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CIA's Secret Torture Program!

yellowarse

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The world's most ardent proponent of human rights has turned out be the greatest hypocrite. When the US point its finger at another country, 3 fingers point back at herself.

So what's new? Bullies have always been cowards and hypocrites. And none more so than the world's sole superpower. Hitler and the Kempeitai were mere novices in the dark art of torture, so it seems now.


Details of CIA torture report released

By Joanna Gill | With REUTERS


09/12 17:44 CET

The CIA is facing the most damaging moment in its history as details of its post 9/11 terror suspect interrogation methods were unveiled in Washington.

The long-delayed report from the Senate Intelligence Committee detailed the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.

They concluded the techniques failed to yield life-saving information, and that the CIA misled the government on the nature and extent of the methods.

Costing 40 million dollars, it is the result of five years of research into six million internal CIA documents. Only a 480-page executive summary was allowed to be released after a battle between the CIA and the Senate committee.

The vice-chair of the committee Senator Saxby Chambliss said that the release of the report was a mistake that could put US national security in jeopardy.

Diane Feinstein, chair of the committee told the Los Angeles Times on Saturday (December 6) that the findings ran against the ‘societal and constitutional’ values of America, adding, “Anybody who reads this is going to never let this happen again.”

The US put facilities on high alert in expectation of violent fallout from the report.

Governments around the world will also be worried by the revelations. Countries in Europe, Africa and south-east Asia allegedly participated in the extraordinary rendition programme, according to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation’s 2013 report.

By Joanna Gill | With REUTERS
Copyright © 2014 euronews
 

yellowarse

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Rectal rehydration and standing on broken limbs: the CIA torture report's grisliest findings


<figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-55d63916-e81c-4ab2-b56b-56ed644b2506" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">
9462c37f-1c98-4152-820b-bb16a93d7595-460x276.jpeg
<figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Detainees were forced to stand on broken limbs for hours, kept in complete darkness, deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, sometimes standing. Photograph: Bob Strong/Reuters</figcaption></figure>

The full horror of the CIA interrogation and detention programmes launched in the wake of the September 11 terror attack was laid bare in the long-awaited Senate report released on Tuesday.

While parts of the programme had been known – and much more will never be revealed – the catalogue of abuse is nightmarish and reads like something invented by the Marquis de Sade or Hieronymous Bosch.

Detainees were forced to stand on broken limbs for hours, kept in complete darkness, deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, sometimes standing, sometimes with their arms shackled above their heads.

Prisoners were subjected to “rectal feeding” without medical necessity. Rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”. The report highlights one prisoner later diagnosed with anal fissures, chronic hemorrhoids and “symptomatic rectal prolapse”.

The report mentions mock executions, Russian roulette. US agents threatened to slit the throat of a detainee’s mother, sexually abuse another and threatened prisoners’ children. One prisoner died of hypothermia brought on in part by being forced to sit on a bare concrete floor without pants.

The dungeon

The CIA began the establishment of a specialised detention centre, codenamed DETENTION SITE COBALT, in April 2002. Although its location is not identified in the report it has been widely identified as being in Afghanistan. Conditions at the site were described in the report as poor “and were especially bleak early in the program”.

The CIA chief of interrogations described COBALT as “a dungeon”. There were 20 cells, with blacked-out windows. Detainees were “kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud music and only a bucket to use for human waste”. It was cold, something the report says likely contributed to the death of a detainee.

Prisoners were walked around naked or were shackled with their hands above their heads for extended periods of time. About five CIA officers would engage in what is described as a “rough takedown”. A detainee would be shouted at, have his clothes cut off, be secured with tape, hooded and dragged up and down a long corridor while being slapped and punched.

A CIA photograph shows a waterboard at the site, surrounded by buckets and a bottle of an unknown pink solution and a watering can resting on the beams of the waterboard. The CIA failed to provide a detailed explanation of the items in the photograph.

Frozen to death

<figure class="element element-image element--supporting" data-media-id="814cee454c8cd74f48c84a37359e12f3f167ec2a" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">
60e4d658-f0ff-4f76-8c32-2b81bc6da02c-460x276.jpeg
<figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Gul Rahman died in the early hours of 20 November 2002, after being shackled to a cold concrete wall in a secret CIA prison. Photograph: AP</figcaption></figure>At COBALT, the CIA interrogated in 2002 Gul Rahman, described as a suspected Islamic extremist. He was subjected to “48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower and rough treatment”.

CIA headquarters suggested “enhanced measures” might be needed to get him to comply. A CIA officer at COBALT ordered Rahman be “shackled to the wall of his cell in a position that required the detainee to rest on the bare concrete floor”.

He was only wearing a sweatshirt as a CIA officer has ordered his clothes to be removed earlier after judging him to be uncooperative during an interrogation.

The next day, guards found Rahman dead. An internal CIA review and autopsy assessed he likely died from hypothermia – “in part from having been forced to sit on the bare concrete floor without pants”. An initial CIA review and cable sent to CIA headquarters after his death included a number of misstatements and omissions.

