Amid Claims of Torture USA plans Indefinite Detention Camps
09 Jan 2005 13:16 GMT
The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts.
This comes after the International Red Cross made allegations of abuse, mistreatment and torture by the USA. It alleges that US interrogators not only used psychological and physical coercion, but also enlisted the participation of medical personnel in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics." Doctors and involvement in torture has been raised most recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, (6 January 2005) which claims Doctors aided in detainee abuse.
[Records Released to ACLU | Geneva Convention on Torture | Amnesty International: torture allegations mount for USA]
First hand accounts of torture, abuse and humiliation include from David Hicks, Mahmood Habib, devastating accounts of torture and abuse by Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed. Even Guards Admit Torture at Guantanamo Bay.
As the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Digs Deeper in Abuse Scandal, the CIA resists request for abuse data. CIA memos already released under Freedom of Information show U.S. forces threatened defence personnel over prisoner abuse. The New ACLU Report Highlights Gonzales Role in Detainee Abuse. Alberto Gonzales is an attorney general nominee and current White House Counsel.
There is an Effort Underway in Germany to Prosecute High-Ranking U.S. Officials for Their Role in Torture, War Crimes according to Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
You think torture is bad, how about American-backed Iraqi death squads?
Collin Baber 09.Jan.2005 13:59
Torture is just one link on Bush's golf course.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek
Now the Pentagon is planning to give birth to elite death squads in Iraq - funded by your tax dollars!
Don't believe me? Read the following link:
For those of you who support that madness, bring yourself on!
Disturbing Parallels
Alexander Solzenitsyn 26.Mar.2005 17:00
Debates About Torture
"In the early...years...the admissibility of torture..was openly debated. Judging by the subsequent course of events, the answer deduced was positive, although not universally so."
Authorization For Torture vs Discretion
"...If..[at first]..some kind of formal documentation was required preliminary to torture, as well as specific permission for each case under investigation, then [later] in view2 of the extraordinary situation prevailing, interrogators were allowed to use ...torture...at their own discretion, and in accordance with the demands of their work quotas and the amount of time they were given."
"..[later] such indiscriminate authorization was withdrawn, and once again written permission was required.. "
Only Certain Prisoners
"..Then [still later] certain categories of prisoners were established by decree for whom a broad range of torture was automatically permitted.... especially in those cases where an underground organization existed (or was suspected) that had to be completely uncovered, which meant obtaining the names of everyone involved from those already arrested." 3
Techniques That Don't Leave Obvious Marks
"Understanding that their superiors were taking precautions for self-protection, some of the rank-and-file interrogators tried to start off with milder methods, and even when they intensified them, they tried to avoid those that left obvious marks."
"Indeed, the actual boundaries of human equilibrium are very narrow, and it is not really necessary to use a rack or hot coals to drive the average human being out of his mind. Let us try to list some of the simplest methods which break the will and the character of the prisoner without leaving marks on his body. " 4
List of Milder Methods
"Let us begin with the psychological methods. These methods have enormous and even annihilating impact on rabbits who have never been prepared for prison suffering. And it isn't easy even for a person who holds strong convictions..."
[text abbreviated here]
1. Night. At night, the prisoner..is more vulnerable
2. Persuasion in a sincere ton
3. Foul language can have a powerful effect on people who are well brought up, refined
4. Psychological contrast, sudden reversals of tone
5. Preliminary humiliation
6. Any method of inducing extreme confusion
7. Intimidation
8. The lie
9. Playing on one's affection for those one loved
10. Sound Effects
11. Tickling
12. Cigarette burns
13. Light effects
14. Continually being led to interrogation, then being sent back to the cell
15. The box
16. Being forced to sit for long periods
17. Kept in a pit
18. Being forced to stay on one's knees
19. Forced to stand for long periods
20. Water deprivation
21. Sleeplessness
22. Assembly line of continuous interrogators
23. Bugs or insects
24. and 25. Punishment cells
26. Starvation
27. Beatings of a kind that leave no marks
28. Fingernails
29. Strait jacket
31. Bridling, also known as the swan dive.
[each of the above might be combined with others]
"Is it necessary to go on with the list? What won't idle, well-fed, unfeeling
people invent?" 5
Notes 1,2,3
Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Harper Paper 1973 page 99
Notes 4,5 ibid pages 103-116