Uncovered: Britain's secret rendition programme - Until now, this country has been guilty only by association in the illegal transfer of prisoners. But the covert rendition of a Moroccan man by MI5 agents suggests that the practice was central to Britain's 'war on terror'. MI5 was directly involved in the rendition of a Moroccan national, illegally taken from a Belgian prison to work for Britain's Security Services in London, an investigation by The Independent has discovered. The man, now aged 29 and who cannot be named for his own safety, was secretly transferred from a Brussels jail in April 2004 and then further held and interrogated by senior MI5 officers at a secret base near London. Documents seen by The Independent show that in September 2003 a Belgian court sentenced the man to four years in prison for the use of false documents and association with terror suspects. Yet less than a year later Home Office papers reveal that the Moroccan, who was born in Rabat, was in Britain and had been granted leave to remain in the UK by the British Government.

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, The Washington Post, today, arguing against civilian trials for Guantanamo detainees:

The civilized world has tried over several hundred years to establish rules of warfare so that those who wear uniforms, follow a recognized chain of command, carry their arms openly and do not target civilians are treated as prisoners of war when captured. Those who follow none of these rules are treated as war criminals, not as ordinary defendants accused of ordinary crimes and entitled to far more robust protection than war criminals.

Dana Priest and William Arkin, The Washington Post, today, on the sprawling network of private corporations performing core U.S. military and intelligence functions:

Private contractors working for the CIA have recruited spies in Iraq, paid bribes for information in Afghanistan and protected CIA directors visiting world capitals. Contractors have helped snatch a suspected extremist off the streets of Italy, interrogated detainees once held at secret prisons abroad and watched over defectors holed up in the Washington suburbs. . . . Contractors kill enemy fighters. They spy on foreign governments and eavesdrop on terrorist networks. They help craft war plans. They gather information on local factions in war zones. . . .

On any given day in Egypt, a U.S. ally with a much-criticized human rights record, citizens who cross the nation’s security forces may be subject to brutal violence, according to a leading human rights organization here. Complaints arrive daily: An 18-year-old man was beaten in a police station and thrown off a third floor balcony. Another man was punched and flogged. Earlier, a family was dragged to the police station, where the father was beaten and the women were threatened with rape. These and hundreds more allegations have been logged into Egypt’s “torture diary,” a chronicle of claimed transgressions compiled by the Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, an independent victims advocacy group.

Florida –Organizers today announced the formation of the North American Truth and Accountability Commission for Human Experimentation (NATAC). The Commission, nearly 8 months in the making, was first proposed after a number of people had read the recently published book by H.P. Albarelli Jr., A TERRIBLE MISTAKE: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments. Albarelli’s book details a number of shocking human experiments conducted during the Cold War years. Following a number of meetings in Los Angeles and New York City to discuss both past and on-going human experiments sponsored by the government, it was proposed that a formal commission be formed to further research government-sponsored human experimentation in the United States and Canada and to advocate for the demise of all such programs.

New details have emerged regarding the 2004 death of Egyptian-born scientist Muhammad al-Azmirly at a prison at a U.S. air base in Baghdad. Al-Azmirly died after his arrest by U.S. forces during the 2003 invasion. He is believed to have been a close confidant of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. A specialist in the field of chemistry, al-Azmirly was considered one of world's leading experts on polymers at the time of his death, and when the war began, was listed among the 200 people closest to the regime of Saddam Hussein. He was a member of the science faculty at the University of Baghdad before being arrested and taken from his home on April 26, 2003. His private office was set alight by American occupation forces after all of his books, papers, computers and family photos were confiscated. Zionist Intelligence [Israeli intelligence, the Mossad] then analyzed the information. He was held at the Abu Ghraib prison for ten days during which U.S. forces tortured him. Then he was transferred to a secret prison under the control of Zionist intelligence for questioning about his scientific activities.

FLetter signed by Steny Hoyer to George Bush, June 29, 2007, demanding closing of Guantanamo:

Holding prisoners for an indefinite period of time, without charging them with a crime goes against our values, ideals and principles as a nation governed by the rule of law. Further, Guantanamo Bay has a become a liability in the broader global war on terror, as allegations of torture, the indefinite detention of innocent men, and international objections to the treatment of enemy combatants has hurt our credibility as the beacon for freedom and justice. Its continued operation also threatens the safety of U.S. citizens and military personnel detained abroad. . . . A liability of our own creation, the existence of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay is defeating our effort to ensure that the principles of freedom, justice and human rights are spread throughout the world.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, today:

Gitmo shut-down not a priority, top Dem says House Majority Leader. Steny Hoyer acknowledged Tuesday that closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison is not a top priority for congressional Democrats. In response to a question from a reporter about where shutting down Gitmo stands, Hoyer said, “I think that’s not an item, as you point out, of real current discussion. There’s some very big issues confronting us – dealing with growing the economy and Iraq and Afghanistan.” Hoyer added, “I think you’re not going to see it discussed very broadly in the near term.”

Details of the techniques used in a secret manual governing the use of physical restraint in private child prisons were revealed today. Some of the measures employed in the secure training centres, detailed in the "instructor's manual", include ramming knuckles into ribs and raking shoes down the shins, the Observer reported. The contents of the manual were revealed after The Youth Justice Board (YJB) agreed to hand over the document earlier this month. The document includes descriptions of "distraction" techniques, which deliberately inflict pain. The Observer detailed some of the techniques such as placing an "inverted knuckle into the trainee's sternum and drive inward and upward." Another practice reads: "Continue to carry alternate elbow strikes to the young person's ribs until a release is achieved."

An Israeli man accused of killing four Palestinians has claimed he was encouraged by the Israeli security agency Shin Bet to commit violent acts. Chaim Pearlman's associates have released new recordings of alleged conversations between Pearlman and his handler. The recordings reveal that a Shin Bet agent allegedly tried to persuade Pearlman into assassinating the head of the Islamic Movement in Israel Sheik Ra'ad Salah. Pearlman maintains that he recorded all his conversations with the man and that has 20 hours of recordings. Pearlman was arrested earlier this week. He is suspected of killing four Palestinians and carrying out a series of attacks against other Palestinian victims over the last 12 years. The Shin Bet denied the claim, saying the exchanges recorded in the tapes represented a legitimate method of extracting a confession from a suspect.

A federal judge today ruled that the government can withhold information from the public about intelligence sources and methods, even if those sources and methods were illegal. The ruling came in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union for Justice Department memos that authorized torture, and for records relating to the contents of destroyed videotapes depicting the brutal interrogation of detainees at CIA black sites. The government continues to withhold key information, such as the names of detainees who were subjected to the abusive interrogation methods as well as information about the application of the interrogation techniques. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York today ruled that the government can continue to suppress evidence of its illegal program.

