Locked Up Abroad—for the FBI

MotherJones
—By Nick Baumann
September/October 2011 Issue

Inside the feds' secret program to have American citizens detained and interrogated by foreign governments.

Learn more about the FBI's version of the rendition program.

A MUST READ
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/proxy-detention-gulet-mohamed
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Hamza El Khatib story on CNN's AC360 5/30/2011

Torture Memo Author John Yoo on Jon Stewart

It is all about how do you define "torture" and who is subjected to that torture and when!!

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John Yoo Pt. 1
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Time Magazine: Does Israel Mistreat Palestinian Child Prisoners?

By Tim McGirk / Jerusalem Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2009
Time Magazine

Walid Abu Obeida, a 13-year-old Palestinian farm boy from the West Bank village of Ya'abad, had never spoken to an Israeli until he rounded a corner at dusk carrying his shopping bags and found two Israeli soldiers waiting with their rifles aimed at him. "They accused me of throwing stones at them," recounts Walid, a skinny kid with dark eyes. "Then one of them smacked me in the face, and my nose started bleeding."

According to Walid, the two soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed him, dragged him to a jeep and drove away. All that his family would know about their missing son was that his shopping bags with meat and rice for that evening's dinner were found in the dusty road near an olive grove. Over the course of several days in April last year, the boy says he was moved from an army camp to a prison, where he was crammed into a cell with five other children, cursed at and humiliated by the guards and beaten by his interrogator until he confessed to stone-throwing...

Walid's story is hardly unusual, judging from a report on the Israeli military-justice system in the West Bank compiled by the Palestine office of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, which works closely with the U.N. and European states...

The report states that "the ill-treatment and torture" of Palestinian child prisoners "appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized, suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command."...

The Geneva organization's report alleges that under Israeli military justice, it is the norm for children to be interrogated by the Israeli police and army without either a lawyer or a family member present and that most of their convictions are due to confessions extracted during interrogation sessions or from "secret evidence," usually tip-offs from unnamed Palestinian informers. If so, the practice may violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which Israel ratified in 1991...

According to the Israeli human-rights group Breaking the Silence, a few Israeli soldiers are alarmed by their own troops' behavior. The group cites the testimony of two officers who complained before a military court that during an operation last March in Hares village, soldiers herded 150 male villagers, some as young as 14, into a schoolyard in the middle of the night, where they were kept bound, blindfolded and beaten over the course of more than 12 hours.

A U.N. Committee Against Torture, which met on May 15 in Geneva, expressed its "concern" over Israel's alleged abuses of Palestinian child prisoners...

Israel's treatment of Palestinian children and teens as combatants perpetuates the cycle of hatred. After a spell in an Israeli jail, it's hard for a young Palestinian to stay uninvolved. Walid says he never cared much for anything aside from his school friends and family before his incarceration. Now he bears a radioactive hatred towards Israelis. "The soldiers' curses and insults, I'll carry them to my grave," he says.

Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape' of women and boys

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
28 May 2009
The Guardian Newspaper

A previous image of Iraq prison abuse

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published...

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

Obama blocks abuse image release

Al Jazeera English, May 13, 2009

Barack Obama, the US president, is to appeal a legal ruling ordering the release of dozens of images depicting abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama, who had previously supported the release of the photographs, acted on advice from military commanders that publishing them could endanger US troops overseas, the White House said on Wednesday.

"The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger," Obama told journalists on Wednesday...

The US department of defence was to release the images by May 28 in response to legal action filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The photographs come from more than 60 criminal investigations between 2001-2006 and are of military personnel suspected of abusing detainees, officials said in April...

The ACLU was quick to condemn Obama's decision.

"The decision to not release the photographs makes a mockery of President Obama's promise of transparency and accountability,'' said Amrit Singh, an ACLU lawyer...

No amnesty for torturers

A MESSAGE FROM DEMOCRATS.COM

This Thursday, we will deliver our Special Prosecutor petitions to Attorney General Eric Holder. We will join with the ACLU and 185 other groups which oppose immunity for torturers.

