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<b>OUTSOURCING TORTURE<br>
</b>The secret history of </font>America's "extraordinary
rendition" program.<br>
<font face="arial" size=3> <br>
<br>
JANE</font> MAYER, New Yorker, 2/14/05<br>
<font face="arial" size=3><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6">http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6</a>
<br>
<br>
On January 27th, </font>President Bush, in an interview with the Times,
assured <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>the world that "torture is never
acceptable, nor do we hand over people to <br>
countries that do torture." </font>Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer
who was born in <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>Syria</font>, was surprised to learn of Bush's
statement. Two and a half years <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>ago, American officials, suspecting Arar of
being a terrorist, apprehended <br>
him in </font>New York and sent him back to Syria, where he endured
months of <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>brutal interrogation, including torture. When
Arar described his experience <br>
in a phone interview recently, he invoked an Arabic expression. The pain
<br>
was so unbearable, he said, that "you forget the milk that you have
been <br>
fed from the breast of your mother*"<br>
<br>
Rendition was originally carried out on a limited basis, but after <br>
September 11th, when </font>President Bush declared a global war on
terrorism, the <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>program expanded beyond recognition-becoming,
according to a former C.I.A. <br>
official, "an abomination." What began as a program aimed at a
small, <br>
discrete set of suspects-people against whom there were outstanding
foreign <br>
arrest warrants-came to include a wide and ill-defined population that
the <br>
Administration terms "illegal enemy combatants." Many of them
have never <br>
been publicly charged with any crime. </font>Scott Horton, an expert on
<br>
<font face="arial" size=3>international law who helped prepare a report
on renditions issued by <br>
N.Y.U.</font> Law School and the New York City Bar Association, estimates
that a <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>hundred and fifty people have been rendered
since 2001. </font>Representative Ed <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>Markey, a Democrat from </font>Massachusetts
and a member of the Select Committee <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>on Homeland Security, said that a more precise
number was impossible to <br>
obtain. "I've asked people at the C.I.A. for numbers," he said.
"They <br>
refuse to answer. All they will say is that they're in compliance with
the <br>
law."<br>
<br>
Although the full scope of the extraordinary-rendition program isn't
known, <br>
several recent cases have come to light that may well violate </font>U.S.
law. In <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>1998, Congress passed legislation declaring
that it is "the policy of the <br>
United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the
involuntary <br>
return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds
<br>
for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to
torture, <br>
regardless of whether the person is physically present in the
</font>United States*"<br>
<font face="arial" size=3> <br>
SEE ALSO:<br>
<br>
<a name="IN_THE_PENAL_COLONY"></a>IN THE PENAL COLONY, </font>Lisa
Hajjar, The Nation Magazine (an excellent review of recent books on the
subject).<br>
<font face="arial" size=3><a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050207&s=hajjar">http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050207&s=hajjar</a>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<a name="FOLLOWING_A_PAPER_TRAIL_TO_THE_ROOTS_OF"></a>FOLLOWING A PAPER TRAIL TO THE ROOTS OF TORTURE<br>
Michiko</font> Kakutani, New York Times, 2/8/05<br>
<font face="arial" size=3><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/books/08kaku.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/books/08kaku.html</a> <br>
<br>
As soon as the repugnant photos of torture at </font>Abu Ghraib prison - the <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>pyramid of naked prisoners, the groveling man on a dog leash, the hooded <br>
man with outstretched arms - hit the airwaves and newspaper stands, they <br>
became iconic images: gruesome symbols of what went wrong with the war and <br>
postwar occupation of </font>Iraq, and for many in the Muslim world, the very <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>embodiment of their worst fears about American hegemony.<br>
<br>
They have become a potent propaganda tool for terrorists, and at the same <br>
time, they remain so repellant and perverse that they have served to <br>
bolster the "few bad apples" argument - the suggestion not only that the <br>
photographed abuses were perpetrated by "a kind of 'Animal House' on the <br>
night shift," in one investigator's words, but also that the larger problem <br>
was confined, as the Bush administration has asserted, to a few soldiers <br>
acting on their own.<br>
<br>
"The Torture Papers," the new compendium of government memos and reports <br>
chronicling the road to </font>Abu Ghraib and its aftermath, definitively blows <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>such arguments to pieces. In fact, the book provides a damning paper trail <br>
that reveals, in uninflected bureaucratic prose, the roots that those <br>
terrible images had in decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush <br>
