Showing posts with label CIA torture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA torture. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
CIA torture program was “Dick Cheney’s baby” – John Kiriakou
By RT America
“Hypocritical” is how CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou describes his arrest and imprisonment for exposing the spy agency’s use of torture while those who actually committed the heinous acts go unpunished. In an in-depth interview with RT’s Ben Swann, Kiriakou discussed not only his time in prison, but also the controversial “enhanced interrogation” program, claiming that President George W. Bush personally approved the harsh practices.
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Part 2 of this interview can be seen below
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Everything You Need to Know About the CIA Torture Report in Under 4 Minutes
Activist Post
If someone tries to hide something from you for ten years, it's probably pretty embarrassing or shameful. Over the past ten years, the CIA has misled Congress about their post-9/11 torture program, withheld evidence and tried to cover up the facts. In the next few weeks, a new bipartisan Senate report is expected to reveal the truth about the CIA's torture programs. Here's why you want to know what's in the Torture Report:
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Saturday, June 1, 2013
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
White House delays release of secret torture report
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Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Supreme Court nixes suit against ex-attorney general
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| Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft © AFP/Getty Images/File Mark Wilson |
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court has ruled that former attorney general John Ashcroft cannot be held responsible for police and judicial excesses committed in the period after the September 11 attacks.
In a unanimous decision on Monday, the court overturned an appeals court decision authorizing a lawsuit brought against Ashcroft by Abdullah Al-Kidd, an American convert to Islam.
Al-Kidd was detained in March 2003 and held without charges as a "material witness," a formulation widely used after the 2001 attacks on the United States to ensure suspects were available to testify in terrorism cases.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Court refuses to consider rendition case
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| The US Supreme Court © AFP/Getty Images/File Brendan Hoffman |
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal Monday by five former detainees claiming a flight-planning firm had helped arrange for the CIA to send them to countries where they were tortured.
The men -- an Egyptian, an Italian, a Yememi, an Iraqi and an Ethiopian -- first filed suit in May 2007 against a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan.
They said they had been tortured at secret prisons abroad, especially in Morocco and Egypt, as terror suspects under the Central Intelligence Agency's post-September 11 rendition program.
In September, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed the case, agreeing with President Barack Obama's administration that trying it could threaten "state secrets" and compromise national security.
"With today's decision, the Supreme Court has refused once again to give justice to torture victims and to restore our nation's reputation as a guardian of human rights and the rule of law," said ACLU National Security Project litigation director Ben Wizner, who argued the case before the appeals court.
ACLU legal director Steven Shapiro said the ruling "will not end the debate over the government's use of the 'state secrets' privilege to avoid judicial scrutiny for illegal actions carried out in the name of fighting terrorism."
"In a nation committed to the rule of law, unlawful activity should be exposed, not hidden behind a 'state secrets' designation," he added.
© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Being Innocent isn't Enough, No Justice for CIA Torture Victim El-Masri (VIDEO)
YouTube -- Representative Press
RELATED ARTICLES:
America's Torture Doctrine
Another Nuremberg in the Making
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America's Torture Doctrine
Another Nuremberg in the Making
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
CIA implanted electrodes in brains of unsuspecting soldiers, suit alleges
Raw Story
A group of military veterans are suing to get the CIA to come clean about allegedly implanting remote control devices in their brains.
It's well known that the CIA began testing substances like LSD on soldiers beginning in the 1950s but less is known about allegations that the agency implanted electrodes in subjects.
A 2009 lawsuit (.pdf) claimed that the CIA intended to design and test septal electrodes that would enable them to control human behavior. The lawsuit said that because the government never disclosed the risks, the subjects were not able to give informed consent.
Bruce Price, one plaintiff in the lawsuit, believes that MRI scans confirm that the CIA placed a device in his brain in 1966.
Read Full Article
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DARPA Wants to Install Transcranial Ultrasonic Mind Control Devices in Soldiers' Helmets
Another Nuremberg in the Making: Intelligence Agencies Employ Physicians to Torture Detainees
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Monday, November 15, 2010
George W. Bush: Torturer-in-Chief
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| Dees Illustration |
The Nation
In an uncoerced confession in his new memoir, Decision Points, former President George W. Bush proudly admits that he personally signed off on the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in 2003. Former Vice President Dick Cheney made the same admission in a televised interview shortly before he left office. In one sense, this is nothing new. It had long been reported that the CIA's use of what the Bush administration euphemistically called "enhanced interrogation techniques" had been approved at the highest levels of the administration. But now both Bush and Cheney have publicly admitted to specifically signing off on the CIA's torture tactics. Their direct personal admissions now seal the case against them.
What case, you might ask? There is in fact no criminal or civil case against the former president or vice president for these actions. And both men no doubt felt comfortable admitting they had authorized what the world recognizes as torture because they believe they are politically immune from being held accountable. Even before the midterm elections, Barack Obama had insisted that he wanted only to look forward, not backward. With a strengthened Republican Party after the elections, it is even less likely that Bush or Cheney will be held accountable by the Obama administration. On November 9 the Justice Department announced that no criminal charges would be brought against the CIA agents who destroyed videotapes of the torture interrogations; that part of the cover-up, it seems, has succeeded.
But Bush and Cheney are not immune. In fact, the United States is legally obligated by the Convention Against Torture, a treaty we helped draft, and have signed and ratified, to investigate any credible allegations of torture by a person within US jurisdiction. And if the United States does not take action, other nations are authorized to do so, under the principle of "universal jurisdiction," which treats torture as so heinous that its perpetrators can be investigated and prosecuted by any country if their own country fails to take corrective action.
