Senior staff attorney Steven Watt at the ACLU's Human Rights Program writes
The horrific stories of CIA-sponsored torture that aren’t in the Senate report. An excerpt:
As bad as the stories in the Senate torture report are, there is a whole class of victims who aren’t even mentioned. The executive summary released last week makes only passing reference to an integral component of the CIA program: the “extraordinary rendition” of prisoners to foreign custody for “interrogation” by those countries’ intelligence services—with the full knowledge that the men would be tortured.
Because rendition was beyond the report’s scope, there’s still no official account of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other victims of torture that the CIA is responsible for.
As the Washington Post revealed in 2005, the CIA identified two categories of prisoners for detention and interrogation: “high value” detainees that the agency held onto and “second tier” ones who were farmed out for detention and interrogation to other governments. As former CIA officer Bob Baer explained in disturbing detail, “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt.”
How many detainees met such fates? The Post reported that more than twice as many prisoners were rendered by the CIA to foreign governments as were held by the agency. Since we now know that 119 men were held by the CIA, that would mean at least 238 people were sent to other countries. And this figure could be much higher: In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said that “more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries.”
Much of what we know about this practice of outsourcing torture is from the harrowing accounts of its victims and survivors who have bravely come forward to tell their stories. One of them is Ahmed Agiza, an Egyptian citizen who lived with his wife and young family in Sweden, where they were seeking refugee status. In December 2001, Ahmed and a friend were apprehended by Swedish police, who turned them over to the CIA. In what was reportedly the Bush administration’s first rendition operation, Ahmed and his friend were sent to Egypt, where they were held incommunicado by Egyptian Intelligence Services, interrogated, and mercilessly tortured. In an unfair trial in 2004, Ahmed was convicted and sentenced to 25 years for membership in an organization banned under Egyptian law. […]
Because the Senate report covers only prisoners held by the CIA, there is still no official accounting of what happened to these men and others like them, forcibly disappeared and handed over to foreign governments for torture. We don’t even know whether the practice was authorized—and if so, by whom—and who was subject to it. We don’t have details of the inhumane treatment and torture that these individuals faced at the hands of CIA officials, or once in the hands of the CIA’s foreign partners.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Gibbs confirms role of deficit commission in budget and State of the Union:
The deficit commission that couldn't come to enough of a consensus to send an official report to Congress will apparently still play a role in the President's budget for next year and the State of the Union speech. That's straight from the Press Secretary's mouth, or fingers.
In a Twitter conference this morning, he was asked: "Will the President use SOTU to push recommendations of the Deficit Panel?" The reply:
There have been plenty of other proposals the administration could consider.
There's the proposal by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, one of the many catfood commission members to reject its findings. There's also the fiscal blueprint developed by Demos, Economic Policy Institute, and the Century Foundation, which has excellent recommendations for growing our economy. Likewise, the Citizens' Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America's Economic Future, featuring some of the smartest progressive economists and analysts around, created a solid proposal for growing our economy.
But the one Gibbs is talking about is the one in which the chairman calls Americans paying into and receiving Social Security benefits millions of tit-suckers. That's the one that seems to count. Even though it failed.
Tweet of the Day
On
today's "encore performance" of the Kagro in the Morning show, it's the 12/18/13 episode: "Happy Holidays!" POW! AZ woman punches a Salvation Army bell ringer! David Pakman (another Netroots Radio fave) informs us that $4K of the taxes paid on a $50K salary end up as corporate subsidies!
Joan McCarter joins the show to round up the non-budget "budget deal" and renewed debt ceiling threats, the lack (so far) of serious post-nuclear Senate drama, the expiration of UI, the NSA lawsuits, and Dan Drezner's "Tone-Deaf at the Listening Post." Also: "Accidental Tax Break Saves Wealthiest Americans $100 Billion," which Alec MacGillis points out is more than half the latest cut in food stamps.
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