation tapes further confirms what has always been known: Rabat was a full CIA black site operation, and not a rendering and outsourcing of torture operation.
After Mohamed's arrest in Pakistan, he was moved to Morocco, where he underwent interrogation by U.S. authorities, Reprieve, a legal charity that has taken on Mohamed's case, said.
The British government knew Mohamed was in Morocco and that the U.S. authorities were interrogating him, Reprieve said.
"During his time in Morocco, Binyam was subject to really medieval torture -- among other horrors, a razor blade was regularly taken to his genitals," Reprieve said.
CNN
[Binyam Mohamed] suffered intense and sustained physical and psychological abuse while in American custody from 2002 to 2004. Petitioner argues that while Binyam Mohamed was detained in locations in Pakistan, Morocco, and Afghanistan, he was tortured and forced to admit to a host of allegations.
Judge Gladys Kessler, District Court for the District of Columbia
The judges’ decision to allow publication was the climax of a long battle by Mr Mohamed, who says that the [MI5] service knew that he was being tortured at the behest of the United States after his arrest in Pakistan in 2002.
Times of London
Western nations generally leap all over themselves to implausibly deny association or knowledge of the Moroccan period of Mohamed's captivity, or to avoid talking about it, including through the usual use of secrecy.
As the district court notes, the United States did not confirm or deny the truth of Mohamed’s allegations of mistreatment. Id. at 42, 58, 62, 64. Instead, the Government took the position that, regardless of whether Mohamed’s allegations were true, the statements he made at Guantanamo were admissible and relevant because they were reliable and because any possible effect of the alleged mistreatment had dissipated by the time he offered these voluntary and uncoerced statements.
Douglas Letter, Terrorism Litigation Counsel, Civil Division, DOJ
The 30-year-old Ethiopian described how he was first seized at Karachi airport, in Pakistan, in April 2002, while travelling with a false passport. He was hung for a week by a leather strap around his wrists. He could only just stand, he said.
The torture stopped when British interrogators came, he said. He said a person called John told him: "I'll see what we can do with the Americans."
He did not see John again. In July 2002, Mohamed was flown to Morocco. He said that his "torture team" consisted of eight people. They asked him questions which, he said, could only have come from the UK.
Guardian
Mohamed was flown to Morocco after his arrest and interrogated. He alleges that after refusing to speak with Americans, a third-party intermediary, who called herself "Sarah, the Canadian," was brought in.
Zachary Katznelson, Mohamed's lawyer, spoke to CBC News exclusively on Thursday and shared sections of a diary his client says he kept during the ordeal.
"If you don't talk to me, the Americans are getting ready to carry out torture," Mohamed wrote that Sarah told him. "They're going to electrocute you, beat you and rape you."
Mohamed alleges he was beaten and cut with razor blades, including hundreds of times on his genitals, while he was held.
The diary documents Sarah, who is described as about 30 to 35 years old, speaking with Mohamed and warning him to talk before leaving him to be tortured, Katznelson said.
CBC
I was also questioned about my links with Britain. The interrogator told me: "We have photos of people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?" I realised that the British were sending questions to the Moroccans. I was at first surprised that the Brits were siding with the Americans.
Guardian
Clive Stafford Smith, its director, said: "It is now obvious that the British authorities were not telling the truth when they denied knowing that Binyam was in Morocco. Again the question for the police and the public must be, how far up the political ladder did this knowledge go?"
He added: "Informant A actually met Binyam in the secret prison in Morocco in September 2002. He then clearly spoke with British intelligence. Since Witness B went to Morocco in November 2002, it seems most likely that he was debriefing Informant A, and then facilitating the man's return to Britain".
The judges also revealed that documents show in August 2002 MI5 was "aware that BM was being held in a covert location where he was being debriefed". At that time, the judges add, "direct access was not possible but [MI5] were able to send questions to the US authorities to be put to him".
Guardian
An MI5 officer visited Morocco three times during the period former terror suspect Binyam Mohamed claims he was secretly interrogated and tortured there, according to documents revealed by the high court today.
Lawyers acting for MI5 have repeatedly told the high court in London the agency had no idea Mohamed was in Morocco in 2002-03. But documents passed to the court show an MI5 officer, known as Witness B, visited Morocco during that time.
Guardian
The Obama administration fought fiercely to prevent disclosure of information about Binyam Mohamed's treatment to be officially released in the U.K.
Today's disclosure of the existence of interrogation tapes, of Ramzi Binalshibh, by the CIA, at the black site near Rabat, Morocco, at the same time Binyam Mohamed was there, really just further confirms one of our darkest of fears, about who really sliced Binyam Mohamed's penis.
The full story of Binyam Mohamed's treatment is in the hands and the knowledge of the United States, unreleased, unadmitted, and unprosecuted.