Former Guantanamo detainees can proceed with lawsuits accusing Britain of complicity in torture overseas, a High Court judge ruled Wednesday, rejected a government request to suspend the action. Britain had asked a judge to direct the six men, and six others who plan to launch similar cases, to halt their lawsuits and focus on reaching out of court settlements, allowing an independent inquiry into the accusations to begin. But High Court judge Stephen Silber ruled that the men can press ahead with their cases, even if their lawyers decide to take part in mediation talks aimed at reaching a deal outside the courts. Some documents giving a taste of what might be released in the inquiry also were released, showing an often-confused government position under former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Officials claim the court cases could last five years and cost tens of millions of pounds (dollars), they also insist that intelligence agency staff have been taken off anti-terrorism duties to review up to 500,000 documents to be disclosed in the cases. The Guardian: Omar Deghayes: 'He was brought in manacled and hooded'. + The torture files: the interrogations.

Psychologists in the United States have been warned by their professional group not to take part in torturing detainees in U.S. custody. Now the American Psychological Association has taken the unprecedented step of supporting an attempt to strip the license of a psychologist accused of overseeing the torture of a CIA detainee. The APA has told a Texas licensing board in a letter mailed July 1 that the allegations against Dr. James Mitchell represent "patently unethical" actions inconsistent with the organization's ethics guidelines. If any psychologist who was a member of the APA were found to have committed the acts alleged against Mitchell, "he or she would be expelled from the APA membership," according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. APA spokeswoman Rhea Farberman confirmed its contents. AP/Google: Psychology group backs CIA detainee abuse claim.

Babar Ahmad, 35, is the longest-serving prisoner held without charge or trial in the UK. In his first media interview since his arrest on a US extradition warrant in 2004, Mr Ahmad tells Robert Verkaik that he is the forgotten victim of the 'war on terror'. In March 2009, he was awarded £60,000 in compensation after an admission by the UK's anti-terrorist police that they subjected him to 'grave abuse, tantamount to torture' during his first arrest in December 2003. Corresponding via email from a secure isolation unit at Long Lartin prison, he calls on the Government to charge him or release him. Today, the European Court of Human Rights rules on his case.

As Sarah began pleading with them to give her father a little time and space to get up because he is an amputee, they began kicking and hitting him. One of the police officers used his knee to press Pruyn’s head down so hard on the ground, said Pruyn in an interview this July 4 with Niagara At Large, that his head was still hurting a week later. CBC News: G20 reporters complain to police watchdog. AWIP: Male officers strip search and cavity search females. Toronto G20 Police RAPE and TORTURE journalist!

Now that Canada is officially the most oppressive and backward dictatorship in the west, will authorities be allowed to cover-up the Abu-Ghraib style incarceration methods Toronto police engaged in during the G20 summit this past weekend, where women were arrested and subsequently raped by male cops?

In this video, journalist Amy Miller describes how women arrested by Toronto police were threatened with rape, that numerous women were strip-searched by male officers and that one severely traumatized woman was sexually molested by police who stuck their fingers up her vagina. Sexual penetration of an individual against their will is called rape.

If these reports are accurate, and there's no reason to think otherwise given everything else we've witnessed not only over the past few days but over the past several years in Canada, Toronto police officers are not only brutal thugs who like to lie about the law, unlawfully arrest people, snatch and grab protesters using unmarked cars, and beat up journalists from major newspapers, but they are also rapists who prey on innocent women.

We have now learned that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair engaged in mass public deception by lying about the claim that Toronto's "Public Works Act" mandated G20 protesters to show their ID. The law doesn't exist, it was never passed. The police officers who cited this law when arresting Charlie Veitch were knowingly engaging in wrongful arrest and should be sued.

Likewise, the goons who brutally molested women Abu-Ghraib style need to be identified and prosecuted. Miller should seek out the victims and bring charges against those involved, and not allow these monsters to cover-up their shameful behavior.

UPDATE: We have now learned that four journalists, including Miller, have "filed complaints with Ontario's police watchdog, with allegations that police physically assaulted or threatened to sexually assault the females when they were arrested during the Toronto G20 summit."

In addition, Guardian journalist Jesse Rosenfeld has spoken publicly of his ordeal at the hands of G20 police.

"I was grabbed on each side and hit in the stomach and back and pounced on by officers. I kept asking them why they were beating me because I wasn't resisting arrest. But they lifted my leg and twisted my ankle," said Rosenfield.

AWIP/Denis Rancourt: They’re not just pigs. The targeting, intimidation, and terrorizing of protestors - treated like “the enemy” in a war – was, like with all recent anti-globalization protests, systematic. The patterns described by the thousands of victims (from psychological intimidation to broken skin and rape) are identical. These are no ordinary pigs. These thugs had to be trained to execute these manoeuvres against civil society. These cops are not just racist individuals because of their particular personal circumstances. Their language and actions show that they are trained into a military culture where protestors and activists are the enemy and are to be rooted out and intimidated away from societal participation. They aren’t just pigs. They are anti-democracy commandos.

The allegations of torture by British soldiers in Iraq bear chilling comparison with America's worst excesses. The inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa is due to report by the end of the year. It will detail how Mousa died in Iraq in September 2003, allegedly brutalised by British soldiers in a "free for all"; and how it was that he and nine other men in the same incident were allegedly hooded, forced into painful stress positions, and deprived of sleep, food and water.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — The photographs have spread online and in the press: a before-and-after montage showing a handsome young man smiling in a gray hoodie on one side and a battered and bloodied corpse on the other. His eyes are rolled back in his head, mouth agape and his lower lip ripped half off his face. His name was Khaled Said, age 28. His murder on June 6 — allegedly at the hands of undercover police — is causing a political uproar that has brought thousands into the streets here in recent weeks to demand justice for the man now known as “the emergency law martyr.” His death is Egypt’s latest — and largest — rallying cry for critics of 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak, the country’s feared security services and the state of emergency that has granted both near limitless power since 1981.

Human Rights Watch says France, Germany and Britain utilize foreign intelligence obtained through torture in the so-called fight against terrorism. In its report entitled "No Questions Asked: Intelligence Cooperation with Countries that Torture," Human Rights Watch (HRW) has denounced the use of foreign torture intelligence as "illegal" and "wrong," raising concern about the way the countries of the European Union have dealt with intelligence obtained from individuals detained on charges of terrorism. The report condemns any application of information tainted by torture, saying such information has also been used in criminal and other proceedings in France and Germany. "Berlin, Paris and London should be working to eradicate torture, not relying on foreign torture intelligence," the AFP quoted Judith Sunderland, a western Europe researcher for HRW. "Taking information from torturers is illegal and just plain wrong," she emphasized. HRW: “No Questions Asked,” Intelligence Cooperation with Countries that Torture [Report] Electronic Intifada: Israeli link possible in US torture techniques.

(CN) - Police Tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn't breathe, after her grandson called 911 seeking medical assistance, the woman and her grandson claim in Oklahoma City Federal Court. Though the grandson said, "Don't Taze my granny!" an El Reno police officer told another cop to "Taser her!" and wrote in his police report that he did so because the old woman "took a more aggressive posture in her bed," according to the complaint.

