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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 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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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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Obama vs. Whistle-Blowers: His Hard Line on Secrecy

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Mark Benjamin - Mar. 20 (News Analysis) - Army Private First Class Bradley Manning sleeps under tear-proof blankets. Guards check on him every five minutes; if his face isn't visible, they wake him to make sure he's O.K. And every night that he spends at the Marine brig in Quantico, Va., for allegedly providing WikiLeaks with hundreds of thousands of classified government documents, he is stripped naked, ostensibly for his own safety.

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U.S. can't link accused Army private to Assange

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

MSNBC - By Jim Miklaszewski - Jan. 25 (News Report) - U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

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How Congress helped thwart Obama's plan to close Guantanamo

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - By Carol Rosenburg - Jan. 22 (News Report) - Two years after the newly minted Obama administration moved to undo what had become one of the most controversial legacies of the George W. Bush presidency by ordering the closure of the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a trove of State Department documents made public by the website WikiLeaks is providing new information about why that effort failed.

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Lawyer for Bradley Manning, Army figure in WikiLeaks case, alleges prison mistreatment

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Ellen Nakashima - Jan. 21 (News Report) - The lawyer for alleged government secrets leaker Bradley Manning is accusing military authorities of using punitive measures against Manning at the Marine Corps jail in Quantico, Va.

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Britain to compensate ex-Guantanamo detainees alleging abuse

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi, Peter Finn - Nov. 17 (News Report) - "Without getting into whether they are good guys or bad guys, there is a global obligation that we don't condone torture, and the U.S. has done everything to avoid its duty under domestic and international law to prevent and atone for torture," said retired Air Force Col. Morris D. Davis, the former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Ba

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CIA May Face New Probe Over Destroyed Videos

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

CBS News - Nov. 11 (News) - The CIA may face new legal challenges over its destruction of videotapes showing the waterboarding of terror suspects, NBC News reports, just two days after a special prosecutor cleared the agency's former top clandestine officer and others of any criminal charges for destroying the records.

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In new memoir, Bush makes clear he approved use of waterboarding

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By R. Jeffrey Smith - Nov. 03 (News Report) - In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

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Iraq's Maliki: Opponents will use U.S. leaks against him

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ernesto Londoño - Oct. 24 (News) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that his opponents are using leaked classified U.S. military reports to discredit his administration as he struggles to secure a second term in office.

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Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Nick Davies, Jonathan Steele, David Leigh - Oct. 23 (News Report) - A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.

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The former guerrilla set to be the world's most powerful woman

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Hugh O'Shaughnessy - Sep. 29 (News Report) - The world's most powerful woman will start coming into her own next weekend. Stocky and forceful at 63, this former leader of the resistance to a Western-backed military dictatorship (which tortured her) is preparing to take her place as President of Brazil.

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Author of 'torture memos' says CIA exceeded limits in interrogations

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Ken Dilanian - Jul. 16 (News Report) - Jay Bybee, who drafted the controversial legal memoranda with lawyer John Yoo, tells a House committee that repeated waterboarding and other techniques were not approved by the Justice Department.

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The inside story of how the interrogators of Task Force 145 cracked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s inner circle—without resorting to torture—and hunted down al-Qaeda’s man in Iraq

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - Jun. 24 (News) -

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Torture inquiry should leave no stone unturned, says Amnesty

Thu, 27 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ian Cobain - May. 27 (News Report) - Investigation into human rights abuses promised by William Hague needs to be independent and must look at criminal responsibility, says organisation The coalition government should "leave no stone unturned" in the search for the truth about the UK?s complicity in foreign torture, the head of Amnesty International has said. An inquiry promised by William Hague, the foreign secretary, needs to be both independent and able to decide whether any individuals should be prosecuted, said Amnesty?s interim secretary general, Claudio Cordone. "We look forward to an inquiry that is truly independent and looks not only at potential criminal responsibility but also at Britain?s co-operation agreements with the United States and other countries," said ...

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'Torture' at secret Baghdad jail

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Apr. 28 (News Report) - Routine torture, including electric shocks and sexual abuse, was inflicted on detainees held in a secret prison in Baghdad, Human Rights Watch says.

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C.I.A. Document Details Destruction of Tapes

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Mark Mazzetti - Apr. 16 (News Report) - Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released Thursday.

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Afghans 'abused at secret prison'

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By Hilary Andersson - Apr. 15 (Investigative Report) - The abuses are all said to have taken place since US President Barack Obama was elected, promising to end torture.

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Legal Memo: Obama Team Split on Tactics Against Terror

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Charlie Savage - Mar. 29 (Special Report) - The arguments over some of the counterterrorism powers inherited from the previous administration have centered on how broadly to define suspects who may be detained without trials as wartime prisoners.

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From oppressed to governing

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Ned Parker, Raheem Salman - Mar. 08 (Special Report) - Men like Suneid, members of Iraq's Shiite elite, help explain the manic hot-cold nature of Maliki's rule since he came to power in 2006. And as Iraq heads into pivotal elections Sunday that could determine the country's future as a democracy, they show how difficult it will be for Iraq to break out of its cycle of suspicion and distrust.

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CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Jeff Stein - Jan. 27 (News Report) - John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about.

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Kuwaiti released from Guantánamo prison

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Carol Rosenberg - Dec. 10 (News Report) - "This innocent citizen of one of the United States' best allies was wrongfully imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay for almost eight years, during which he was tortured, abused and coerced into making false confessions," said defense attorney David Cynamon.

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Administration wants suit against Yoo dismissed

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

San Francisco Chronicle - By Bob Egelko - Dec. 08 (News Report) - The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.

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