User:Rama/Bush era torture

Review of articles by the Guardian

Extreme Reaction Force
Five-man teams at Guantanamo, beat prisoners into submission. (TGF133)

They pepper-sprayed me in the face and I started vomiting (...) they pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed. -- The Guantanamo files, p.133
 * Tarek Dergoul: For refusing to agree to a third cell search in a day (...)


 * 32 hours of abuse on film according to the Pentagon.


 * US soldier Sean Baker posing as a detainee, beaten causing debilitating injuries and consecutively discharged.

"monstering"
Non-stop interrogation at Bagram.

Initially limited to 24 hours, interrogator remains with the prisoner, and thus subject to the same treatment and sleep deprivation (Chris Mackey).

Relief by Lt. Carolyn Wood, 525th Military Intelligence Brigade:
 * time extend to over 36 hours, "optimum time" between 32 and 36 hours (TGF174)
 * prisoners systematically shackled in isolation for first 24 hours of imprisonment
 * nudity
 * sexual humiliations
 * dogs
 * electricity
 * hanging by wrists (Omar Deghayes, Richard Belmar, Jamal Kiyemba, Mohammed al-Amin)
 * stress positions
 * rape


 * US troops torturing US mercenaries in Iraq

Beatings

 * Extreme reaction force: US soldier Sean Baker permanently incapacitated
 * Richard Belmar: skull fracture by rifle stock
 * Al-Rawi (MI5 agent captured by US), CIA Dark Prison, Kabul: "On the way, 'they really beat me and Jamil up. Of course I was hooded, so I couldn't see anything. But you know how you see in cartoons when people get hit on the head and they see stars? I thought, ah, now I know what those cartoons mean. I saw stars.'"
 * Jamal Abdullah Kiyemba "physically assaulted by the Emergency Reaction Force at Guantanamo Bay"
 * "Abdullah", man interviewed by Amnesty International in Kandahar province in Afghanistan . US base in Kandahar, 17 March 2002: "lined up and ordered to lie down on the gravel, where they lay for several hours. He said that during this time, he was kicked in his ribs. He said that all the men had hoods placed over their heads and were searched by dogs"
 * "According to Americans with direct knowledge and others who have witnessed the treatment, captives are often "softened up" by MPs and U.S. Army Special Forces troops who beat them up and confine them in tiny rooms. The alleged terrorists are commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep. The tone of intimidation and fear is the beginning, they said, of a process of piercing a prisoner's resistance."
 * Al-Zamil "While walking to the place of interrogation, the guards would continuously hit me on my head with sticks, and every time I their accusations during interrogations (of being tied to Al-Qaeda) the guards would hit me even more, hold me high up and then fling me to the floor"
 * Sami el-Leithi, Guantanamo: dropped on the floor, stomped upon and head forcer backwards, resulting in two broken vertebra and causing permanent paralysis (TGF193)
 * Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, Bagram Air Base and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, released in 2006: "They were beating me, they put me in the snow, in the cold, until I was unconscious."

Hypothermia

 * unknown prisonner dies at Salt Pit in November 2002
 * Al-Rawi (MI5 agent captured by US), CIA Dark Prison, Kabul: "The unheated cell was so cold he could feel ice crystals on the water he was occasionally given to drink. 'For three days or so I just sat in the corner, shivering"
 * Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, Bagram Air Base and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, released in 2006: "They were beating me, they put me in the snow, in the cold, until I was unconscious."
 * Icy water

Sexual abuse

 * Jamal Abdullah Kiyemba "threatened with rape at Bagram"
 * "Abdullah", man interviewed by Amnesty International in Kandahar province in Afghanistan . US base in Kandahar, 17 March 2002: "the men were shaved of all their facial and body hair. Abdullah said that he was shaved by a woman."
 * Afghan national Alif Khan, US base in Kandahar, March 2002: "daily intimate body searches, in what he described to Amnesty International as being “searched from both sides”."
 * "Amir", Abu Ghraib: forced to lay down in urine and feces, stay naked in his cell for days, howl like a dog while on a dog leash, sodomized with a broomstick, genitals stepped on.

Electricity

 * "forced nudity, sexual humiliation, sexual assaults, and the use of dogs and electric shocks were described by numerous prisoners." (TGF, p.174)

Hypothermia

 * Icy water
 * "A prisoner could be doused with 41-degree water but for only 20 minutes at a stretch."

Water cure

 * In 2004, when Daniel B. Levin, then the acting assistant attorney general in the counsel’s office, sent a letter to the C.I.A. reauthorizing waterboarding, he dictated the terms: no more than two sessions of two hours each, per day, with both a doctor and a psychologist in attendance. In 2007, Steven G. Bradbury, then in charge of the office, wrote a two-page letter simply to extend the authorization for use of a particular technique — its name is redacted — for an extra day, until “1700 E.S.T., November 8, 2007.”

Rape

 * Hussain Mustafa, from Azarka, Jordan . In Bagram: "An American soldier took me blindfolded, my hands were tightly cuffed, with my ears plugged so I could not hear properly, and my mouth covered so I could only make a muffled scream. Two soldiers (one each side) forced me to bend down, and a third pressed my face down over a table. A fourth soldier then pulled down my trousers. "They forcibly rammed a stick up my rectum. It was excruciatingly painful. I have always believed that I am not a person who would scream unless I was really hurt. But I could not stop screaming when this happened. This torture went on for several minutes, but it felt like hours, and the pain afterwards was almost as bad as anything I experienced at the time." Cited in TGF, p.175

Stress positions

 * Jamal Abdullah Kiyemba "made to kneel for hours at a time with his hands cuffed behind his head" (also crucified)
 * Sayed Abbasin, March 2002, Bagram: "made to kneel for hours and also subjected to sleep deprivation and prolonged shackling. Others have made similar allegations."
 * "US military officials in Afghanistan have since been quoted confirming the use of these techniques [stress and duress], and former prisoners have also alleged their use. The techniques alleged include prolonged standing or kneeling, hooding, blindfolding with spray-painted goggles, being kept in painful or awkward positions, sleep deprivation, and 24-hour lighting."

