Tag: Torture (page 6)

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed four lawsuits against military contractors on behalf of four detainees who were subjected to torture at Abu Ghraib.

The defendants are CACI International Inc. (NYSE: CAI) and CACI Premier Technology, Inc., of Arlington, Va.; L-3 Services Inc., an Alexandria, Va.-based division of L-3 Communications Corp. (NYSE: LLL), of New York; and three individual contractors, Adel Nakhla, of Montgomery Village, Md., Timothy Dugan, of Pataskala, Ohio, and Daniel E. Johnson, of Seattle, Wash.

The allegations:

The lawsuits allege that the defendants committed multiple violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes, and civil conspiracy. CACI, which provided interrogators at Abu Ghraib, and L-3, which provided translators at the prison, were linked to abuses there in military court martial proceedings which resulted in convictions for U.S. military personnel but no civil or criminal penalties for contractors implicated in abuses. According to the lawsuits, the individual contractor defendants allegedly “tortured, and conspired with others to torture.”

The lawsuits were filed in the federal district courts where the contractor defendants reside: Maryland, Ohio, Michigan, and Washington state.

Canadian rendition victim Maher Arar has been denied relief by the U.S. District Court in his lawsuit against the U.S. arising from his seizure at JFK airport and transfer to Syria where he was tortured for a year.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has the details.

Today, a federal Court of Appeals ruled against Center for Constitutional Rights client Maher Arar’s case against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and interrogated for a year under the extraordinary rendition program.

Maher Arar is not available to comment in person, but is issuing the following statement: “The Court’s 2-1 ruling is outrageous. It basically legitimizes what was done to me, and permits the government to use immigration law as a disguise to send people to torture without regard for due process.”

All of our Maher Arar coverage (47 posts)is accessible here.

Update: ACLU response is here.

The U.S. announced today it will seek to file charges that carry the death penalty against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent captured in 2002 and tranferred to Guantanamo in 2006, who has claimed he confessed because he was tortured during interrogation.

The charges are related to the 2000 USS Cole bombing.

The allegations include conspiracy to violate laws of war, murder, treachery, terrorism, destruction of property and intentionally causing serious bodily injury.

Al-Nashiri was held in an overseas secret prison before being shipped to Gitmo. [More...]

David Addington, Dick Cheney's former legal counsel and current Chief of Staff (post Scooter Libby) testified before a House subcommittee today on the Administration's interrogation practices and torture.

Crooks and Liars has some thoughts as well as videos of Addington's testimony and the law profs at Balkanization have lots to say about John Yoo's testimony.

Human Rights First has the lowlights of both men's testimony. John Yoo's prepared testimony is here.

In other torture news, the American Civil Liberties Union is calling on the United States government "to appoint an independent prosecutor for U.S. torture crimes, to put an end to practices that involve torture and abuse and to fulfill its obligations under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). "

Meet Deuce Martinez. Career narcotics agent turned Five-Star CIA interrogator. Credited with getting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh to talk.

Waterboarding, belly slaps, sleep deprivation and more. Martinez didn't like getting his hands dirty with the physical abuse, he waited in the wings while others did it and then conducted the interrogations. If the detainee stopped cooperating, it was back to the torture, then back to Martinez. Ultimately, they talked. The value of their information? The CIA says huge, even accounting for the misinformation they were fed. Of course, there's no way to test that theory.

Where did this all occur? Inside the CIA's black hole of choice -- in Poland. [More...]

McClatchey newspapers has a new series of investigative reports based on its 8 month investigation into treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

The report is in 8 parts. Today's segment is U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases. As to the investigation, [More...]

President Bush says the United States does not engage in torture. A new report by the DOJ Inspector General today does not agree. The full report is here.

Some of the techniques used violated Defense Department policy at the time.

F.B.I. agents complained repeatedly, beginning in 2002, about the harsh interrogation tactics that military and C.I.A. interrogators were using in questioning terrorism suspects, like making them do dog tricks and parade in the nude in front of female soldiers, but their complaints appear to have had little effect, according to an exhaustive report released Tuesday by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The report for the most part praises the FBI.

“In sum, while our report concluded that the F.B.I. could have provided clearer guidance earlier, and while the F.B.I. and DoJ could have pressed harder for resolution of F.B.I. concerns about detainee treatment, we believe the F.B.I. should be credited for its conduct and professionalism in detainee interrogations in the military zones in Afghanistan,” in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay, the report said. DoJ refers to the Justice Department, the bureau’s parent agency.

The ACLU sees it differently: [more...]

President Bush says the U.S. does not engage in torture. The ACLU has new evidence from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act that it does.

These documents provide further evidence that the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad was not aberrational, but was widespread and systemic," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "They only underscore the need for an independent investigation into high-level responsibility for prisoner abuse."

The newly obtained documents are available here.

ABC News and the Associated Press report Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, George Tenet, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell and others held high level meetings about harsh interrogation techniques and ultimately approved them.

The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Attending the sessions were Cheney, then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

[A] former intelligence official described Cheney and the top national security officials as deeply immersed in developing the CIA's interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and when.

More...

Just to remind everyone of what is at stake in November....

The House today failed to override President Bush's veto of the anti-torture bill.

The 225-188 roll call Tuesday by which the House failed to override President Bush's veto of a bill that would have prohibited the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects.

As expected, President Bush today vetoed the bill banning water boarding.

"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.

beating, electrocuting, burning, using dogs... stripping detainees [or] forcing them to perform or mimic sexual acts

The Office of Professional Responsibility, which is the branch of the Justice Department that investigates alleged misconduct, announced today that it has opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the infamous August, 2002 "torture memorandum" that opined interrogation techniques such as waterboarding were not torture.

Among other issues, we are examining whether the legal advice contained in those memoranda was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys," Jarrett wrote.

More...