Red Cross Described 'Torture' at CIA Jails

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Washington Post

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.

The report, an account of alleged physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had previously been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning.

At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the report.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/15/AR2009031502724.html?hpid=topnews

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US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites

We think time and elections will cleanse our fallen world but they will not. Since November, George W. Bush and his administration have seemed to be rushing away from us at accelerating speed, a dark comet hurtling toward the ends of the universe. The phrase "War on Terror"—the signal slogan of that administration, so cherished by the man who took pride in proclaiming that he was "a wartime president"—has acquired in its pronouncement a permanent pair of quotation marks, suggesting something questionable, something mildly embarrassing: something past. And yet the decisions that that president made, especially the monumental decisions taken after the attacks of September 11, 2001—decisions about rendition, surveillance, interrogation—lie strewn about us still, unclaimed and unburied, like corpses freshly dead.

How should we begin to talk about this? Perhaps with a story. Stories come to us newborn, announcing their intent: Once upon a time... In the beginning... From such signs we learn how to listen to what will come. Consider:

I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately 4m x 4m (13 feet by 13 feet). The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed....

A man, unnamed, naked, strapped to a bed, and for the rest, the elemental facts of space and of time, nothing but whiteness.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22530

[EFerrari]

1. Where was the WaHO five years ago when these reports first came out?

Mendacity.

[tomm2thumbs]

2. when America tortures, we invite attacks over and over from many others

The idiots who allowed and authorized this sort of thing fail to understand this fact. If God forbid another terrorist hit occurs on U.S. soil, it is these very people who that are the ones to blame - it all falls on Bush Cheney and their government enablers themselves who make America easy-victim in the propaganda war against us.

No one else can be more responsible than them.

The Bush Presidential library should be built in Abu Ghraib Prison as that defines his legacy.

[bottomtheweaver]

3. I think they understood just fine.

The MIC needs enemies to keep the billions flowing in the pipeline to Houston. If anything it hasn't worked well enough. Most of our torture victims are apparently either dead, insane, or have very reasonably attributed the nightmare they experienced to the criminal political leadership of the US and UK.

[cosmicone]

4. We really really need war crimes trials.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[hootinholler]

6. A book trade rag broke this?

Give me a break! There's a story there in itself.

-Hoot

[dipsydoodle]

7. Here's the BBC News link

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7945783.stm

[specimenfred1984]

8. Why bash where it came from if it's legit?

The Red Cross had the info so that's actually where it came from, not some "book trade rag".

[hootinholler]

10. I'm not bashing where it came from...

I'm bashing that it didn't come from a news organization. You know, like AP or Reuters.

-Hoot

[chill_wind]

9. K & R. AFP article (link)

Red Cross report renews call for probe of Bush era

1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A leaked Red Cross report on CIA "torture" of detainees offers fresh ammunition to demands that officials from the Bush administration be prosecuted for their conduct, rights groups have revealed.

President Barack Obama has so far sidestepped calls from some fellow Democrats and from civil liberties activists to go after officials from the previous administration over torture allegations, saying he wants to "look forward."

But his administration will face renewed pressure to take action following the leaking of the internal document from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which describes abuse in harrowing detail.

(...)

ICRC officials did not dispute the authenticity of the report, but a spokesman at the agency's headquarters in Geneva regretted that the document was made public. The CIA declined to comment.

The report carried added weight given the neutrality of the ICRC, a humanitarian organization that carefully avoids political comment and works to assist those detained or displaced in war.

At least five copies of the report had been shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007, but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the organization's policy of neutrality.

Rights activists speculated the document may have been leaked by officials in the current administration amid internal debates about detention policies.


more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i89OLskgDYt1Skzlr_Z4LoMcGYrA

[bottomtheweaver]

11. Straight up Jeffrey Dahmer-level depravity:

Abu Zubaida was severely wounded during a shootout in March 2002 at a safe house he ran in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and survived thanks to CIA-arranged medical care, including multiple surgeries. After he recovered, Abu Zubaida describes being shackled to a chair at the feet and hands for two to three weeks in a cold room with "loud, shouting type music" blaring constantly, according to the ICRC report. He said that he was questioned two to three hours a day and that water was sprayed in his face if he fell asleep.

At some point -- the timing is unclear from the New York Review of Books report -- Abu Zubaida's treatment became harsher. In July 2002, administration lawyers approved more aggressive techniques.

Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said.

"The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the ICRC.

After he was removed from a small box, he said, he was strapped to what looked like a hospital bed and waterboarded. "A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," Abu Zubaida said.

After breaks to allow him to recover, the waterboarding continued.

"I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless," he said. "I thought I was going to die."

In a federal court filing, Abu Zubaida's attorneys said he "has suffered approximately 175 seizures that appear to be directly related to his extensive torture -- particularly damage to Petitioner's head that was the result of beatings sustained at the hands of CIA interrogators and exacerbated by his lengthy isolation."