http://afterdowningstreet.org/sites/afterdowningstreet.org/images/cbac.gif

Report probes US custody deaths 
 
The report says that charges for mistreating prisoners are rare
Almost 100 prisoners have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, according to US group Human Rights First.
The details were first aired on BBC television's Newsnight programme.

Of the 98 deaths, at least 34 were suspected or confirmed homicides, the programme said.

The Pentagon told Newsnight it had not seen the report but took allegations of maltreatment "very seriously" and would prosecute if necessary.

The report, which is to be published on Wednesday, draws on information from Pentagon and other official US sources.

Torture

Human Rights First representative Deborah Pearlstein told Newsnight she was "extremely comfortable" that the information was reliable.

  They are human beings, they violate the law, they make mistakes and they have to be held accountable

Zalmay Khalilzad
US ambassador to Iraq 

The report defines the 34 cases classified as homicides as "caused by intentional or reckless behaviour".

It says another 11 cases have been deemed suspicious and that between eight and 12 prisoners were tortured to death.

But despite this, charges are rare and sentences are light, the report says.

Speaking on the programme, the US ambassador to Iraq said the "overwhelming number" of troops behaved according to the law.

But Zalmay Khalilzad said abuses did exist.

"They are human beings, they violate the law, they make mistakes and they have to be held accountable and the good thing about our system is that we do hold people accountable," he said.

Investigation call

UK MP Bob Marshall-Andrews told the Press Association that the report confirmed "in statistical terms the appalling evidence already available in footage".

"If it is indeed systemic, then the responsibility for it must go right to the top, and that would apply to both British and American governments," he said.

A spokesman for Amnesty International UK called for a probe into the deaths in custody.

"Deaths in custody during the war on terror are a real matter of concern to us and we want to see the US and its allies allowing a full independent and impartial investigation into these deaths, as well as mounting incidents of alleged torture and other mistreatment," he said.

He said Amnesty had raised the issue of "overly lenient sentences" for those found guilty of mistreating prisoners.

Last week, an Australian TV channel broadcast previously unpublished images showing apparent US abuse of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail in 2003.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4738008.stm

=========== 

US soldier guilty of Iraq abuse 
 
England became the face of the scandal
A US military panel has found a woman soldier guilty of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail, near the Iraqi capital Baghdad, in 2003.
Private Lynndie England, 22, appeared in some of the graphic photos of abuse at the prison which caused outrage.

The panel found her guilty on four counts of maltreating detainees, one count of conspiracy and one count of committing an indecent act.

England faces up to 10 years in prison when she is sentenced.

She was acquitted on a second conspiracy count.

No visible reaction

The panel in Texas rejected the defence argument that she had been led astray by her colleagues, in particular her then boyfriend, Specialist Charles Graner. He too has been convicted of prisoner abuse, and is serving 10 years in jail.

England was the last in a group of nine army reservists charged with mistreating inmates at the prison.

It took the panel of five military officers just two hours to reach their verdict.

England showed no visible reaction as she stood to attention in the military court, at Fort Hood, to hear the verdict.

A military prosecutor had argued that England had humiliated prisoners because she enjoyed it and had a sick sense of humour.

Prosecutor Chuck Neill said England had been an active participant who enjoyed enacting the scenes portrayed on camera.

"This was simply for the amusement of Private England and the other soldiers," he said.

In photographs published around the world in April 2004, England was shown holding a naked Iraqi prisoner by a leash, and pointing to a naked inmate's genitals.

England's original guilty plea was rejected at a military tribunal earlier this year.

The military judge then was not convinced that she knew that what she had been doing was wrong.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4284838.stm

 =================
"The Milgram experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

"Brainwashing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing#Studies_of_the_Korean_War_.281950.E2.80.931953.29

"Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_and_Escape

"Torturing Democracy"
http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/

Fallacy of testimony exposed as story blows up in Pentagon's face"

(full story)
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/march2007/160307afterarrest.htm

(clipped headline and article)
"Netanyahu Warns Obama on Talks as He Challenges Livni - Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Even before Benjamin Netanyahu finds out whether he will be Israel’s next prime minister, he is sending a message to President Barack Obama that he won’t be pushed around."

