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How Scores of Black Men Were Tortured Into Giving False Confessions by Chicago Pol...
More than 20 years after being tortured into giving confessions by Chicago police officers, dozens of black men remain behind bars.
Michael Tillman was 20, with a 3-year-old daughter and an infant son, when he was brought into the Area 2 police station on Chicago's South Side for questioning. His mother, Jean Tillman, says that although he had gotten into some trouble with the law as a youngster, he had been on the straight-and-narrow, working as a janitor and paying his bills, since he and his girlfriend had their first child. That was July 22, 1986.
He hasn't been home since.
Tillman is one of at least 24 African-American men that the People's Law Office in Chicago claims are still serving sentences for crimes they say they confessed to only after enduring hours of torture at the hands of Chicago police officers under Commander Jon Burge between 1972 and 1992. Although 10 of Burge's victims have been pardoned or given new trials after their illegally obtained confessions were exposed, the vast majority of the 100-plus cases have yet to be reviewed by the state of Illinois. Those men have either served out their sentences, died in custody or, like Tillman, continue to live their lives behind bars, hoping that one day they will have a fair trial.
According to Tillman's 1986 trial testimony, when he arrived at the Area 2 police station in the predawn hours of July 21, 1986, Detectives Ronald Boffo and Peter Dignan took him to a second-floor interrogation room and pressed him for information about the murder of 42-year-old Betty Howard, whose body was found the day prior in the apartment building Tillman oversaw. When he told the detectives that he knew nothing about the murder, he says that Boffo and Dignan, along with three other officers, became abusive. Without ever reading him his Miranda rights, he says they handcuffed him to the wall, hit him in the face and punched him in the stomach until he vomited blood. During the course of what appeared to be three days, rotating pairs of officers brought him to the railroad tracks behind the station and held a gun to his head, suffocated him repeatedly with thick plastic bags, poured soda up his nose and forced him into Dumpsters outside of the apartment building, ordering him to search through the rubbish for a murder weapon until, according to Detective John Yucaitis, Tillman confessed to the crime.
According to Tillman's mother, she, her husband and an attorney they called for counsel were all denied access to her son during his three days of interrogation.
***Continues, click link to read*** More than 20 years after being tortured into giving confessions by Chicago police officers, dozens of black men remain behind bars. ... more -
9 to face stoning in Iran for adultery
Nine people in Iran - eight women and one man - have been sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of adultery in verdicts lawyers blame on a resurgence of hardline Islamic fundamentalism.
The sentences have been imposed in courts across the country despite a supposed moratorium on the punishment, which Iran says is justified under sharia law.
Lawyers say most of the nine have been victims of violence and are mostly too ill-educated to understand the charges against them.
Many of the sentences were handed down after hearings held in private without the presence of witnesses and defence lawyers.
One woman, Kobra Najar, an ethnic Kurd, is said to have been condemned after being forced by her husband into prostitution. After she divorced him, he forced their daughter to sell her body.
Another defendant, Shamame Qorbani, claims she was raped but that the allegation was not investigated.
Details of the sentences were disclosed by Iranian lawyers yesterday in Tehran as they attempted to generate international support for a campaign to force Iran's government to abolish stoning.
"These women mostly come from the illiterate masses and did not have money or access to a lawyer. Many did not understand Farsi and, of course, all the interrogations were in Farsi," Shadi Sadr, a prominent Iranian human rights lawyer, told the Guardian. "In all of the cases, there has been violence against them, or they have been forced into marriages, or their divorce applications have been refused. In some cases, they couldn't apply for a divorce due to family pressures."
Two of the cases took place in Tehran while two others are in the largely Arab-speaking city of Ahvaz. Two others are from the mainly Azeri-speaking north of the country.
They came to light after a group of Iranian lawyers embarked on a campaign to halt stoning, which has been condemned by international human rights groups.
The lawyers are calling on Iran's judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to issue pardons.
However, Shahroudi's influence in the current political climate is believed to be limited. Last year, he ordered a stay of execution for a man condemned to be stoned for adultery but local officials carried out the sentence in violation of his orders.
Sadr said the verdicts were a consequence of an atmosphere of political repression and religious fundamentalism, under which MPs feel free introduce ever more draconian legislation. These include proposed laws allowing execution for witchcraft and bodily punishments such as blinding and amputation under a new penal code before parliament.