The U.S government has commissioned via CIA the Xe Company, formerly known as Blackwater, "to guard facilities in Afghanistan". The details of this deal are classified. The official cover of the subversive and terrorist activities set for the Blackwater is a contract between the CIA and the Xe. A leakage to the media says that the price of the contract is allegedly equal to 100 million dollars, a certain source "close to the negotiations" told this to The Washington Post. According to it, Xe will "carry out protective and guard services in the region". The CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano "stopped short of confirming the contract", saying only that Xe personnel would not be involved in operations. Meanwhile, the command of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan warned last May that "CIA agents and mercenaries from Blackwater were infamous task in the long-term US strategy to destabilize the situation in the region. AWIP: CIA gives Blackwater firm new $100 million contract.

In another example of the inanity of the U.S. State Department’s work in Afghanistan, it was revealed several days ago that the U.S. State Department has awarded a $120 million contract for security operations to the United States Training Center (USTC) at new U.S. Consulates in Mazar-i-Sharif and Heart. The USTC is a division of Xe, the new name Blackwater USA chose to hide behind after its indictment for murdering dozens of Iraqi civilians in broad daylight on a busy Baghdad square. The $120 million contract, split between the two small consulates means that $6.6 million per month will be spent on each consulate— on security alone! Blackwater security workers earn about $18,000/month. Afghan teachers earn about $50/month. For a fair comparison, figure that $50/month is below a living wage in Kabul. It takes three times that to pay rent, buy food and all the other costs required to raise a family, as a bare minimum— and that means no meat, no car, and making children work, and not go to school. Teachers are guaranteed a life of poverty, and are at much greater risk for attack by Talibs than U.S. diplomats. The huge cost of the U.S. diplomatic infrastructure in Afghanistan is a big thorn in the side of the U.S. and the Afghan people.

Writing to members of the Illinois delegation in Congress, Asst. Atty. Gen. Ronald Weich reaffirmed the administration’s “commitment to acquiring the facility this year,” and provided details about steps planned for the next few months.

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons plans to hire and train employees while other administration officials “work with Congress to obtain authorization and funding for a portion of the Thomson facility,” Weich wrote in the letter, obtained by the Tribune Washington bureau.

In the only “terrorism”-related case this term, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld 6-3 a provision of law making it a federal crime to “knowingly provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization,” even if the “support” consists only of “expert advice or assistance” for “lawful, non-violent purposes”—in other words, political speech. The US Secretary of State can designate any “foreign organization” as “terrorist” based on “classified information” establishing that it “engages in terrorist activity” which “threatens the security of United States nationals or the national security of the United States.” Uruknet/Arthur Silber: The Death State Brutalizes, Tortures and Murders Because It Can.

For years, the military insisted that the Active Denial System — known as the “Holy Grail” of crowd control — was oh-so-close to battlefield deployment. But a host of technical issues hampered the ray gun: everything from overheating to poor performance in the rain. Safety concerns lingered; a test subject had to be airlifted to a burn center after being zapped by the weapon. (He eventually made a full recovery.) And then there were concerns about “the atmospherics” — how the locals might react — when they learned that the United States had turned a people-roaster on ‘em. “Not politically tenable,” the Defense Science Board concluded.

Canadian police officers were not justified in using a taser gun on a Polish immigrant who later died, an inquiry has found. Robert Dziekanski, who did not speak English, died after being stunned five times with a Taser gun at Vancouver airport in 2007. The district attorney general has said that a special prosecutor would look into possible criminal charges against the four officers involved. The case sparked outrage across Canada. Mr Dziekanski, 40, was a first-time traveller who had been emigrating to Canada, where his mother lived.

A Guantanamo Bay detainee awaiting trial in a federal civilian court cannot evade strip searches that require him to expose his private areas because security would be compromised, a judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan made the written ruling Monday and it was released publicly Thursday in the terrorism case brought against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be brought to a U.S. civilian court for trial. Ghailani had asked Kaplan to force the Bureau of Prisons to spare him from a 1997 policy that requires all inmates entering or leaving the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan to submit to a visual inspection of "all body surfaces and body cavities." A psychologist, Katherine Porterfield, had testified at a hearing several weeks ago that Ghailani did not object to the strip search so much as the requirement that he bend over or squat briefly to display his rectum to an officer conducting the search. She said the search triggered Ghailani's post-traumatic stress disorder, which resulted from treatment he received during interrogations at a secret CIA-run camp overseas after his 2004 arrest. Porterfield testified that "enhanced interrogation techniques" torture he experienced while in CIA custody caused him to have a severe reaction in anticipation of exposing his rectal area.

The European Court of Human Rights will consider the case of a German citizen who was kidnapped and beaten in connection with the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, the Open Society Justice Initiative revealed today. This is the first time an extraordinary rendition case related to the "war on terror" has reached Europe's top court. Macedonian security forces seized Khaled El-Masri at the request of the United States in December 2003 and held him—incommunicado—for 23 days. El-Masri was then handed over to the CIA and flown to a detention center in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was confined in appalling conditions, interrogated, and abused. After several months, El-Masri was finally released and dumped on a roadside in Albania. Despite overwhelming evidence of its collaboration, Macedonia has denied that El-Masri was detained illegally on its territory or handed over to the CIA.

"European governments must be held accountable for participating in torture, abuse, and kidnappings in association with the CIA's rendition program," said James A. Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which is litigating the case. "United States courts may have closed their doors on this matter, but we hope that El-Masri will find justice before the European Court."

Geoff Hoon, the former defence secretary, insisted yesterday that he did not know until the death of Baha Mousa that British troops hooded prisoners in Iraq as standard operating procedure. Mr Hoon told an inquiry into Mr Mousa's death: "I was clearly deeply shocked that a man had died in such circumstances at the hands of apparently British soldiers," and that the abuse he had suffered, manacled and hooded, while held by British soldiers was "appalling" and "reprehensible".

PHR’s new report, Experiments in Torture, has sent shock waves through the conscience of America this week. This report reveals evidence indicating that the Bush administration may have conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. This research, if proven to have occurred, could violate the Geneva Conventions, The Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other international and domestic prohibitions against illegal human subject research and experimentation. Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America’s core values. Elected officials have failed in their duty to investigate potential CIA wrongdoing. It’s time to get the experts involved. PressTV: CIA experimented on terror suspects.

Physicians for Human Rights yesterday released a report documenting (while relying on heavily redacted material) that "medical professionals who were involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogations of terrorism suspects engaged in forms of human research and experimentation in violation of medical ethics and domestic and international law." To those paying close attention, the evidence suggesting that this occurred has long been clear.

The dramatic expansion in the use of special forces [assassins], which in their global span go far beyond the covert missions authorised by George W. Bush, reflects how aggressively the President is pursuing "al-Qaeda" behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy. When Mr Obama took office US special forces were operating in fewer than 60 countries. In the past 18 months he has ordered a big expansion in Yemen and the Horn of Africa — known areas of strong al-Qaeda activity — and elsewhere in the Middle East, central Asia and Africa. According to The Washington Post, Mr Obama has also approved pre-emptive special forces strikes to "disrupt terror plots" [to hatch themm & carry them out], and has given the units powers and "authority" [Obama has no authority whatsoever to give.] that was not granted by Mr Bush when he occupied the White House.