(full story)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aeKTFmR61kD0

========= 

Monday Feb. 9, 2009 15:32 EST
Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability -- resoundingly and disgracefully

(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI - Update VII)

Two weeks ago, I interviewed the ACLU's Ben Wizner, counsel to 5 individuals suing the subsidiary of Boeing (Jeppesen) which had arranged the Bush administration's rendition program, under which those 5 plaintiffs had been abducted, sent to other countries and brutally tortured.  Today the Obama administration was required to file with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals its position in this case -- i.e., whether it would continue the Bush administration's abusive reliance on the "state secrets" privilege to prevent courts from ruling on such matters, or whether they would adhere to Obama's previous claims about his beliefs on "state secrets" by withdrawing that position and allowing these victims their day in court.

Yesterday, enthusiastic Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan wrote about this case:  "Tomorrow in a federal court hearing in San Francisco, we'll find out if the Obama administration intends to keep the evidence as secret as the Bush administration did."  As I wrote after interviewing Wizner two weeks ago:  "This is the first real test of the authenticity of Obama's commitment to reverse the abuses of executive power over the last eight years."  Today, the Obama administration failed that test -- resoundingly and disgracefully:

Obama Administration Maintains Bush Position on 'Extraordinary Rendition' Lawsuit

The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.

A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn't changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.

This is not going to please civil libertarians and human rights activists who had hoped the Obama administration would allow the lawsuit to proceed.

The ACLU's Wizner said this:

We are shocked and deeply disappointed that the Justice Department has chosen to continue the Bush administration’s practice of dodging judicial scrutiny of extraordinary rendition and torture. This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course. Now we must hope that the court will assert its independence by rejecting the government’s false claims of state secrets and allowing the victims of torture and rendition their day in court.

What makes this particularly appalling and inexcusable is that Senate Democrats had long  vehemently opposed the use of the "state secrets" privilege in exactly the way that the Bush administration used it in this case, even sponsoring legislation to limits its use and scope.  Yet here is Obama, the very first chance he gets, invoking exactly this doctrine in its most expansive and abusive form to prevent torture victims even from having their day in court, on the ground that national security will be jeopardized if courts examine the Bush administration's rendition and torture programs -- even though (a) the rendition and torture programs have been written about extensively in the public record; (b) numerous other countries have investigated exactly these allegations; and (c) other countries have provided judicial forums in which these same victims could obtain relief.  As Wizner said:

For one thing, the idea you alluded to, the facts of this story are absolutely well-known, have been the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post, are in books, and all of these stories are based on CIA and other government sources, that essentially said, well, in this case we got the wrong guy. So the position of the Bush administration, accepted by conservative judges in that case, really the only place in the world where Khalid El-Masri's case could not be discussed was in a federal courtroom. Everywhere else it could be discussed without harm to the nation, but in a federal court before a federal judge there, all kinds of terrible things could happen.

Despite that, the new President -- who repeatedly condemned the extreme secrecy of the Bush administration and vowed greater transparency -- has now acted to protect, purely on secrecy grounds, the government and company that did this, as Wizner described:

They were essentially the CIA's torture travel agents. They were the one who arranged all the overflight rights for the CIA civilian planes to be able to fly from country to country. They handled the security and the logistics. They filed dummy flight plans to try to trick air traffic controllers into not being able to track where the actual flights were going. And we know they knew what they were doing because we have a witness in our case, someone who's given us a sworn declaration, who was an employee of Jeppesen DataPlan, and who was present when senior officials of the company were openly boasting about their role in the torture flights, and about how much money they made from them because the CIA spared no expense.

We were able, with the help of an investigative journalist and other documentary evidence, to link Jeppesen to an number of very specific CIA rendition flights, involving these five torture victims who were flown to countries like Egypt, Morocco, to CIA sites in Afghanistan and eastern Europe. . . .