Nearly 25,000 of our readers have signed our petition - but you have not. Could you sign right now so we can deliver your signature on Thursday? No Amnesty for Torturers:
http://democrats.com/no-amnesty-for-torturers?cid=ZGVtczU0NDU0NGRlbXM=

Torture is utterly immoral and un-American. Despite Dick Cheney's lies, it produced absolutely no useful intelligence. In fact, it recruited terrorists responsible for at least half the U.S. deaths in Iraq. And it endangered every U.S. soldier who may be captured in the future.

And torture is absolutely illegal. The U.S. ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which prohibits torture and requires prosecution of torturers. In 1947, the U.S. prosecuted a Japanese officer for waterboarding. No lawyer can "legalize" what is illegal.

Congress must take the following actions:

1. Demand the appointment of a Special Prosecutor by Attorney General Eric Holder for torture, warrantless wiretapping, and other heinous crimes of the Bush Administration. (Thanks to Rep. Jerrold Nadler for leading the way!)

2. Prohibit the use of any taxpayer dollars to defend government officials who committed such crimes against lawsuits, or to pay for judgments against them.

3. Impeach Judge Jay Bybee, the torture memo author who serves on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California.

4. Protect human rights by restoring Habeas Corpus and the Fourth Amendment (search and seizure), including repeal of the Orwellian-named Protect America Act, U.S.A. Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments, and Military Commissions Act.

5. End secret government by prohibiting use of "State Secrets," "Sovereign Immunity" and "Signing Statements."

Sign our Petition: No Amnesty for Torturers
http://democrats.com/no-amnesty-for-torturers?cid=ZGVtczU0NDU0NGRlbXM=

Through your patience and persistence, we are moving ever closer towards the restoration of the Constitution and the Rule of Law in the nation we love.

Thanks for all you do!

Bob Fertik

Jon Stewart: "We Don't Torture"

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L.A.-based American-Islamic relations group asks for Sec. of State's help

Also read:

Did the FBI order the torture of a U.S. Citizen abroad?

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L.A.-based American-Islamic relations group asks for Sec. of State's help

Desert Sun wire services

A coalition of Muslim, interfaith and civil rights groups sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today asking that she help a Southland man locked up in the United Arab Emirates on suspicion of promoting terrorism.

Naji Hamdan, 42, lived in Southern California for more than two decades and has been a well-respected community leader, activist and father of three children, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations Greater Los Angeles Area Chapter.

According to the Washington Post, Hamdan lived in the Los Angeles area, where he had gone to school, owned a successful auto-parts business and become a U.S. citizen. But last July, he was summoned to the U.S. Embassy in the Dubai to answer questions from FBI agents who had come from Los Angeles, and six weeks later he was taken prisoner by UAE authorities.

The Post reported he had been monitored by the FBI since the 1980s, when he studied aviation engineering at Northrop-Rice University and with other Muslim students set aside a dorm room as a mosque. The mosque was later moved to downtown Hawthorne, where Hamdan often presided during Ramadan services.

He was approached by the FBI in December 1999 in connection with the ``millennium plot'' that targeted Los Angeles International Airport, and surveillance ramped up after 9/11, the Post reported. He was also audited twice by the IRS and routinely pulled aside for extra questioning at airports.

In August 2006, Hamdan and his family moved to Dubai. Friends told the Post he made the move not only because of the constant monitoring of his activities, but also because of drugs and gangs in Hawthorne schools.

In a sworn statement to a U.S. consular official in the UAE, Hamdan said he was kicked, made to sit in an electric chair with threats that he might be electrocuted, punched and slapped, blindfolded and beat with a large stick and coerced to sign a confession, which he did to stop the torture, according to CAIR.

Ahilan Arulanantham of the American Civil Liberties Union, who is representing Hamdan through his brother and wife, who now lives in Lebanon with their two children, told the Post, ``this is torture by proxy.'' He said the UAE had shown no interest in Hamdan before arresting him, and that he was tortured ``at the behest'' of the U.S. government.

In a statement, the FBI said it does not ask other governments to arrest people on its behalf, but in court papers it did not deny the involvement of any U.S. agency in Hamdan's detention, according to the Post.

``In terrorism matters, we routinely work with foreign counterparts,'' FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said in a statement.

The letter sent to Clinton stated, in part, ``Mr. Hamdan, like every other American, has the right to the protection of his government from human rights abuses inflicted by any group or state entity. We cannot stress enough the urgency of Mr. Hamdan's situation and request that the State Department take immediate steps to restore Mr. Hamdan's basic human rights without delay.''