[Taking time off for a fair number of killing sprees...] all around Afghanistan, from Kandahar Airfield to the Bagram jail, the U.S. military is on a building spree, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on wartime encampments. By one count, America and its allies now have 700 bases in Afghanistan. But most of the construction — and most of the extra troops “surging” into the country — are going to the violent south and the dangerous east. Until recently, northern Afghanistan was considered quiet. Regional hub Mazar-e-Sharif was the first major city in Afghanistan to be taken from the Taliban. But, especially in nearby Kunduz province, violence is bubbling up once again. Chris Floyd: War on the World: Obama's Surge in State Terror.

George Bush admitted yesterday that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was waterboarded by the US, and said he would do it again "to save lives". In his speech, Bush also defended the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. He said ousting Saddam Hussein "was the right thing to do and the world is a better place without him". But he said he was not tempted to criticise Barack Obama. "You are not going to see me in the public square criticising the president."

An international children's rights charity has said it has evidence that Palestinian children held in Israeli custody have been subjected to sexual abuse in an effort to extract confessions from them. The Geneva-based Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected 100 sworn affadavits from Palestinian children who said they were mistreated by their Israeli captors. Fourteen of the statements say they were sexually abused or threatened with sexual assault to pressure them into confessions. Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh met with one of the children, identified only as N, who says he suffered sexual abuse at the hands of his interrogators.

A global justice gap is being made worse by power politics despite a landmark year for international justice, said Amnesty International today in its annual assessment of human rights worldwide. Launching Amnesty International Report 2010: State of the World's Human Rights, which documents abuses in 159 countries, the organization said that powerful governments are blocking advances in international justice by standing above the law on human rights, shielding allies from criticism and acting only when politically convenient. "Repression and injustice are flourishing in the global justice gap, condemning millions of people to abuse, oppression and poverty," said Claudio Cordone, interim Secretary General of Amnesty International. "Governments must ensure that no one is above the law, and that everyone has access to justice for all human rights violations. Until governments stop subordinating justice to political self-interest, freedom from fear and freedom from want will remain elusive for most of humanity." Amnesty International called on governments to ensure accountability for their own actions, fully sign up to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and ensure that crimes under international law can be prosecuted anywhere in the world. It said that states claiming global leadership, including the G20, have a particular responsibility to set an example.

[This is a Kangaroo court based upon torure of prisoners and a profound lack of legal safeguards. These trials are nothing but insidious propaganda meant to fool the most stupid & reactionary people among us.] On June 1, a detainee will stand with a lawyer and plead his case in front of an Afghan judge, said Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the deputy commander for detention operations. His remark came during a tour of the prison Tuesday for a handful of Afghan lawmakers who have been critical of U.S. detention practices. The facility, which is on the edge of Bagram Air Field, opened in December and can hold up to 1,300 inmates. It replaced a smaller — and more notorious — prison that was inside the base. The trial is one of the first tangible steps toward a pledge to hand over the facility to Afghan authorities and the latest example of a U.S. push to win over a suspicious population by being more open about what happens to the people it captures. AntiWar: Rights Groups Condemn Ruling on Bagram Detainees.

The US has authorised a sweeping expansion of covert military operations in the Middle East and Africa, aimed at destroying terrorist networks in the region, and preparing the ground ahead of any presidential decision to attack Iran. According yesterday's The New York Times, a directive, called the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order, was signed on 30 September by General David Petraeus, head of Central Command and in charge of US military operations in the Middle East, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Under its provisions, units of the Navy Seals, the Army's Delta Force and other Special Forces will be able to operate both in friendly countries, and in hostile countries with which the US is not technically at war. AWIP: Secret order prepares new US wars in Middle East and Central Asia. + Criminal Empire: US to expand secret "operations" [state terrorism]

A front-page article in Tuesday’s New York Times reveals the existence of a secret directive signed by Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the US Central Command, ordering the expansion of covert military operations throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. The seven-page document, entitled “Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order,” essentially provides the US military with a blank check to carry out aggressive acts against virtually any country. Issued in September 2009, the order calls for the creation of a network of covert task forces and intelligence-gathering units which will “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” any target within any country designated by the US military. These forces will carry out clandestine operations which “cannot or will not be accomplished” through other military means. AWIP: Criminal Empire: US to expand secret "operations" [state terrorism]

Human-rights groups are expressing concerns over the treatment of more than 100 anti-government protesters who were detained after the Thai government's military crackdown in Bangkok on Wednesday. New York-based Human Rights Watch said it was concerned that Thai authorities were using what it called a "draconian" emergency decree to hold the prisoners in secret detention.

A judge will investigate claims that Britain's secret services were complicit in the torture of terrorism suspects after a spate of damaging allegations, foreign secretary William Hague said. Details of the probe were being worked out by his Conservative party and their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, and would be published soon, the minister said. A slew of allegations - including that of Binyam Mohamed who claims British intelligence services colluded in torturing him with US agents - have sparked a fierce row between the authorities and human rights campaigners.

Like a modern-day Ministry of Truth, the American Psychological Association (APA) has scrubbed the webpage describing "deception scenarios" workshops that were part of a conference it conducted with the CIA and Rand Corporation on July 17-18, 2003. In addition, the APA erased the link to the page, and even all mention of its existence, from another story at its July 2003 Science Policy Insider News website that briefly described the conference.

The Obama administration has started using special law enforcement and intelligence teams to interrogate "suspected militants" in the United States and abroad, including the Pakistani-American arrested in the Times Square bombing plot, a top official said on Tuesday. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the formation of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) in August and gave the reins to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, replacing the Central Intelligence Agency that did have the lead role in intelligence interrogations & torture.

"What they've done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban," Hersh added. "You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they're Taliban, you must turn them free. "What it means is, and I've been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place," he continued. "Well, if they can't prove they're Taliban, bam. If we don't do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now."

ZHENGZHOU - Authorities in Henan province have issued arrest warrants for three police officers suspected of torturing Zhao Zuohai, a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and jailed about 10 years. Two of the officers, Guo Shouhai and Zhou Minghan, have been detained while the third cop, Li Deling, is still at large. They are suspected of torturing Zhao, 57, into confessing to a murder 10 years ago. Authorities have also started a probe into the wrongful imprisonment on Wednesday, said Song Guoqiang, an official with the people's procuratorate in Shangqiu city. Song said the procuratorate has questioned everyone else involved in Zhao's conviction at the local public security bureau, procuratorate and court. AWIP: China clears murderer after 'victim' shows up alive.

US citizen faces a lifetime of solitary confinement in a Colorado supermax prison for a conviction based on a confession tape OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE in Saudi Arabia. Evidence of torture was not allowed to be presented at trial.

