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UN Experts to Probe Secret CIA Detention Centers
GENEVA - Two United Nations special rapporteurs said Tuesday they would investigate secret detention centres used by the CIA in counter-terrorism efforts.
The CIA symbol is shown on the floor of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Two United Nations special rapporteurs said Tuesday they would investigate secret detention centres used by the CIA in counter-terrorism efforts. (AFP/Getty Images/File) "We call on all governments to cooperate, not just in clarifying the facts, but in ensuring that such secret detention centres will no longer be used in the future," Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture said.
Nowak and Martin Scheinin, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism will study locations alleged to have hosted such secret detention centres, including US military bases.
Besides secret jails run by the CIA, the study would also probe alleged prisons run by other governments.
Scheinin said such prisons were "one of the most horrendous practices" that emerged after the September 11 attacks in the US, while Nowak hoped that this "will stop, and perhaps is in the process of being stopped."
The results of the probe should be ready in a year.
The two independent experts mandated by the UN Human Rights Council hailed US President Barack Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo prison and all CIA prisons operating abroad.
Nowak said he was also "very encouraged" by the fact that Warsaw is probing allegations of a secret CIA jail near Szymany in northeast Poland.
Besides alleged detention centres in Poland and Romania, the two experts will look into the role played by over 10 American military bases in the world, which have been alleged to have also sheltered secret jails.
"We are fully aware" of the problem, said Nowak, citing the military base of Tuzla in Bosnia, which was suspected of having served as a temporary holding centre for detainees before their transfer to Guantanamo.
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Show AllIf 5 men, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, have signed a confession that they were responsble for planning the 9/11 attacks after 5 years of torture and brainwashing, I would hope that the U.N. would investigate those men too......
Personally,I believe they were brinwashed to believe that they had planned the attacks, but actually have no knowledge of any of the details other than what their captors have given them. Who financed the operation? Where are the credit card accounts? Who put the explosives in the three buildings?
If there is a thorough investigation of the illegal prisons and rendition of the prisoners, will there be an international court of law to prosecute those responsible for thoes "Crimes Against Humanity"?
Commissions......probes......exploratory committees.......executive priviledge......national security......the unitary executive......diplomatic immunity......next time one of We the People get caught smoking a joint, speeding, not paying some illegal tax etc. etc. etc........try using those terms and create your own smoke and mirrors .....SEE HOW FAR IT GETS YOU. Indictment, trial, conviction, incarceration, justice...words that have meaning only against We the Peons.
Hopefully an investigation of Bagram is first in priority....preferably BEFORE it is doubled in size.
Some of the worst abuses (detainees suspended from ceilings, gasoline being injected into detainee's anuses, etc) occurred/are occurring in Bagram, yet because Guantanamo is "closed" and the CIA must now abide by the Army Manual, people seem to have forgotten about this torture center...
For more information on what we can do to push Obama to make meaningful and effective decisions, visit www.100dayscampaign.org
Deepa
""We call on all governments to cooperate, not just in clarifying the facts, but in ensuring that such secret detention centres will no longer be used in the future," Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture said."
What is the purpose of the probe by the UN experts? Is it to bring the criminals to accountability? Or just to ensure "that such secret detention centres will no longer be used in the future"? If later is the only purpose of this investigation, then US, UK, Australia, Spain, Canada... will continue to indulge in similar activities, without any sense of accountability.
Most of these countries are also members of the UN Security Council with veto power. The basic question is: when these countries which are supposed to further SECURITY in the world are the cause of insecurity and instability, and violators of human rights, UNSC does not have any legitimacy?
Along with death and destruction in Iraq, prisons have become centers of detention of defenseless men, women and children without charges and without due legal process. They have also become centers of psychological and physical torture in violation of international laws.
According to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) there are about 21000 prisoners held in Iraq by the US forces. It reports: "The detainees – all Iraqis, save for a small number of foreigners – are effectively denied their basic right not to be held indefinitely without charge or trial. Many are young men rounded up in mass, arbitrary arrests…On average detainees remain in custody for more than 300 days, according to MNF (US-led Multinational Force-Iraq) figures as of May (2008). The detainees divided between a remote prison near Basra and a smaller one near Baghdad’s airport, have little access to relatives, who in many cases cannot afford to visit or fear reprisal."
HRW further comments that these prisoners have “no meaningful access to legal counsel and no judicial review – both of which detainees are entitled to under international law.” It notes that “There are 360 children among the detainees, down from 500 in May (2008). Many have been held for months and some for more than a year.”
Deepa
The systemic torture of Iraqi prisoners by the Americans was confirmed by the testimony of Army Captain Ian Fishback and two sergeants from the 82nd Airborne Division. In September 2005 they wrote to ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and told the Human Rights Watch that they witnessed torture of prisoners near Fallujah, Iraq, in 2003 and early 2004. Some of the same tactics depicted in the Abu Ghraib photos were used. The death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush in 2003 in US custody in northern Iraq, adds to the list of the US torture victims.
Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr., an Army Interrogator, bound him, stuffed him in a sleeping bag, and then sat on Mowhoush's chest in an effort to get information about the Iraqi insurgency. As a result, the Iraqi general suffocated and died.
Another confirmation of torture of Iraqis by the American crusaders comes from Tony Lagouranis, a specialist in a military intelligence battalion. He interrogated prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Al Asad Airfield and other places in Iraq from January through December of 2004. He said that coercive techniques, including the use of dogs, waterboarding and prolonged stress positions, were employed on the detainees. The prisoners held at Al Asad Airfield, about 110 miles northwest of Baghdad, were shackled and hung from an upright bed frame welded to the wall in a room in an airplane hanger. Lagouranis confessed, “I started realizing that most of the prisoners were innocent…We were torturing people for no reason.”
The torture of Iraqi prisoners under the US custody is in compliance with torture policies authorized by the American officials. Mary McCarthy, a CIA Deputy Inspector General, realized that the CIA had not only conducted abusive interrogations but also policies that authorized treatment that was cruel, inhumane or degrading. According to the HRW, Iraqi prisoners’ abuse in US custody in Iraq is systemic, routine and authorized. HRW further notes that the detainees routinely faced severe beatings, sleep deprivation and other abuses during 2003-2005.
Deepa
The torture programs implemented by the CIA and the US Military Intelligence in Iraq and elsewhere are the decades-long programs developed by these two agencies. McCoy says that the Abu Ghraib photos of prisoners in hooding, stress positions, extreme intimidation with ferocious dogs and sexual humiliation reveal the psychological and physical torture that the CIA has been employing for years.
Realizing that the psychological torture produces better results than the physical torture, the CIA in 1950s and 1960s was involved in a program called Mkultra. As a result, “(f)rom 1950 to 1962, the CIA became involved in torture through a massive mind-control effort, with psychological warfare and secret research into human consciousness that reached a cost of a billion dollars annually—a veritable Manhattan Project of the mind.”
The PSYWAR methods developed in Mkultra have been “refined” as described in the CIA’s torture manual KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation and the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual – 1983 (HRE) . The methods described in these two documents include: forced drugging, hooding, sexual humiliation, extended sensory deprivation, prolonged interrogation, environmental and dietary manipulation, beatings, stress positions and other methods of “self-inflicted pain.” Kleinman informed that he witnessed an Iraqi prisoner forced to kneel beneath a spotlight and repeatedly hit across the face with every answer he gave, and the interrogators were baffled when he tried to stop the beating.
The documents released in June of 2008 by the Senate Armed Service Committee (SASC) confirm that the top officials in Washington have approved the methods used in SERE resistance training to be used on prisoners under US custody. The SASC released a new set of documents that throw additional light on the origins of US torture policies.
Mark Mazzetti reports: "The documents provide new details about the still-murky early months of the C.I.A.’s detention program, when the agency began using a set of harsh interrogation techniques weeks before the Justice Department issued a written legal opinion in August 2002 authorizing their use. Congressional investigators have long tried to determine exactly who authorized these techniques before legal opinion was completed."
It is now evident that the top officials of the Bush administration not only discussed in the White House about torturing “enemy combatants”, but also gave a formal legal authority to use torture methods on them.
Deepa....
Thank you for posting this information, as it is difficult to come by even with the Google tubes...
More people need to know about the covert operations of the CIA, no matter how uncomfortable the info is...
Project Paperclip that brought over the Nazi scientists and military strategists to the US, Operation Northwoods & Garden Plot, whichbplan war games and the potential overthrow of the Republic, Operation Artichoke that brainwashed and trained military personnel to become assassins like the guys who shot Reagan and Lennon, Operation Condor and Phoenix in Vietnam, And the CIA creatingt he Mujahadeen and Al Queda in Heroinistan to bankrupt Russia, and later using the same Wahabbists in the Former Yugoslavia to carry out ethnic cleansing campaigns through Operation Cyclone...
The CIA needs to be dismantled, along with the National Security Agency, if we are to get our Republic back...
Should it surprise anyone that the Detention Centers in the USA were built and owned by Halliburton, a Bush Family investment? Were they afraid of the coming
Depression that has been brought on by Bubba Clinton under the leadership of
George HW Bush? In Maine we have no worry, Pat Lamarche the promoter of the
Casino in Bethel will protect us..
There isn't a patriot left in the USA. Everyone who supports the agenda of the US government today is either bought or enslaved.
We really need to put the people that created this situation in prison.
Maybe one of those prison's that Haliburton built.
If we don't we are leaving ourselves and others open to further abuse.
Why Bush was not impeached I'll never know.