NewsTrust - Torture - Most Recent Stories

Checking Ron Paul and Barack Obama on torture

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Louis Jacobson - Nov. 15 (Fact Check) - On Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011, in South Carolina at the Republican candidates' debate, the subject was foreign policy. When the subject of waterboarding detainees came up, both Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and former Godfather's Pizza executive Herman Cain said they favored allowing interrogators to use the practice of simulating drowning to elicit information from a detainee. Waterboarding was permitted under the George W. Bush administration, but the policy was rescinded soon after President Barack Obama took office. Then moderator Major Garrett asked Paul for his opinion. Paul responded that "torture is illegal by our laws. It's illegal by international laws." ... >>More

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Ron Paul says torture is banned under U.S., international law

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Louis Jacobson - Nov. 15 (Fact Check) - During the CBS-National Journal Republican presidential debate in Spartanburg, S.C. , on Nov. 12, 2011, one of the moderators, Major Garrett, invited Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, into a discussion of torture. Both Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and former Go

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S.C. Debate: The Ultimate Waterboarding Championship

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Esquire - By Charles P. Pierce - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - Oh, my goodness, they do love their waterboarding, all of them except Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, who is still battling a chronic case of invisibility. Herman Cain thinks it's okay as long as we call it "an enhanced interrogation technique," albeit one that results in an enhanced inability to breathe. (Otherwise, on Saturday night, Herman Cain announced his willingness to delegate the entire job of being president to various subordinates, which will be the nicest thing he's done to a subordinate in a while. It's going to be like Reagan without the senility.) Rick Santorum, when he's not out there killing Iranian nuclear scientists, as well as their neighbors' cats and whomever's trimming their hedges that day, is fine with it, too, and for many of the same philological reasons that so appeal to Herman. La Bachmann is busy pricing designer thumbscrews and also is busy going completely off her admittedly limited rails and deep, deep into the outer bananasphere.

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Afghanistan: “The War is Unwinnable: It is a Stalemate. There is No Victory”

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Jonathan Steele - Nov. 01 (Interview) - The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, now entering its eleventh year, shows no sign of ending. On Saturday, 12 U.S. soldiers died in a suicide bombing in Kabul. It was deadliest single ground attack against NATO forces in the decade of war. To discuss Afghanistan, we speak with Jonathan Steele, a longtime correspondent for the The Guardian newspaper and author of the new book, "Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground.” “The [U.S. military strategy] doesn't work because you create new resistance by being there. So resistance comes 'cause you're there. You're not there because of the resistance. The occupying force itself creates the resistance,” Steele said. “And so the crucial thing now is to recognize now is that the war is unwinnable: It is a stalemate. There is no victory." [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Noam Chomsky on Israel-Palestine Prisoner Exchange, U.S. Assassination Campaign in Yemen

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Noam Chomsky - Oct. 18 (Speech) - MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and political dissident, spoke Monday night at Barnard College in New York City about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, just hours before Israel and Hamas completed a historic prisoner exchange. "I think [Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit] should have been released a long time ago. But there’s something missing from this whole story. There’s no pictures of Palestinian women, and no discussion, in fact, in the story of—what about the Palestinian prisoners being released?

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Freed U.S. Hiker Shane Bauer

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Sep. 26 (News Report) - "In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would immediately remind us of comparable conditions at Guantánamo Bay. They would remind of us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world and the conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.," says Shane Bauer. "We do not believe that such human rights violations on the part of our government justify what has been done to us. Not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments, including the government of Iran, to act in kind."

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Genocide-Linked General Otto Pérez Molina Poised to Become Guatemala's Next President

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman - Sep. 15 (News Analysis) - Human rights groups have accused Pérez of being directly involved in the systematic use of torture and acts of genocide in Guatemala in the 1980s. Pérez has run largely on a platform of using "an iron fist" to crack down on drug cartels. Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Mayan activist, Rigoberta Menchú, is one of nine other candidates challenging Pérez.

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U.S. Navy Vet Sues Donald Rumsfeld for Torture in Iraq, Court Allows Case to Move Forward

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Donald Vance, Andrea Prasow - Aug. 11 (News Report) - On Monday, a federal appeals court refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two U.S. citizens against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and unnamed others for developing, authorizing and using harsh interrogation techniques against detainees in Iraq. Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel were working for a private U.S. government contractor, Shield Group Security, in 2006 when they witnessed the sale of U.S. government weapons to Iraqi rebel groups for money and alcohol. After they became FBI informants and collaborated with an investigation into their employer, the company revoked their credentials for entering Iraq’s so-called Green Zone, effectively barring them from the safest part of the country. Shortly afterward, they were arrested and detained by U.S. troops, moved to the U.S.-run prison at Camp Cropper, and subjected to extreme sleep deprivation, interrogated for hours at a time, kept in a very cold cell, and denied food and water for long periods.