Today’s Justice system of the world is left just for those who have power, but on top of these powers is the so called superpower US left alone against whomever they turn aginst… US has hundreds of secret prisons all over the world most of them are in Europe, Asia, Sout America, from which Gitmo is the famous one…Abu Gharib is a page of shame not only for the US military, but the whole government, as well, something worse is under the US control in Afghanistan, Kabul, the Bagram Air Base for Pashtun=Afghan detainees, who are being held since the invasion of Afg by the US, these detainees are in one case lucky to be alive, because under the US command in northern provinces of Kunduz, Mazar etc were packed over 7000 Pashtuns=Afghans in the name of Taliban, who lost their lives in truck containers, where they couldn’t breath & all of them died inside the trucks driven by Hazara, Tajik & Uzbik drivers & its famous by the “”Convoy of Death”, however, these detainees suffer worse than those who were killed by the aggressor…

The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC. Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse. The US military says the main prison, now called the Detention Facility in Parwan, is the only detention facility on the base. However, it has said it will look into the abuse allegations made to the BBC. PressTV: ICRC confirms secret jail at Bagram.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed reports about the existence of a secret detention facility at a US airbase in Bagram in Afghanistan. The Red Cross said it had been informed of names of several detainees held in the hidden prison in Afghanistan, the BBC reported on Tuesday. The facility is said to be separate from the main prison at Bagram airbase. Several former prisoners had earlier in April claimed that they were held in the prison, where they suffered abuse.

Interrogators had free hand to terrify detainees, Khadr hearing told --'We could do basically anything to scare the prisoners,' former interrogator - nicknamed 'Monster' - says 05 May 2010 Military interrogators at Bagram prison were under enormous pressure to extract information from detainees and had a free hand to terrify detainees into confessing, a Damien Corsetti, a former interrogator who knew Omar Khadr said Wednesday. "We could do basically anything to scare the prisoners," he said... Mr. Corsetti, a huge man nicknamed 'Monster' at Bagram was the first witness called by Mr. Khadr’s defence team at the pre-trial hearings. Mr. Khadr, now 23, was a 15-year-old when he was captured after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002 in which a U.S. special forces solider was killed. AWIP/Chris Floyd: It's Not Dark Yet, But It's Gettin' There.

Dozens of men corroborate extensive torture toward false confessions during their prolonged, indefinite detention in a Baghdad prison—kept secret for months—after village raids from September through December 2009 by the Iraqi government, interviews with Human Rights Watch (H.R.W.) reveal. The men were kidnapped during raids in Sunni Arab areas in Nineveh.

Records of Afghan detainee transfer orders showing whether Canadian military commanders took the risk of torture into account are buried in sea shipping containers and "may take years" to locate, the Military Police Complaints Commission was told Tuesday. The revelation by Maj. Denis Gagnon emerged when he was closely questioned by lawyer Paul Champ, who said the commission is on the verge of deciding whether it has to suspend public hearings, partly because of missing and delayed documents from the Defence Department. Gagnon said the documents are "all thrown together in a storage bin, a sea container" and an assessment of how long it would take to catalogue documents and identify the records requested by the commission may take years. The hearings are into a complaint by Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association that Canadian military commanders ordered the transfer of detainees to Afghan custody despite a high risk of torture and that military police failed to investigate. Such transfers are illegal under international law.

(Baghdad) - Detainees in a secret Baghdad detention facility were hung upside-down, deprived of air, kicked, whipped, beaten, given electric shocks, and sodomized, Human Rights Watch said today. Iraq should thoroughly investigate and prosecute all government and security officials responsible, Human Rights Watch said. The men's stories were credible and consistent. Most of the 300 displayed fresh scars and injuries they said were a result of routine and systematic torture they had experienced at the hands of interrogators at Muthanna. All were accused of aiding and abetting terrorism, and many said they were forced to sign false confessions. BBC: Routine torture, including electric shocks and sexual abuse, was inflicted on detainees held in a secret prison in Baghdad -Video. AWIP/Stephen Lendman: Iraq Today: Afflicted by Violence, Devastation, Corruption, and Desperation.

Judge Kennedy’s opinion was released a month ago [.pdf] but was then abruptly withdrawn, and, perhaps with unnecessary delicacy, I held off from analyzing it, waiting for it to be reissued, as I was uncertain how much would be redacted. When the revised opinion was finally released on April 21 [.pdf], I realized that the name of a criminal investigator with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service had been removed, as had other named operatives, but that other key elements had not; specifically, the names of two other prisoners who alleged that Uthman "acted as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden." These two men are Sharqwi Abdu Ali al-Hajj and Sanad Yislam Ali al-Kazimi, and in the most important part of the opinion, Judge Kennedy stated, "The Court will not rely on the statements of Hajj or Kazimi because there is unrebutted evidence in the record that, at the time of the interrogations at which they made the statements, both men had recently been tortured." AntiWar: Scott Horton Interviews Andy Worthington.

Map of secret US detention facilities around the world.

A former Canadian Armed Forces’ interpreter has charged that Canada’s military handed over Afghan detainees whom it deemed uncooperative to the Afghan secret police so that information could be beaten out of them through torture. Testifying before a House of Commons committee last week, Ahmadshah Malgarai said he “saw Canadian military intelligence sending detainees to the NDS [Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security] when the detainees did not tell them what they expected to hear.” “If the [Canadian] interrogator thought a detainee was lying, the military sent him to NDS for more questions, Afghan style. Translation: abuse and torture.”

Government denials of such abuse are the result of a "head in the sand" attitude, partly borne out of a close intelligence relationship with the Afghans, the judges were told. They are the latest allegations of British complicity in torture following investigations into MI5 and MI6. Human rights lawyers have assembled details of nine cases involving allegations of beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, electrocution, and whipping with rubber cables. The Guardian: UK accused over Taliban torture risk when handing over "insurgents".

Documents detail the rationalization for destroying the tapes—the supposed protection of the agents doing the torturing—and instruct that future torture sessions be recorded on a single tape which can be reviewed at the end of the day’s session and then reused the next day, erasing the prior recording “for the protection and safety of officers.” The emails reveal, however, that the real reason was concern that the recordings would someday become public and reveal the war crimes being perpetrated by CIA officials. AWIP: 'The heat from destroying is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into public domain.' 2005 destruction of interrogation tapes caused concern at CIA, e-mails show.

The 2005 destruction of 92 videotapes documenting the harsh interrogation torture of terrorism suspects at secret CIA prisons immediately prompted concern at agency headquarters that the decision was not adequately cleared and may have been improper, according to newly released documents. A day after the destruction, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, then the executive director of the CIA, was told that "we may have 'improperly' destroyed something," according to an e-mail. The message was written by Foggo's deputy, who remains undercover, according to a former intelligence official. Foggo's deputy wrote that Rodriguez thought "the heat from destroying is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into public domain -- he said that out of context they would make us look terrible; it would be 'devastating' to us." Associated Press: E-mail: Ex-CIA chief agreed with tape destruction.

Afghan prisoners are being abused tortured in a "secret jail" at Bagram airbase, according to nine witnesses whose stories the BBC has documented. The "abuses" are all said to have taken place since US President Barack Obama was elected, promising to end torture. The US military has denied the existence of a secret detention site and promised to look into allegations. Bagram was the site of a controversial jail holding hundreds of inmates, who have now been moved to another complex. The old prison was notorious for allegations of prisoner torture and abuse. But witnesses told the BBC in interviews or written testimony that abuses continue in a hidden facility.

