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:
Waiting for Godot? Guantanamo Prisoners Don’t Have the Luxury
- Category: Torture and Detention
“Time. We can’t get it back. When it’s gone, it’s gone,” notes Frida Berrigan, WagingNonviolence.org, on the return of Connecticut National Guard soldiers from Guantanamo. “I am always happy when families are reunited, but the words of another father reuniting with his children rang through my head.” (Repatriated prisoner Shaker Aamer met his 13-year-old son Faris for the first time on October 31, 2015.) “All those innocent men released from Guantánamo and still struggling to find their footing in strange lands—and still struggling to heal from severe trauma—know it too.”
Close Guantanamo NOW January 11, 2016
- Category: Torture and Detention
Monday, January 11th will be 14 years since the Bush Regime set up Guantanamo
12:00 pm at The White House,
Washington DC Rally & March
Local actions being planned around the US
Cat Watters Interviews Andy Worthington and Debra Sweet on Release of Shaker Aamer
- Category: Torture and Detention
British Journalist Andy Worthington who wrote the Guantanamo Files and has been pushing for the release of Shaker Aamer, WE STAND WITH SHAKER, a British citizen held without charge or trial at GITMO for 14 years and cleared for release in by 2 Administrations.
More on the "Getting Rid" of Guantanamo
- Category: Torture and Detention
A likely scenario for the Obama administration to "close" Guantanamo may be announced very soon, to include:
First photos & news of Shaker Aamer, released from Guantanamo
- Category: Torture and Detention
"Hi Joanne and Andy, please send this message below to all of those who campaigned with We Stand With Shaker, the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, those who fasted for me, MPs, and everyone else you know who has fought for my release.
Shaker Aamer: A Voice for Truth and Justice is Finally Released From Guantanamo
- Category: Torture and Detention
It is rare that we hear anything good coming out of the criminal U.S. Detention Center in Guantanamo. But this morning people here in the U.S. who have been following the plight of those detained there woke to the news that at long last Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held at Guantanamo was enroute to the U.K. after 14 years of his life were stolen by the U.S. Government. The London Guantanamo Campaign put out the following press release:
Why Has Shaker Aamer Been Held At Guantanamo For So Very Long?
- Category: Torture and Detention
In an interview with Democracy Now, Clive Stafford Smith, Shaker Aamer's attorney, was asked to elaborate on the point Shaker Aamer has made that his prolonged detention at Guantanamo — even though he has been cleared for release since 2007, — has been in part due to the fact that he witnessed the torture of the man whose torture-extracted testimony was cited by the Bush regime as justification for the devastating war on Iraq.
Talk is Cheap. Shaker Aamer's Freedom Hangs in the Balance
- Category: Torture and Detention
World Can't Wait Calls for Immediate Release of Shaker Aamer. Not One More Day of Torture for the Last British Resident of Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter's notice of intent to repatriate the illegally detained "terror suspect" -- Mr Aamer has never been charged with a crime -- is a welcome development.
DePaul Students Demand Removal of “Torture” Dean
- Category: Torture and Detention
The role of members of the American Psychological Association (APA) in facilitating, rationalizing and covering up torture committed by CIA and Department of Defense (DoD) personnel at Guantanamo was confirmed in detail three months ago with the release of the Hoffman Report that investigated long-standing allegations against the APA’s leadership. One name came up more than 200 times in that report: Dr. Gerald P. Koocher, Dean of the College of Science and Health at DePaul University, Chicago.
Guantanamo: Change of Venue is Not Closure - Preemptive Imprisonment Must End!
- Category: Torture and Detention
Last month, word leaked out that the Pentagon is considering various Federal and military prisons in the U.S. to imprison the men held at Guantanamo unlawfully and in inhumane conditions for more than 12 years in most cases. Meanwhile, Ash Carter, Secretary of Defense, is selling this scheme with despicable arguments about “saving U.S. taxpayers money ” and “depriving Islamic fundamentalists of a recruitment tool. ”
Justice Detained, Justice Denied: Indefinite Detention and Torture Continue as Law of the Land
- Category: Torture and Detention
After years of struggle to learn, expose and stop what the American Psychological Association did to support U.S. torture and detention policies, we celebrate a recent victory for people of conscience who have long spoken out and forced revelations of 14 years of sordid, and criminally complicit, history. Last week, the APA voted to ban psychologists from participating in the interrogation and torturing of detainees at Guantanamo, on vessels in international waters, and in black sites.