[Plaintiff Ahmed Agiza] was picked up off the streets of Stockholm and then he was taken to an airport where a CIA rendition team--this is a bunch of men dressed all in black, with their faces covered--sliced off all of his clothes, put a suppository into him, chained him to the floor of an airplane, flew him to Egypt, where he was exposed to absolutely brutal torture, including shock treatment, all kinds of beatings. He was then given a show trial in an Egyptian military court and sentenced to 15 years for involvement in a banned organization.

His has been an extremely well-documented case; it's been in books by Seymour Hersh and others. The UN has investigated this; the Swedish government has investigated this case.

In fact, just a couple of months ago, the Swedish government agreed to pay Ahmed Agiza $450,000 for its secondary role in the CIA's rendition of Agiza to Egypt. So there's no real secret involved here. Nothing would be revealed by allowing Agiza to go forward in a case against the CIA, because Jeppesen's role is public, because Sweden's role is public, and because Egypt's role is public--he's in an Egyptian prison right now.

That's what Barack Obama is now shielding from judicial scrutiny.  Those are the torture victims he is preventing from obtaining judicial relief in our courts.  And he's using one of the most radical and destructive tools in the Bush arsenal -- its wildly expanded version of the "state secrets" privilege -- to accomplish all of that dirty work.  I've been as vigorous a proponent as anyone for waiting to see what Obama does before reaching conclusions about his presidency, but this is a very real and substantial act, and it's hard to disagree with what ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said today:

Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.

Secrecy generally, and the state secrets privilege particularly, was the linchpin of the civil liberties abuses and constitutional radicalism of the last eight years.  At the end of 2006, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick listed the Bush administration's "10 most outrageous civil liberties violations" and it included this:

6. The State-Secrets Doctrine

The Bush administration's insane argument in court is that judges should dismiss entire lawsuits over many of the outrages detailed on this very list. Why? Because the outrageously illegal things are themselves matters of top-secret national security. The administration has raised this claim in relation to its adventures in secret wiretapping and its fun with extraordinary rendition. A government privilege once used to sidestep civil claims has mushroomed into sweeping immunity for the administration's sometimes criminal behavior.

That the Obama DOJ -- when faced with its first real test to determine what it intends to do in these areas (as opposed to engaging in symbolic rituals and issuing pretty words) -- explicitly adopts exactly the Bush position is about as inauspicious a start in these areas as one can imagine.

UPDATE: I just spoke with Wizner about today's court hearing.  It's really remarkable what happened.  One of the judges on the three-judge panel explicitly asked the DOJ lawyer, Doug Letter, whether the change in administrations had any bearing on the Government's position in this case.  Letter emphatically said it did not.  Instead, he told the court, the new administration -- the new DOJ -- had actively reviewed this case and vetted the Bush positions and decisively opted to embrace the same positions.

There's no doubt about that.  Wizner pointed out that after the interview he did with me 10 days ago, there was substantial press coverage of this matter.  Both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times wrote editorials in the last week demanding that the Obama administration adhere to its prior pledge and abandon the Bush administration's reliance on "state secrets" in this case.  Wizner said that reporters calling the DOJ were told that the case was under active review.  This was an active, conscious decision made by the Obama DOJ to retain the same abusive, expansive view of "state secrets" as Bush adopted, and to do so for exactly the same purpose:  to prevent any judicial accountability of any kind, to keep government behavior outside of and above the rule of law.

Finally, Wizner noted one last fact that is rather remarkable.  The entire claim of "state secrets" in this case is based on two sworn Declarations from CIA Director Michael Hayden -- one public and one filed secretly with the court.  In them, Hayden argues that courts cannot adjudicate this case because to do so would be to disclose and thus degrade key CIA programs of rendition and interrogation -- the very policies which Obama, in his first week in office, ordered shall no longer exist.  How, then, could continuation of this case possibly jeopardize national security when the rendition and interrogation practices which gave rise to these lawsuits are the very ones that the U.S. Government, under the new administration, claims to have banned?