"It is connected to the general hardline politics," she said. "The more there is fundamentalism in general in our politics, the greater the worry that these verdicts will be carried out. If you have a hardline prosecutor in a remote rural area, he is going to be much more able to put his beliefs into practice in the current atmosphere."
Nine people in Iran - eight women and one man - have been sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of adultery in verdicts ... more -
SECOND GUANTANAMO
KABUL:: The US plans to build a vast 'second Guantanamo' were condemned yesterday. Human rights lawyers said they will attack America's use of its main Afghan base in Bagram as a legal black hole, as a place "where no laws apply".
Rights lawyers also accused Washington of targeting journalists to cover up its practices in Afghanistan and Iraq. "I think it is very clear that the reason the US chose to build it inside the base is that they did not like the independent decisions that would have come out of the Afghan judiciary," said lawyer Barbara J Olshansky.
The Pentagon has announced plans for a 40-acre, $60 million (BD22.6m) detention centre at the base.
The new center is intended to accommodate up to 1,100 prisoners.
The Bagram base, where 625 people are held without charges in wire mesh cages, has a notorious reputation of torture of humiliation of detainees.
Last month, the Afghan Human Rights Organisation said 10 children, aged 9-13, were being held there.
Hundreds of prisoners have also passed through Bagram on their way to Guantanamo Bay since the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan.
"Many people in Afghanistan and in Iraq that have been targeted for detention are local journalists covering the conflict in their own country," said Olshansky. KABUL:: The US plans to build a vast 'second Guantanamo' were condemned yesterday. Human rights lawyers said they will attack America'... more -
Medical Study Confirms Prisoners in US Custody Were Physically & Mentally Tort...
A new report by the Physicians for Human Rights has, for the first time, found medical evidence corroborating the claims of former prisoners who say they were tortured while in US custody. Teams of medical specialists conducted physical and psychological tests on the former prisoners, including exams intended to assess if they were lying. We speak to Dr. Allen Keller. [includes rush transcript] A new report by the Physicians for Human Rights has, for the first time, found medical evidence corroborating the claims of former pri... more
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A Blind Eye to Guantanamo? Book Says White House Ignored CIA on Detainees' Innocen...
A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were "enemy combatants" subject to indefinite incarceration, according to a new book critical of the administration's terrorism policies.
The CIA assessment directly challenged the administration's claim that the detainees were all hardened terrorists -- the "worst of the worst," as then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time. But a top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees' cases, author Jane Mayer writes in "The Dark Side," scheduled for release next week.
"There will be no review," the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. "The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it."
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The reported exchange is one of dozens recounted by Mayer in a volume that describes how Cheney and his legal advisers pushed for policies on domestic wiretapping, detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mayer, who has written extensively about terrorist detention for New Yorker magazine, argues that the administration set the stage for the use of waterboarding and other controversial techniques with a series of legal memos that gave government agencies virtually unchecked power in waging war against terrorist groups.
"For the first time in its history, the United States sanctioned government officials to physically and psychologically torment U.S.-held captives, making torture the official law of the land in all but name," she writes.
A spokeswoman for Cheney declined to comment, noting that the White House had not been provided a copy of Mayer's book. While the book officially goes on sale Tuesday, a copy was obtained in advance of release by The Washington Post. The New York Times reported some details of Mayer's findings in yesterday's editions.
The classified CIA report described by Mayer was prepared in the summer of 2002 by a senior CIA analyst who was invited to the prison camp in Cuba to help Defense Department officials grapple with a major problem: They were gleaning very little useful information from the roughly 600 detainees in custody at the time. After a study involving dozens of detainees, the analyst came up with an answer: A large fraction of them "had no connection with terrorism whatsoever," Mayer writes, citing officials familiar with the report. Many were essentially bystanders who had been swept up in dragnets or turned over to the U.S. military by bounty hunters. Previous published reports have described the CIA analyst's visit but have not provided details of its findings. A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by... more -
UK 'must check' US torture denial
The British government should not rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, a report by MPs says.
The foreign affairs select committee said the UK and US differ on their definitions of what constitutes torture and it urged the UK to check US claims.
It recommended the government carry out an "exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques."
The MPs also said the government should check claims that Britain is not used by the US for "rendition" flights.
The committee highlighted the technique of "water-boarding" - a practice which simulates drowning.
