Human Rights Glance
Der Spiegel reports this morning of 'new' evidence of a torture prison housed at the Polish military airbase of Stare Kiejkuty, north of Szymany. It's certainly an important revelation, and it was just as important in March 2007 when Raw Story originally identified Stare Kiejkuty as being part of the CIA's secret rendition and detention program.
'New' evidence of secret CIA detention site in Poland reported by Raw Story 2 years ago...
New evidence of a secret torture prison
It has long been clear that the CIA used the Szymany military airbase in Poland for extraordinary renditions. Now there is new evidence of a secret torture prison nearby.
It was apparently here, just under an hour's drive from Szymany airport, that Sheikh Mohammed was tortured exactly 183 times with waterboarding -- an interrogation technique that simulates the sensation of drowning -- in March 2003 alone. That averages out to eight times a day. And all of this happened right here in Europe.
Over six years later, these acts of torture are putting President Obama under intense pressure. On the one hand, he released four memos in which his predecessor George W. Bush had legalized such interrogation methods. On the other hand, he decided not to prosecute the torturers. And he initially neglected to launch investigations into these "special interrogation methods."
Looking Back at Abu Ghraib 5 Years Later
In the next few days, we have been told that we will see thousands of new pictures of prisoner abuse, this time released by the Pentagon in response to an ACLU legal filing. This disclosure is sad -- and sadly overdue.These are illustrations of pathological elements of Bush administration policy that should have been made public years ago.
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How Ali Soufan, an FBI agent, got Abu Zubaydah to talk without torture.
The arguments at the CIA safe house were loud and intense in the spring of 2002. Inside, a high-value terror suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was handcuffed to a gurney. He had been wounded during his capture in Pakistan and still had bullet fragments in his stomach, leg and groin. Agency operatives were aiming to crack him with rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics—including stripping him nude, turning down the temperature and bombarding him with loud music. But one impassioned young FBI agent wanted nothing to do with it. He tried to stop them.
Interrogation techniques' efficacy wasn't scrutinized
The CIA used an arsenal of severe interrogation techniques on Al Qaeda prisoners for nearly seven years without seeking a rigorous assessment of whether the methods were effective or necessary, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The failure to conduct a comprehensive examination occurred despite calls to do so as early as 2003. That year, the agency's inspector general circulated drafts of a report that raised deep concerns about the use of waterboarding and other methods, and recommended a study by outside experts on whether those techniques worked.
CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks
The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.
That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.
Military agency: warned "torture" methods unreliable
The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information."
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