administration - decisions that started the torture snowball rolling down <br>
the slippery slope of precedent by asserting that the United States need <br>
not abide by the Geneva Conventions in its war on terror.<br>
<br>
Many of the documents here have been published before (most notably in </font>Mark <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>Danner's incisive 2004 volume "Torture and Truth"), but "The Torture <br>
Papers" contains some material not collected in earlier books. More <br>
important, the minutely detailed chronological narrative embodied in this <br>
volume, which has appeared piecemeal in other publications, possesses an <br>
awful and powerful cumulative weight. As one of its editors. </font>Karen J. <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New <br>
York University School of Law, observes, it leaves the reader with "a clear <br>
sense of the systematic decision to alter the use of methods of coercion <br>
and torture that lay outside of accepted and legal norms."<br>
<br>
The book is necessary, if grueling, reading for anyone interested in <br>
understanding the back story to those terrible photos from </font>Saddam Hussein's <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>former prison, and abuses at other American detention facilities*<br>
<br>
---<br>
<br>
<a name="GUANTANAMO_CAPTIVES_CLAIM_FALSE_CONFESSI"></a>GUANTANAMO</font><a name="GUANTANAMO_CAPTIVES_CLAIM_FALSE_CONFESSI"></a> CAPTIVES CLAIM FALSE CONFESSIONS <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>Associated Press, </font>2/8/05<br>
<font face="arial" size=3><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6929947/">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6929947/</a> <br>
<br>
Nearly a dozen prisoners at the </font>Guantanamo Bay prison camp contend they <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>were wrongly imprisoned after repeated abuse by </font>U.S. troops in Afghanistan <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>and </font>Pakistan, including beatings with chains, electric shock and sodomy, <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>their lawyer said Monday.<br>
<br>
"These are classic stories of men who ended up in </font>Guantanamo by mistake," <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>charged attorney </font>Tom Wilner, who represents 11 Kuwaiti prisoners held in <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>the detention center at the U.S. Navy base in eastern </font>Cuba.<br>
<font face="arial" size=3> <br>
Most of his clients say they falsely confessed to belonging to <br>
Afghanistan</font>'s ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terrorist network as a <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>way to stop the abuse, Wilner said. He said one is too angry over his <br>
treatment to discuss details of his case, but all argue their detentions <br>
are unjustified.<br>
<br>
Human rights groups and defense lawyers have long charged that some <br>
information used as the basis for incarcerations at </font>Guantanamo Bay resulted <br>
<font face="arial" size=3>from abuse or torture. Many of the 545 prisoners there have been held for <br>
more than three years, most without charge. About 150 have been let go, but <br>
officials have not given explanations for their release*<br>
<br>
---<br>
<br>
<a name="LAWYER_SAYS_US_FORCES_ABUSED_KUWAITI"></a>LAWYER SAYS U.S. FORCES ABUSED KUWAITI PRISONERS<br>
Will Dunham, Reuters, 2/7/05<br>
<a href="http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5522469">http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5522469</a> <br>
<br>
WASHINGTON - U.S. forces abused several Kuwaiti prisoners now held at <br>
Guantanamo Bay by beating them with chains, sodomizing them and giving them <br>
electrical shocks, the detainees' lawyer said on Monday.<br>
<br>
Human rights lawyer Tom Wilner, who represents the 11 Kuwaitis locked up as <br>
foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, <br>
described the abuses in notes after meeting with the men last month.<br>
<br>
The notes -- declassified by the U.S. government -- detailed conversations <br>
with six of the men, and said the other five recounted similar treatment.<br>
<br>
Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, would not offer a <br>
point-by-point rebuttal of the allegations. But he said, "It is important <br>
to note that al Qaeda training manuals emphasize the tactic of making false <br>
abuse allegations."<br>
<br>
The worst of the abuse, which Wilner labeled torture, took place at the <br>
hands of U.S. forces at detention facilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan <br>
before the men were taken to Guantanamo, first used to detain terrorism <br>
suspects in January 2002, he said.<br>
<br>
"All of them were hung from their wrists and beaten, sometimes beaten with <br>
chains. At least one was hung upside from his ankles and beaten. They were <br>
all beaten, they said, until they would pass out," Wilner said.<br>
<br>
"They were stripped naked and kept naked for extended periods of time. They <br>
were taunted while naked by female guards. At least one of them was <br>
sodomized. At least two of them were subjected to electric shocks while <br>
hanging from their wrists," Wilner added, with the shocks applied using <br>
metal paddles placed under the men's arms.<br>
<br>
Wilner said the Kuwaitis were chained in painful positions for such long <br>
periods of time that they would urinate and defecate on themselves*<br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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