Crucifiction

 * Bagram, 2002: Omar Deghayes, Richard Belmar, Jamal Kiyemba, Mohammed al-Amin (reports being hung for 48 hours in periods of two hours with 30 minutes of pause, no sleep) (TGF174)
 * Jamal Abdullah Kiyemba "periodically hung up on a door for hours at a time"
 * "al-Amin was tied by his hands to the ceiling "for days on end"" (TGF p.174)
 * "I had to kneel on the cold concrete throughout the interrogation with my cuffed hands above my head" (TGF p. 175)

Sensory deprivation

 * Al-Rawi (MI5 agent captured by US)
 * the totality of the conditions in which most of the Guantánamo detainees have been held, including the indefinite, prolonged and isolating nature of the detentions, can amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Prolonged incommunicado detention, an abuse to which detainees held in Bagram Air Base and at undisclosed locations have been subjected, not only facilitates torture but can also itself constitute a form of cruel treatment.
 * number of hours he could be kept in a box (eight hours for the large box, two hours for the small one)

Sleep depravation

 * Sayed Abbasin, March 2002, Bagram: "made to kneel for hours and also subjected to sleep deprivation and prolonged shackling. Others have made similar allegations."
 * "US military officials in Afghanistan have since been quoted confirming the use of these techniques [stress and duress], and former prisoners have also alleged their use. The techniques alleged include prolonged standing or kneeling, hooding, blindfolding with spray-painted goggles, being kept in painful or awkward positions, sleep deprivation, and 24-hour lighting."
 * Other U.S. government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that interrogators deprive some captives of sleep, a practice with ambiguous status in international law. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the authoritative interpreter of the international Convention Against Torture, has ruled that lengthy interrogation may incidentally and legitimately cost a prisoner sleep. But when employed for the purpose of breaking a prisoner's will, sleep deprivation "may in some cases constitute torture." The State Department's annual human rights report routinely denounces sleep deprivation as an interrogation method. In its 2001 report on Turkey, Israel and Jordan, all U.S. allies, the department listed sleep deprivation among often-used alleged torture techniques.
 * At night, members of Unit 94 would hit rocks with brooms throughout the cell block, making sleeping virtually impossible.
 * US troops torturing US mercenaries in Iraq

Deprivation of medical assistance

 * Sami el-Leithi, Guantanamo: two untreated broken vertebra caused permanent paralysis (TGF193)
 * Al-Zamil claims the guards slammed him on the head with iron handcuffs and though was bleeding, stayed for weeks without medical attention until infection set in. “The guard used to hit me and then apologise laugh with each other all the time,” he said.

General principles

 * "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA.."


 * Regulation of white noise, ligthening, time spent in boxes, nudity, food, cold water, sleep depravation, waterboarding.


 * Tony Blair received early torture warning, court told Guardian

Discipline

 * Speaking to the army's criminal investigation in 2004, one of the reservists said that President Bush's announcement, in February 2002, that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaeda and that Taliban fighters did not have rights as prisoners of war, led the interrogators to believe that they "could deviate slightly from the rules". (TGF, p. 173)


 * If the humiliation was not policy, then it was spontaneous - and so there was something wrong with US troops. The Army's claim was, of course, implausible. In order for it to be true, it would have meant that the officers had completely lost control of their troops. (...) there is little doubt that abuse of prisoners was policy. (America's secret war, George Friedman. p. 327)


 * There is little doubt that abuse of prisoners was policy. Shortly after 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld and others had made it clear that they would take any steps necessary to extract information from anyone they believed to have knowledge of pans to attack the US. Few Americans protested. Indeed, it felt that if someone knew of an impending nuclear attack, all means available had to be used. The problem was that this policy had trickled down from the strategic urgency of Al Qaeda and WMD to local prisonners in an Iraqi jail. The slippery slope had grabbed US policy. A policy that had broken with American tradition, and was to be used only in extraordinary circumstances, had become routine. (America's secret war, George Friedman. p. 327)


 * Whereas "monstering" had never exceeded 24 hours, one former interrogator said that they "decided on 32 to 36 hours as the optimal time to keep prisoners awake (...) It also became standard practice that new prisoners were hooded, shackled and kept in isolation for the first 24 hours of their imprisonment. (TGF, p.174)


 * US troops torturing US mercenaries in Iraq

Unidentified

 * Name: unknown
 * date of abduction: unknown
 * date of death: November 2002
 * cause of death: hypothermia
 * place: Salt Pit
 * reported: Dana Priest, Washington Post, March 2005
 * sources: TGF232; "CIA avoids scrutiny of detainee treatment", Dana Priest, Washington Post, 3 March 2005

Mullah Haribullah

 * Name: Mullah Haribullah
 * date of abduction:
 * date of death:
 * cause of death: Beating
 * place: Baghram
 * reported:
 * sources: TGF188

Dilawar

 * Name: Dilawar
 * date of abduction:
 * date of death:
 * cause of death: Beating
 * place: Baghram
 * reported:
 * sources: TGF188

Khaled el-Masri
German, abducted to Salt Pit, January 2004.

TGF233

Places

 * Camp nama : " in 2006, McChrystal was tainted by a scandal involving detainee abuse and torture at Camp Nama in Iraq. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, prisoners at the camp were subjected to a now-familiar litany of abuse: stress positions, being dragged naked through the mud."