IndictBushNow.org reports that on April 3, at a meeting of over 150 lawyers, legal scholars and human rights campaigners, Ramsey Clark, founder of Indict Bush Now, was chosen to be the chairperson of an international campaign to investigate war crimes committed by officials from the Bush administration. Representatives at the meeting held in Beirut, Lebanon, came from all over the world. The campaign will investigate the lies, deceit and manipulation leading up to the Iraq war; the conduct of the war itself against an essentially defenseless country; and the horrors of the continued occupation. Lawyers and judges in several countries are exploring prosecution.

The Army Reserve unit tarnished by the Abu Ghraib detainee-abuse scandal torture & war crimes has been mobilized to return to Iraq in its first deployment since photographs of naked, humiliated prisoners surfaced more than six years ago, the Army said Friday. The 372nd Military Police Company of Cresaptown will leave April 29 for one to three months of training at Fort Bliss, Texas, followed by a planned deployment to Iraq, said Sgt. Darius Kirkwood, a spokesman for the 200th Military Police Command at Fort Meade.

In order to justify the US-led War on Terror, the Bush administration deliberately kept hundreds of 'innocent' terror suspects in the notorious Guantanamo prison camp. According to new documents recently obtained by the Times, former US president George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld refused to free scores of innocent Guantanamo inmates for fear that their release would harm the US-led campaign for war in Iraq and the broader 'War on Terror.' Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, made the revelations in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantanamo detainee Adel Hassan Hamad. Hamad, a Sudanese man who was held at Guantanamo Bay from March 2003 until December 2007, claims that he was tortured by US agents while in custody and yesterday filed a damage dction against a list of American officials. According to Wilkerson, both Cheney and Rumsfeld knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantanamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible” to let them walk free. TimesOnline: George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'.

MARTINSVILLE, Ind. -- One officer called to a home day care to help control an unruly 10-year-old used a stun gun on the boy and another slapped him in the face when he wouldn't listen to them, a central Indiana chief police said Thursday. The child suffered no significant injuries. Both officers have been placed on administrative duty while the Tuesday confrontation is being investigated.

Abu Zubaydah was the first "high-value" detainee who was tortured, as the U.S. claimed he was a top Al Qaeda terrorist who knew a lot about 9/11. He was waterboarded at least 83 times in August 2002 alone. In fact, Abu Zubaydah was one of the main sources of information for the 9/11 report. Never mind that he was literally crazy.

So I guess this war is enough like the Iraq War that President Obama, like his predecessor, can only visit the troops at night, in secret. And the whiff of triumphalism is familiar, too: "we never quit". Really? Lebanon 1984 didn't happen? Vietnam came out differently than we remember? Still, the most jarring part of the Obama fly-in to Bagram was the part of the base he (apparently) didn't visit: the secret prison we've been running there for years. It's Gitmo on steroids. AWIP/Bill van Auken: Obama’s visit underscores US crisis in Afghanistan.

The White House is considering housing international terrorism suspects at Bagram air base, as is done at Guantanamo Bay. 21 Mar 2010 The White House is considering whether to detain international terrorism suspects at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, senior U.S. officials said, an option that would lead to another prison with the same purpose as Guantanamo Bay, which it has promised to close. Although it has been known for some time that the administration was seeking options other than Guantanamo for holding existing prisoners, it has not been reported previously that it was considering Bagram for suspected terrorists that might be captured in the future.

Equipment designed for torturing prisoners is still being exported from European Union (EU) countries despite a four-year-old ban on such trade, according to a new report by Amnesty International. The human rights group has found that companies active in several of the EU’s 27 states have exploited loopholes in controls aimed at putting an end to the selling of instruments of torture.

Senator slams Pentagon's cozy ties to Blackwater. Blackwater, the contractor with a tainted public image, has been blasted by the chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee for its "lack of credibility." In a blistering letter to Defense Sec. Robert Gates, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) attacked the company, which is now known as Xe Services.

The waterboarding sessions that terrorist suspects were subjected to during the Bush administration were "administered with meticulous cruelty" and were in part designed so that detainees acted as "guinea pigs" for future interrogation sessions, says an exhaustive new report. The report also shows that the interrogation methods were so harsh that some detainees "simply gave up and tried to let themselves drown." AWIP: Stomach-churning details of CIA waterboarding crimes - Internal CIA documents reveal a meticulous protocol that was far more brutal than Dick Cheney's "dunk in the water".

The government protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects, the former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed last night. She also said the Americans concealed from Britain the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks. "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," Lady Manningham-Buller told a meeting at the House of Lords.

[Editor's Comment:] This lady's being disingenuous. -Any intelligence agency worth its salt will pass this hurdle easily. After all, can they reasonably expect people from the dog-eat-dog underworld of intelligence to hand it to them on a silver plate? Either the MI5 is not worth shit or this lady's lying through her teeth.

Craig Murray: E-liar Manningham Buller. AWIP: Stomach-churning details of CIA waterboarding crimes - Internal CIA documents reveal a meticulous protocol that was far more brutal than Dick Cheney's "dunk in the water".

A public inquiry opened in London yesterday into claims that up to 20 Iraqis were unlawfully killed and others tortured by British troops after a firefight in 2004. The inquiry, chaired by a retired High Court judge, got under way less than 24 hours after the armed forces minister, Bill Rammell, announced a wide-ranging investigation into all allegations of abuse by UK forces after the 2003 invasion. It means that there will now be three separate inquiries going on simultaneously into claims that British troops ill-treated and even murdered Iraqi prisoners, prompting fears that the glut of investigations could undermine the reputation of the country’s armed forces.

Self-proclaimed waterboarding fan Dick Cheney called it a no-brainer in a 2006 radio interview: Terror suspects should get a "a dunk in the water." But recently released internal documents reveal the controversial "enhanced interrogation" practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney's description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty. LA Times: The Supreme Court justice has a history of dismissing prisoner brutality. And it's his former law clerk who was investigated for authorizing harsh interrogation tactics as a Justice Department lawyer.

Payback time: Eleven people were killed and fifty injured in a car-bomb attack on a Lahore interrogation torture centre used for "questioning" suspected terrorists. 08 Mar 2010 The attack is believed to been carried out by Taliban militants. "This place was used to interrogate torture important suspects, presently there was no such suspect, but more than 40 staff were manning the place," Lahore Police Chief Pervez Rathore said.

The shocking truth about Tasers: A commuter in a diabetic coma, an 89-year-old man and children as young as 12 - just some of the targets of British police armed with skin-piercing 50,000-volt Taser guns. The smartly dressed sales executive travelling on the number 96 bus across Leeds didn't notice his body descending into a state of severe hypoglycaemia. He didn't have time to ask his fellow passengers for help, or press the bell. Instead he slumped back in his seat in a diabetic coma, his head lolling from side to side. This was why he wore a special tag and chain around his neck: it advertised his diabetes. His mother and father, both retired GPs, had encouraged their son to wear it ever since he had started having to take insulin 20 years earlier.

