tagged w/ Interrogation
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The U.S. military secretly captured a terrorism suspect in the Gulf of Aden in April and detained him for more than two months aboard a U.S. Navy ship before flying him to New York City on Tuesday and indicting him on federal terrorism charges.
The operation indicates a new willingness by the Obama administration to capture and interrogate terrorism suspects outside war zones, U.S. officials said.
The Somali suspect, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, was questioned by military interrogators before he was read his rights in June and turned over to federal law enforcement officials aboard the ship for additional questioning. Federal officials charged him with nine counts of terrorism-related offenses, according to the indictment unsealed in federal court Tuesday in New York.
U.S. officials said Warsame and another individual, who was later released, were apprehended while aboard a boat traveling from Yemen to Somalia.
The operation comes amid a major escalation of clandestine U.S. operations against al Qaida-linked groups in Yemen and Somalia, including strikes and patrols by armed U.S. drone aircraft.
The arrest and indictment of Warsame also represent a potentially significant change of direction for the Obama administration, which condemned and dismantled secret CIA detention facilities and other counterterrorism programs that were approved by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
But the federal charges brought in the Southern District of New York also indicate a desire on the part of the administration to try terrorism suspects in U.S. civilian courts. “After taking a very careful look at our options, it became clear to us that the federal courts had jurisdiction to try Warsame for terrorist-related offenses,” a senior administration official said.
The official said that jurisdiction for military commissions, which are being used to try detainees at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was “relatively limited” compared with that of federal courts. Flying Warsame secretly to New York also allows the administration to bypass congressional objections to bringing terrorism suspects to this country for civilian trials.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/05/v-print/2301141/somali-terror-suspect-who-was.html#ixzz1RLp7MI2eThe U.S. military secretly captured a terrorism suspect in the Gulf of Aden in April... more
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Does desperation for Information trump human rights? There are such compelling arguments both for and against the use of torture during the interrogation of suspected terrorists, that it is a no win situation for whomever is deciding policy.
Read the whole article, "Should America Torture Terrorists during Interrogation to obtain Info?", including a very provocative video on Conspiracy Watch, at http://www.conspiracywatch.net/2011/05/should-america-torture-terrorists.htmlDoes desperation for Information trump human rights? There are such compelling... more
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The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, demanding records about the detention in the United Arab Emirates of a U.S. citizen who claims that the U.S. government colluded in his arrest and torture.The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the FBI, the CIA and... more
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A security researcher in India has been arrested after he refused to provide authorities with the name of a person who supplied him with an electronic voting machine that was used to discover vulnerabilities in the system. The researcher had used the machine to demonstrate how someone could hack voting systems to easily subvert an election.
At 5:30 Saturday morning, nearly a dozen police converged on the home of Hari Prasad, managing director of Netindia, to question him about the source of the voting machine he received. After refusing to identify his source, he was reportedly arrested under suspicion of theft and receiving stolen property.
The voting system was allegedly taken from a storage facility at the district election office in Mumbai. It was reported missing on May 12, after Prasad disclosed on a television program in India that he had received a machine from an anonymous source. It’s not clear why it took authorities so long to act on the report, but the arrest comes about a week after two representatives of the India Election Commission got into a heated debate about the country’s machines, during a panel discussion at an electronic voting conference (.mp3) in Washington, D.C.
Following that discussion, 28 computer security researchers signed a letter to India’s election commission (.pdf) stating that the country’s voting machines “do not today provide security, verifiability, or transparency adequate for confidence in election results.”
India uses proprietary paperless electronic voting machines nationwide. The systems were developed by two government-controlled companies.
Despite concerns expressed by a number of the country’s political parties, election officials have insisted that the machines are secure and tamper-proof. In a press release following Prasad’s arrest, the election commission wrote:
“While the Commission has every respect for technologists and is always open to suggestions for improvement in the voting system, it cannot overlook any illegal act, especially the theft of a public property like the EVM given in its custody for conduct of elections.”
Last year Prasad challenged the election commission to prove that the machines were secure, but the commission refused to allow the voting systems to be independently examined. Then in February this year, an anonymous source provided Prasad with a machine that had been used in elections.
