Guantanamo, 2002
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Helmand, 2010
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In 2002, when the prison at Guantanamo opened, the Department of Defense released publicity photos of the orange-clad prisoners.
The photos show what are now recognized as standard American isolation and sensory deprivation techniques, the use of eye goggles and ear muffs.
And they show a known torture technique, a painful stress position, of forced kneeling on gravel.
In 2010, at the time of the surge, Reuters released a photograph of an Afghan man being held by U.S. Marines in Helmand province.
The photo shows standard American isolation and sensory deprivation techniques, with the eye goggles.
And it shows a known torture technique, a painful stress position, of forced kneeling on gravel.
In this year [Vietnam, 1965], American POWs report forced kneeling with hands in the air or, less frequently, sitting or standing. Guards would sometimes place objects (pebbles or sticks) under the knees. One POW observed, "kneeling torture" was similar to "driving a long nail under the kneecaps".
Torture and Democracy, Darius Rejali
The 2002 photo can be seen at numerous anti-torture websites and blogs. The 2010 photo, of a U.S. Marine smoking a cigarette while guarding an Afghan prisoner in a stress position, can be seen at
Totally Cool Pix.
Afghan prisoners, captured by the U.S., are usually handed over to Afghan control and Afghan prisons. The U.N. and other organizations report on torture by Afghan security forces, year after year.
Detainees described experiencing torture in the form of suspension (being hung by the wrists from chains or other devices attached to the wall, ceiling, iron bars or other fixtures for lengthy periods) and beatings, especially with rubber hoses, electric cables or wires or wooden sticks and most frequently on the soles of the feet. Electric shock, twisting and wrenching of detainees’ genitals, stress positions including forced standing, removal of toenails and threatened sexual abuse were among other forms of torture that detainees reported.
Treatment of Conflict Related Detainees in Afghan Custody, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, 2011
Researchers found credible evidence of torture at nine NDS facilities and several Afghan National Police (ANP) facilities, including beatings, suspension from the ceiling, electric shocks, threatened or actual sexual abuse, and other forms of mental and physical abuse, which were routinely used to obtain confessions or other information.
Torture, Transfers, and Denial of Due Process, AIHRC and the Open Society Foundations, 2012
Detainees said they experienced torture in the form of suspension (hanging from the ceiling by the wrists or from chains attached to the wall, iron bars or other fixtures so that the victim’s toes barely touch the ground or he is completely suspended in the air with his body weight on his wrists for lengthy periods), prolonged and severe beating with cables, pipes, hoses or wooden sticks (including on the soles of the feet), punching and kicking all over the body, twisting of genitals, and threats against the detainee of execution and/or sexual violence.
Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, 2013
The torture techniques described are consistent, year after year. After a report, the U.S. consistently halts renditions to the worst locations. Until the glare of negative publicity has passed, when the U.S. renditions to Afghan torture are continued.
Rendition to torture was noticed as a loophole, soon after the January 2009 executive orders. The loophole was defended by U.S. officials.
"Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."
One provision in one of Obama's orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."
Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool, Los Angeles Times
Afghan security forces are a thinner U.S. proxy than in the standard rendition to torture by foreign governments. Afghan security forces are almost entirely funded by the U.S.
The complex allegiance of Afghan national security forces can be seen even in the military insignia they wear.
The Afghans were originally recruited and trained by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command to join the elite U.S. operators on missions, as indicated by the patch the Afghans still wear emblazoned with the words “Afghan Partnering Forces.”
Obama Is Betting His Whole Afghan Plan on These Commandos, Daily Beast
But at any level of partnership or independence, the practice of rendition to torture is not defensible. U.S. rendition to torture is torture.
Our government does not torture. That should be our position. That should be our position. That will be my position as president. That includes, by the way, renditions. We don't farm out torture. We don't subcontract torture.
Democratic Candidates Compassion Forum, Barack Obama, 2008
The U.S. has been using the No Fly list to coerce Americans into serving as informants in the war on terror. The No Fly List has recently been ruled as unconstitutional. And also, the government has recently argued that using the list for coercion is not unconstitutional.
In a number of stories, Americans subject to the government coercion attempts have found themselves imprisoned by foreign governments, and tortured. The interrogation questions asked during the foreign torture seem guided by Americans.
Last June, while Yonas Fikre was visiting the United Arab Emirates, the Muslim American from Portland, Oregon was suddenly arrested and detained by Emirati security forces. For the next three months, Fikre claims, he was repeatedly interrogated and tortured. Fikre says he was beaten on the soles of his feet, kicked and punched, and held in stress positions while interrogators demanded he "cooperate" and barked questions that were eerily similar to those posed to him not long before by FBI agents and other American officials who had requested a meeting with him.
