Contents Pages by Subject

Torture

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NY Times

Some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for as long as six years. And unlike the prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba, these detainees have had no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only

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Reuters

A federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit against two U.S. defense contractors by Iraqi torture victims, saying the companies had immunity as government contractors.

The lawsuit was filed in 2004 on behalf of Iraqi nationals who say they or their relatives had been tortured or mistreated while detained by the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The plaintiffs sued CACI International Inc, which provided interrogators at Abu Ghraib, and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc's Titan unit, which provided interpreters to the U.S. military.

 

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Steve Lombardi

Does bad judgment or rude behavior by any citizen justify the use of force of an electric shock by the police in America?

Here we go again, another officer with poor or nonexistent communication skills using the Taser in a manner unacceptable in a free society. This new report comes from not New York City where you expect rude behavior to be the norm, but from the wild west of Glenrock, Wyoming.

Wasn’t it the Bush Administration that coined the phrase, “Freedom isn’t free.”? I’m left to wonder, free of what; free of excessive force from our own police force? Just going through the airport in America I’m made to feel like a criminal in ways you won’t feel going through airports in Europe. In Russia you get robbed over luggage charges but you expect it. In America we now get not just robbed by Wall Street, but there is a growing trend of being mugged by our own police forces.

Like many of the reports seen on YouTube and

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NY Times

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft may face personal liability for the decisions that led to the detention of an American citizen as a material witness after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal appeals court panel ruled on Friday.

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McClatchy News

When it came time for a CIA employee to testify during the court-martial of Army Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, however, officials went to great lengths to protect the employee's identity, erecting a high, Army-green tarpaulin to shield him from spectators. Even the unidentified man's employment by the CIA was off-limits, until Welshofer's civilian attorney mentioned it in a slip of the tongue.

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The Guardian

Doctors and psychologists the CIA employed to monitor its "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation, a medical ethics watchdog has alleged.

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Reuters

On Sept. 2, 2008, U.S. and Iraqi troops smashed in the doors of Iraqi journalist Ibrahim Jassam's home, shouting "freeze" and holding back snarling dogs before they hauled him off into the night in his underwear.

A year later, neither Jassam and his family nor global news agency Reuters, which employed him as a freelance TV cameraman and photographer, have been told exactly why he has been detained for all this time by U.S. military forces in Iraq.

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Reuters

Mohammad Jawad, one of the youngest detainees to be held at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said after his return home to Afghanistan he had been abused and humiliated during 6 years in custody. A teenager when he was held, he was accused of war crimes for throwing a grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers in 2002, but was ordered freed in July by a U.S. judge who threw out his confession because it had been obtained through abuse.

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Pastors Anderson's court files video below   Prosecutor's and Court's Actions are in Red. Defense Attorney's Actions are in Blue. 4/16/09 Not Guilty Plea
4/17/09 2 Misdemeanor Complaints against Pastor Anderson
4/20/09 Pre-trial Conference is Scheduled
4/21/09 Rule 15.2 Disclosure
4/28/09 Motion to allow Pastor Anderson interstate travel
4/28/09 Prosecutor's request to DENY interstate travel (this is insane!)
4/29/09 Judge Romine grants interstate travel
5/7/09 Search Warrant
5/8/09 Rule 15 Interviews
5/20/09 Supplemental Disclosure
6/2/09 Officer Jones' version of the incident
6/2/09 Officer Mitchell's version of the incident (aka Mr. Smiley & Mr. Failure to Obey Me Right Now!)
6/16/09 Motion to Dismiss the Case with Prejudice
6/25/09 Judge Cora Romine Recuses herself (i.e. decides not to hear the case because of either personal bias or inability to

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AP

About a dozen state officials were joined by 18 representatives from the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments and the Bureau of Prisons on the tour of the lockup in Standish, said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections.

The prison in Standish, 145 miles north of Detroit, and a military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., are being considered to house the 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters currently at the Guantanamo Bay prison, if it is closed by 2010 as President Barack Obama has ordered.

 

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Reuters

A U.S. military lawyer for a Kuwaiti detainee held at the American prison at Guantanamo Bay charged the Obama administration was hampering his efforts to clear his client's name.

Navy Lieutenant Commander Kevin Bogucki said the U.S. State Department would not issue him clearance to travel on Friday to Kuwait, where he planned to hold a news conference outlining the case involving his client, Fouad Al Rabiah.

 

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IPS

NEW YORK, Aug 6 (IPS) - Charging that the U.S. government was complicit in the forced disappearance of an influential Muslim scholar four years ago, human rights groups in the U.S., the U.K., and Switzerland have asked the U.N. to investigate.

News Link • Global Reported By Lola Flores
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TruthOut.org & InfoWars.com

 Nowhere is there a more disturbing, if not horrifying, example of the relationship between a culture of cruelty and the politics of irresponsibility than in the resounding silence that surrounds the torture of children under the presidency of George W. Bush – and the equal moral and political failure of the Obama administration to address and rectify the conditions that made it possible. But if we are to draw out the dark and hidden parameters of such crimes, they must be made visible so men and women can once again refuse to orphan the law, justice, and morality. How we deal with the issue of state terrorism and its complicity with the torture of children will determine not merely the conditions under which we are willing to live, but whether we will live in a society in which moral responsibility disappears altogether and whether we will come to find ourselves living under a democratic or authoritarian social order.

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McClatchy News

A young Guantanamo detainee appears likely to be sent home after a federal judge concluded he'd been held illegally and ordered him released after almost seven years.

"After this horrible, long, tortured history, I hope the government will succeed in getting him back home," U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle told Justice Department lawyers during a court hearing. "Enough has been imposed on this young man to date."

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Washington Post

In the 13 months since the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision granting detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their confinements before federal judges, most prisoners still have not had their day in court.

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Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday "deplored" the alleged abuse of political prisoners in Iran following the election and urged their immediate release.

News Link • Global Reported By Lola Flores
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HELEN THOMAS

Secrecy is endemic in all governments. It goes with the turf, especially if their leaders hope to hide illegal or immoral behavior, such as torture of foreign prisoners.   Many Americans heaved a sigh of relief last January when President Barack Obama banned the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It made the administration look more humane than the Bush-Cheney team. But that is not the whole story.

Obama left unaddressed the possibility of torture in secret foreign prisons under our control as in Abu Ghraib in Iraq or Bagram in Afghanistan, not to mention the 'black sites" sponsored by our foreign clients in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Thailand and other countries.

"The United States will not torture," Obama said in his directive. But he has been silent on the question of whether the U.S. would help others do the torturing.

Members of Congress knew a lot about U.S. torture practices. But Republica

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McClatchy News

6 months after President Barack Obama ordered the closing of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, his administration is still slogging through the cases and policies and will need more time to complete interim reports due on Tuesday.

Top Obama administration officials said late Monday that they're still on track to close the prison in January.

 

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UrukNet

WASHINGTON, AP – The Obama administration is considering creating a special unit of professional interrogators to handle key terror suspects, focusing on intelligence-gathering rather than building criminal cases for prosecution, a government official said Saturday.

News Link • Global Reported By Lola Flores
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