Prasad examined the system with two other researchers, J. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, and Dutch hacker and longtime e-voting activist Rop Gonggrijp.
They demonstrated two attacks (see below) that could be conducted against the machines. One involves replacing a digital display board on the machine with a look-alike part that could be used to receive instruction from the hackers — sent wirelessly via a mobile phone — to steal votes for a candidate. The second attack uses a small device that connects to the machine’s memory to change votes stored on a machine after the election, before the votes are counted.
Halderman says the researchers believe the person who gave them the voting machine had legal access to it and provided it in the interest of transparency and scientific study. Halderman spoke with Prasad on the phone while he was in the back of a police car on Saturday (see audio above). Prasad told Halderman that the police had no choice but to arrest him, since they were receiving pressure from above.
“This kind of intimidation will hit the hearts of volunteers, and no volunteer will come forward if this kind of thing happens in future,” Prasad said during the phone call. “That’s the reason I’m going to take it on and I’ll face it, so that the volunteers get inspired by me. And the ultimate goal is we have to achieve that these machines are not fit enough for elections.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/researcher-arrested-in-india?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29#ixzz0xVFxAR2v
Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/researcher-arrested-in-india?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29#ixzz0xVF8Cd00A security researcher in India has been arrested after he refused to provide... more
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AP Exclusive: Under desk, CIA found video of 9/11 plotter being interrogated in secret prison
ADAM GOLDMAN, MATT APUZZO Associated Press Writers
August 17, 2010|12:45 a.m.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA has tapes of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists.
The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only remaining recordings made within the clandestine prison system.
The tapes depict Binalshibh's interrogation sessions at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat in 2002, several current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the recordings remain a closely guarded secret.
When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency's interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staffer discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes.
A Justice Department prosecutor who is already investigating whether destroying the Zubaydah and al-Nashiri tapes was illegal is now also probing why the Binalshibh tapes were never disclosed. Twice, the government told a federal judge they did not exist.
The tapes could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, 38, who has been described as a "key facilitator" in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. If the tapes surfaced at trial, they could clearly reveal Morocco's role in the counterterrorism program known as Greystone, which authorized the CIA to hold terrorists in secret prisons and shuttle them to other countries.
More significantly to his defense, the tapes also could provide evidence of Binalshibh's mental state within the first months of his capture. In court documents, defense lawyers have been asking for medical records to see whether Binalshibh's years in CIA custody made him mentally unstable. He is being treated for schizophrenia with a potent cocktail of anti-psychotic medications.
With military commissions on hold while the Obama administration figures out what to do with suspected terrorists, Binalshibh has never had a hearing on whether he is mentally fit to stand trial.
"If those tapes exist, they would be extremely relevant," said Thomas A. Durkin, Binalshibh's civilian lawyer.
The CIA first publicly hinted at the existence of the Binalshibh tapes in 2007 in a letter to U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Virginia. The government twice denied having such tapes, and recanted once they were discovered. But the government blacked out Binalshibh's name from a public copy of the letter.
At the time, the CIA played down the significance, saying the videos were not taken as part of the CIA's detention program and did not show CIA interrogations.
That's true, but only because of the unusual nature of the Moroccan prison, which was largely financed by the CIA but run by Moroccans, the former officials said. The CIA could move detainees in and out, and oversee the interrogations, but officially, Morocco had control.
CIA spokesman George Little would not discuss the Moroccan facility except to say agency officials "continue to cooperate with inquiries into past counterterrorism practices."
Moroccan government officials did not respond to questions about Binalshibh and his time in Morocco. The country has never acknowledged the existence of the detention center.
Morocco has a troubled history of prison abuse and human rights violations. A government-created commission identified decades of torture, forced disappearances, poor prison conditions and sexual violence. And this year's State Department report on Morocco notes continued accusations of torture by security forces.
But current and former U.S. officials say no harsh interrogation methods, like the simulated drowning tactic called waterboarding, were used in Morocco. In the CIA's secret network of undisclosed "black prisons," Morocco was just way station of sorts, a place to hold detainees for a few months at a time.