Shackled to the wall

The CIA in the first half of 2003 interrogated four detainees described as having “medical complications in their lower extremities”: two had a broken foot, one had a sprained ankle and one a prosthetic leg.

CIA officers shackled each of them in a standing position for sleep deprivation for extended periods until medical staff assessed they could no longer maintain that position.

“The two detainees that each had a broken foot were also subjected to walling, stress positions and cramped confinement, despite the note in their interrogation plans that these specific enhanced interrogation techniques were not requested because of the medical condition of the detainees,” the report says.

‘Rectal feeding’

CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”.

One CIA cable released in the report reveals that detainee Majid Khan was administered by enema his “‘lunch tray’ consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was ‘pureed and rectally infused’”. One CIA officer’s email was in the report quoted as saying “we used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.

Rectal feeding is of limited application in actually keeping a person alive or administering nutrients, since the colon and rectum cannot absorb much besides salt, glucose and a few minerals and vitamins. The CIA administered rectal rehydration to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “without a determination of medical need” and justified “rectal fluid resuscitation” of Abu Zubaydah because he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. Al-Nashiri was given an enema after a brief hunger strike.

Risks of rectal feeding and rehydration include damage to the rectum and colon, triggering bowels to empty, food rotting inside the recipient’s digestive tract, and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from carless insertion of the feeding tube. The report found that CIA leadership was notified that rectal exams may have been conducted with “Excessive force”, and that one of the detainees, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse.

The CIA’s chief of interrogations characterized rectal rehydration as a method of “total control” over detainees, and an unnamed person said the procedure helped to “clear a person’s head”.

Waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah and KSM

<figure class="element element-embed element--supporting" data-alt="Map of detention sites" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">The report suggests Abu Zubaydah was a broken man after his extensive interrogations. In CIA documents he is described as having become so compliant that “when the interrogator raised his eyebrows” he would walk to the “water table” and sit down. The interrogator only had to snap his fingers twice for Abu Zabaydah to lie down, ready for water-boarding, the report says.</figure>
“At times Abu Zubaydah was described as ‘hysterical’ and ‘distressed to the level that he was unable effectively to communicate’. Waterboarding sessions ‘resulted in immediate fluid intake and involuntary leg, chest and arm spasms’ and ‘hysterical pleas’. In at least one waterboarding session, Abu Zubaydah ‘became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth’ ... Abu Zubaydah remained unresponsive until medical intervention, when he regained consciousness and ‘expelled copious amounts of liquid’.”

The CIA doctor overseeing the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said that the prisoner was ingesting so much water that he or she was no longer concerned that regurgitated gastric acid was likely to damage his oesophagus. But, the doctor warned, the CIA should start using saline, because his electrolytes were becoming too diluted.

The forgotten man chained to a wall

One CIA interrogator at COBALT reported that “‘literally, a detainee could go for days or weeks without anyone looking at him’, and that his team found one detainee who ‘as far as we could determine’, had been chained to a wall in a standing position for 17 days’.’ Some prisoners were said to be like dogs in kennels: “When the doors to their cells were pened, ‘they cowered.’”

In April 2006, during a CIA briefing, President George W Bush, expressed discomfort at the “image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself”. This man is thought to be Ridha al-Najjar, who was forced to spend 22 hours each day with one or both wrists chained to an overhead bar, for two consecutive days, while wearing a diaper. His incarceration was concealed from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads. At least five detainees experienced disturbing hallucinations during prolonged sleep deprivation and, in at least two of those cases, the CIA nonetheless continued the sleep deprivation.” One of the prisoners forced to say awake for seven-and-a-half days was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Most of this time he was forced to stand. The report says that former CIS director Michael Hayden was aware that Mohammed had been deprived of sleep for this period.
<figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-6578b079-f8bd-4a59-8a9a-97cb72863dc3" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"></figure>
 

yellowarse

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
CIA Lied

CIA lied to officials

The White House, National Security Council (NSC) and others were given “extensive amounts of inaccurate and incomplete information” related to the operation and effectiveness of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme. No CIA officer briefed the president on the specific CIA enhanced interrogation techniques before April 2006. The CIA did not inform two secretaries of state of the locations of CIA detention facilities, despite the foreign policy implications and the fact that the political leaders of host countries were generally informed of their existence. FBI director Robert Mueller was denied access to CIA detainees that the FBI believed was necessary to understand domestic threats.

The White House kept key members of its team in the dark

At the direction of the White House, the secretaries of state and defence – both principals on the National Security Council – were not briefed on the programme’s specifics until September 2003. An internal CIA email from July 2003 noted that the White House was “extremely concerned” that secretary of state Colin Powell “would blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what’s been going on.”

Wrongfully detained

Among its findings, the report says that: “The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet its own legal standard for detention.”