The US describes it as "a legal technique used in a specific set of circumstances" and President Bush has refused to ban it. The British government should not rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, a report by MPs says. ... more -
US torture claims are unreliable: UK MPs
"The British government should no longer accept US assurances that it does not use torture, a parliamentary oversight committee said Sunday in a wide-ranging report looking at London's human rights policy.
Ministers have previously taken at face value statements from their US counterparts, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush, that Washington does not resort to such practices.
"We conclude that, given the clear differences in definition, the UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future," it added.
Britain is a signatory to a United Nations convention that prevents the extradition of suspects to countries where torture is used. If adopted, a change in approach could affect such transfers.
The committee also called for Britain to carry out an "exhaustive analysis" of US government interrogation techniques and seek guarantees about whether US flights carrying terror suspects used British airspace or airports." "The British government should no longer accept US assurances that it does not use torture, a parliamentary oversight committee said S... more -
Guantánamo children
In a submission to the UN in May, the Pentagon said that no more than eight youths, aged 13 to 17 at time of capture, were held at Guantánamo Bay. But a prisoner list released in 2006 in response to US freedom of information act litigation names 21 inmates under 18 when they arrived. A separate defence department admission brings the total to 22. Testimonies collected by the charity Reprieve, which represents 30 inmates at Guantánamo, indicate the actual number is much higher.
Guantánamo's child prisoners came from all over the world: they were Afghan, Yemeni, Saudi, Russian, Uighuri, and Canadian. Five of them are still there. They are: Mohammed el Gharani, aged 14-15 when he was seized while praying in a Karachi mosque; Hassan bin Attash, aged 16-17 when seized in Pakistan, and rendered to Jordan where he endured 16 months of torture before being transferred; Faris Muslim Al Ansari, an Afghan-Yemeni who was 17 when captured; Mohamed Jawad, an Afghan who was 17 when seized and faces trial by military commission; and Omar Khadr.
Saudi citizen Yasser Talal Al Zahrani, 17 when captured, joined a prison-wide hunger strike in 2005. He was found dead in his cell in June 2006 after apparently killing himself. In a submission to the UN in May, the Pentagon said that no more than eight youths, aged 13 to 17 at time of capture, were held at Gua... more -
Ashcroft Falsely Claims Waterboarding Has Been Seen as Legal
During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee today, former Attorney General John Ashcroft falsely claimed that waterboarding has “consistently” been defined as “not torture” and refused to agree that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques — including waterboarding — on captured U.S. soldiers is “unacceptable” or “criminal.”
REP. MAXINE WATERS: Do you think that if these techniques were used on American soldiers that they would be totally unacceptable and even criminal? […]
ASHCROFT: My job, as Attorney General, was to try and elicit from the experts and the best people in the Department definitions that comported with the statues enacted by the Congress and the Constitution of the United States. And those statutes have consistently been interpreted so as to say, by the definitions that, waterboarding, as described in the CIA’s request, is not torture.
Watch it: During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee today, former Attorney General John Ashcroft falsely claimed that waterboarding ... more -
Husband tortured and killed dog
A man who killed his wife's dog and threatened to kill her has been sentenced to six months in jail.
William David Streeter, 29, of Cloyfin Park, Coleraine, was convicted of seven counts of animal cruelty and one of making threats to kill.
The judge said it was one of the worst cases he had seen involving animals.
Streeter hanged golden retriever Mac by his collar, kicked him with steel toe-capped boots and hit him with a boulder in October 2006.
North Antrim Magistrates' Court heard that he threatened to kill his wife two days after the dog's death.
The one-year-old pedigree dog died after Streeter put a choke chain around its neck and hanged it from a rafter in his garage. A man who killed his wife's dog and threatened to kill her has been sentenced to six months in jail. ... more -
Ashcroft testifies on 'torture' memos
"It was not a hard decision for me."
That was the way former U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft today described his decision to back off controversial Justice Department legal opinions produced by then-Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. John Yoo. The memoranda, written in 2002 and 2003, you may remember, spelled out the use of interrogation techniques that described torture as "extreme acts" that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure.
The memos said, in effect, that anything short of that was OK. They have been among the most controversial documents to come to light in the Bush administration in its campaign against terrorism.
The former attorney general, who ran the Justice Department from 2001 to 2005, was the man who originally approved the memos.