"The tapes record a guy sitting in a room just answering questions," according to a U.S. official familiar with the program.
That would make them quite different from the 92 interrogation videos of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri being subjected to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics.
Binalshibh was captured Sept. 11, 2002, and interrogated for days at a CIA facility in Afghanistan. Almost immediately, two former CIA officials said, Binalshibh exhibited mental instability that would worsen over time.
When FBI agents finally had a chance to interview Binalshibh, they found him lethargic but unharmed.
"He had a certain toughness about him, like he didn't care," said Raymond Holcomb, a retired FBI agent who spent five days alongside the CIA with Binalshibh in Afghanistan and wrote about it in a forthcoming book, "Endless Enemies: Inside FBI Counterterrorism."
Though Binalshibh was uncooperative during his early interrogations, his interviews formed the foundation for parts of the 9/11 commission report. One official said he also provided intelligence about a plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport.
Binalshibh spent five months in Morocco in late 2002 and early 2003, the first of three trips through the facility during his years in CIA custody.
Since his incarceration was established at Guantanamo Bay in 2006, Binalshibh has appeared increasingly erratic. Court records show him acting out, breaking cameras in his cell and smearing them with feces.
He has experienced delusions, believing the CIA was intentionally shaking his bed and cell, according to court records and interviews. He has imagined tingling sensations like things were crawling all over him and developed a nervous tic, obsessively scratching himself.
Nine years after his capture, there is no indication when Binalshibh and other admitted 9/11 terrorists will face military or civilian trials.
Binalshibh and other accused 9/11 conspirators have openly admitted their roles, praising the attacks. Binalshibh and the others have asked to plead guilty, a move that would head off any trial and almost certainly guarantee the videotapes never get played in any court.
http://www.gotgeoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/9-113.bmpAP Exclusive: Under desk, CIA found video of 9/11 plotter being interrogated in secret... more
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A good amount of documentation on the involvement of psychologists in the torture and abuse of detainees or “terror suspects.” And, a new study(http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0805/study-cia-doctors-gave-green-light-torture/) provides even more revelations on the involvement of physicians making it increasingly clear that medical professionals put limits on ethical standards they were expected to follow in order to help the CIA interrogate detainees.
The study, titled “Roles of CIA Physicians in Enhanced Interrogation and Torture of Detainees,(http://www.wepapers.com/Papers/117511/Roles_of_CIA_Physicians_in_Enhanced_Interrogation_and_Torture_of_Detainees)” authored by Leonard S. Rubinstein, the president of Physicians for Human Rights, and Brigadier General (ret.) Stephen N. Xenakis, a former Army psychiatrists (who is now with the Center for Public Health and Human Rights), utilizes a previously secret document from 2004 and lays out the “guidelines for detainee interrogation” that physicians, psychologists, and other health care professionals developed and followed so they could serve the CIA.
Guidelines indicate the doctors, who were working for the CIA’s Office of Medical Services, conducted medical evaluations [experimentations] on detainees “before and during interrogations” and waterboarding “required the presence of a physician.”
Physicians documented the effects of “enhanced interrogation techniques” [torture] like waterboarding and decided waterboarding “created risks of drowning, hypothermia, aspiration pneumonia, or laryngospasm.” They ignored “clinical experience/research” and assured lawyers “there was no ‘medical reason’ to believe that waterboarding [would] lead to physical pain.”
It was established that “cramped confinement could result in deep vein thrombosis” and death could result from “lengthy exposure to cold water.” And, the physicians, psychologists, and other health care professionals working for the CIA developed “limitations” so that techniques like waterboarding, cramped confinement, sensory deprivation, stress positions, etc could be used on detainees.
Limitations included: “exposure to specified temperature either up to time of hypothermia would develop or on evidence of hypothermia,” dietary restrictions up to “body weight loss of 10% or evidence of significant malnutrition,” “exposure to noise just under decibel levels associated with hearing loss,” up to 48 hours of exposure to stress positions “provided hands were no higher than the head” of a detainee, and no more than eight consecutive hours or eighteen hours per day of “confinement in a box.”