The CIA acknowledged to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in February 2006 that it had wrongly detained five individuals throughout the course of its detention programme. The report’s review of CIA records indicates that at least 21 additional individuals, or a total of 26 of the 119 (22%), of detainees identified did not meet the CIA’s standard for detention.

The report calls the number “a conservative calculation” and notes it does not include “individuals about whom there was internal disagreement within the CIA over whether the detainee met the standard or not, or the numerous detainees who, following their detention and interrogation, were found not to ‘pose a continuing threat of violence or death to US persons and interests’ or to be ‘planning terrorist activities’.

With one exception, the reports says there are no CIA records that indicate that anyone was held accountable for “the detention of individuals the CIA itself determined were wrongfully detained.”

CIA misled the press

The CIA gave inaccurate information to journalists in background briefings to mislead the public about the efficacy of its interrogation programme, the report reveals.

“In seeking to shape press reporting … CIA officers and the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs (OPA) provided unattributed background information on the program to journalists for books, articles and broadcasts, including when the existence of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program was still classified,” the report said.

It also added that when this still-classified information was published, the CIA did not, as a matter of policy, submit crime reports – highlighting a gulf between officially sanctioned leaks and non-sanctioned whistleblowing, the latter of which is often heavily prosecuted.

The report refers to Ronald Kessler’s book The CIA At War. An unidentified party at the CIA – the name and office is redacted – decided not to open an investigation into the publication of classified information by Kiessler “because ‘OPA provided assistance with the book.’”

An article by Douglas Jehl in the New York Times also contained “significant classified information,” which was also not investigated because it was based on information provided by the CIA.

Both the book and the article, the report continues, contained inaccurate information about the effectiveness of CIA interrogation programs, and untrue accounts of interrogations.

Many of the inaccuracies the CIA fed to journalists, the report says, were consistent with inaccurate information being provided by the agency to policymakers at the time.

• This article was amended on 10 December 2014. Colin Powell was secretary of state in the Bush administration, not defence secretary as an earlier version said.
 

nkfnkfnkf

Alfrescian
Loyal
No blooding fucking use at all, the militants are way stronger than the CIA, and torturing them failed to extract any useful intell for CIA.

:wink:

http://sammyboy.com/showthread.php?195479-CIA-torture-post-911&p=2067233#post2067233

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-fg-torture-report-20141210-story.html#page=1


Senate report says CIA torture methods yielded no useful intelligence

Dianne Feinstein
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) speaks to reporters after releasing the report on the CIA's harsh interrogation methods. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
By Brian Bennett contact the reporter
NationPolitics and GovernmentCrimeWhite HouseCIA Torture ReportCentral Intelligence Agency
Senate panel finds CIA interrogations 'far more brutal' than agency acknowledged
Senate report on CIA interrogations says program was poorly managed and produced false information

The CIA's brutal interrogations of terrorism suspects from 2002 to 2008 led to false confessions and fabricated information, produced no useful intelligence about imminent terrorist attacks and were so badly run that the CIA lost track of captives, according to a long-delayed Senate report released Tuesday.

The scathing document by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reveals previously unknown details of interrogation practices so disturbing that the State Department and the Pentagon warned U.S. embassies and military commanders overseas to prepare for possible protests or even terrorist attacks in response.
Acting without conscience isn't necessary, it isn't even helpful, in winning this strange and long war we're fighting. We should be grateful to have that truth affirmed. - Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

The 500-page executive summary, the product of a nearly six-year inquiry by committee Democrats, concludes that the CIA routinely provided "extensive inaccurate information" to Congress and the White House about its coercive interrogations, that CIA management of the program was "inadequate and deeply flawed" and that the methods were "far more brutal" than the CIA has acknowledged.

Some of the report's more horrifying details are reminiscent of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. One detainee in CIA custody was "chained to a wall in the standing position for 17 days" and another looked like "a dog who had been kenneled," according to a CIA description cited in the report.

Some detainees were forced to stay awake for a week, "usually standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads." Some were doused with ice water, or stripped naked and chained for days in unheated, unlighted cells.

At least five captives were subjected to painful rectal rehydration or rectal feeding, without documented medical necessity. In one case, the CIA put a captive's lunch — hummus, raisins, pasta and nuts — into a blender and inserted the food into his colon through a tube.
lRelated CIA torture report seen abroad as proof of U.S. human rights duplicity

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The CIA applied its methods "in near nonstop fashion for days or weeks at a time," the document states.

The most gruesome conditions occurred at a former brick factory north of Kabul, Afghanistan, that the CIA took over in the fall of 2002.

The report's findings revived a partisan debate over whether the George W. Bush White House approved waterboarding and other methods so painful they amounted to torture — as well as over whether they produced clues that ultimately guided the CIA-led raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

"Under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who listed the grisly practices in an hourlong speech on the Senate floor. She called the CIA program "one of the lowest points in our nation's history."
Document
Senate committee report on CIA interrogations
Senate committee report on CIA interrogationsOpen link

Republicans on the committee, who didn't participate in the study, issued a 167-page rebuttal, charging that the Democrats' investigation was flawed and the report includes "erroneous analytical and factual claims."