What this is clearly about is shielding the U.S. Government and Bush officials from any accountability.  Worse, by keeping Bush's secrecy architecture in place, it ensures that any future President -- Obama or any other -- can continue to operate behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy, with no transparency or accountability even for blatantly criminal acts.

UPDATE II: There wasn't a more enthusiastic Obama supporter during the campaign than Andrew Sullivan.  Here is what he wrote just now:

The Obama administration will continue the cover-up of the alleged torture of the British resident. The argument is that revealing the extent of the man's torture and abuse would reveal state secrets. No shit. This is a depressing sign that the Obama administration will protect the Bush-Cheney torture regime from the light of day.  And with each decision to cover for their predecessors, the Obamaites become retroactively complicit in them.

So what are they hiding from us? Wouldn't you like to know?

There is no viable excuse, or even mitigation, for what they did here.

==================

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document. 

The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. 

The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials, who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning. 

At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the report. 

"The ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture," Danner quoted the report as saying. 

Many of the details of alleged mistreatment at CIA prisons had been reported previously, but the ICRC report is the most authoritative account and the first to use the word "torture" in a legal context. 

The CIA declined to comment. A U.S. official familiar with the report said, "It is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves." 

Often using the detainee's own words, the report offers a harrowing view of conditions at the secret prisons, where prisoners were told they were being taken "to the verge of death and back," according to one excerpt. During interrogations, the captives were routinely beaten, doused with cold water and slammed head-first into walls. Between sessions, they were stripped of clothing, bombarded with loud music, exposed to cold temperatures, and deprived of sleep and solid food for days on end. Some detainees described being forced to stand for days, with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers. 

On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room," the report quotes detainee Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying. Later, he said, he was wrapped in a plastic sheet while cold water was "poured onto my body with buckets." He added: "I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes. Then I would be taken for interrogation." 

ICRC officials did not dispute the authenticity of the excerpts, but a spokesman expressed dismay over the leak of the material. "We regret information attributed to the ICRC report was made public in this manner," spokesman Bernard Barrett said. 

"The ICRC has been visiting the detainees formerly held by the CIA," he added, "at Guantanamo since 2006. Any concerns or observations the ICRC had when visiting the detainees are part of a confidential dialogue." 

President George W. Bush acknowledged the use of coercive interrogation tactics on senior al-Qaeda captives detained by the CIA in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but he insisted that the measures complied with U.S. and international law. Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden confirmed last year that the measures included the use of waterboarding on three captives before 2003. 

President Obama outlawed such practices within hours of his inauguration in January. But Obama has expressed reluctance to conduct a legal inquiry into the CIA's policies. 

The report gives a graphic account of the treatment of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, a Saudi-born Palestinian who was the first alleged senior al-Qaeda operative seized after Sept. 11 -- a characterization of his role that is disputed by his attorneys, who describe him as having a different philosophy of jihad than bin Laden. 

Abu Zubaida was severely wounded during a shootout in March 2002 at a safe house he ran in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and survived thanks to CIA-arranged medical care, including multiple surgeries. After he recovered, Abu Zubaida describes being shackled to a chair at the feet and hands for two to three weeks in a cold room with "loud, shouting type music" blaring constantly, according to the ICRC report. He said that he was questioned two to three hours a day and that water was sprayed in his face if he fell asleep. 

At some point -- the timing is unclear from the New York Review of Books report -- Abu Zubaida's treatment became harsher. In July 2002, administration lawyers approved more aggressive techniques. 

Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said. 

"The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the ICRC. 

After he was removed from a small box, he said, he was strapped to what looked like a hospital bed and waterboarded. "A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," Abu Zubaida said. 

After breaks to allow him to recover, the waterboarding continued. 

"I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless," he said. "I though I was going to die." 

In a federal court filing, Abu Zubaida's attorneys said he "has suffered approximately 175 seizures that appear to be directly related to his extensive torture -- particularly damage to Petitioner's head that was the result of beatings sustained at the hands of CIA interrogators and exacerbated by his lengthy isolation." 