Much of this took place after 2003, after a CIA Inspector General investigation of “enhanced interrogation techniques” [torture], OMS physicians were asked to provide “opinions to the agency and lawyers on whether techniques used would be expected to cause severe pain or suffering and thus constitute torture.” Slowly, OMS physicians’ work for the CIA transformed into work, which violated “ethical standards,” prohibiting physicians from using “medical skills to facilitate torture or be present when torture is taking place.”
The physicians consulted directly with Department of Justice lawyers and were asked to provide legal cover by supporting “legal decisions” that “interrogators who applied enhanced interrogation techniques neither inflicted sever mental or physical pain or anguish and thus did not commit torture.” For techniques like sleep deprivation, they claimed the use thereof “could not lead to profound disruption in the detainees’ senses or personality (the legal definition of psychological torture).”
As suggested in the opening paragraph, it has been evident that physicians and psychologists have been involved in torture for some time, especially since Wikileaks leaked the Guantanamo Standard Operating Procedures Manual in November 2007(http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Guantanamo_document_confirms_psychological_torture).
The manual indicated that, “incoming prisoners were to be held in near-isolation for the first [four] weeks to foster dependence on interrogators and `enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process.’” It outlines how isolation was to be used on detainees, a technique Physicians for Human Rights said can lead to symptoms of “`bewilderment, anxiety, frustration, dejection, boredom, obsessive thoughts or ruminations, depression, and, in some cases, hallucination'” and, if prolonged, could result in “increased stress, abnormal neuroendocrine function, changes in blood pressure and inflammatory stress responses.”
Then, it was known those involved understood how they could be prosecuted for violating international law. As an April 16, 2003, memo from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld explained
"Caution: the use of isolation as an interrogation technique requires detailed implementation instructions, including specific guidelines regarding the length of isolation, medical and psychological review, and approvals for extension of the length of by the appropriate level in the chain of command. This technique is not know to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days. Those nations that believe that detainees are subject to POW protections may view use of this technique as inconsistent with the requirements of Geneva III, Article 13 which provides that POWs must be protected against acts of intimidation; Article 14 which provides that POWs are entitled to respect for their person; Article 34 which prohibits coercion and Article 126 which ensures access and basic standards of treatment. Although the provisions of Geneva are not applicable to the interrogation of unlawful combatants, consideration should be given to these views prior to application of this technique."
The report is yet another indication of the need for more investigation, accountability, and reform from the Obama Administration. Yet, as demonstrated by a comprehensive report ("Establishing the New Normal")(http://www.aclu.org/national-security/establishing-new-normal) from the ACLU, the Obama Administration has avoided its obligation to accountability for torture and chosen to follow the dangerous mantra of “looking forward, not back,” a false choice because, as the ACLU states in the report:
“a strong democracy rests not on the goodwill of its leaders but on the impartial enforcement of laws. Sanctioning impunity for government officials who authorized torture sends a problematic message to the world, invites abuses by future administrations, and further undermines the rule of law that is the basis of any democracy.”A good amount of documentation on the involvement of psychologists in the torture and... more
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An attorney for Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr expressed outrage this week over a ruling by a U.S. military judge allowing Khadr's confessions to interrogators to be used as evidence against him in his murder and terrorism conspiracy trial at Guantanamo.An attorney for Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr expressed outrage this week over a ruling... more
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Bobby is seven years old, but this is not the first time he has been subjected to electroshock. It's his third time. In all, over the next year, Bobby will experience eight electroshock sessions. Placed on the examining table, he is held down by two male attendants while the physician places a solution on his temples. Bobby struggles with the two men holding him down, but his efforts are useless. He cries out and tries to pull away. One of the attendants tries to force a thick wedge of rubber into his mouth. He turns his head sharply away and cries out, "Let me go, please. I don't want to be here. Please, let me go." Bobby's physician looks irritated and she tells him, "Come on now, Bobby, try to act like a big boy and be still and relax." Bobby turns his head away from the woman and opens his mouth for the wedge that will prevent him from biting through his tongue. He begins to cry silently, his small shoulders shaking and he stiffens his body against what he knows is coming.