But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, offered a more personal response, providing the emotional high point of several hours of Senate debate that followed Feinstein's speech.

"I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence," McCain said.

"Our enemies act without conscience," he said. "We must not."

"… Acting without conscience isn't necessary, it isn't even helpful, in winning this strange and long war we're fighting," he said. "We should be grateful to have that truth affirmed."
cComments

@anoncalusa "your too dumb" That should be "you're too..." You make that mistake consistently because uuto-correct can't fix that one for you ...
Mick Snyder
at 12:12 AM December 11, 2014

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262

President Obama, who formally ended the CIA detention and interrogation program when he took office in 2009, said the harsh techniques "did not serve our broader counter-terrorism efforts or our national security interests" and "did significant damage to America's standing in the world."

CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged that the program "had shortcomings and the agency made mistakes" as it struggled to prevent another mass casualty terrorist attack. He said the agency had suffered a "failure of management at multiple levels."

But Brennan insisted CIA interrogators garnered intelligence "that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives."

Whether information gathered under duress could have been obtained through other means is "impossible to know in hindsight," the CIA said in a statement.

Former CIA chief George J. Tenet, who oversaw the program's creation and worst abuses before he resigned in 2004, denounced the Senate report as "biased, inaccurate and destructive," calling it a "dark day for congressional oversight."
KSM, Nashiri
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, left, and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, respectively accused of masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole, were subjected to interrogation techniques tantamount to torture, a Senate report disclosed Tuesday. (AFP/Getty Images)

Investigators were not permitted to speak to the CIA interrogators because of concerns about disrupting a Justice Department inquiry then underway. Republicans on the committee withdrew from participating in the study because of the criminal inquiry.

The Republicans did not rejoin the review when Obama announced in April 2009 that prosecutors would not press criminal charges against CIA officials who participated in interrogations consistent with the legal memorandums issued under the Bush administration. No one ultimately was charged.

The Senate committee reserved special condemnation for those who ran the interrogation program and the lack of proper oversight.

The report raises questions about how much Bush knew of the detention and interrogation program at the time.

It says the CIA prepared a briefing for him in August 2002 but was told by White House aides that Bush would not be receiving the report, according to CIA internal messages reviewed by Senate staff.

The CIA's inspector general recommended that the CIA brief the president in 2004. But Bush was not formally briefed until April 2006, according to CIA records. They indicate that Bush "expressed discomfort" with the image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed only in a diaper, and forced to defecate on himself.

The CIA briefed Vice President Dick Cheney, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales in July 2003 about its treatment of detainees, according to notes by the CIA's acting general counsel.

The Senate committee reviewed 20 cases where the CIA said its interrogations had led to intelligence successes.

Each of those examples was "wrong in fundamental respects," the report concludes.

In some cases, investigators found no relationship between the claimed success and any information provided by the detainee. In other cases, the CIA inaccurately stated that unique information was acquired from a CIA detainee as a result of the interrogations, when the intelligence was either acquired earlier or was available from other sources, according to the report.

The methods regularly resulted in fabricated information, the report concludes. The CIA was often unaware the information was false, however, leading the agency astray as it scrambled to track terrorists and prevent further attacks.

At least 26 of the 119 who were in CIA custody "were wrongfully held," the report states. But it adds that a full accounting of how many people were imprisoned, and how they were treated, may never be known because of poor CIA record-keeping.

In all, 39 detainees were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques between 2002 and 2008, the investigation found.
Full Coverage
Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogations
Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogations Read more stories

One central question on which the report focuses is whether the interrogations actually produced actionable intelligence that U.S. officials did not already have or which could not have been obtained otherwise. The report concludes that they did not do so.

CIA officials say the evidence does not support such a sweeping conclusion, although they also no longer say that the interrogations clearly "saved lives," as the agency routinely did during the Bush administration.

The report and the CIA differ most clearly on the question of whether torture helped uncover Bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan by leading U.S. agents to the Al Qaeda leader's courier, a man known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
lRelated CIA torture report seen abroad as proof of U.S. human rights duplicity

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One of the main sources for Kuwaiti's identity and importance was an Al Qaeda figure, Hassan Ghul, who was captured in Iraq's Kurdistan region. Ghul was initially interrogated using standard questioning techniques in January 2004. Later, he was transferred to a CIA prison where he was shaved, placed in a stress position and deprived of sleep for 59 hours until he began hallucinating and having irregular heartbeats.

The Senate report concludes that Ghul's useful statements, in which he referred to Kuwaiti as one of Bin Laden's "closest" associates, came before he was tortured. It quotes a CIA officer who said he "sang like a Tweety Bird" in those initial sessions.

The CIA says the later interrogations produced important information that corroborated Ghul's earlier statements and was "more concrete" than what he had said earlier. The Senate report disputes that, citing CIA documents written at the time.
Under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured. - Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

The detention program began when President George W. Bush signed a classified covert action memorandum six days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

The spy service subsequently built and ran "black sites," or secret prisons, in Thailand, Poland, Romania, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The names of the countries are blacked out in the unclassified report.

