Torture and Detention
Frequently Asked Questions (scroll down for article archives and further resources)
"If anyone acts like they don't know their government is torturing people on a widespread and systematic scale, they are choosing NOT to know. We have to continue to lead people to act against this -- going out to people, into classes, to institutions, and on worldcantwait.org. Too many people have learned to accept this, there is not nearly enough opposition to the revelations about these top level torture meetings -- but this is something that can change quickly if a beginning core acts with moral clarity..." -Debra Sweet, Director of World Can't Wait
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Torture + Silence = Complicity!
Act Now to Stop Torture!
Has Obama put an end to torture, rendition, and indefinite detention? Facts you need to know:
1. Obama admits Bush officials tortured, but refuses to prosecute them.
Cheney has bragged about authorizing water boarding of detainees. In January 2009, Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, that he believed water boarding was torture. Torture is a violation of Geneva Conventions. The Obama administration is, therefore, not only morally, but legally, required to prosecute Bush Regime officials for torture.
2. Under Obama, the U.S. is still holding detainees without charges or trial.
During the campaign Obama declared habeas corpus to be “the foundation of Anglo-American law.”Habeas corpus is your right to challenge your detention. It is a 900-year- old right. Without habeas corpus there are no restraints on a government’s powers to detain and punish.
Contrary to his rhetoric, the Obama administration is continuing the Bush Regime’s policies of denying prisoners habeas corpus rights and has even adopted the same arguments made by Bush. In February 2009, the Obama administration declared in Federal Court that it would not grant habeas corpus rights to detainees in U.S. custody in Bagram, Afghanistan.
In March 2009 Obama’s Justice Department claimed that Guantanamo prisoners who were detained before June 2008 had no habeas corpus rights. On May 21, 2010 the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the Obama administration, holding that three prisoners who are being held by the U. S. at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan cannot challenge their detention in U.S. courts.
3. Don’t be fooled just because Obama isn’t using the term “enemy combatant”
The Obama administration will no longer use the term “enemy combatant,” but it’s a change in name only: in the same court filing in which it made this announcement, Obama’s Justice Department made clear that it would continue to detain prisoners at Guantanamo without charge. As the NY Times put it:
“[T]he [Obama] Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held, which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration.”
Meanwhile, Obama’s executive orders do not ban indefinite detention. In addition, at his confirmation hearing, Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder said: “There are possibly many other people who are not going to be able to be tried but who nevertheless are dangerous to this country… We’re going to have to try to figure out what we do with them.” Holder suggested prisoners could be detained for the length of their war of terror which, as we know, has no set end point.
4. Guantanamo is still open. The prison at Bagram is growing and torture is being committed.
According to Reuters, abuse of prisoners worsened shortly after the election of Obama:
“Abuses began to pick up in December 2008 after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.”
Earlier this year Scott Horton reported in Harper’s Magazine on three murders of detainees in 2006 at Guantanamo that the military tried to cover up as suicides. More is coming out about torture at Bagram Detention Center in Afghanistan. Recently Andy Worthington reported on the detention and torture of three teenagers in his article, “Torture and the ‘Black’Prison,” or What Obama is Doing at Bagram (Part One).”
On June 7, 2010 Chris Floyd of Empire Burlesque wrote that under the Bush Regime medical personnel experimented on detainees to prove that the techniques used did not constitute torture. The chilling history of Nazi medical experimentation on those in concentration camps lurks in this revelation. (http://chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/1976- echoes-of-mengele-medical-experiments-torture-and- continuity-in-the-american-gulag.html)
This is a violation of Geneva Conventions and there is evidence that these experiments are going on under Obama.
5. Obama is continuing rendition.
During his confirmation hearing, new CIA director Leon Panetta made it clear the Obama administration will continue rendition. Rendition is the practice of kidnapping somebody in one country and shipping them to another country for detention. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said “Rendition is a violation of sovereignty. It’s a kidnapping. It’s force and violence…Once you open the door to rendition, you’re opening the door, essentially, to a lawless world.”
Obama supporters have attempted to draw the distinction between this practice and “extraordinary rendition,” defined as the practice of transferring somebody to another country knowing that they will be tortured. During his confirmation hearing, Leon Panetta said that under the Bush administration, “There were efforts by the CIA to seek and to receive assurances that those individuals would not be mistreated.” So Panetta is embracing the practices of the Bush Regime by continuing rendition!