Mary is only five years old. She sits on a small, straight-backed chair, moving her legs back and forth, humming the same four notes over and over and over. Her head, framed in a tangled mass of golden curls, moves up and down with each note. For the first three years of her life, Mary was thought to be a mostly normal child. Then, after she began behaving oddly, she had been handed off to a foster family. Her father and
About the same time Dr. Bender was conducting her electroshock experiments, she was also widely experimenting on autistic and schizophrenic children with what she termed other "treatment endeavors." These included use of a wide array of psycho-pharmaceutical agents, several provided to her by the Sandoz Chemical Co. in Basel, Switzerland, as well as Metrazol, sub-shock insulin therapy, amphetamines and anticonvulsants. Metrazol was a trade name for pentylenetetrazol, a drug used as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant. High doses cause convulsions, as discovered in 1934 by the Hungarian-American neurologist and psychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna.
Metrazol had been used in convulsive therapy, but was never considered to be effective, and side effects such as seizures were difficult to avoid. The medical records of several patients who were confined at Vermont State Hospital, a public mental facility, reveal that Metrazol was administered to them by CIA contractor Dr. Robert Hyde on numerous occasions in order "to address overly aggressive behavior." One of these patients, Karen Wetmore, received the drug on a number of occasions for no discernible medical reason. During the same ten-year period in which Metrazol was used by the Vermont State Hospital, patient deaths skyrocketed. In 1982, the FDA revoked its approval of Metrazol.
Here it should be noted that, during the cold war years, CIA and Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) interrogators, working as part of projects Bluebird and Artichoke, sometimes injected large amounts of Metrazol into selected enemy or Communist agents for the purposes of severely frightening other suspected agents, by forcing them to observe the procedure. The almost immediate effects of Metrazol are shocking for many to witness: subjects will shake violently, twisting and turning. They typically arch, jerk and contort their bodies and grimace in pain. With Metrazol, as with electroshock, bone fractures - including broken necks and backs - and joint dislocations are not uncommon, unless strong sedatives are administered beforehand.
A November 1936 Time mag. article seriously questioned the benefits of Metrazol, citing "irreversible shock" as a "great danger." The article described a typical Metrazol injection as such: "A patient receives no food for four or five hours. Then about five cubic centimeters of the drug [Metrazol] are injected into his veins. In about half-a-minute he coughs, casts terrified glances around the room, twitches violently, utters a horse wail, freezes into rigidity with his mouth wide open, arms and legs stiff as boards. Then he goes into convulsions. In one or two minutes the convulsions are over and he gradually passes into a coma, which lasts about an hour. After a series of shocks, his mind may be swept clean of delusions.... A patient is seldom given more than 20 injections and if no improvement is noted after ten treatments, he is usually given up as hopeless."
The Army, the CIA and Metrazol | This is just important sections go read whole thing!
Army CIC interrogators working with the CIA at prisoner of war camps and safe house locations in post-war Germany on occasion used Metrazol, morphine, heroin and LSD on incarcerated subjects. According to former CIC officer Miles Hunt, several "safe houses and holding areas outside of Frankfurt near Oberursel" - a former Nazi interrogation center taken over by the US - were operated by a "special unit run by Capt. Malcolm S. Hilty, Maj. Mose Hart and Capt. Herbert Sensenig.
Eventually, CIC interrogators working in Germany would be assisted in their use of interrogation drugs by several "former" Nazi scientists recruited by the CIA and US State Department as part of Project Paperclip. By early 1952, the CIC's Rough Boys would routinely use Metrazol during interrogations, as well as LSD, mescaline and conventional electroshock units.
Metrazol-like drugs are still used in interrogations today. According to reports from several former noncommissioned Army officers, who served on rendition-related security details in Turkey, Pakistan and Romania, drugs that produce effects quite similar to Metrazol are still used in 2010 by the Pentagon and CIA on enemy combatants and rendered subjects held at the many "black sites" maintained across the globe. Observed one former officer recently, "They would twist up like a pretzel, in unbelievable shapes and jerk and shake like crazy, their eyes nearly popping out of their heads."