On Feb. 7, 2002, Bush signed a separate memo stating that the Geneva Conventions requiring humane treatment of prisoners in a conflict did not apply to Al Qaeda or Taliban detainees.
cComments

@anoncalusa "your too dumb" That should be "you're too..." You make that mistake consistently because uuto-correct can't fix that one for you ...
Mick Snyder
at 12:12 AM December 11, 2014

Add a comment See all comments
262

Legal authorization to use harsh interrogation methods came Aug. 1, 2002, when the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued two memos concluding that the CIA's proposed interrogation techniques did not violate federal anti-torture laws.

The first waterboarding, against Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan, began three days later. He was subjected to "non-stop use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques 24 hours a day for 17 days," the report notes.

Contrary to subsequent CIA claims, agency personnel were ordered to give the interrogations priority over medical care for Zubaydah, who had been shot in the thigh, abdomen and stomach during his capture. During one session, he became "completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth," the report states.
Op-Ed
Prosecute the torturers: It's the law
Prosecute the torturers: It's the law
Erwin Chemerinsky

His mistreatment sparked concern from CIA officers at the site. One wrote to headquarters that members of the interrogation team were "profoundly effected … some to the point of tears and choking up."

A second Al Qaeda suspect, Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, was waterboarded at the same CIA site that November. While in custody, he was also threatened with a handgun and an electric drill.

In March 2003, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, was captured and subjected to coercive interrogation, including 183 instances of waterboarding that one CIA official described as a "series of near drownings."

Mohammed repeatedly provided false information under questioning. He confirmed an intelligence tip, for example, that Al Qaeda had a recruited a cell of African American operatives in Montana. The FBI assigned field agents to chase the lead but came up empty.

In November 2005, contrary to directions from the Bush White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriguez, authorized the destruction of videotapes of the waterboarding of Zubaydah and Nashiri.

Senate staffers reviewed more than 6.3 million pages of CIA internal cables, emails, chat logs and other communications, as well as interviews conducted by the CIA's inspector general and the agency's internal history of the interrogation program. The full classified report, which was not released, is more than 6,700 pages.

Some words and portions of the executive summary were blacked out to protect the identity of CIA officers and countries that hosted CIA "black sites."

[email protected]

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this report.
 

yellowarse

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
The truth is out: the alliance against terrorism has turned out to be the axis of evil, with no less than 54 nations shamed in the CIA torture report. More egregiously, the CIA routinely carries out its torture program by getting their allies to do the dirty job for them.

Here are seven of those nations with blood on their hands. The most surprising inclusion has to be the LOS; the rest are the usual suspects.



Afghanistan

This war-ravaged country was at the heart of the US’s detention camps, housing a total of four, according to the Senate report. Detention Site Cobalt, which is said to be outside Kabul, was one of the first places that interrogators had the chance to torture suspects, with techniques including beatings, sleep deprivation, chaining to walls and exposure to cold. It is not known how many prisoners were kept at the facility.
<iframe id="twitter-widget-0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded Tweet" height="0" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Segoe UI', 'Gill Sans Light', Helvetica; font-size: 10px; display: block; max-width: 99%; min-width: 220px; padding: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; margin: 10px 0px; border-color: rgb(238, 238, 238) rgb(221, 221, 221) rgb(187, 187, 187); border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.14902) 0px 1px 3px; position: static; visibility: visible; width: 500px;"></iframe>The news was met with anger by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who said the report “violates all accepted norms of human rights in the world.” The US announced it was closing its last detention facility on December 10, after handing over Redha Al-Najar to the Afghan government. The Tunisian is one of the longest-serving detainees from the US ‘War on Terror’ and was captured as a suspected bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden in May 2002. Lawyers for Al-Najar say he was tortured at the Cobalt facility.

Italy

Though it did not house any detention facilities likes its eastern European neighbors, however, Italy was guilty of transporting suspects for torture in third countries. One of the most high-profile cases involved the abduction of Abu Omar from Milan in 2003. The Egyptian cleric had been given asylum in Italy, but a joint operation between the CIA and Rome saw him taken to a US air base in northern Italy, before being flown via Germany to Egypt, where he was tortured.
<iframe id="twitter-widget-1" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded Tweet" height="0" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Segoe UI', 'Gill Sans Light', Helvetica; font-size: 10px; display: block; max-width: 99%; min-width: 220px; padding: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; margin: 10px 0px; border-color: rgb(238, 238, 238) rgb(221, 221, 221) rgb(187, 187, 187); border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.14902) 0px 1px 3px; position: static; visibility: visible; width: 500px;"></iframe>In a rare case, those involved in the kidnapping were prosecuted by an Italian court. Twenty-two CIA officers and one US Air Force pilot were convicted in a trial that lasted for three-and-a-half years, though the Americans charged were never remanded in Italian custody. Convicted in absentia, the Italian court issued prison sentences of seven to nine years to the US nationals.

