Human Rights Glance
The Central Intelligence Agency has refused to turn over documents they were ordered to produce to a civil rights group under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
A federal judge ordered the agency to produce the documents — relating to the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program and secret prisons — by Monday, or provide a justification for withholding them. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
CIA refuses to release torture documents
PHR Analysis: CIA Health Professionals’ Role in Torture Worse Than Previously Known
The extent to which American physicians and psychologists violated human rights and betrayed the ethical standards of their professions by designing, implementing, and legitimizing a worldwide torture program is greater than previously known, according to a report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).
A team of PHR doctors authored the new white paper, Aiding Torture: Health Professionals' Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 Inspector General's Report. The report details how the CIA relied on medical expertise to rationalize and carry out abusive and unlawful interrogations.
Binyam Mohamed: I will fight for other prisoners
Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantanamo detainee, has reversed a decision to stay out of the public eye by signalling his determination to campaign for justice for prisoners at the American detention camp and highlight the lifelong effects of torture he suffered at the hands of his interrogators.
Six months after emerging as a frail and ghostly figure from the plane which brought him back to Britain from the US military prison in Cuba, Mr Mohamed last night used his first public speech since his release to explain the legacy of his seven years in detention.
Cheney ‘OK’ with violating felony torture statute
In an interview with Fox News to be aired this Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he is “OK” with CIA interrogations that violated Justice Department guidelines and condemned the prospect of any investigation of abuses as potentially “devastating” to morale.
The 2004 Inspector General’s report released on Monday cited numerous cases of possible violations of the felony torture statute.
Tutu to Haaretz: Arabs paying the price of the Holocaust
"The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns," Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa told Haaretz Thursday.
The Nobel Prize laureate spoke to Haaretz in Jerusalem as the organization The Elders concluded its tour of Israel and the West Bank. He said the West was consumed with guilt and regret toward Israel because of the Holocaust, "as it should be." "But who pays the penance? The penance is being paid by the Arabs, by the Palestinians. I once met a German ambassador who said Germany is guilty of two wrongs. One was what they did to the Jews. And now the suffering of the Palestinians."
Justice Department Urged Strict Detainee Confinement
Human rights groups and many law enforcement officials dismiss as ludicrous the notion that maximum security prisons cannot keep convicted terrorists securely locked up.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project, noted that a separate memo, dated May 7, 2004, and released this week, gives a different reason for keeping detainees in isolation: They might share information about the conditions of their captivity.
Report Shows Tight C.I.A. Control on Interrogations
Two 17-watt fluorescent-tube bulbs — no more, no less — illuminated each cell, 24 hours a day. White noise played constantly but was never to exceed 79 decibels. A prisoner could be doused with 41-degree water but for only 20 minutes at a stretch.
The Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program operated under strict rules, and the rules were dictated from Washington with the painstaking, eye-glazing detail beloved by any bureaucracy.
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