By Aaron Leonard In the last couple of weeks we have learned quite a bit more about the U.S.’s use of waterboarding — that relic of the Spanish Inquisition that has…
Category: 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
Download this flier |
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:
Demanding Prosecution of the War Criminals
On Thursday April 23, World Can’t Wait resisters gathered in front of the Spanish Consulate to demand that a Spanish Judge push forth with criminal investigations of 6 Bush Regime torture architects. …
Appeals Court Rules Gitmo Detainees are not ‘Persons’
From the Center for Constitutional Rights website A Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are…
Obama Didn’t Ban Torture
By Randolph Brickey The nonsensical case for “moving forward.” The current debate on how to respond to the Bush administration’s torture policies centers on the choice between seeking prosecution against its…
Who Authorized The Torture of Abu Zubaydah?
By Andy Worthington For the defendants of the use of torture by US forces — still led by former Vice President Dick Cheney — this has been a rocky few weeks,…
Obama Plays Hamlet: Shredders Hum
By Ray McGovern Well, well. The New York Times has finally put a story together on the key role played by two faux psychologists in helping the Bush administration devise ways to torture…
Remembering the Past to Change the Future – We Must Hold the Torture State Accountable
By Kenneth J. Theisen “Get the good old syringe boys and fill it to the brim We’ve caught another nigger and we’ll operate on him Let someone take the handle who can…
People of Spain: Help the World Prosecute Bush War Crimes!
To the Spanish people: Sign the Petition: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1170/t/3716/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1918 On April 16th, the Obama administration released four infamous Bush Regime “torture memos” that justified and orchestrated the torture of named individuals in horrendous…
Bush Regime Tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 Times
By Jonathan Turley One of the more shocking revelation from the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003. Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83…
The Legal Language of Torture
Four memos released by the Justice Department last week describe the torture techniques Bush Regime lawyers determined to be allowable. The first of these memos, dated August 2002, described 10 techniques already…