Lithuania

The Baltic state was heavily involved in the US’s rendition program, which according to the Senate report, saw Washington pay Vilnius $1 million in appreciation for establishing the Violet detention center. Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius is demanding answers from the US as to whether it used the facility for prisoner torture. Washington has so far declined to comment.

Vilnius found out that the CIA ran flights in and out of the country. Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi now held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, says he was kept in the secret CIA site in Lithuania and has asked the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to rule that Lithuania acted illegally.

Poland

According to the US Senate report, Poland housed a facility that was used to interrogate Al-Qaeda suspects between 2002 and 2003. Abuses recorded included sleep deprivation, water boarding and mock executions. This was confirmed by former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. While he was in office, he admitted to letting US intelligence create a facility on Polish soil.
<iframe id="twitter-widget-2" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded Tweet" height="0" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Segoe UI', 'Gill Sans Light', Helvetica; font-size: 10px; display: block; max-width: 99%; min-width: 220px; padding: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; margin: 10px 0px; border-color: rgb(238, 238, 238) rgb(221, 221, 221) rgb(187, 187, 187); border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.14902) 0px 1px 3px; position: static; visibility: visible; width: 500px;"></iframe>The ECHR has already ruled that abuses took place in Poland and ordered the government to compensate detainees. Kwasniewski denied that Warsaw had any knowledge of the CIA’s operations, asked the US government to sign a document asserting the people at the facility would be treated in accordance with Polish law and humanitarian norms. However this memorandum was never signed.

In a response to an email from RT, Poland’s Foreign Ministry said that “a lot of unsubstantiated information about CIA secret prisons appeared in the public domain. The response also added that Poland is the most advanced country in Europe when it comes to investigating the circumstances surrounding the operation of CIA secret detention centers in Europe. However, so far the investigation has experienced problems with obtaining evidence.”

Thailand

The Southeast Asian nation was also culpable for the interrogation of the CIA’s first prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. Despite being cooperative when questioned, he was sent to Thailand, where he was kept in isolation for 47 days. According to the Washington Post, he was tortured continuously for 17 days and at one point waterboarding had left him, “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.”
<iframe id="twitter-widget-3" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded Tweet" height="0" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Segoe UI', 'Gill Sans Light', Helvetica; font-size: 10px; display: block; max-width: 99%; min-width: 220px; padding: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; margin: 10px 0px; border-color: rgb(238, 238, 238) rgb(221, 221, 221) rgb(187, 187, 187); border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.14902) 0px 1px 3px; position: static; visibility: visible; width: 500px;"></iframe>A cable that was included in the report warned that Zubaydah’s interrogation was approaching the “legal limit,” however Jose Rodriquez, then chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, said “such language is not helpful.” It was reported that Zubaydah was water boarded 83 times and kept in cramped boxes for nearly 300 hours. The Thai government has denied ever allowing the United States to detain or torture terrorism suspects on its soil.

United Kingdom

The CIA report claims Britain was involved in rendition flights to transfer detainees, while it also interrogated suspects it knew had been tortured. It was also revealed that the British government offered logistical support for key aircraft in CIA rendition exercises, permitting them to refuel at UK military and civilian airports hundreds of times.

It has also emerged that MI6 was complicit in a least two separate CIA rendition cases in 2004, which resulted in the kidnapping and transfer of two Libyans to prisons run by the Muammar Gaddafi regime. Both men’s families were also abducted. The pregnant wife of one of the men claims she was bound to a stretcher with tape from head-to-toe for the duration of a 17-hour flight.
<iframe id="twitter-widget-4" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded Tweet" height="0" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Segoe UI', 'Gill Sans Light', Helvetica; font-size: 10px; display: block; max-width: 99%; min-width: 220px; padding: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; margin: 10px 0px; border-color: rgb(238, 238, 238) rgb(221, 221, 221) rgb(187, 187, 187); border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.14902) 0px 1px 3px; position: static; visibility: visible; width: 500px;"></iframe>Clare Algar, a lawyer who works for UK human rights group Reprieve, said it is widely known Britain was “up to its neck in the CIA’s rendition and torture program.” She added, “MI6 fell over themselves to take credit for the rendition of Gaddafi opponents – along with their wives and young children – to Libyan prisons in 2004.”

Uzbekistan

Ten years ago, Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan made a claim that the CIA was transporting suspects from Poland to the Central Asian nation to be tortured. However, he was laughed at and branded a liar for his allegations. A decade later it was proved Murray was correct.

Speaking to RT, Murray said, “The rendition flights which went to that secret base in Poland, at Szymany, almost every single one of those flights went on and landed in Tashkent in Uzbekistan. And a number of people, whenever they finished within Szymany, were taken on to Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan, I believe they were murdered, because they have never been seen again.”

Despite the fallout from the report, Murray doubts if this will force the CIA into altering its tactics.