But testifying before the House Judiciary Committee today, he said: “It became apparent in the further examination of those opinions, when made in another time frame, that there were matters of concerns that were brought to my opinion."
Democrats challenged Ashcroft, according to the Associated Press account of the hearing, with questions about the frequency of waterboarding -- and he said he did not think that the procedure, as the CIA then described it, was torture.
--James Gerstenzang
Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images "It was not a hard decision for me." ... more -
Rumsfeld, Torture, and the Geneva Conventions
This is a document which exposes the Bush administration's attitude towards torture and the Geneva Conventions. A real eye-opener worth copy/pasting into a word document and keeping for perusal and study, an interesting resource, to say the least. This is a document which exposes the Bush administration's attitude towards torture and the Geneva Conventions. A real eye-opener wort... more
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Ashcroft: Waterboarding doesn't constitute torture
The controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding has served a "valuable" purpose and does not constitute torture, former Attorney General John Ashcroft told a House committee Thursday.
Testifying on the Bush administration's interrogation rules before the House Judiciary Committee, Ashcroft defended the technique while answering a question from Rep. Howard Coble, R-North Carolina.
"Waterboarding, as we all know, is a controversial issue. Do you think it served a beneficial purpose?" the congressman asked.
"The reports that I have heard, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, indicate that they were very valuable," Ashcroft said, adding that CIA Director George Tenet indicated the "value of the information received from the use of enhanced interrogation techniques -- I don't know whether he was saying waterboarding or not, but assume that he was for a moment -- the value of that information exceeded the value of information that was received from all other sources."
Ashcroft, who stated his opposition to torture, said the Justice Department has determined that waterboarding, as defined and described by the CIA, doesn't constitute torture.
"I believe a report of waterboarding would be serious, but I do not believe it would define torture," Ashcroft said, responding to questions from Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California.
The controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding has served a "valuable" purpose and does not constitute torture, former Att... more -
Secret Red Cross report of C.I.A. torture of Qaeda captives
Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001. The book says that the International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were "categorically" torture, which is illegal under both American and international law. The book says Abu Zubaydah was confined in a box "so small ... he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls," according to the Red Cross report. The C.I.A. has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were waterboarded, a practice in which water is poured in the nose and mouth to [cause near] suffocation and drowning. The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer ... offers new details of the agency’s secret detention program, as well as the bitter debates in the administration over interrogation methods. Citing unnamed "sources familiar with the report," Ms. Mayer wrote that the Red Cross document "warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted." Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-l... more
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'Truth serum' used by Indian interrogators
Did you know a 'truth serum' even existed!?
A scandal has erupted in India after interrogators on a hjigh-profile murder case used so-called 'truth serum' sodium pentothal, yet failed to catch the killer, the Times reports.
India has been transfixed by the murder of Aarushi Talwar, 14, who was found with her throat slit in May at her home near Delhi. Police initially blamed the Talwars' domestic help, but were forced to rethink when his body was found on the terrace of the family house the next day.
After a series of embarrassing bungles, Indian police were under pressure to get results. So they turned to a practice long since banned in most democracies, but on the rise in India: they injected their prime suspects with a “truth serum”.
They detained Rajesh Talwar, the dead girl's dentist father, and drugged him with sodium pentothal — the “truth serum”. The Central Bureau of Investigation, India's equivalent of the FBI, took over and declared him innocent last week.
The CBI now says that the culprit was Krishna, an assistant in Dr Talwar's clinic, who was subjected to six hours of “narcoanalysis” at the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Bangalore. A suspected accomplice is now receiving the same treatment.
The practice is illegal in Britain, the United States and most other Western democracies, although security officials have suggested that it should be used on suspected terrorists — and some allege that it already has been. India adopted the technique in 2000 when S.Malini, a doctor who is now assistant director of the FSL in Bangalore, used it to coax evidence from a witness in another murder case.
Prisoners are usually taken to a specialist forensic laboratory, where doctors give them sodium pentothal, a commonly used anaesthetic, through a drip to induce a trance-like state. A forensic psychologist then questions the prisoner during the trance, which typically lasts from 15 to 45 minutes.
Doctors often have to slap the prisoners to keep them awake, according to rights groups. “This is nothing but torture,” said Amar Jesani, a co-founder of the Forum for Medical Ethics Society.