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How the U.S. Government uses its media servants to attack real journalism

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jul. 17 (News Analysis) - Earlier this week, the truly intrepid investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill published in The Nation one of the most significant political exposés of the year. Entitled "the CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia," the article documented that the CIA uses and effectively controls a secret prison in Mogadishu, where foreign nationals who are rendered off the streets of their countries (at the direction of the U.S.) are taken (along with Somali nationals) to be imprisoned with no due process and interrogated (by U.S. agents). Although Somali government agents technically operate the facility, that is an obvious ruse: "US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners" and are "there full-time," Scahill reported.

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The CIA’s Secret Prison in Somalia

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jul. 17 (News Analysis) - The Obama Administration’s recent decision to charge a Somali militant named Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame with crimes in a federal court in Manhattan has focused a good deal of attention on American intelligence operations in the Horn of Africa. Somalia is still viewed as the quintessential failed state, and it has been cited by American analysts as a breeding ground for Islamist militants. The U.S. government has made no secret of the special attention it devotes to the country, but it has been remarkably short on details about what that attention entails. Much of this knowledge gap has now been filled in by a remarkable piece of reporting from The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill. . . .

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A Debate on Human Rights Watch's Call For Bush Administration Officials Be Tried For Torture

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jul. 12 (News Report) - Human Rights Watch has released a new report calling on the U.S. government to launch a broad criminal investigation into alleged crimes of torture committed by former President George W. Bush and other top officials under his administration. It comes on the heels of a Department of Justice investigation into alleged torture, abuse and murder during the interrogation of detainees in CIA custody. Earlier this month, the DOJ announced it would launch a full criminal investigation into the deaths of just two prisoners out of 101 cases under review, including one who died at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. We speak to Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, and to John Baker, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University Law School.

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Former CIA Agent Glenn Carle Draws Agency Censorship With Chronicle of "War on Terror" Interrogation

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jun. 22 (Interview) - We speak with Glenn Carle, who served 23 years in the Clandestine Services of the Central Intelligence Agency. Carle's book, "The Interrogator," has just been published and tells the story of one of the most secret and sensitive CIA interrogations during the "war on terror." Carle says he took part in the interrogation of a "high-value" al-Qaeda target kidnapped off the streets at an undisclosed site in the Middle East. The book chronicles this interrogation and Carle says that CIA censors initially tried to redact nearly half of the book's first draft, which was still published with significant blacked-out omissions.

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Syrian Troops Pursue “Scorched Earth” Policy; Videos Document Children Tortured to Death

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman; Razan Zaitouneh - Jun. 13 (News Report) - The Syrian army has taken control of the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour following what state media has described as heavy fighting by "armed groups," who residents say are mutinous soldiers defending the town. Our guest Neil Sammonds, Syria researcher for Amnesty International, is interviewing refugees who have fled the violence by crossing into Turkey. They tell him Syrian military forces have destroyed houses, burned crops, slaughtered livestock and contaminated water supplies. We speak with Razan Zaitouneh, a lawyer and human rights activist based in Damascus. She has documented that children are among those killed by snipers, or kidnapped by security forces, tortured and killed.

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Three Words of Omission When It Comes to Torture

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

amnestyusa.org - By Matthew Alexander - Jun. 09 (Editorial) - Not a single one of us professional interrogators endorses torture. A former senior military interrogator exposes the popular myth that torture helps the US fight terrorism.

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Tortured and killed: Hamza al-Khateeb, age 13

Tue, 31 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Hugh Macleod, Annasofie Flamand - May. 31 (News Report) - "He would often ask his parents for money to give to the poor. I remember once he wanted to give someone 100 Syrian Pounds ($2), and his family said it was too much. But Hamza said, 'I have a bed and food while that guy has nothing.' And so he persuaded his parents to give the poor man the 100." In the hands of President Bashar al-Assad's security forces, however, Hamza found no such compassion, his humanity degraded to nothing more than a lump of flesh to beat, burn, torture and defile, until the screaming stopped at last. Arrested during a protest in Saida, 10km east of Daraa, on April 29, Hamza's body was returned to his family on Tuesday 24th May, horribly mutilated.

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Bin Laden Hit Leaves Hangover

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

populist.com - By R.J. Eskow - May. 25 (News Analysis) - Rep. King asks: Wouldn’t we have tortured Mohammad Atta on Sept. 10 to save 3,000 lives? That’s a foolish question, as interrogation experts already know. Atta would only have needed to confuse and delay us for 24 hours. Experts say that the quickest way to get information from a terrorist is by winning his sympathy. But sympathy doesn’t provide the emotional satisfaction, or the electoral opportunities, soulless politicians like Peter King crave.

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Dorothy Parvaz: Inside Syria's secret prisons

Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Dorothy Parvaz - May. 18 (Interview) - Parvaz recounts her experiences while detained in Syria and Iran. I was standing in two fist-sized pools of smeared, sticky blood, trying to sort out why there were seven angry Syrians yelling at me. Only one of them - who I came to know as Mr Shut Up du

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Bin Laden’s death and the debate over torture

Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By John McCain - May. 12 (Opinion) - Osama bin Laden’s welcome death has ignited debate over whether the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners were instrumental in locating bin Laden, and whether they are a justifiable means for gathering intelligence.