<iframe id="twitter-widget-5" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded Tweet" height="0" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Segoe UI', 'Gill Sans Light', Helvetica; font-size: 10px; display: block; max-width: 99%; min-width: 220px; padding: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; margin: 10px 0px; border-color: rgb(238, 238, 238) rgb(221, 221, 221) rgb(187, 187, 187); border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.14902) 0px 1px 3px; position: static; visibility: visible; width: 500px;"></iframe>“The CIA is most certainly still getting intelligence from torture, by getting other people to do it for them. In Uzbekistan where I was, the CIA didn’t actually do the torture. They got the Uzbek government to do it. I also know for certain that at the moment in Bahrain, people are being tortured in order to provide evidence to the CIA. It is just the Bahrainis who are doing the torture, not the CIA.”

 

VPutin

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Dear yellowarse. If your PAP IB wants to behave like a juvenile to play childish games to derate my threads to one star rating, yours will be the chosen lucky one. :biggrin:
 

Leongsam

High Order Twit / Low SES subject
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Who gives a shit how those muslim nut jobs are tortured as long as they suffer horribly. :rolleyes:
 

yellowarse

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Dear yellowarse. If your PAP IB wants to behave like a juvenile to play childish games to derate my threads to one star rating, yours will be the chosen lucky one. :biggrin:

LOL. Can you question your Pappy masters why Singapore is not a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture, while Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand have already ratified it?

Even Uncle Sam has signed it. Of course we know the signature means diddly-squat, but shouldn't a stooge follow its master as well in maintaining the facade? :biggrin:

BTW, I don't give a damn to star ratings. Go fight your imaginary battles elsewhere. Isogallardo and zeroo seem to be doing a better job at disseminating Pappy propaganda than you. :rolleyes:
 
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yellowarse

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Who gives a shit how those muslim nut jobs are tortured as long as they suffer horribly. :rolleyes:

Well, as of last count, 156 nation states who have ratified the UN Convention Against Torture would respectfully disagree with you.

The worst thing is, the torture didn't yield any useful intel. The Gestapo and Kempeitai were more productive in that respect.
 

yellowarse

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If you believe that hogwash, you're really naive.

On the contrary, the CIA has more or less submitted that it lied or exaggerated the impact of its 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. The most valuable breakthrough info was usually obtained by means other than torture.

Naturally, if you're human at all, no torture should be condoned even it were to prove effective. Granting that the CIA comprises predominantly subhuman species, at the very least it should show that torture works. But they didn't. And the report is an embarrassing exposé.

Some examples:



Killing of Osama bin Laden

THE CASE​
No counterterrorism mission was more successful or higher profile than the secret raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. Almost immediately, C.I.A. officials began telling Congress that its interrogation program led them to a secretive courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who in turn led the C.I.A. to the doorstep of the world’s most-wanted terrorist.
COMMITTEE’S CONCLUSION​
But in page after page of previously classified evidence, the committee calls those statements inaccurate. The report shows that, as early as 2002, the C.I.A. received a wealth of evidence about the courier, including his alias and his association with Bin Laden, as well as a physical description and family connections that would later prove crucial in finding him. By the end of the year, the C.I.A. was wiretapping his phone number and email address and had recordings of his voice.

The linchpin in the hunt for the courier was a detainee named Hassan Ghul. But Mr. Ghul was cooperative from the outset. One officer said he “sang like a tweetie bird.” Mr. Ghul spoke expansively about the courier, describing him as Bin Laden’s closest assistant. Despite the cooperation, the C.I.A. decided to torture Mr. Ghul, subjecting him to sleep deprivation and stress positions. He hallucinated. His heart fell out of rhythm. But he provided “no actionable threat information.”

Nevertheless, after the Bin Laden raid, the C.I.A. provided Congress with a document listing Mr. Ghul as a detainee who had been subjected to enhanced interrogation and provided valuable intelligence on Bin Laden’s courier. The document did not make clear that the valuable intelligence came before the harsh tactics.


Thwarting of Dirty Bomb and Capture of José Padilla

THE CASE​
José Padilla, who was accused of plotting a radiological dirty bomb attack inside the United States, was one of the first American citizens designated an “enemy combatant.” The Bush administration credited the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah with uncovering the plot and leading investigators to Mr. Padilla. His arrest has been held up for years as proof that waterboarding and other tactics worked.
COMMITTEE’S CONCLUSION​
But Abu Zubaydah's information on Mr. Padilla was sketchy, and he provided it well before he was waterboarded. Mr. Padilla, in fact, was arrested in May 2002, three months before the C.I.A. interrogation program began.

For all the publicity the Bush administration gave Mr. Padilla, the committee revealed that the government never took his dirty bomb plot seriously. It was based on a satirical Internet article titled “How to Make an H-Bomb,” and the plot involved swinging a bucket full of uranium over one's head for 45 minutes. One internal C.I.A. email declared that such a plot would most likely kill Mr. Padilla but “would definitely not result in a nuclear explosive device.” Another called Mr. Padilla “a petty criminal” and described the dirty bomb plot as “lore.”


