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.....Jennifer K. Harbury, a Harvard-educated lawyer, spoke for two hours about human rights and interrogation techniques employed by the CIA and addressed in her most recent book, "Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of U.S. Involvement in Torture."
Harbury’s husband, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, was a Mayan resistance leader who was captured, tortured and eventually killed by military officials in Guatemala during the early 1990s. At the time of his imprisonment, officials told Harbury that her husband died in combat. However, she later discovered that the Guatemalan army actually faked his death. For over two years, Velasquez was tortured and held in custody along with 350 other prisoners. Eventually he was thrown out of a helicopter to his death, she said. Harbury discovered these details after she found the body of an 18-year-old man, who was certainly not Velasquez, in her husband’s grave. She was later informed that the army killed the anonymous man to hide her husband’s existence.
After realizing the reality of the situation, Harbury went on a mission to find out more. She fought for information from the State Department to the United Nations. She went on hunger strikes, wrote to Congress and did anything in hopes of uncovering intelligence. In 1995, Sen. Robert Torricelli told Harbury someone hired by the CIA killed her husband. She said the State Department confirmed that Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, who was paid by the CIA to torture prisoners in Guatemala, did in fact kill Velasquez.
Harbury then went on to explain some of the interrogation techniques used on her husband and other prisoners in Guatemala and around the world.
Harbury discussed "water boarding," which she claims is a technique the CIA still practices. She said that water boarding is performed by holding a prisoner under water until they are almost dead, then reviving them using CPR. She explained other techniques, such as dog attacks and electrical shock.
Harbury then spoke about friends of hers who have been tortured. She talked about a young American nun she knows who was gang-raped, endured 112 cigarette burns, and various other tortures. Harbury said the woman was only released from imprisonment because an American intelligence worker realized she was an American.
Harbury then explained why she feels interrogating prisoners by means of torture is usually ineffective. She explained she believes the phrase "there are just a few bad apples … that are out of hand" is simply a dodge to the problem. She also expressed her belief that the CIA gets around torture restrictions by calling the methods "cruel and degrading, but not torture." Finally, she discussed the CIA’s ticking-bomb scenario and explained that she doesn’t think that using torture techniques will result in intelligence that will prevent a crisis from occurring. After her speech, Harbury addressed students’ questions. When asked about media coverage of torture in the United States, she responded with "There’s been a complete shutdown of our mainstream press." She continued, "We are not being told the truth … it’s being heavily censored."
(snip/...) http://www.collegiatetimes.com/news/3/ARTICLE/6869/2006-04-11.html   If you take the time to research Jennifer Harbury, you will learn more about how the Guatemalan government, with American influence, has been operating over the years. Very enlightening. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~August 25, 2005
Jennifer K. Harbury Knows American Torture Starts at the Top, and It Has for Decades
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
When it comes to torture, Jennifer Harbury knows of what she speaks. The man she loved, known as Everard by his admirers and his adversaries, was its victim at the hands of U.S-trained interrogators in Guatemala. In her latest book, Truth, Torture and the American Way, Harbury takes the reader on a journey as to how we arrived at Abu Ghraib. The book documents our path from Vietnam to Latin America to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo -- a chilling chronicle that gives the lie to the "few bad apples" assesment. We can only hope that the facts she presents will help bring this nightmare of abuses to an end.
* * *
BuzzFlash: You came to this topic through the torture of your husband and his murder. Could you summarize for our readers what happened to your husband, the circumstances, and the U.S. involvement?
Jennifer K. Harbury: I'm an attorney, and I had been doing human rights work in South Texas with a number of different groups for a number of years and became familiar with the refugee community, especially the Guatemalans. After doing human rights work in Guatemala from 1985 on, I ended up marrying Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a Mayan resistance leader. As I'm sure you know, the socioeconomic situation in Guatemala is very similar to the old South Africa, in that the indigenous people there, the Mayans, are the majority – they're 80%. But they are completely disenfranchised, suffer from an extremely high malnutrition level, 80% illiteracy, and the second-highest rate of infant mortality in the hemisphere, second only to Haiti, by way of background.
My husband was picked up by the Guatemalan military. He was captured alive in 1992. Then they falsely stated that he had been killed in combat. I found out six months later that he was, in fact, still alive, that they had faked his death in order to torture him long term, with medical assistance to avoid accidentally killing him, so that he would break psychologically and reveal all of his information to them. I then went on a series of hunger strikes to try to obtain his release to the courts of law for a fair trial, as opposed to his torture and extra-judicial execution. I was going back to the United Nations, the State Department, the OAS, and, of course, Capitol Hill. Congress was trying very hard to assist me. The Ambassador and high-level State Department officials kept responding to me and to Congress that they had no information whatsoever about him.
After two and a half years, after my longest hunger strike, which lasted 32 days in Guatemala and then another 14-day hunger strike in front of the White House in '95, it was revealed by U.S. Rep. Robert Torricelli, who was then on the Intelligence Committee in the House, that my husband had indeed been captured alive, had been held for two and a half years and severely tortured, then extra-judiciously executed or assassinated by military intelligence officials in Guatemala, who were also on the CIA payroll as paid informants.
In other words, the CIA had been paying the very people that were torturing and who eventually killed my husband without trial. The documents from the U.S. government also showed that both the CIA and the United States Embassy had known where my husband was, and the fact that he was being tortured in the hands of U.S.-paid informants, from the first week of his capture. We could have saved him.
(snip/...) http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/08/int05036.html |
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