The letter was signed by CAIR, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, National Lawyers Guild Los Angeles, Muslim American Society's MAS Freedom, the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, Interfaith Communities United for Justice & Peace, the Islamic Center of Hawthorne, and Switzerland-based Alkarama (Dignity) for Human Rights.

"We are extremely concerned about the allegations of torture and lack of due process in Mr. Hamdan's case,'' said CAIR-LA staff attorney Ameena Qazi. "We are also concerned about possible U.S. government agency involvement in Mr. Hamdan's detention and his trial in UAE. We hope the new administration will make it an urgent priority to correct the many civil rights abuses against the Muslim community, which were a hallmark of the previous administration.''

Did the FBI order the torture of a U.S. Citizen abroad?

American Muslim's Case Poses a Test
U.S. Role Alleged in Detention in UAE

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 23, 2009;

One day last July, Naji Hamdan was summoned to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates. He drove two hours through the desert heat from Dubai to answer questions from FBI agents who had arrived from Los Angeles, where Hamdan had gone to school, started a family, built a successful auto-parts business and become a U.S. citizen.

At his apartment six weeks later, he was awakened from a nap by men who bundled him into a black Chevrolet Suburban with tinted windows. Hamdan was told he was a prisoner of the UAE and was held in a cell painted glossy white to reflect the lights that burned round the clock, according to a note he wrote from prison. Between interrogations, he wrote, he was confined in a frigid room overnight, strapped into "an electric chair" and punched in the head until he lost consciousness.

In one session, the blindfolded prisoner recalled hearing a voice that sounded American. The voice said, "Do what they want or these people will [expletive] you up," Hamdan wrote.

The prisoner obliged, signing a confession that he later said meant only that he would do anything to make the pain stop. The case might have ended there but for Hamdan's U.S. citizenship and his American attorney's assertion that he was tortured "at the behest" of his own government.

"This is torture by proxy," said Ahilan Arulanantham, an American Civil Liberties Union staff lawyer representing Hamdan through his brother and wife. Noting that the UAE had shown no interest in Hamdan before arresting him, Arulanantham filed a habeas corpus petition in November in U.S. District Court in Washington. The petition alleges that the federal government used its influence to have Hamdan arrested and insists that it should use that influence to free him.

The evidence of U.S. involvement is circumstantial and sometimes ambiguous. Arulanantham said the UAE prosecutor in the case traveled to the United States in February. He said that a week after the habeas petition made public Hamdan's detention, custody was transferred to the UAE criminal justice system, where he faces nonspecific charges of "promoting terrorism." Justice Department lawyers say the transfer lines up with the expiration of a 90-day UAE limit on secret detention.

The FBI issued a statement saying it does not ask other governments to arrest people on its behalf, but in court papers it stops short of denying the involvement of any U.S. agency in Hamdan's detention.

"In terrorism matters, we routinely work with foreign counterparts," Richard Kolko, a bureau spokesman, said in a statement.

The United Arab Emirates' embassy in Washington declined to comment "since this is a police-security matter, which involves a U.S. citizen," a spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

In the long list of individuals accused, renditioned, arrested or otherwise detained since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Hamdan case stands out. Three Americans are known to have been arrested by foreign governments at the apparent direction of U.S. authorities, each amid circumstances more suspicious than those surrounding Hamdan.

In 2007, Kenyan authorities detained Amir Meshal of Tinton, N.J., and Daniel Joseph Maldonado of Houston after they were captured among Islamist fighters fleeing a U.S.-backed offensive in Somalia. And Saudi Arabian security officers provided the bulk of the evidence against Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a Falls Church man convicted in 2005 of plotting with al-Qaeda.

Though the events detailed by Hamdan's attorney occurred before President Obama was sworn in, human rights groups and others said they will monitor his response. Obama has declared that "the United States will not torture," and CIA Director Leon Panetta said in his confirmation hearings that the United States will not turn over suspects to governments that will abuse them.

Deborah Manning, an attorney for Alkarama, a human rights organization focused on the Middle East, said the case "bridges the practices of the past, and we hope we're in a new era, but this is a litmus test."

The torture accusations are from Hamdan's accounts to relatives and a handwritten eight-page note carried out of Abu Dhabi's Al Wathba prison by a U.S. diplomat required to check on the suspect's welfare.