Although any evidence gleaned is inadmissible in court, police say the technique is an invaluable and harmless way of establishing facts. “It helps the investigating officer to reach the depths of the crime so that justice and law can prevail,” Rajan Bhagat, a police spokesman, told The Times.
Some say that it is unethical for doctors to take part in narcoanalysis, since the drug tends to be administered against the prisoner's will and can cause respiratory or cardio-vascular complications.
Human rights groups accuse the police of using narcoanalysis as a substitute for proper criminal investigation, and say that it violates the Constitution, which prohibits anyone accused of an offence from being “compelled to be witness against himself”.
Did you know a 'truth serum' even existed!? It sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Should it be used on criminals, as is happening more often in India? Or should it continue to be banned, as it is in the UK. US and other nations? How do interrogators even know if what their captors are saying is reliable? If people can't tell the truth, should drugs like this be used to help them along...?
Did you know a 'truth serum' even existed!? ... more -
Gitmo interrogation video! Is this some kind of sick joke? Release Omar Khadr’s To...
Do you know what the difference is between watching an interrogation video and a torture tape? It’s the difference between watching a video of someone being interviewed after they have been raped, and watching the actual video of the rape.
The following is the CSIS interrogation video from Guantanamo Bay. These are grow men and women, adults, our representatives in government, questioning a 16 year old child who has already been tortured by the US government for a year.
The CIA claims that they have destroyed their torture tapes, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The odds are that there are hours of video showing how Omar Khadr was tortured. I would like to see those videos. I would actually like to see all news stations in the US and Canada broadcast the torture tapes 24 hours a day 7 days a week for the next year. I think we all deserve to hear the screams of a 15-year-old child being tortured by the most powerful military in the world. And than we can watch as two of the richest nations on this planet defend their actions.
What is happening in Guantanamo Bay is a fascist wet dream come true, and we’re not only witness to it, but a part of it.
Do you know what the difference is between watching an interrogation video and a torture tape? It’s the difference between watching a ... more -
Why Impeachment was "Off the Table"
In December of last year, The Washington Post revealed:
Four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
Identically, numerous key Democrats in Congress were told that Bush had ordered the NSA to spy on American without warrants and outside of FISA. None of them did anything to stop it.
In light of this sordid history of active complicity, is it really any wonder that these leading Democrats are desperate to quash any investigations or judicial adjudications of Bush administration actions that they knew about and did nothing to stop, in some cases even actively supporting?
In December of last year, The Washington Post revealed: ... more -
'Kill me,' pleads 16 year old Canadian Guantanamo inmate
Omar Khadr, the only western prisoner still held in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, broke down and wept when questioned by Canadian interrogators and moaned "kill me," video footage released overnight shows.
Khadr, a Canadian, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of 15 and is charged with killing a US medic in Afghanistan.
The secret video was taken in February 2003 and shows Khadr - then 16 - being grilled by officials from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service spy agency.
"Kill me," Khadr can clearly be heard moaning repeatedly in a desperate voice as he holds his head in his hands.
Extracts of videos taken over four days of interrogation were released by Khadr's lawyers after a long battle with the Canadian Government.
"It's the cry of a desperate young man. He expected the Canadian officials to take him home," Khadr's lawyer Dennis Edney said.
The footage offers a rare glimpse into the Guantanamo Bay facility where the United States is holding about 265 prisoners in conditions criticised by human rights groups.
Khadr also told the interrogators "you don't care about me," complained of poor medical treatment, and removed his orange jumpsuit to show scars from the serious injuries he suffered during the firefight in Afghanistan in which the medic died.
Critics of Khadr's treatment say he is a child soldier who should be rehabilitated rather than punished.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has brushed off calls to intervene with Washington, saying Khadr faces serious charges.
Mr Edney said his client has suffered "torture and abuse" at the hands of the Americans during his time in Guantanamo.
Khadr has alleged US interrogators repeatedly threatened to rape him or send him to another country to be raped.
Documents released earlier this month show US authorities deprived Khadr of sleep ahead of a separate interview with an official from Canada's Foreign Ministry in 2004, moving him every three hours to make him more likely to talk.
Mr Edney said the videos - which do not show Khadr being physically abused - and the documents show Mr Harper misled Canadians when he said Ottawa had received assurances that Khadr was being treated well.