American Muslim Alleges FBI Had a Hand in His Torture, Mother Jones
An American teenager detained in Kuwait two weeks ago and placed on an American no-fly list claims that he was severely beaten by his Kuwaiti captors during a weeklong interrogation about possible contacts with terrorism suspects in Yemen.
The teenager, Gulet Mohamed, a Somali-American who turned 19 during his captivity, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday from a Kuwaiti detention cell that he was beaten with sticks, forced to stand for hours, threatened with electric shocks and warned that his mother would be imprisoned if he did not give truthful answers about his travels in Yemen and Somalia in 2009.
American officials have offered few details about the case, except to confirm that Mr. Mohamed is on a no-fly list and, for now at least, cannot return to the United States.
Detained American Says He Was Beaten in Kuwait, New York Times
Some Afghan prisoners are kept in U.S. control. News media has been reporting on U.S. torture and beatings, at a facility known as the Black Jail at Bagram, ever since 2009.
The site, known to detainees as the black jail, consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. In interviews, former detainees said that their only human contact was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.
“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,” said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who said he was detained there in June.
Afghans Detail Detention in ‘Black Jail’ at U.S. Base, New York Times
Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.
2 Afghans allege abuse at U.S. site, Washington Post
The cells are especially small.
He said he lived in a small concrete cell that was slightly longer than the length of his body.
2 Afghans allege abuse at U.S. site, Washington Post
He said it was like being in a cupboard – two metres long and less in width.
The ‘Other Guantanamo’ 6: Afghans still struggling for sovereignty at Bagram, Afghanistan Analysts Network
Prisoners describe the treatment as especially harsh.
It was better to just kill me. But they would not kill me.
In the black jail, they can do anything to detainees.
They treated us like wild animals.
Reports of torture at the U.S. facility are made year after year.
"They call it the Black Hole," said Sher Agha who spent six days in the facility last autumn.
"When they released us they told us we should not tell our stories to outsiders because that will harm us."
Sher Agha and others we interviewed complained their cells were very cold.
"When I wanted to sleep and started shivering with cold I started reciting the holy Koran," he said.
Afghans 'abused at secret prison' at Bagram airbase, BBC
And descriptions of the confinement conditions and the techniques used are consistent over the years.
Given the consistency of the accounts, the Open Society Foundations believes these are genuine areas of concern, and not outliers, that run counter to U.S. rules on detainee treatment and the administration’s strong public support for Common Article 3 of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which prohibits “cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”
Confinement Conditions at a U.S. Screening Facility on Bagram Air Base, Open Society Foundations
On the same day that Guantanamo opened, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni was rendered to Egypt. He was placed in a cramped confinement box, among other torture techniques.
Ibn Sheikh al-Libi is said to have broken under the cramped confinement box technique, also in Egypt. From this torture, we get the false claims that Iraq assisted in al-Qaida's weapons of mass destruction efforts.
Abu Zubaydah was placed in cramped confinement boxes in Afghanistan, by the CIA. The technique is a part of the reason FBI agent Ali Soufan removed himself from the process.
After the fact of use of a confinement box on Abu Zubaydah, John Yoo approved their use. The Bybee two memo also approves their use. And a George Tenet memo lists the box in the list of "enhanced techniques."
And, in October 2011, a prisoner captured by US forces in Paktika says he was placed in a cramped confinement box. He broke under the torture, under the old enhanced technique, and his false confession under torture is why he was sent to Bagram.
But he said that upon his October 2011 capture in Paktika, he was placed in a "3ft-by-3ft" space, leading him to make a false confession that prompted his Bagram stint.
Revealed: the hunger strikes of America's most secret foreign prisoners, Guardian
In 2006, after public disclosures about Abu Ghraib, and the black sites, and techniques including waterboarding, and with a decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld coming up, the Department of Defense officially pulled back from the more extreme torture techniques.
But the new army interrogation manual had a section, Appendix M, specifically for use only on prisoners deemed to fall outside the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
In 2009, on the second day of the administration, the army field manual was declared the standard for all interrogations, including by the CIA. And Common Article 3 of the Conventions was declared to apply to all prisoners.
Jeff Kaye has reported that a Steven Bradbury memo from 2006, authorizing Appendix M techniques, but specifically disclaiming legal analysis under the Geneva Conventions, assumed to be rescinded in 2009, is still in effect.