Danner said the organization's use of the word "torture" has important legal implications. 

"It could not be more important that the ICRC explicitly uses the words 'torture' and 'cruel and degrading,' " Danner said in a telephone interview. "The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, and when it uses those words, they have the force of law." 

He discounted the possibility that the detainees fabricated or embellished their stories, noting that the accounts overlap "in minute detail," even though the detainees were kept in isolation at different locations. 

Human rights groups echoed his assessment. 

"These reports are from an impeccable source," said Geneve Mantri, a counterterrorism specialist at Amnesty International. "It's clear that senior officials were warned from the very beginning that the treatment that detainees were subjected to amounted to torture. This story goes even further and deeper than many us of suspected. The more details we find out, the more shocking this becomes." 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/15/AR2009031502724.html?hpid=topnews

==========
Secret Bush administration legal memos released to public
9 documents show Bush's broad interpretation of presidential power
By Josh Meyer and Julian E. Barnes | Washington Bureau 
March 3, 2009 
WASHINGTON—The Obama administration on Monday made public nine long-secret legal memos setting out an extraordinarily broad interpretation of presidential power that was used by the Bush White House to justify its actions in the war on terror, including one 2001 opinion authorizing the military to treat terrorist suspects in the U.S. like an invading army that lacked constitutional rights.

The memos provide a detailed glimpse into the thinking of Bush's Justice Department legal advisers. They embraced the view that President George W. Bush, acting alone, had the authority to override the other branches of government.

That legal rationale by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, in a memo written six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, would have meant that U.S. soldiers could search houses and seize suspected terrorists without a court-approved warrant. The military never used that power, according to a former Bush administration lawyer, but the memo was the legal basis for some in the administration who wanted to use the military, instead of law-enforcement agencies, to arrest Al Qaeda suspects in the U.S., he said.

The memos disclosed Monday also said the military's need to go after terrorists in the United States might override constitutional protections guaranteeing the right to free speech. One of the legal opinions set the stage for the Guantanamo Bay prison policy by asserting Bush had "the exclusive authority" to decide how prisoners would be detained. The Bush administration had refused to make any of the memos public.

Latest politics news The memos also show that five days before leaving office, the Bush Justice Department issued a secret retraction of some of the most sweeping definitions of presidential authority that its own lawyers had authored.

In a Jan. 15 "Memorandum For The Files," Principal Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Steven G. Bradbury said many of the Office of Legal Counsel opinions issued between 2001 and 2003 no longer reflected views of the Justice Department.

The Justice Department had secretly withdrawn other controversial legal memorandums years earlier, Bradbury added, "and on several occasions we have already acknowledged the doubtful nature of these propositions." But the memos released Monday go well beyond what was known about the assertion of presidential power.

An Oct. 23, 2001, memo authorizing use of the military in the U.S. was written by then-Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. John Yoo—now a law professor at the University of California Berkeley—and Special Counsel Robert Delahunty. Yoo did not return calls for comment, and Bradbury declined to comment.

"These military operations, taken as they may be on United States soil, and involving as they might American citizens, raise novel and difficult questions of constitutional law," they said. But, they said, the president, as commander in chief in a time of war, had the right to authorize such extraordinary actions. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the memos showed that the Bush administration was already discussing ways to wiretap conversations in the U.S. without warrants, and to take other steps without oversight of Congress and the courts.

"The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically," Yoo and Delahunty said in their October 2001 memo.

President Barack Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric Holder have vowed to release other still-secret Bush legal memos as soon as possible.

In a speech Monday, Holder said he understood the need to protect America from terrorism. "But we must do so in a manner that preserves, protects and defends the rights that are enshrined in our Constitution, and the rule of law itself."

American Civil Liberties Union officials hailed the release of the documents but said the Obama administration needs to release, "dozens of still-secret legal memos related to interrogation, detention, rendition, surveillance and other Bush administration policies that are still being withheld."

Greg Miller and David G. Savage of the Washington Bureau contributed. 

jmeyer@tribune.com

jbarnes@tribune.com

===============================