Thwarting of the Karachi Plots

THE CASE​
President Bush credited the C.I.A. interrogation program with helping to prevent an attack on the United States Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. The tip can be traced back to the interrogations of Ammar al-Baluchi and Khallad bin Attash, who were subjected to harsh C.I.A. interrogations in May 2003. Intelligence reports from those interrogations state that Al Qaeda was plotting attacks on the consulate and other Western targets in Karachi.
COMMITTEE’S CONCLUSION​
The committee said in a report released Tuesday, the C.I.A. already knew that information. Mr. Baluchi and Mr. bin Attash had provided it weeks earlier to Pakistani officials, who then relayed it to the C.I.A. When the intelligence report on the Karachi plot was issued, C.I.A. officials in Pakistan were nonplussed. They issued a cable saying they “had become aware of most of this reporting” already. Security at the consulate had been increased based on earlier threats, the officers reported.

Weeks later, when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — after being subjected to waterboarding — discussed the Karachi plot, it came as no surprise to C.I.A. officials, who again reported that they already knew about it.


Thwarting of ‘Second Wave’ Plot and Discovery of Al Ghurabaa Group

THE CASE​
In 2006, the White House announced that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had been conceived as an attack on two fronts, with a “second wave” planned on the West Coast. The plot, as described by Mr. Bush, involved hijacking an airplane and crashing it into Library Tower in Los Angeles.
COMMITTEE’S CONCLUSION​
In a memo to the Justice Department, the C.I.A. credited the waterboarding of Mr. Mohammed with uncovering this plot. But the committee report revealed that the C.I.A. learned about the plot in January 2002 with the arrest of Masran bin Arshad, a Malaysian who was involved. Mr. Mohammed confirmed the existence of the plot after being tortured, to the frustration of C.I.A. interrogators who said he was confirming only what they already knew.
 

Leongsam

High Order Twit / Low SES subject
Admin
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On the contrary, the CIA has more or less submitted that it lied or exaggerated the impact of its 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. The most valuable breakthrough info was usually obtained by means other than torture.

You mess with America you pay the price. There's a war on and people are going to get hurt in the process. That's what war is all about.
 

yellowarse

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You mess with America you pay the price. There's a war on and people are going to get hurt in the process. That's what war is all about.

Oooooh ... I'm so scared ... LOL.

Yeah, the perks of superpowerdom. Comes with the territory. Nature, red in tooth and claw. Be thankful you're alive in this beautiful world.
 

yellowarse

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U.S. under fire over Senate's report on CIA torture

BY BILL TROTT
WASHINGTON Wed Dec 10, 2014 4:01pm EST


(Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday faced criticism from the United Nations as well as governments that Washington often reprimands for human rights violations over a Senate report on CIA torture techniques in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Some U.S. allies, who could face embarrassment or legal liability for any role in the CIA's "enhanced interrogations" during the George W. Bush administration, either condemned the CIA's methods or played down any involvement their governments might have had in them.

"The CIA's practice of torture is gruesome," German Justice Minister Heiko Maas told German newspaper Bild. "Nothing justifies such methods. Everybody involved must be legally prosecuted."

Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said according to the Convention Against Torture, not even a state of war justified torture.

In a statement issued in Geneva on Human Rights Day, he said, "The convention lets no one off the hook – neither the torturers themselves, nor the policy-makers, nor the public officials who define the policy or give the orders."

A White House spokesman said the U.S. Justice Department had reviewed the interrogations and found no reason to indict anyone.

Poland long denied allowing U.S. intelligence to use a secret site in the country for interrogations but on Wednesday former President Aleksander Kwasniewski acknowledged his government let U.S. officials run a facility there. But when asked at a news conference in Warsaw if he knew what his NATO ally was doing, said: "About what the CIA was doing? No. Inside the site, no."

China, Iran and North Korea, regularly under fire for their human rights records, prodded Washington on its methods.

"China has consistently opposed torture," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily briefing. "We believe that the U.S. side should reflect on this, correct its ways and earnestly respect and follow the rules of related international conventions."

A Twitter account associated with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei said the report showed the U.S. government was a "symbol of tyranny against humanity."

"They claim they've a prideful nation; US govts. debased & misguided their people who aren't aware of many realities," said one tweet.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry accused the United Nations of ignoring "inhuman torture practiced by the CIA" while focusing too much on Pyongyang's human rights practices.

The Senate report concluded CIA interrogation tactics were ineffective and often too brutal. U.S. officials had been concerned the report would incite attacks and endanger the lives of American hostages held by Islamic militants but there had been no incidents a day after the report's release.

(Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by James Dalgleish)

 

eatshitndie

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Totally agree. Extremists should be punished via the most extreme measures

if jihadists are hell-bent to kill you and your loved ones, you have the most fundamental human instinctive right to protect yourself and lives around you by doing whatever necessary to neutralize these sons of bitches, including torture, maiming, and killing.
 
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