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Rumsfeld Disproves GOP's Tortured Argument

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Keith Olbermann - May. 05 (Comment) - Guess who’s out tonight denying that waterboarding, or even “harsh treatment” led to the info that led to Bin Laden? “It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.” That was said by Don Rumsfeld.

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The Torture Apologists

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - May. 05 (Editorial) - The killing of Osama bin Laden provoked a host of reactions from Americans: celebration, triumph, relief, closure and renewed grief. One reaction, however, was both cynical and disturbing: crowing by the apologists and practitioners of torture that Bin Laden's death vindicated their immoral and illegal behavior after the Sept. 11 attacks.

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Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on Value of Torture

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Scott Shane, Charlie Savage - May. 04 (News Report) - The raid that led to Bin Laden’s death has raised anew the issue of using torture to gain intelligence.

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North Korea 'holding 200,000 prisoners'

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Al Jazeera - May. 04 (News) - Amnesty International says new images and testimony point to terrible conditions in huge network of prison camps.

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Waterboarding 'Worked'?: Media push pro-torture message

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - May. 04 (Investigative Report) - To hear some tell it, the intelligence clues that ultimately led to Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan were generated by the use of torture. But the evidence available so far does not bear this out.

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The illogic of the torture debate

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - May. 04 (Opinion) - But even if it were the case that valuable information were obtained during or after the use of torture, what would it prove? Nobody has ever argued that brutality will never produce truthful answers. It is sometimes the case that if you torture someone long and mercilessly enough, they will tell you something you want to know.

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Bradley Manning: top US legal scholars voice outrage at 'torture'

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ed Pilkington - Apr. 10 (News) - Obama professor among 250 experts who have signed letter condemning humiliation of alleged WikiLeaks sourceMore than 250 of America's most eminent legal scholars have signed a letter protesting against the treatment in military prison of the alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, contesting that his "degrading and inhumane conditions" are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture.The list of signatories includes Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America's foremost liberal authority on constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign.Tribe joined the Obama administration last year as a legal adviser in the justice department, a post he held until three months ago.He told the Guardian he signed the letter because Manning appeared to have been treated in a way that "is not only shameful but unconstitutional" as he awaits court martial in Quantico marine base in Virginia.The US soldier has been held in the military brig since last July, charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking of thousands of embassy cables and other secret documents to the WikiLeaks website.Under the terms of his detention, he is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, checked every five minutes under a so-called "prevention of injury order" and stripped naked at night apart from a smock.Tribe said the treatment was objectionable "in the way it violates his person and his liberty without due process of law and in the way it administers cruel and unusual punishment of a sort that cannot be constitutionally inflicted even upon someone convicted of terrible offences, not to mention someone merely accused of such offences".The harsh restrictions have been denounced by a raft of human rights groups, including Amnesty International, and are being investigated by the United Nations' rapporteur on torture.Tribe is the second senior figure with links to the Obama administration to break ranks over Manning. Last month, PJ Crowley resigned as state department spokesman after deriding the Pentagon's handling of Manning as "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid".The intervention of Tribe and hundreds of other legal scholars is a huge embarrassment to Obama, who was a professor of constitutional law in Chicago. Obama made respect for the rule of law a cornerstone of his administration, promising when he first entered the White House in 2009 to end the excesses of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.As commander in chief, Obama is ultimately responsible for Manning's treatment at the hands of his military jailers. In his only comments on the matter so far, Obama has insisted that the way the soldier was being detained was "appropriate and meets our basic standards".The protest letter, published in the New York Review of Books, was written by two distinguished law professors, Bruce Ackerman of Yale and Yochai Benkler of Harvard. They claim Manning's reported treatment is a violation of the US constitution, specifically the eighth amendment forbidding cruel and unusual punishment and the fifth amendment that prevents punishment without trial.In a stinging rebuke to Obama, they say "he was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency".Benkler told the Guardian: "It is incumbent on us as citizens and professors of law to say that enough is enough. We cannot allow ourselves to behave in this way if we want America to remain a society dedicated to human dignity and process of law."He said Manning's conditions were being used "as a warning to future whistleblowers" and added: "I find it tragic that it is Obama's administration that is pursuing whistleblowers and imposing this kind of treatment."Ackerman pointed out that under the Pentagon's own rule book, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Manning's jailers could be liable to prosecution for abusing him. Article 93 of the code says "any person who is guilty of cruelty toward any person subject to his orders shall be punished".The list of professors who have signed the protest letter includes leading figures from all the top US law schools, as well as prominent names from other academic fields. Among them are Bill Clinton's former labour secretary Robert Reich, President Theodore Roosevelt's great-great-grandson Kermit Roosevelt, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union Norman Dorsen and the novelist Kwame Anthony Appiah.Bradley ManningWikiLeaksUnited StatesUS constitution and civil libertiesEd Pilkingtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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