Panetta then added, “I will seek the same kind of assurances that those individuals will not be mistreated.” (emphasis added)
Articles on Torture and Detention:
A Call to End All Renditions
- Category: Torture and Detention
By Marjorie Cohn
Guantánamo: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
- Category: Torture and Detention
By Andy Worthington
On January 22, in an executive order relating to the closure of Guantánamo, President Barack Obama established a comprehensive review of the cases of the remaining 242 prisoners, to work out
who could be released and who should continue to be held. The executive order explained that the review was to be “conducted with the full cooperation and participation” of the Attorney General, the Secretaries of Defense, State and Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but in reality, it was expected that the lead would be taken by the Justice Department.
Bush Policymaker Escapes Berkeley's Wrath
- Category: Torture and Detention
February 11, 2009
Yoo is a visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law in Orange, on leave from his tenured post at UC Berkeley to teach foreign relations law.
But a small group of local activists said they hope to stir up anger at the 14-year-old law school in the thick of conservative Orange County.
Yoo Visits U. of Iowa: Hot Protest Outside, Academic Talk Inside
- Category: Torture and Detention
Approximately 25 protesters lined up outside, some with signs - "I disapprove of Yoo," "Shame on Yoo," "Who Would Jesus Torture" - while three symbolically wore black pillow cases over their heads.
Inside, controversial University of California-Berkeley Professor John Yoo delivered a chapter from his upcoming book, Globalization and Structure, to around 25 UI College of Law faculty members and two students. A 40-minute question-and-answer session followed.
Notably absent, however, were questions about Yoo's much-debated role in former President George W. Bush's administration, which was the bone of contention for protesters outside.
Hiding Torture in U.S. and U.K.
- Category: Torture and Detention
A Call to End All Renditions
- Category: Torture and Detention
Obama’s Justice Department: Covering up Outsourcing of Torture and Death
- Category: Torture and Detention
By Kenneth J. Theisen
agencies overseas, where they were tortured during interrogation. In order to cover itself and its various allies in this illegal program, the Bush administration intervened in the case, asserting the "state secrets" privilege and claiming the case would undermine national security if it was allowed to be heard by the court. The Bush regime also wanted to protect the Boeing subsidiary so that private contractors would continue to cooperate in the various illegal “war on terror” programs initiated by various U.S. intelligence agencies after 9/11. The administration further wished to provide political protection to various foreign governments that participated in the extraordinary rendition program. This case, if allowed to proceed, would expose that the Bush regime was deeply involved in torture and death through its secret rendition program. It may also reveal secrets of the Clinton’s administration use of rendition.ACLU: Justice Dept Stands Behind Bush Secrecy In Extraordinary Rendition Case
- Category: Torture and Detention
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 9, 2009
NEW YORK – The Justice Department today repeated Bush administration claims of "state secrets" in a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan for its role in the extraordinary rendition program. Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen was brought on behalf of five men who were kidnapped and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated under torture. The Bush administration intervened in the case, inappropriately asserting the "state secrets" privilege and claiming the case would undermine national security. Oral arguments were presented today in the American Civil Liberties Union's appeal of the dismissal, and the Obama administration opted not to change the government position in the case, instead reasserting that the entire subject matter of the case is a state secret.
Hunger Strike at Guantanamo
- Category: Torture and Detention
By Andy Worthington
Right to Secrecy Trumps Human Rights?
- Category: Torture and Detention
World Can’t Wait Asks, “Why Should the U.S. Government’s Right to Secrecy Trump the Right of People Not to be Tortured?
Today, five men who were flown in CIA “extraordinary rendition” and subsequently tortured by third countries are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate the case of Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. In 2008, the Bush administration convinced U.S. District Judge James Ware to throw out the case, on the basis that making the information in the lawsuit public would harm U.S. national security.
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have direct testimony of torture from the five who were transported in CIA sponsored flights by Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of Boeing, and testimony to show that employees of Jeppesen knew they were planning flights in what has become known infamously as the “Torture Taxi.” Binyam Mohamed, says he was seized by the U.S. in Pakistan and tortured before being flown to Morocco and further tortured. He is now imprisoned at the U.S. interrogation camp in Guantanamo.
Fire and Disbar John Yoo Campaign Arrives in Southern California
- Category: Torture and Detention
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