In 2008, at the behest of US Sens. Carl Levin, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel and in reaction to a March 2008 article in The Washington Post, the Pentagon initiated an Inspector General Report on the use of "mind-altering substances by DoD [Department of Defense] Personnel during Interrogations of Detainees and/or Prisoners Captured during the War on Terror." It is not known if the investigation has been completed. Among the more famous recent cases of the use of drugs upon prisoners concerns one-time alleged "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, who had originally been accused of wanting to set off a "dirty bomb."
The government has gone to great efforts to keep the public uninformed as regards use of drugs on prisoners. In an article by Carol Rosenberg for McClatchy News in July 2010, Rosenberg reported that, when covering the Guantanamo military commissions trials, when the question of "what psychotropic drugs were given another accused 9/11 conspirator, Ramzi bin al Shibh, the courtroom censor hits a white noise button so reporters viewing from a glass booth can't hear the names of the drugs. Under current Navy instructions for the use of human subjects in research, the undersecretary of the Navy is described as the authority in charge of research concerning "consciousness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques," while at the same time is also responsible for "inherently controversial topics" that might attract media interest or "challenge by interest groups."Bobby is seven years old, but this is not the first time he has been subjected to... more
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Ten U.S. citizens or lawful residents are suing the government for placing them on the "no-fly" list without notice or due process and then giving them no way to get their names off the list.Ten U.S. citizens or lawful residents are suing the government for placing them on the... more
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A coalition of major news organizations is challenging as unconstitutional Pentagon rules that were used in May to ban four reporters from covering military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.A coalition of major news organizations is challenging as unconstitutional Pentagon... more
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McClatchy Newspapers reports that a federal judge has put Yemeni citizen Mohammed Mohammed Hassan Odaini on the path to freedom after eight years imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.McClatchy Newspapers reports that a federal judge has put Yemeni citizen Mohammed... more
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The Obama administration is considering using Afghanistan's U.S.-run Bagram Air Base prison to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects captured far from a battlefield and who have not been charged with a crime - without any judicial oversight.The Obama administration is considering using Afghanistan's U.S.-run Bagram Air... more
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The American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and numerous other legal organizations are demanding that the Senate Armed Services Committee reject a provision in a House of Representatives bill that would mandate an investigation into lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay detainees.The American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and numerous other... more
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Yesterday a former defense minster Adam Ingram admitted to misleading MPs when he denied the illegal practice of hooding took place when British soldiers detained Iraqi's. The Independent says the evidence was revealed in a inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa, who died while being interrogated by British soldiers.
"Adam Ingram, the ex-armed forces minister, denied in a Parliamentary answer that UK forces hooded detainees as an interrogation technique despite seeing a document suggesting they did, a public inquiry in London heard."-Independent, the document mentioned refers to a memo that says Mousa was hooded for 24 hours.
The article by the newspaper reveals the contradictions in full, in an inquiry which has already shown the unlawful practices used in prisoner interrogation and detention in Iraq.Yesterday a former defense minster Adam Ingram admitted to misleading MPs when he... more
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A Spanish prosecutor has asked a judge there to authorize the arrest of 13 CIA agents for their alleged role in the Bush administration's extraordinary rendition program. The agents are accused of participating in the rendition of Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who was kidnapped in 2003 and flown to a CIA-run "black site" in Afghanistan, where he was secretly detained and tortured for months before being abandoned on a hillside in Albania. He was never charged with a crime.A Spanish prosecutor has asked a judge there to authorize the arrest of 13 CIA agents... more
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A former interrogator at the US prison in Bagram, Afghanistan said in court testimony that he and other interrogators would terrify detainees into confessing by threatening them with dying from multiple gang rape "by four big black guys" who would catch little Afghan boys in the shower of a U.S. prison.A former interrogator at the US prison in Bagram, Afghanistan said in court testimony... more
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This week a group of musicians launched Close Gitmo Now, a movement with an eponymous objective. Why is a group of artists as diverse as Rage Against the Machine, REM, Billy Bragg, Roseanne Cash, Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne and Steve Earle getting involved in the debate over Guantanamo? Because of the use of popular music by military interrogators.