A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for the alleged torture by U.S. forces of two Americans who worked for an Iraqi contracting firm. U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen's ruling did not say the two contractors had proven their claims, including that they were tortured after reporting alleged illegal activities by their company. But it did say they had alleged enough specific mistreatment to warrant hearing evidence of exactly what happened. Andersen said his decision "represents a recognition that federal officials may not strip citizens of well settled constitutional protections against mistreatment simply because they are located in a tumultuous foreign setting."

Two senators are set to unveil sweeping legislation that will prevent "enemy combatants" from being Mirandized, Fox News has learned. The legislation by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, 'I'-Conn., would result in banning all civilian trials for terror suspects who have been classified as enemy combatants and forcing their cases into military tribunals. The bill lays out "comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected unprivileged enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning," according to a release from McCain's office. "Unprivileged enemy belligerents considered to be a 'high-value detainee'" would be required "to be held in military custody and interrogated for their intelligence value by a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team established by the President," the release states. Reuters: McCain, Lieberman push military to handle terror cases: Two senior senators unveiled legislation on Thursday to require the military to hold, interrogate and prosecute certain terrorism suspects and also bar them from receiving legal rights afforded most criminals in the United States.

Two weeks ago the Foreign Secretary David Miliband lost his long legal battle to suppress a section (known as paragraph 168) from a court decree revealing that MI5 officers were involved in the torture of ex terror suspect and British resident, Binyam Mohamed. Up until now the testimonies of released British Residents Omar Deghayes, Mozzam Begg and Binyam Mohamed have not been fully absorbed by the British public. This is despite the fact Omar Deghayes entered Cuba with two eyes but came home with one.

Dedicated to everything from architecture to sports medicine, "career academies" claim to offer high school kids focus, relevancy, and solid job prospects. Now add a new kind of program to the list: homeland security high. In late August, Maryland's Joppatowne High School became the first school in the country dedicated to churning out would-be Jack Bauers. The 75 students in the Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness magnet program will study cybersecurity and geospatial intelligence, respond to mock terror attacks, and receive limited security clearances at the nearby Army chemical warfare lab. Students will choose one of three specialized tracks: information and communication technology, criminal justice and law enforcement, or "homeland security science."

One of the defenses that John Yoo and Jay Bybee made in response to the OPR Report with which I’m sympathetic is the argument that, if they are going to be held accountable, so should all the other Executive Branch lawyers who approved of torture. Jay Bybee even included a pretty little graph of all the other lawyers who approved torture (I’ve excerpted the list at the end of the post). To support his case that everyone in the Bush Administration signed off on this torture, Bybee included extensive descriptions of the approval top Bushies gave to torture (though he admittedly seems to have forgotten to include Cheney and Addington–maybe that has something to do with the defense fund that got set up around the time this letter got drafted).

A man died in a central China detention house with cut-off nipples, injured penis and a hole in his head, while police claimed he died from an acute disease after drinking a cup of water. Wang Yahui died three days after being taken into custody as a theft suspect in Lushan County, Henan Province. The police informed Wang's family on February 22 that he had died from an acute disease, but Wang's family found it hard to believe when they saw the damaged body, Chongqing Evening News reported yesterday. Wang's aunt surnamed Wu told the newspaper that the relatives saw big bruises on Wang's back. His nipples were ripped off, skull was fractured, and his penis was covered with injuries. Wu said Lushan police told the family that Wang died during an interrogation but collapsed only after given a cup of hot water.

The Department of Justice rejected a request from psychologists Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell to give the CIA the power to pretend to bury terror suspects during interrogations in the years after the 9/11 attacks. A report (PDF, 289 pages) from the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, released last Friday, documents ten interrogation techniques approved by Bush administration lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The psychologists had requested twelve techniques. One of those two techniques has already been revealed to be prolonged diapering.

A British court on Friday made public a ruling criticizing domestic intelligence agency MI5's handling of alleged victim of torture overseas, rejecting a government attempt to keep it secret. A three-judge panel at Britain's Court of Appeal published a paragraph of a judge's draft ruling that was previously withheld after government lawyer Jonathan Sumption complained it contained unsubstantiated criticism. That ruling published details of the mistreatment of ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, who alleges he was tortured in Pakistan in 2002.

Human Rights Watch has blasted US President Barack Obama's change in "rhetoric" rather than "policies" as US transfers more Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Europe. Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, says that vows of change in the US administration have been limited to presidential rhetoric, US media said Wednesday. When it came to promoting human rights, there has undoubtedly been a marked improvement in presidential rhetoric, Roth said. However, he added, the translation of those words into deeds remains incomplete.

CIA officials briefed at least 68 U.S. lawmakers between 2001 and 2007 on enhanced interrogation methods like simulated drowning that were being considered or used against captured al Qaeda members, according to declassified documents released on Tuesday. The once-secret CIA papers, obtained in a lawsuit by the conservative legal foundation Judicial Watch, shed new light on which lawmakers knew the details of the controversial interrogation program and when. Human rights groups have argued the harsh interrogation methods torture were forms of torture and violated U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions on treatment of war prisoners. President Barack Obama banned the techniques shortly after taking office in January 2009.

The Torture Memos will forever be known as the work of John Yoo, the former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer who took the lead in preparing them. But the internal Justice Department report on the memos, released Friday, reveals that a less experienced OLC attorney, working under Yoo, played a key role in the process -- in some cases writing initial drafts of the opinions before getting feedback from Yoo and others. The name of that lawyer is redacted throughout the report. But in what appears to be an oversight in the redaction process, a footnote identifies her as Jennifer Koester. Political Friendster: Jennifer Koester Hardy's Friends. Slate: Jennifer Koester Hardy helped John Yoo write the torture memos. Harper's: Scott Horton: Unredacting the OPR Report. [You can find the Office of Professional Responsibility Report HERE.]

At the highest levels of the US military, a quiet discussion is going on about putting in place a legal framework that would permit the US government to strip American citizenship from terrorists. The case of Las Cruces, New Mexico born al Qaeda commander Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has been a key organizer and recruiter for the terrorist organization in Yemen is the primary driver of this exploration of possibly modifying US law to allow "de-citizening."

Warsaw air control service confirms that at least six CIA flights landed at disused military air base in northern Poland in 2003. The Polish authorities have for the first time admitted their involvement in the CIA's secret programme for the rendition of high-level terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan, it emerged today. After years of stonewalling, Warsaw's air control service confirmed that at least six CIA flights had landed at a disused military air base in northern Poland in 2003. "It is time for the authorities to provide a full accounting of Poland's role in rendition," Adam Bodnar, of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, said. "These flight records reinforce the troubling findings of official European inquiries and global human rights groups, showing complicity with CIA abuse across Europe." AWIP/Nil Nikandrov: Secret CIA Jails in Lithuania: Legacy of Nazi Collaborationism.

John Yoo, Jay Bybee and the others among the top fifty United States war criminals are not off the hook just because part of heads of high-level corruption says so according to David Swanson today, writing about the rapidly increasing peaceful mass mobilization occurring to hold the fascist, human rights violating, war criminals accountable.

