The Supreme Court ruled in March that Americans have no right to learn the grisly details of CIA torture because the CIA has never formally confessed its crimes. The case symbolizes how the rule of law has become little more than legal mumbo-jumbo to shroud official crimes. And it is another grim reminder that Americans cannot rely on politically approved lawyers wearing bat suits to save their freedoms.
Source: Supreme Court Tortures the Constitution Again – CounterPunch.org
This is the account of an ongoing appeal initiated in 2009 by 725 doctors from 43 countries concerning medical complicity with torture in Israel. It has been underpinned by a voluminous and still accumulating evidence base from reputable international and regional human rights organisations, quoted below, and has spanned the terms of office of four World Medical Association (WMA) presidencies and two UN special rapporteurs on torture. This campaign has been a litmus test of whether international medical codes regarding doctors and torture actually matter, and are applied rigorously and even-handededly, particularly when compelling evidence incriminates a WMA member association. Our findings in the case of Israel suggest that this is not true, and that impunity largely operates. The WMA seems in partisan violation of its mandate to be the official international watchdog on the ethical behaviour of doctors. And as the IMA case demonstrates, by their inaction national medical associations or other regulatory bodies appear to function at base as buttresses and shields of the state.All data relevant to the study are included in the article.
James Mitchell, one of a pair of psychologists paid $81 million to oversee the CIA’s interrogation of suspected terrorists, said detainee Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri “liked” being in a box used to torture him.
Source: ‘All of These Guys Belong in Prison’: CIA Torture Described in Vivid Detail by Psychologist
Coinciding with Senate hearings finally underway to close the “stain on the moral fiber of America” – among many others – that is Guantánamo Bay, a new film documents the life, captivity and CIA-decreed fate “he will remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life” of Abu Zubaydah, “patient zero for the CIA’s torture program.” Chronicling his 20 years of abuse – from chains to 83 waterboardings in a month – “The Forever Prisoner” also grimly records “how the rule of law was upended” in a betrayal of ideals that asks, “Are we prepared to abandon our principles in order to defend them?”
Source: Further | At Gitmo, A Soul-Crushing Parade of Horribles | Opinion
Chilling testimony of the torture and abuses committed against Majid Khan, at the illegal U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, was recently presented by the prisoner.
Source: There is one place in Cuba where torture occurs | MR Online
On October 29 a Guantanamo Bay prisoner was reported as having testified about the torture inflicted on him over many years in CIA “black sites” and the US military base in Cuba where among other things he was “suspended naked from a ceiling beam for long periods, doused repeatedly with ice water to keep him awake for days. He described having his head held under water to the point of near drowning, only to have water poured into his nose and mouth when the interrogators let him up. He was beaten, given forced enemas, sexually assaulted and starved . . .”
Source: Drone Strikes and Torture Will Cause Big Blowback – CounterPunch.org
The attempted US extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange resumed yesterday with the opening of a hearing into a US government appeal. It is a legal abomination in pursuit of a heinous crime.Assange is being targeted for his and WikiLeaks’s exposure of war crimes, torture and other human rights abuses, mass surveillance, coup plots, and state corruption. The architects of these crimes, the US and other imperialist governments, are determined to extract a blood price, either through Assange’s life imprisonment and the destruction of his physical and mental health, or his murder.
Source: The horrific persecution of Julian Assange continues – World Socialist Web Site
1848+: The End(s) of History 