Several references to music as an interrogation tool appeared in a US senate report last year. Records were used to "stress" Mohamedou Ould Slahi during questioning in 2003, including repeated plays of a song by hard-rockers Drowning Pool. Other tracks that were reportedly played at high volume near prisoners include David Gray's Babylon, Metallica's Enter Sandman, Don McLean's American Pie, Queen's We Will Rock You, songs by REM, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, Bruce Springsteen, and even theme tunes from Sesame Street, Barney the Dinosaur and the Meow Mix commercials.
While the Meow Mix cats have yet to get involved, a wide range of other musicians have. Plenty of artists are plenty pissed about their music being a torture device. Ask Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello:
“Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured – from water boarding, to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts - playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums. Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney’s idea of America, but it’s not mine. The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me – we need to end torture and close Guantanamo now."
Vanguard's Adrian Baschuk took a trip down to Gitmo last year and even spent the night. What going on at the most controversial jail in the world?
The Most Controversial Jail in the World (Video)
Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Pakistan <3's the U.S. - American drones at work in S. Waziristan
- US police make massive Mexican drug cartel bust
- Defining 'dithering' - Dick Cheney accuses President Obama of wasting time
- North American Union conspiracy hits the big time
- Captured by Somali pirates - A journalist's first hand storyThis week a group of musicians launched Close Gitmo Now, a movement with an eponymous... more
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From 2004 through 2009, in a policy that has gotten completely out of control, New York City police officers stopped people on the street and checked them out nearly three million times, frisking and otherwise humiliating many of them.
Upward of 90 percent of the people stopped are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. And yet the New York Police Department is compounding this intolerable indignity by compiling an enormous and permanent computerized database of these encounters between innocent New Yorkers and the police.
Not only are most of the people innocent, but a vast majority are either black or Hispanic. There is no defense for this policy. It’s a gruesome, racist practice that should offend all New Yorkers, and it should cease.
Police Department statistics show that 2,798,461 stops were made in that six-year period. In 2,467,150 of those instances, the people stopped had done nothing wrong. That’s 88.2 percent of all stops over six years. Black people were stopped during that period a staggering 1,444,559 times. Hispanics accounted for 843,817 of the stops and whites 287,218.From 2004 through 2009, in a policy that has gotten completely out of control, New... more
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"Corporate Water-Boarding Services" >> http://ow.ly/18wV0
The Truth shall set us all Free
The act of "Water-Boarding" has been ruled on by Bush and Cheney's legal lap-dogs ** "John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee" as safe & humane technique for man woman & child.... So because of these legal lap dogs personal subversion of legal argument and the fabric of law, Now, Water-Boarding is 100% Legal in the USA.
This currently being the case... As entrepreneurs, we all need to take a good look at this new business model. As entrepreneurs, it is our responsibility to take this business model to the next level. Our objective is to bring water-boarding back home to the American People and make it a viable profitable business and most of all.... make it assessable to all citizens!
As I discovered first hand.... "The Judicial System is Corrupt to the Core. Today... we have the best justice money can buy. Because of corporate legal corruption, our right to justice is either... not administered equally or, with a wink and a nod... denied altogether. ( As it was in my case. http://ow.ly/13Hy8 )
By design... our right to justice was stolen from us. We have lost "equal justice under the law". Currently our legal system doesn't work for the little guy anymore, only for the corporate lawyers.
Because of that, I now am now open to try something new, something to balance the scales of justice. Something exciting and something ruled by the US Justice Department as safe and legal.
There is a saying where I come from. "Give people enough rope to hang themselves." So, in our case... with Water-Boarding... We can now legally give people enough water... to make them drink their own words!
At this point, I would like to welcome you to a new and exciting business model...
"Corporate Water-Boarding Services" >> http://ow.ly/18wV0
** http://current.com/18l8s4c
."Corporate Water-Boarding Services" >> http://ow.ly/18wV0
The... more
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