These war criminals (See video below) are responsible for one million dead Iraqis and an untold number of targeted individuals' lives ruined, not only the 60,000 kidnapped and tortured individuals. Focusing only on the torture issue lends to Disinformation according to Swanson. Torture is only one among many war crimes requring legal action.

Becky Bond, Political Director of CREDO Action from Working Assets has issued a call to Americans to oppose the highest-level corruption, highlighting ABC News last weekend when former Vice President Dick Cheney confessed to playing a key role in the commission of war crimes during the Bush administration. "I was a big supporter of waterboarding," boasted Cheney.

Pressed on his views in an interview with OPR investigators, Yoo was asked: "What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? ... Is that a power that the president could legally -" "Yeah," Yoo replied, according to a partial transcript included in the report. "Although, let me say this: So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief's power over tactical decisions." "To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?" the OPR investigator asked again. "Sure," said Yoo.

Justice department finds John Yoo and Jay Bybee guilty of poor judgment but not professional misconduct. An inquiry by the US justice department last night reprimanded two senior Bush era lawyers who approved the use of torture at Guantánamo Bay. The department found the two lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, guilty of poor judgment but not professional misconduct. Chris Floyd: Teach Your Children Well: There is No Law but Might and Murder.

Dick Cheney's statutory crimes are notable for their severity, their number, and his public confessions to them. Torture is the least of it. We can start with the crimes found in the three articles of impeachment contained in H Res 333 in the 110th Congress. Let's Try Democracy: Cheney's Crimes and Confessions: Torture Is the Least of It.

Dick Cheney says he "was a big supporter of waterboarding." Is that a damning admission? Some liberals want to put former Vice President Dick Cheney on trial for war crimes for advocating torture, but Cheney doesn't appear worried. In his Sunday interview on ABC's "This Week," Cheney said that in the Bush administration, he "was a big supporter of waterboarding," and thinks it should still be used, when necessary, to get information from terrorism suspects. But with President Obama and many legal experts saying waterboarding is torture under U.S. and international law, did Cheney just write the opening statement for the prosecution in a war-crimes tribunal?

Yesterday evening, the district court in Washington, D.C. ruled against two men who died in Guantanamo in June 2006 and their families in a case seeking to hold federal officials and the United States responsible for the men’s torture, arbitrary detention and ultimate deaths at Guantánamo. Following a two-year investigation, the military concluded that the men had committed suicide. Recent first-hand accounts by four soldiers stationed at the base at the time of the deaths, however, raise serious questions about the cause and circumstances of the deaths, including the possibility that the men died as the result of torture.

I've been sentenced for a D.U.I. offense. My 3rd one. When I first came to prison, I had no idea what to expect. Certainly none of this. I'm a tall white male, who unfortunately has a small amount of feminine characteristics. And very shy. These characteristics have got me raped so many times I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to 5 black men and two white men at a time. I've had knifes at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn't ever think I'd see straight again. One time when I refused to enter a cell, I was brutally attacked by staff and taken to segragation though I had only wanted to prevent the same and worse by not locking up with my cell mate. There is no supervision after lockdown. I was given a conduct report. I explained to the hearing officer what the issue was. He told me that off the record, He suggests I find a man I would/could willingly have sex with to prevent these things from happening. I've requested protective custody only to be denied. It is not available here. He also said there was no where to run to, and it would be best for me to accept things . . . . I probably have AIDS now. I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking to hard on all this . . . . I've laid down without physical fight to be sodomized. To prevent so much damage in struggles, ripping and tearing. Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well. Something I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for.

More than 60 years after the end of the Second World War, the name "Unit 731" still has the power to generate shock, revulsion and denial in Japan. The Imperial Japanese Army's notorious medical research team carried out secret human experiments regarded as some of the worst war crimes in history. Its scientists subjected more than 10,000 people per year to grotesque Josef Mengele-style torture in the name of science, including captured Russian soldiers and downed American aircrews. The experiments included hanging people upside down until they choked, burying them alive, injecting air into their veins and placing them in high-pressure chambers.

He was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he's dragging us further in. Osama bin Laden's favourite son, Omar, recently abandoned his father's cave in favour of spending his time dancing and drooling in the nightclubs of Damascus. The tang of freedom almost always trumps Islamist fanaticism in the end: three million people abandoned the Puritan hell of Taliban Afghanistan for freer countries, while only a few thousand faith-addled fanatics ever travelled the other way. Osama's vision can't even inspire his own kids. But Omar bin Laden says his father is banking on one thing to shore up his flailing, failing cause - and we are giving it to him.

That seems to me to be the big news out of Jonathan Karl's interview with the former vice-president today. There is not a court in the United States or in the world that does not consider waterboarding torture. The Red Cross certainly does, and it's the governing body in international law. It is certainly torture according to the UN Convention on Torture and the Geneva Conventions. The British government, America's closest Western ally, certainly believes it is torture. No legal authority of any type in the US or the world has ever doubted that waterboarding is torture. To have subjected an individual to waterboarding once is torture under US and international law. To subject someone to it 183 times is so categorically torture is it almost absurd to even write this sentence.

Since the judgement in the Binyam Mohammed case, there has been a resurgence in the awareness of our government's policy of collusion in torture. Kim Howells and David Miliband have been telling outright lies in denying it, while Bruce Anderson is leading the "Torture the Muslim bastards" wing. With the government issuing blatantly lying denials, I decided to contact the Guardian to ask why they never published my indisputable documentary proof of a policy of using torture, sanctioned by Jack Straw.

On Monday February 15 in Madrid, Judge Baltasar Garzon will convene an investigation of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity allegedly committed by U.S. government officials and others during the Bush administration. The first witness called to testify will reportedly be American international human rights lawyer Dr. William F. Pepper. Dr. Pepper, who convened the International Human Rights Seminar at Oxford University, stated that he was, “asked by the Court to file an Opinion and testify as an expert on the issue of jurisdiction of the Spanish Court with respect to the various crimes being alleged.” He may also testify as to his opinion on the validity, or invalidity, of the most likely defenses to be offered by defendants should criminal charges result, namely ‘Sovereign Immunity’ and ‘Superior Orders’ (more commonly known as ‘The Nuremberg Defense’). The Independent: Goldsmith calls for investigation into UK's role in torture.

Cheney's outrageous behavior is very rational, an attempt to wrest the narrative away from the truth that he authorized horrifying war crimes, that he is criminally liable for them and will be described in history as the vice-president who made the US a symbol for torture throughout the world. Yahoo: Biden and Cheney spar over "antiterrorism policies" [torture].

That is at the centre of this week's appeal court ruling, which disclosed CIA-based intelligence showing that MI5 "knew" that British resident Binyam Mohamed had been subjected to treatment "at the very least cruel, inhuman, and degrading". They took part in the torture. AWIP: Moazzam Begg: 'British intelligence were there at every stage of my detention'. + Angry U.S. warns there will be a price for Britain to pay after judges reveal MI5 DID collude in abuse of terror suspects. + They knew: The UK government just lost their Court of Appeal case, and the judges have ruled that they must publish this incriminating information relating to the torture of a UK resident, so here it is.