Crapaganda.com

Secret operation ‘reporting only to London’ deprived prisoners of sleep, documents show

Fresh evidence has emerged that British military intelligence ran a secret operation in Iraq which authorised degrading and unlawful treatment of prisoners. Documents reveal that prisoners were kept hooded for long periods in intense heat and deprived of sleep by defence intelligence officers. They also reveal that officers running the operation claimed to be answerable only “directly to London”.

The revelations will further embarrass the British government, which last month was forced to release documents showing it knew that UK resident and terror suspect Binyam Mohamed had been tortured in Pakistan.

The latest documents emerged during the inquiry into Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel worker beaten to death while in the custody of British troops in September 2003. The inquiry is looking into how interrogation techniques banned by the Government in 1972 and considered torture and degrading treatment were used again in Iraq.

Lawyers believe the new evidence supports suspicions that an intelligence unit – the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT) which operated in Iraq – used illegal “coercive techniques” and was not answerable to military commanders in Iraq, despite official denials it operated independently.

In a statement to the inquiry, Colonel Christopher Vernon said he raised concerns after seeing 30 to 40 prisoners in a kneeling position with sacks over their heads. He said those in charge said they were from the Defence and Intelligence Security Centre, based at Chicksands, Bedfordshire, the British Army’s intelligence HQ.

He was informed that “they were an independent unit and reported directly to their chain of command in London”. Hooding was “accepted practice” and would continue, he was told. “They reiterated the point they were an independent unit and did not come under the command of the GOC1 (UK) Armed Div (the Iraq command),” he said. Asked by the inquiry last week whether there was “some sort of feeling generally in the Army the intelligence people were slightly on their own and running their own show”, Col Vernon replied: “I think you could say that.”

In a second statement, Colonel David Frend, a British Army legal adviser in Iraq, said he was told by a senior military intelligence officer in London that “there was a legitimate reason for it [hooding], they had always done it and they would like to continue to do it.” Col Frend said: “My recollection is that he said that they – ie those at JFIT – had been trained to hood. My understanding from the conversation was simply the use of hessian sandbags as hoods were something that had been taught to members of the JFIT at some point prior to deployment [to Iraq] and that it was not a unilateral act by them.”

In a further email disclosed by the inquiry this week, Major Gavin Davies, a member of the Army’s legal team, wrote in March 2003: “I have just spoken to S002 [code for an army intelligence officer in Iraq] about the subject of placing [prisoners] in hoods in the UK facility." He goes on to say that he was told that hooding is only until "high value" prisoners can be interviewed, and the length of hooding can last from an hour to 24 hours. The only other restriction, he wrote, "is that they may not sleep". Sleep deprivation is considered torture.

Chicksands has always denied that it trained soldiers to use hoods, claiming that there may have been some confusion with its "conduct after capture" training programme.

However, a further email from a military legal officer based at Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, also published last week, stated: "I have heard that Chicksands have denied teaching hooding and suggested that there may be confusion in the minds of those who have completed the conduct after capture course during which students are hooded. I find this implausible. The people I have spoken to are not stupid. It seems to me more likely that hooding is taught but for actions immediately on capture or for prisoner handling."

In November, the human rights lawyer Phil Shiner, who represents Baha Mousa's family and forced the public inquiry, lodged a further 14 cases of abuse, naming JFIT. This is the first time that evidence to support the claims from the British military has emerged. There are now 47 claims of abuse lodged against the Government.

Yesterday Mr Shiner said: "It's been established that JFIT were a separate compound and their personnel were not accountable to a military chain of command. There is a mass of evidence from this and other cases which shows JFIT used coercive interrogation techniques – forbidden under law – as standard operating procedure. We need an independent inquiry to examine who was responsible."

A MoD spokesman declined to comment while the inquiry was ongoing.

Source: Independent.co.uk

A French TV documentary features people in a spoof game show administering what they are told are near lethal electric shocks to rival contestants.

Those taking part are told to pull levers to inflict shocks – increasing in voltage – upon their opponents.

Although unaware that the contestants were actors and there was no electrical current, 82% of participants in the Game of Death agreed to pull the lever.

Programme makers say they wanted to expose the dangers of reality TV shows.

They say the documentary shows how many participants in the setting of a TV show will agree to act against their own principles or moral codes when ordered to do something extreme.

The Game of Death has all the trappings of a traditional TV quiz show, with a roaring crowd chanting “punishment” and a glamorous hostess urging the players on.

Christophe Nick, the maker of the documentary, said they were “amazed” that so many participants obeyed the sadistic orders of the game show presenter.

“They are not equipped to disobey,” he told AFP.

“They don’t want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop, but they don’t manage to.”

Yale experiment

The results reflect those of a similar experiment carried out almost 50 years ago at Yale University by social psychologist Stanley Milgram.

Participants took the role of a teacher, delivering what they believed were shocks to an actor every time they answered a question incorrectly.

Mr Nick says that his experiment shows that the TV element further increases people’s willingness to obey.