The April 13, 2006 memo was written by Stephen Bradbury, who was also author of two 2005 memos on the CIA torture-interrogation program that were subsequently withdrawn.
According to LTC Todd Breasseale in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), Obama’s January 2009 Executive Order EO 13491, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogation,” widely understood and cited as voiding the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel torture memos, “did not cancel Mr. Bradbury’s legal review” of a rewritten Army Field Manual and its controversial Appendix M.
DoD Deception Hides Fact SERE Torture Techniques Still Allowed for Interrogations, Valtin, Daily Kos
The contradiction, that techniques authorized for use only outside the conventions, by the Bush administration, are currently used on prisoners covered by the conventions, has never been addressed, and not much even questioned.
The Bush administration had used jurisdictional arguments to protect the torture program.
And jurisdictional arguments are still relied on. This year, the United States had gone to a United Nations torture panel, making the claim that international law does not apply internationally.
In 1995, Conrad Harper, the Clinton administration’s top State Department lawyer, appeared before a United Nations panel in Geneva to discuss American compliance with a global Bill of Rights-style treaty the Senate had recently ratified, and he was asked a pointed question: Did the United States believe it applied outside its borders?
Mr. Harper returned two days later and delivered an answer: American officials, he said, had no obligations under the rights accord when operating abroad. The Bush administration would amplify that claim after the Sept. 11 attacks — and extend it to another United Nations convention that bans the use of torture — to justify its treatment of terrorism suspects in overseas prisons operated by the military and the C.I.A.
The United Nations panel in Geneva that monitors compliance with the rights treaty disagrees with the American interpretation, and human rights advocates have urged the United States to reverse its position when it sends a delegation to answer the panel’s questions next week. But the Obama administration is unlikely to do that, according to interviews, rejecting a strong push by two high-ranking State Department officials from President Obama’s first term.
U.S. Seems Unlikely to Accept That Rights Treaty Applies to Its Actions Abroad
The administration has also argued, successfully, that U.S. prisoners in Afghanistan have no
habeas rights. Prisoners in Afghanistan have less protection than even Guantanamo prisoners have.
The Obama administration has told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.
In a two-sentence filing late Friday, the Justice Department said that the new administration had reviewed its position in a case brought by prisoners at the United States Air Force base at Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital. The Obama team determined that the Bush policy was correct: such prisoners cannot sue for their release.
“Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position,” wrote Michael F. Hertz, acting assistant attorney general.
Obama Upholds Detainee Policy in Afghanistan, New York Times
In the executive orders on the day after inauguration, the CIA black sites were declared closed.
In 2011, though, Jeremy Scahill reported on CIA black sites still running in Somalia.
Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport is a sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport. The site, which airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access. At the facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted “combat” operations against members of Al Shabab, an Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.
As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu. While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu.
The CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia, the Nation
Last year, at a small U.S. Special Forces base in Wardak province, some two dozen Afghan men were tortured and killed, with mutilated bodies dumped just outside the base.
The footless corpse of an Afghan man missing since November was found on Tuesday near the former American Special Forces base to which he was last seen being taken, according to Afghan officials and victims’ representatives.
Torture Victim’s Body Is Found Near U.S. Base, Afghans Say, New York Times
A U.S. contractor going by the name of Zakaria Kandahari, who operated out of the base, fled the base for a safe house, and was later arrested by Afghanistan. But, even after Kandahari had fled the base, the killings of civilians in Wardak continued.
In addition, he said, the abuse of detainees continued even after Mr. Kandahari fled when Mr. Karzai demanded that he be handed over to the Afghan authorities. Four of those who were killed had been arrested after Mr. Kandahari fled, the authorities said.
Interpreter Accused of Torturing and Killing Afghan Civilians Is Arrested, New York Times
Matt Aikins, for Rolling Stone, was able to report on the Wardak killings and torture.
He was taken to the U.S. base in Nerkh and put in a plywood cell, where he was left until the next morning. Then the interrogations began. He says his hands were bound above his head and he was suspended and then beaten by Kandahari and the bearded American. There were two Americans and their translators interrogating him, and they asked him about Gul Rahim, and about well-known insurgent commanders in the area; Omar professed to know nothing. He says the beatings intensified, and he fainted several times – they twisted his testicles, he admits shamefacedly. The interrogation sessions continued for two days. Bound to a chair and beaten, Omar was certain he would die.
The A-Team Killings, Rolling Stone
The reporting is in considerable detail.
