Torture continues at US prisons in Afghanistan (OpEd News)

[JohnyCanuck]

Recent media reports reveal that the US military continues to carry on torture and illegal detention in Afghanistan at a dungeon known to inmates as "the black prison."

The jail, located on the Bagram Air Base next to the notorious Bagram prison north of Kabul, operates under the executive order of President Obama. After entering office, Obama ordered the closure of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prison "black sites"-which were in fact no longer active-but exempted those prisons run by the military's Special Operations, which was headed from 2003 until 2008 by General Stanley McChrystal, now US commander of the Af-Pak theater.

US military officials recently said they had no plans to close the Afghan jail and another like it at the Balad Air Base in Iraq, which they claimed were needed to interrogate "high-value detainees."

Two teenage Afghan boys told the Washington Post that they were beaten, photographed naked, sexually humiliated, denied sleep, and held in solitary confinement by American guards at the prison this year. Interviewed at a juvenile detention center in Kabul, where they have been transferred, "the teenagers presented a detailed, consistent portrait" of the abuse they experienced, the newspaper reported. Their descriptions of the prison were confirmed by two other former prisoners.

SNIP

Prisoners are exposed to extreme cold and sleep deprivation. The teenage boys told the Post that when they attempted to sleep on the hard floor, US soldiers "shouted at them and hammered on their cells." Prisoners' only respite from this extreme solitary confinement are twice-a-day interrogations, during which some are beaten or humiliated.

"He kept asking me, 'Tell us the truth.' I told them the truth more than 10 times," Mohammad told the Post. "That I'm a farmer, my father was a farmer, my brother was a farmer. But they said, 'No, help us with this case. Tell us the truth.' That's why he was slapping me."

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Torture-continues-at-US-pr-by-Tom-Eley-091204-31.html

[eleny]

1. Well, if they can just hang in there for 18 more months, things should start getting better

:sarcasm:

k&r

[rhett o rick]

2. If this is true i am sick. nt

[slipslidingaway]

3. knr ...

"...On Saturday, the New York Times published interviews with three former inmates who also spoke of the black prison near Bagram. Each informant "was interviewed separately and described similar conditions," the Times notes, and "heir descriptions also matched those obtained by two human rights workers who had interviewed other former detainees at the site." One of the three men was arrested months after Obama's inauguration as US president, as were the two teenage boys interviewed by the Post..."

[leftstreet]

4. K&R

[katandmoon]

5. Looks like Bush has competition for the title "The Torture President"!

[JohnyCanuck]

6. I guess its a step forward that under Obama

CIA prisoners are no longer being "rendered" to Uzbekistan for torture. (As far as we know). The Uzbek security services are so dedicated to finding the truth they have been known to boil their victims alive in their efforts to get at it. No wonder the CIA and the Bush administration felt the Uzbek, Stalinist goon force were just the guys for the job of applying "enhanced interrogation" techniques that the terrorist-coddling laws of "civilized" countries like the USA and UK disallowed.


It's all explained by the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, in these two videos: UK/USA made use of Uzbek torture:

Part1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNYES8KOIqY

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MQoG5wfx5g

And also in this Statement by Murray for the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights:

As Ambassador in Uzbekistan I regularly received intelligence material released by MI6. This material was given to MI6 by the CIA, mostly originating from their Tashkent station. It was normally issued to me telegraphically by MI6 at the same time it was issued to UK ministers and officials in London.

From the start of my time as Ambassador, I was also receiving a continual stream of information about widespread torture of suspected political or religious dissidents in Tashkent. This was taking place on a phenomenal scale. In early 2003 a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, in the preparation of which my Embassy much assisted, described torture in Uzbekistan as “routine and systemic”.

The horror and staggering extent of torture in Uzbekistan is well documented and I have been informed by the Chair is not in the purview of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. But what follows goes directly to the question of UK non-compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture.

In gathering evidence from victims of torture, we built a consistent picture of the narrative which the torturers were seeking to validate from confessions under torture. They sought confessions which linked domestic opposition to President Karimov with Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden; they sought to exaggerate the strength of the terrorist threat in Central Asia. People arrested on all sorts of pretexts – (I recall one involved in a dispute over ownership of a garage plot) suddenly found themselves tortured into confessing to membership of both the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Al-Qaida. They were also made to confess to attending Al-Qaida training camps in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. In an echo of Stalin’s security services from which the Uzbek SNB had an unbroken institutional descent, they were given long lists of names of people they had to confess were also in IMU and Al-Qaida.

It became obvious to me after just a few weeks that the CIA material from Uzbekistan was giving precisely the same narrative being extracted by the Uzbek torturers – and that the CIA “intelligence” was giving information far from the truth.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/trying_again_my.html

[chill_wind]

7. Dear God!! n/t

[chill_wind]

8. But have you seen this JohnyCanuck? Scahill alleging--

Additionally, he reports the Republic of Uzbekistan is now being drawn into the battlelines as Blackwater forces are acting within the borders of Uzbekistan as well. This is in addition to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and all of this - every bit of it of it, with no Congressional oversight.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x409727

:-(

[JohnyCanuck]

9. I imagine Blackwater and the repressive Stalinist style,

torturing, Uzbek regime will find they work well together. One of them rounds up the prisoners and the other drops them into tubs of boiling water - a match made in heaven, er.. hell, er.. Langley, Va.

[JohnyCanuck]

10. Some more thoughts on torture by the ex-ambassador Craig Murray.

The "ticking bomb" scenario is supposed to pose the classical justification of torture. It denies that any action is per se wrong, and posits that inflicting terrible pain on one person is justified if it prevents terrible pain to more numerous others. That is precisely the argument which was being put to me when I was officially informed of the new British government policy of using torture for intelligence:

There were difficult ethical and moral issues involved and at times difficult judgements had to be made weighing one clutch of "moral issues" against another. It was not always easy for people in post (embassies) to see and appreciate the broader picture, eg piecing together intelligence material from different sources in the global fight against terrorism

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/11/jack_straw_lied.html#comments

But the argument relies on a whole number of premisses. They include:

1. That the right person is being tortured and he does indeed have the knowledge to prevent harm.

In fact in the vast, vast majority of the War on Terror torture cases that is not true, as Colvin and I have both testified from actual experience - and as people like Baba Musa testify from beyond the grave - most torture is of the innocent.

2. That the torturer is a benevolent being who genuinely wants to learn the truth in order to prevent harm to others.

In fact, in the vast majority of War on Terror torture cases, the torturer is seeking evidence to support a false narrative, (my emphasis /JC). In my case, the Uzbek dictatorship was seeking to win increased Western military and financial support by providing a vastly exagerrated narrative of the strength and penetration of Al-Qaida in Central Asia.

Link: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/11/torturing_ordin.html
(blog entry for Nov 23rd)

[Echo In Light]

11. Interesting in that over 24 hrs this thread has only a few replies

[MadHound]

12. This is why I find the closing of Gitmo so very hollow

Because it doesn't mean that we're going to stop torturing people, we're simply moving the location. This has been going on for years, under both Bush and Obama, and apparently it's not going to stop anytime soon. Oh, and I wonder if we're still flying prisoners to such exotic locales like Egypt or Saudi Arabia for their brand of friendly "persuasion".

[Echo In Light]

13. Exactly