“With Milgram, 62% of people obeyed an abject authority. In the setting of television, it’s 80%,” he told Reuters.

The documentary was broadcast on the state-owned France 2 channel on Wednesday evening.

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.

Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.

The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.

“This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing,” said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. “The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, ‘This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.’ It just sounds like lunacy,” he said. “This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine.”

Read the rest of the story at: Waterboarding for dummies (Salon)

Watch Christopher Hitchens Get Waterboarded (Vanity Fair)

The director-general of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has issued a passionate defence of the Security Service against the “conspiracy theory” that it covered up its involvement in torture.

Mr Evans accusations made by Lord Neuberger, the country’s second most senior judge, that there was a “culture of suppression” at MI5 were “the precise opposite of the truth”.

As Mr Evans defended the security services against claims of torture, ministers also voiced their support in an open letter to newspapers.

In their open letter David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said it was “disgraceful” to suggest that the UK aided torture, or was turning a blind eye to it.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Evans warns that the row over alleged human rights abuses would be used by “our enemies” as “propaganda to undermine our will and ability to confront them”.

His unprecedented response to criticism in print indicates the anger within MI5 at what is rapidly becoming its biggest crisis of recent years.

The row escalated on Wednesday when the Court of Appeal ordered the disclosure of seven paragraphs of evidence which showed that MI5 knew that Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee, was being mistreated by the CIA.

Mr Miliband had tried to prevent the publication of the material.

The most damning criticism of MI5 was contained in an unpublished draft version of the court’s judgment, details of which were leaked to the media, in which Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls, claimed that the Security Service failed to respect human rights or denounce torture, and had lied to Parliament about what it knew.

More at: MI5 chief defends security services amid torture ‘cover-up’ claims (Telegraph UK)

The US Government is finally investing in the science of torture.  It seems that since the Revolutionary War we have always just adopted new torture technique without any knowledge of its actual effectiveness.  Soon we will have absolute scientific proof as to which torture methods provide the most information for the effort exerted.

They say that the research will be guided by the US Army Field Manual. This means that all torture techniques researched  must not be specifically listed in the manual. I think this comes down to: Create new techniques and you are free to use them until the public finds out.

Interrogators will do ‘research’, not torture (Sidney Morning Herald)

US doing ‘scientific research’ to boost interrogations (AFP)

As it turns out, retired CIA agent John Kiriakou has an active imagination, basically.

According to a piece by veteran intelligence reporter Jeff Stein, Kiriakou “basically made up” details about the waterboarding of al Qaeda agent Abu Zubaydah.

Arguing that waterboarding — or simulated drowning — is actually effective in forcing prisoners to share secret information, Kiriakou told ABC News’ Nightline in April, “The next day [after his first time being waterboarded], he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate.”

“From that day on, he answered every question,” he said, according to ABC. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

“Now comes John Kiriakou, again, with a wholly different story,” Stein noted in Foreign Policy. “On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up.”

It seems, the CIA is not just making up stories for the American public.  They are creating propaganda for their own staff!

More at: Revealed: Retired CIA agent ‘made up’ waterboarding details (The Raw Story)

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”

During the Bush Administration, the U.S. military had captured the number 3 man in Al-Qaeda.  The prisoner was “resistant to normal interrogation.”  So they approached  the CIA, The Justice Dept, and the White House  in order to see how much pressure could be exerted to obtain information.

John Yoo was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General.  He was tasked with writing the legal briefs that make it look like Constitutional law is flexible when it comes to the powers of the President.  He sends the interrogators away with exactly what they want to hear and now we have the President of the United States operating outside of the law.

They did get a fancy lawyer to write up a paper in Legaleeze before they shredded the Constitution, this time.

Watch the first of a three part interview with John Yoo on The Daily Show.

Part 2, Part 3

It has been argued that Yoo could potentially be indicted for crimes against the laws and customs of war, the crime of torture, and crimes against humanity. Criminal proceedings to this end have begun in Spain, in a move that could lead to an extradition request.

Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush by John Yoo

Report Faults 2 Authors of Bush Terror Memos (NY Times)

In 1481 the Catholic Church charged two Dominican monks, James Sprenger and Henry Kramer, with the task of writing a manual for hunting witches. The manual, Malleus Maleficarum, took 5 years to create.

The Malleus Maleficarum is the best known of the witch-hunt manuals. Originally written in Latin, the title is translated as “The Hammer of Witches”. Used for more than three hundred years, it was the justification for the witch trials in Europe and Colonial America.

The document specified rules of evidence and procedures by which suspected witches should be detected, tortured and put to death.

Buy your own copy of the Malleus Maleficarum or Read the Malleus Maleficarum online.

Witch hunts continue today.  In Nigeria, religious leaders in extremist Christian churches are  “identifying” some children as witches.   The children are then subjected to horrible purifying rituals.  Children have been hacked to death, poisoned and buried alive in an attempt to drive out Satan.

‘Child-witches’ of Nigeria Seek Refuge (Telegraph UK)