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TechnoratiRights Group Wants US Officials Probed For Ordering Torture
WASHINGTON - A Nobel-prize-winning rights group said US officials committed war crimes by ordering what the group says was torture of detainees, and called for them to be probed and prosecuted.
"There must be a complete and independent investigation of what happened in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other places where terrorist suspects were detained," Allen Keller of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) told a briefing in the US House of Representatives Thursday.
"We urge that a full investigation in the form of an independent non-partisan commission that has access to all documents and has subpoena power to obtain relevant documents as well as the testimony of officials," PHR president Leonard Rubenstein said.
"There must be accountability... accountability must include prosecuting individuals who have committed war crimes, whatever their place in the chain of command," he added.
The doctors described graphically how detainees held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq and Afghanistan had been subjected to "torture and abuse while in US custody that was sadly second to none."
The ordeals suffered by the 11 detainees, all of whom have been released without charge, were outlined in a report compiled by PHR and released three weeks ago.
Keller told how one former Guantanamo prisoner who was interviewed for the report was beaten, stripped naked, subjected to intimidation by dogs, hooded, thrown against a wall and sustained electric shocks from a generator.
He also endured sexual humiliation, including an incident where "a naked woman entered the interrogation room and smeared him with what he believed to be menstrual blood."
Another prisoner was "forced to lie face-down in urine and sodomized with a broomstick," Keller said.
"As a physician and scientist who has spent much of his professional career evaluating and caring for victims of torture and abuse, I want to clearly state that torture and inhuman interrogation techniques are cruel, ineffective and can have devastating health consequences," Keller said.
"I am very concerned that when we as a country condone such methods, we are putting our soldiers and other US citizens living around the world at risk," he added.
"We have violated the golden rule that we preached for years: don't torture. So what do we do? We change the name. We called it 'enhanced interrogation techniques'," Keller said.
PHR president Rubenstein echoed the call for a probe.
"Accountability must include prosecuting individuals who have committed war crimes, whatever their place in the chain of command," said Rubenstein.
In the preface to the PHR report entitled "Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical evidence of torture by US personnel and its impact," retired US Army general Antonio Teguba said bluntly that there was "no longer any doubt that the current administration has committed war crimes."
"The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account," said Teguba, who led the official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.
Abu Ghraib prison became infamous after the publication in 2004 of photographs showing Iraqi detainees being humiliated and abused by their US guards. The scandal led to the sentencing of 11 US soldiers to up to 10 years in prison.
Physicians for Human Rights shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 as one of the original steering committee members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
© 2008 Agence France Presse
13 Comments so far
Show AllIt will take another country to take these offenders to task because you won't hear of any accountability from our Congress, the Justice Dept., or Attorney General. So these thugs will have to watch their back if they ever try to vacation in another country as war crimes and inhumane treatment of prisoners is against the law throughout the world, excepting Bush's regime.
If that is not another Natzi Germany in the Making, what else can it be.
Bornfreemen
RIGHT ON BORNFREEMEN!
But this started after 9/11. Then came the rest of the NAZI script, the invasion and occupation of other countries. The only difference is, back then it was called communist aggression and occupation when they did it. But when WE do it, it's called several names...liberating, fighting terrorists, or making Americans safe!
My dear friends,there are all kinds of torture.
One need only look at his own community.
All over the USA, there are local community watch groups cunducting 24/7 illegal survielllance on citizens in your community they don't like.
Why, to build the new USA spy netowrk. Supported by DHS dollars.
They do not try to hide the fact that they are following you.
This will destroy the targets mind, while providing training and building controll over community watch troops.
Thats national torture at a level that equals the rise of the Natzi police state.
We have millions of American spys condcuting torture on 100s of thousands of Americans.
The silent war crime.
Our nation has become mentaly ill and drunk on sadism.
My community has slandered me as Delusional.
Imagine, organized community watch groups that practise gang stalking mind control tactics so that they can claim you are Delusional.
If that is not another Natzi Germany in the Making, what else can it be.
Bornfreemen
Nice title. Do onto others...
The grocery tabloids have described the kind of 'PROBING' that should be done to US officials who ordered or engaged in torture. I think it involves space aliens in disc shaped craft.
Bush and his handlers are guilty of this and much more, and there's no punishment too extreme for the violence they have visited upon the world.
Interesting choice of words for the headline....
Foget it!! Nothing will happen to those who violated US law, international law, and the Geneva Convention.....nothing. All of them, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Feith, Bybee, Yoo, Addington, Perle, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft are LAUGHING at YOU. YOU fell for the 911 false flag attacks.....fooling YOU is simple. YOU actually believe a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon, and then had the wreckage of a 100 ton airplane vanish into thin air. YOU believed that Iraq was part of the 911 attack, instead of the real enemy (Mossad). You believed that Iraq was supporting Al Queda. And, YOU support the immoral and illegal Israelis. NOTHING will happen to these war criminals who are no better than those executed after Nuremberg. Just remember, there were Nazis EXECUTED for the murders of Polish military members at Katyn, when the REAL killers were Russians. There will be no justice, as Obama does not have the courage, or the will, to confront the horror of those actually pulled off 911, and McCain is just a lost fool who can not remember what day it is.
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/alerts/429
Isn't congress holding hearings on this these days?
I'm sure it's lame and toothless, but the article seems to make no mention of it.
The Congress fiddled while Rome burned and the people went shopping while the dictator gobbled up more power.
"There must be a complete and independent investigation of what happened in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other places where terrorist suspects were detained,"
Nonsense! We don't need accountability. This is nothing a few rousing speeches from Obama can't fix.
"There is a hard core of people in the United States who will not be moved, whatever facts you present, from their conviction that this nation means only to do good, and almost always does good, in the world, that it is the beacon of liberty and freedom."
Howard Zinn
Bush/Cheney have turned every American citizen into an international criminal.
Heckovajob!
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html