BARACK Obama has revived Bush-era military trials for Guantanamo Bay terror
suspects he once branded a ``failure'', but with new rules.
- RIC'S COMMENT.
- I was shocked and horrified when I heard tonight over CNN that one prisoner at Guantanamo was tortured by water-boarding 82 times. This means he was submerged until he lost all the air out of his lungs and the water started to rush in through his mouth and nostrils 82 times. Many died in agony from this method. Some members of the past Bush government say it wasn't really torture, and it was necessary and still advocate this practice. My God are we still back in Nazi times? It appears that some tortures were from the hands of special interrogators who had been contracted to do the dirty work. The United States is beginning to disgust me. Even President Obama is starting to backslide. I thought the hypocrisy and shenanigans of Canadian governmental practices and the thug-like tactics of the R.C.M.P.were pretty bad and I still do, but we are still innocent compared with governmental murderers and torturers south of our border.
- I am so proud not to be an American.(Ric)
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
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President Barack Obama will try to block this month's planned release of photos showing US personnel allegedly abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, agreeing with top military commanders' concerns that publicising the pictures could put American troops in extra danger, a White House official said today.
Obama decided he "did not feel comfortable" with the release and last week instructed his legal team to fight it in court, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the president's decision had not yet been made public.
Obama has instructed administration lawyers to make the case that "the national security implications of such a release have not been fully realized....
In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain. The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their US interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic. Most of those taken captive were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They include at least one Afghani soldier, Jamal Naseer, who was mistakenly arrested in 2004. “Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables,” Sifton writes. “Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.” Another Afghan killing occurred in 2002. Mohammad Sayari was killed by four U.S. servicemembers after being detained for allegedly “following their movements.” A Pentagon document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2005 said that the Defense Department found a captain and three sergeants had “murdered” Sayari, but the section dealing with the department’s probe was redacted. Perhaps the most macabre case occurred in Iraq, which was documented in aHuman Rights First report in 2006. “Nagem Sadoon Hatab… a 52-year-old Iraqi, was killed while in U.S. custody at a holding camp close to Nasiriyah,” the group wrote. “Although a U.S. Army medical examiner found that Hatab had died of strangulation, the evidence that would have been required to secure accountability for his death – Hatab’s body – was rendered unusable in court. Hatab’s internal organs were left exposed on an airport tarmac for hours; in the blistering Baghdad heat, the organs were destroyed; the throat bone that would have supported the Army medical examiner’s findings of strangulation was never found.” In another graphic instance, a former Iraqi general was beaten by US forces and suffocated to death. The military officer charged in the death was given just 60 days house arrest. “Abed Hamed Mowhoush [was] a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death,” Human Rights First writes. “In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.” Another Iraqi man was killed in a US detention facility on Mosul in 2003. “U.S. military personnel who examined Kenami when he first arrived at the facility determined that he had no preexisting medical conditions,” the rights group writes. “Once in custody, as a disciplinary measure for talking, Kenami was forced to perform extreme amounts of exercise—a technique used across Afghanistan and Iraq. Then his hands were bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he was hooded, and forced to lie in an overcrowded cell. Kenami was found dead the morning after his arrest, still bound and hooded. No autopsy was conducted; no official cause of death was determined. After the Abu Ghraib scandal, a review of Kenami’s death was launched, and Army reviewers criticized the initial criminal investigation for failing to conduct an autopsy; interview interrogators, medics, or detainees present at the scene of the death; and collect physical evidence. To date, however, the Army has taken no known action in the case.”
United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according areport published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.
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