Chile's former President Augusto Pinochet found this out the hard way. After flying to London for medical treatment, he was served with an arrest warrant issued by a Spanish magistrate investigating him for, among other things, authorizing torture. Pinochet argued that he was immune from such action as a former head of state, but Britain's highest court rejected that plea, and Pinochet was placed under arrest. He was eventually sent back to Chile on medical grounds, but he spent the last years of his life there fighting criminal charges arising out of his acts as president.
Investigating and arresting the former president of Chile is one thing. Investigating and arresting the former president and vice president of the United States would be another matter altogether. No doubt Bush was relying on just that calculation in admitting his guilt in his memoir. And it may be that Bush and Cheney are deliberately admitting their crime at a time when they know they will not be prosecuted, in hopes of putting the issue behind them and providing cover to those below them who also approved of the crime. How can we prosecute anyone lower down when the president and vice president have admitted to giving their approval?
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Chile's former President Augusto Pinochet found this out the hard way. After flying to London for medical treatment, he was served with an arrest warrant issued by a Spanish magistrate investigating him for, among other things, authorizing torture. Pinochet argued that he was immune from such action as a former head of state, but Britain's highest court rejected that plea, and Pinochet was placed under arrest. He was eventually sent back to Chile on medical grounds, but he spent the last years of his life there fighting criminal charges arising out of his acts as president.
Investigating and arresting the former president of Chile is one thing. Investigating and arresting the former president and vice president of the United States would be another matter altogether. No doubt Bush was relying on just that calculation in admitting his guilt in his memoir. And it may be that Bush and Cheney are deliberately admitting their crime at a time when they know they will not be prosecuted, in hopes of putting the issue behind them and providing cover to those below them who also approved of the crime. How can we prosecute anyone lower down when the president and vice president have admitted to giving their approval?
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010
No charges to be filed in destruction of CIA tapes
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| Image Source / Raw Story |
Raw Story
There will be no criminal charges over the destruction of CIA tapes showing interrogation of terrorism detainees, according to a new report.
Federal prosecutors have determined that there is not enough evidence to bring charges, two sources have told NPR.
The statue of limitations expired Monday so no future prosecutions will be possible.
A few of the tapes allegedly contained evidence showing the interrogation of two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Intelligence officials told NBC News that one of the tapes showed Zubaydah being waterboarded. Other tapes contained innocuous images of other detainees.
Read Full Article
RELATED ARTICLES:
America's Torture Doctrine
Another Nuremberg in the Making: Intelligence Agencies Employ Physicians to Torture Detainees
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Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Torture Orders Were Part of U.S. Sectarian War Strategy
IPS
WASHINGTON - The revelation by Wikileaks of a U.S. military order directing U.S. forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the U.S. military about detainee abuse.
But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by the news media, is that it was part of a larger U.S. strategy of exploiting Shi'a sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the U.S. war.
And Gen. David Petraeus was a key figure in developing the strategy of using Shi'a and Kurdish forces to suppress Sunnis in 2004-2005.
The strategy involved the deliberate deployment of Shi'a and Kurdish police commandoes in areas of Sunni insurgency in the full knowledge that they were torturing Sunni detainees, as the reports released by Wikileaks show.
Read Full Article
RELATED ARTICLES:
America's Torture Doctrine
Another Nuremberg in the Making: Intelligence Agencies Employ Physicians to Torture Detainees
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Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Who's to blame for torture? Lawyers probe Wikileaks logs
Associated Press
LONDON — It has been one of the most bitter legal debates during the so-called war on terror – who's to blame for torture and how many degrees of separation does it take to dodge a lawsuit?
Lawyers say the answer may lie in recently leaked documents, which human rights groups and some Iraqi civilians hope will be a treasure trove of evidence that could prove U.S. and other coalition forces broke a cardinal rule of international law – handing over terror suspects when they had good reason to believe the detainees would be tortured.
The Pentagon has criticized the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks for publishing nearly 400,000 U.S. military logs detailing daily carnage in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. In July, the same group published 77,000 secret documents on the war in Afghanistan.
The classified logs on Iraq describe detainees abused by Iraqi forces, insurgent bombings, sectarian executions and civilians shot at checkpoints by U.S. troops. They also chart how coalition troops handed Iraqis back to security forces after suspicions that the Iraqis were abusing or torturing detainees.
Lawyers say the once-secret logs are different from other leaks because of the vast amount of material presented and the number of potential breaches of international law.
"If a state knows that there's a real risk that a person will be tortured by another state, they simply cannot transfer that person to the other country's custody," said Phil Shiner of U.K.-based Public Interest Lawyers, which represents some 130 Iraqi civilians who allege ill-treatment by Britain's armed forces.
But not everyone agrees that torture is avoidable during war, let alone just how far an occupying power should go to make sure terror suspects aren't tortured and abused – especially in the case of Iraq, which is a sovereign state.
Read Full Article
RELATED ARTICLES:
America's Torture Doctrine
Another Nuremberg in the Making
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Friday, October 15, 2010
Wolfowitz Directive Gave Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation Program
TruthOut
In 2002, as the Bush administration was turning to torture and other brutal techniques for interrogating "war on terror" detainees, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz loosened rules against human experimentation, an apparent recognition of legal problems regarding the novel strategies for extracting and evaluating information from the prisoners.
Wolfowitz issued his directive on March 25, 2002, about a month after President George W. Bush stripped the detainees of traditional prisoner-of-war protections under the Geneva Conventions. Bush labeled them "unlawful enemy combatants" and authorized the CIA and the Department of Defense (DoD) to undertake brutal interrogations.
Despite its title - "Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research" - the Wolfowitz directive weakened protections that had been in place for decades by limiting the safeguards to "prisoners of war."
"We're dealing with a special breed of person here," Wolfowitz said about the war on terror detainees only four days before signing the new directive.
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