"They knew from Omar Khadr that he had been mistreated, that he was frightened of the Americans and had been tortured ... this kid has suffered enough. This kid needs to come home. This kid is not a terrorist," he said.
A Canadian judge ruled last month that Khadr has a right to see descriptions of interviews that the Canadians conducted with him, to help him prepare for his trial at Guantanamo.
The poor quality video shows Khadr at plain wooden table in an apparently windowless cell, and also sitting on a sofa.
He wears an orange prison jumpsuit, and at times buries his head in his hands, or pulls at his hair.
"I lost my eyes, I lost my feet, everything," he said.
"No, you still have your eyes and your feet are still at the end of your legs, you know," a Canadian official responded, telling the teenager to "relax a bit" and eat his hamburger.
Wayne Marston of the left-leaning opposition New Democratic Party said it was "disgraceful" for Mr Harper to say Canada had US assurances that Khadr was being treated properly.
Other western countries, such as Britain and Australia, have successfully pressed for the repatriation of citizens imprisoned in Guantanamo. Omar Khadr, the only western prisoner still held in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, broke down and wept when questioned by Canadian i... more -
Former Bush official defends interrogation techniques
Does a 20-hour interrogation involving “hooding” and “removal of clothing” constitute inhumane treatment? Rep. Jerrold Nadler sought answers from Douglas Feith, an architect of the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation policies. Does a 20-hour interrogation involving “hooding” and “removal of clothing” constitute inhumane treatment? Rep. Jerrold Nadler sought ... more
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Canadian teenager cries in Guantanamo interrogation video
A sobbing Canadian teenager begs for help as he is interrogated at the US "war on terror" camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the very first video glimpse of any such questioning showed on Tuesday.
The video was released by attorneys for terror suspect Omar Khadr, who is shown being questioned at the prison by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents in February, 2003.
Khadr is the youngest detainee at Guantanamo, accused of killing a US soldier in a firefight in Afghanistan.
He has been held at the US facility naval since his arrest in 2002, when he was 15 years old, and faces an upcoming US military commission on terrorism charges.
"Help me, help me, help me," Khadr says in the video, weeping, holding his head in his hands.
The footage covers seven and a half hours of questioning over three days. It depicts a dejected young man, tense from the pang of injuries suffered in a brush with US soldiers six months earlier.
In one excerpt, Khadr tugs at his hair, and pulls his orange prisoner suit over his head to show his interrogator his battle scars.
"I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything," he says.
"You look like you're doing well to me," the interrogator replies, his face blurred in the images. "I'm not a doctor but I think you're getting good medical care."
"You say this is healthy?" Khadr asks. "I can't move my arm."
"No, you still have your eyes, and your feet are still at the ends of your legs," his interrogator replies, urging him to cooperate.
"You don't care about me," Khadr tells the interrogator. "Nobody cares about me."
In the video, apparently shot through the flaps of a ventilation shaft, Khadr is asked what he knows about Al-Qaeda and questioned about his Islamic faith.
At one point, an interrogator tries to calm Khadr, who is clearly distraught, saying he needs to get a "bite to eat" and adding: "I understand this is stressful."
When Khadr complains his compatriots have not helped his case, the interrogator replies: "We can't do anything for you."
The video shows no beating or physical abuse of Khadr.
According to files from the Foreign Intelligence Division of Canada's Foreign Affairs department, Khadr was forcibly sleep deprived and placed in isolation for three weeks before being interviewed again.
Human rights groups have also demanded Khadr be released from Guantanamo, saying his age at the time of capture precludes any war crime proceeding.
The US government alleges Khadr was the lone survivor of a four-hour US bombardment of an Al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002, who rose from the rubble and killed a US sergeant with a grenade.
Khadr's US lawyer Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler instead described him to a Canadian Commons committee as a "frightened, wounded, 15-year-old boy, a boy like other children wrongfully involved in armed conflict who had no business being there, who sat slumped against a bush while a battle raged around him."
Khadr was then shot at least twice in the back by US soldiers and was about to be executed when another soldier intervened, Kuebler said.
Khadr is said to have no vision in one eye, and sight in the other is deteriorating because of shrapnel embedded in the eye membrane.
There are no words. What are our so-called 'civilised' countries doing?
A sobbing Canadian teenager begs for help as he is interrogated at the US "war on terror" camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the very first... more
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Torture