When I showed the photos to the witnesses in Nerkh, they consistently recognized, without prompting, members of ODA 3124 and their interpreters. For example, Neamatullah, who claimed his two brothers were arrested and later found buried outside the base, correctly picked out six members of the A-Team. When I show a group photo to Omar, the man who witnessed Gul Rahim’s execution by Kandahari, he identifies three members of the unit that he alleges were present during the murder and his subsequent torture.
Torture, death, and dismemberment, it unfortunately needs said, is clearly outside any approved U.S. method. "If the detainee dies, you are doing it wrong" had been the standard, even at the worst of the Bush administration. (This made the standard: torture just short of death.)
But torture, during the Bush years, has not been effectively investigated and prosecuted. Not torture to death, even, and not even by the current administration.
And the multiple torture, death, and dismemberment in Wardak has not been effectively investigated and prosecuted either. Torture which occurred in 2013.
Aikins also released a video, showing Afghan security forces whipping a prisoner, while American soldiers stand by and watch.
These are not the same soldiers from ODA 3124 that I wrote about for the investigation. We don't know who they are. However, based on their facial hair and appearance they are probably from a U.S. Army Special Forces team. Moreover, the uniform pattern that they seem to be wearing did not see general use in Afghanistan until 2010.
As Afghan soldiers abuse a prisoner, American Special Forces stand idly by
In 2010, a deputy counsel for the CIA, not speaking for official policy, had argued that even rendition to torture is not illegal.
Indeed, U.S. law does not even preclude the United States from rendering individuals to a third country in instances where the third country may subject the rendered individual to torture. The only restrictions that do exist under U.S. law preclude U.S. officials from themselves torturing or inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on individuals during rendition operations, or rendering individuals from a place of actual armed conflict or occupation – all of which prove to be narrow limitations indeed. Finally, few actual means exist to prosecute or sue U.S. officials engaged in rendition operations, due to limitations in civil and criminal statutory authority, as well as the courts’ continuous reluctance to consider such claims.
Rendition Operations: Does U.S. Law Impose Any Restrictions?, Loyola University Chicago Law Journal
This video, of U.S. soldiers standing over torture by Afghan forces, shows what a standard that the U.S. officials cannot participate in the torture themselves, means.
We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will.
Meet the Press, Dick Cheney, September 16, 2001
Some believe the first casualty of any war is the truth. But in this war, the first victory must be to tell the truth. And the truth is, this will be a war like none other our nation has faced.
A New Kind of War, Donald Rumsfeld, September 27, 2001
Twelve years after 9/11, we still have the dark side to work through. And we still have the truth to work for. The president has officially acknowledged that the United States has used torture. But the torture is talked about as something from our past.
I understand why it happened. I think it’s important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen, and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent, and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this.
Press Conference by the President, Barack Obama, August 1, 2014
The story of torture at the U.S. base in Wardak, in 2013, is as horrific as any we've read.
Two days after masked men burst in to Bibi Shereen's house and took her son away, villagers found his corpse - half-eaten by dogs - under a bridge in Afghanistan's volatile Wardak province.
"His fingers were cut off, he was badly beaten. His hands were swollen, his throat was slit," she told Reuters in her small mudbrick house.
Afghan move against U.S. special forces tied to abuse allegations, Reuters
The story of current U.S. rendition to torture in Afghanistan, as horrific, and as large scale.
A joint team of Afghan National Security Forces and international military forces arrested me from a shop in XXX area of XXX city on XXX. They handcuffed and hooded me and took me directly to NDS Department 124. ... On the second day at the Department 124, the same interrogator came and took me again to the interrogation room. He called another NDS soldier and told him to bring pipes and a power cable of a computer to beat me if I did not confess. I said to him again that I was innocent. They kicked me and threw me on the floor. Then they beat me with the power cable and pipe all over my body continuously for about 25 minutes.
Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
A government by warlord, a system of secret police operating with impunity, a system of secret prisons beyond control, a system of torture and disappearance and indefinite detention, has been part of the American strategy in Afghanistan all along. And is part of the American exit strategy now.
And my hope is, is that this report reminds us once again that the character of our country has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard. And when we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line. And that needs to be -- that needs to be understood and accepted. And we have to, as a country, take responsibility for that so that, hopefully, we don't do it again in the future.
Press Conference by the President, Barack Obama, August 1, 2014
The truth is, torture still continues. The truth is, rendition to torture still goes on. The truth is, some black sites are still open. The truth is, some old "enhanced interrogation" techniques are still used. The truth is, the Geneva Conventions, in any meaningful sense, are not in effect.
We need, as a country, to take responsibility for that.