After being beaten on the soles of his feet and kicked in the liver, Hamdan said, "I admitted to whatever they asked."

"Sometimes when he talks to me, he's crying," said Mona Mallouk, his wife, by phone from Beirut, where she went after the arrest with their two children, born in Los Angeles.

"When they beat him hard . . . his voice changed. I said 'Naji? Are you okay?' He said, 'No, I'm not okay. They hit me, badly. I don't know why, Mona.' "

Hamdan's family and associates said they are perplexed by the FBI's interest. The businessman was known to be religious, but in the mainstream vein of fellow Muslim students who set aside a dorm room as a mosque at Northrop-Rice University, where Hamdan studied aviation engineering in the 1980s.

After the worship space moved to downtown Hawthorne, Hamdan often presided during the holy month of Ramadan.

The FBI knocked on Hamdan's door in December 1999, when several other local Muslims were approached after the discovery of the "millennium plot" targeting Los Angeles International Airport. After Sept. 11, 2001, official attention became more routine, often in airport security lines.

"We get used to it," said Hossam Hemdan, Hamdan's brother, who runs a smog-inspection shop. "They always, always, always ask the same questions: How long you been living here? What's your business? What's the phone number?"

Hemdan said that as many as three Crown Victorias began following his brother in 2006. Jehad Suleman, a friend and business associate of Hamdan's in Los Angeles, said it was around that time when his own airport interrogators began asking him about Hamdan.

No one claims to know why. The ACLU encouraged Muslim residents to request their FBI files, and Hamdan was surprised to find that the agency had started his file in the mid-1990s, his relatives said.

The attention on Hamdan came from several directions. FBI agents visited his business, jotting down serial numbers on an acre of car parts. The IRS audited him twice.

Hamdan, 42, chafed at the surveillance, so conspicuous that the imam at the Hawthorne mosque asked him to keep his distance. But confidants said his decision to return to the Middle East was equally grounded in unease with Hawthorne's schools, where gangs and drugs remain problems.

In August 2006, Hamdan moved the family to Dubai. At the Los Angeles airport, he was questioned for so long that he missed his flight. When he returned in 2007 for a visit, the FBI surveillance was continuous, associates said.

Things were not going smoothly abroad, either. In early 2008, while waiting for a flight in Beirut, Hamdan was arrested and interrogated for four days by Lebanese authorities. Hamden said a lawyer the family later hired to examine the court file said his detention was at the request of "outside influences."

Last July, FBI agents passed a request to Hamdan to report to the embassy in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital, then flew there to question him. "What did they want?" his brother recalled asking Hamdan, who he said replied: " 'Whatever they ask at the airport, same thing. You can't imagine how much they know about us. If you ever forget something in your life, a certain spot, call them. They'll tell you.' "

Six weeks later, the security police took him away, then returned to carry away all things electronic.

In Los Angeles, Hamdan's banker, Dan Suie, of the Asian Pacific Revolving Loan Fund, said an FBI agent delivered a subpoena in early January. The bureau wanted paperwork on loans for Hamdan's business, records the banker said contained nothing suspicious.

"I deal with people who, you know, shake their hands and count your fingers," Suie said. "But [Hamdan] was a very decent person, a very nice guy."

The mosque has mounted a campaign demanding Hamdan's return to the United States to face whatever charges he is suspected of.

For more information, visit:
http://www.masfreedom.org/cases/naji_hamdan.html

Surprise! Surprise! Under Bush, the CIA practiced torture!

As if anyone had any doubts, the Red Cross concluded that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture". Of course, one should also consider the CIA's version of the story, except that the CIA conveniently destroyed 92 videotapes of its interrogations of detainees.

The use of torture is undoubtedly a form of terrorism, regardless who practices it.


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Red Cross Described 'Torture' at CIA Jails
Secret Report Implies That U.S. Violated International Law
By Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 16, 2009

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.

The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials, who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning...

Many of the details of alleged mistreatment at CIA prisons had been reported previously, but the ICRC report is the most authoritative account and the first to use the word "torture" in a legal context...

"On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room," the report quotes detainee Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying. Later, he said, he was wrapped in a plastic sheet while cold water was "poured onto my body with buckets." He added: "I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes. Then I would be taken for interrogation."..

