Crapaganda.com

It is a commonly held misbelief that President Obama closed all of the US secret prisons abroad.  The ones that were closed are the “black” detention facilities that were operated by the CIA.  The prisons run by the US Justice Department are still up and running at full speed.

“The interrogators blindfolded him, taped his mouth shut and chained him to the ceiling, he alleges. Occasionally they unleashed a dog, which repeatedly bit him. At one point they removed the blindfold and forced him to kneel on a long wooden bar. “They tied my hands to a pulley [above] and pushed me back and forth as the bar rolled across my shins. I screamed and screamed.” They then pushed him to the ground and forced him to swallow twelve bottles of water. “Two people held my mouth open, and they poured water down my throat until my stomach was full and I became unconscious,” he said. “It was as if someone had inflated me.” After he was roused, he vomited uncontrollably.

This continued for a number of days. Sometimes he was hung upside down from the ceiling, other times he was blindfolded for extended periods. Eventually he was moved to Bagram, where the torture ceased. Four months later he was quietly released, with a letter of apology from US authorities for wrongfully imprisoning him.”

Anand Gopol on America’s Secret Afghan Prisons

Read more at: America’s Secret Afghan Prisons (The Nation)

California’s Governor, in an attempt to  to save the state billions of dollars, has suggested that they build cheaper prisons south of the border.

“We can do so much better, in the prison system alone, if we can go and take inmates – for instance, the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here – and get them to Mexico,” Schwarzenegger said.

“We pay them to build a prison down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in the prison,” he added. “Half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons. That is money, again, a billion dollars right there that can go into higher education. That is an example of one of the things we do that is unnecessary spending.”

Schwarzenegger asks: Why not build prisons in Mexico? (Sacramento Bee)

During his campaign for election, Barack Obama promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He said, on many occasions, that he would close Camp X-ray within the first year of his presidency.

His year is up!

After a year of “closing” the prison, 200 prisoners remain in the facility. Many of those, still in detention, have been there for eight years. 800 prisoners have been released so far. Of those let go, only one has been found guilty of any crime. He was convicted by a dubious military commission, a verdict that is likely to be overturned.

How does one survive in a detention facility for years? Ask Omar Deghayes.

“For nearly six years, British resident Omar Deghayes was imprisoned in Guantánamo and subjected to such brutal torture that he lost the sight in one eye. But far from being broken, he fought back to retain his dignity and his sanity.

Deghayes developed a personal policy of resistance. Guards would ­typically arrive at a prisoner’s cell and spray pepper and other chemicals through the “bean-hole”, the hatch in the door. While most prisoners cowered at the back of their cell, Deghayes says he would grab the guards’ hands and attack them. He fought back, as viciously as he could, trying to take the fights with guards out of the privacy of his cell and into the corridors.

“It was chaos; they would fall on top of each other and it was embarrassing [for them]. They were wearing all this heavy stuff [body armour] which didn’t help either,” he says. Some guards became afraid of going into his cell. Most, he says, were Puerto Rican and were not driven by the patriotism of the “war on terror”. They did not want to get hurt for their meagre wages.”

How I fought to survive Guantánamo (Guardian UK)

It has been one year since Barack Obama signed the executive order essentially outlawing torture, but the debate about interrogation methods continue.  Although the situation has improved, the changes were not as drastic as most Americans think. Elements of the US interrogation policy remain inhumane and counterproductive.

Americans can now boast that they no longer “torture” detainees, but they cannot say that detainees are not abused, or even that their treatment meets the minimum standards of humane treatment mandated by the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (the McCain amendment), US law, international law, or President Obama’s executive order.

If one were to visit one of the war zones today, as an a member of an Air Force interrogation team, they would still be allowed to abuse prisoners.

This is true even though in my experience, torture or even harsh but legal treatment never got us useful information. Instead, such tactics invariably did just the opposite, convincing detainees to clam up.

Matthew Alexander – Author of “How to Break a Terrorist.”

Read Matthew Alexander’s Op-Ed – Torture’s Loopholes (NY Times)

Afghan Boys Allegedly Abused At Bagram “Black Prison”