President George W. Bush acknowledged the use of coercive interrogation tactics on senior al-Qaeda captives detained by the CIA in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but he insisted that the measures complied with U.S. and international law. Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden confirmed last year that the measures included the use of waterboarding on three captives before 2003.

President Obama outlawed such practices within hours of his inauguration in January. But Obama has expressed reluctance to conduct a legal inquiry into the CIA's policies.

The report gives a graphic account of the treatment of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, a Saudi-born Palestinian who was the first alleged senior al-Qaeda operative seized after Sept. 11 -- a characterization of his role that is disputed by his attorneys, who describe him as having a different philosophy of jihad than bin Laden.

Abu Zubaida was severely wounded during a shootout in March 2002 at a safe house he ran in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and survived thanks to CIA-arranged medical care, including multiple surgeries. After he recovered, Abu Zubaida describes being shackled to a chair at the feet and hands for two to three weeks in a cold room with "loud, shouting type music" blaring constantly, according to the ICRC report. He said that he was questioned two to three hours a day and that water was sprayed in his face if he fell asleep.

At some point -- the timing is unclear from the New York Review of Books report -- Abu Zubaida's treatment became harsher. In July 2002, administration lawyers approved more aggressive techniques.

Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said.

"The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the ICRC.

After he was removed from a small box, he said, he was strapped to what looked like a hospital bed and waterboarded. "A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," Abu Zubaida said.

After breaks to allow him to recover, the waterboarding continued.

"I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless," he said. "I thought I was going to die."

In a federal court filing, Abu Zubaida's attorneys said he "has suffered approximately 175 seizures that appear to be directly related to his extensive torture -- particularly damage to Petitioner's head that was the result of beatings sustained at the hands of CIA interrogators and exacerbated by his lengthy isolation."...

Danner said the organization's use of the word "torture" has important legal implications.

"It could not be more important that the ICRC explicitly uses the words 'torture' and 'cruel and degrading,' " Danner said in a telephone interview. "The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, and when it uses those words, they have the force of law."

He discounted the possibility that the detainees fabricated or embellished their stories, noting that the accounts overlap "in minute detail," even though the detainees were kept in isolation at different locations...

Gitmo guards expose abuse, express shame (and even convert to Islam)

For many years, at the expense of being unfairly labeled an unpatriotic American by right-wing nuts in our country, I have vocally called for the shutting down of what I called the Gitmo Gulag. I refused to have our country remembered and associated with such an immoral legacy. My moral values required that I publicize the injustice committed against those who were never charged with any crimes, such as Guantanamo Bay Prisoner 345 or when our democracy deems it necessary to torture a 16-year-old kid.

I firmly believe that the patriotic and moral thing to do is to continue to speak for the rule of law, for the human rights of every human being, and for an America that respects its moral values.

-------

Former Gitmo guard recalls abuse, climate of fear

By MIKE MELIA, Associated Press, Sat Feb 14

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Army Pvt. Brandon Neely was scared when he took Guantanamo's first shackled detainees off a bus. Told to expect vicious terrorists, he grabbed a trembling, elderly detainee and ground his face into the cement — the first of a range of humiliations he says he participated in and witnessed as the prison was opening for business.

Neely has now come forward in this final year of the detention center's existence, saying he wants to publicly air his feelings of guilt and shame about how some soldiers behaved as the military scrambled to handle the first alleged al-Qaida and Taliban members arriving at the isolated U.S. Navy base.

His account, one of the first by a former guard describing abuses at Guantanamo, describes a chaotic time when soldiers lacked clear rules for dealing with detainees who were denied many basic comforts. He says the circumstances changed quickly once monitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross arrived...

Neely, a burly Texan who served for a year in Iraq after his six months at Guantanamo, received an honorable discharge last year, with the rank of specialist, and now works as a law enforcement officer in the Houston area. He is also president of the local chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

An urge to tell his story led him to the University of California at Davis' Guantanamo Testimonials Project, an effort to document accounts of prisoner abuse. It includes public statements from three other former guards, but Neely was the first to grant researchers an interview. He also spoke extensively with the AP...

Terry C. Holdbrooks Jr. told the Web site cageprisoners.com in an interview this month that he saw several abuses during his service at Guantanamo in 2003, including detainees subjected to cold temperatures and loud music, and he later converted to Islam.

Neely, 28, describes a litany of cruel treatment by his fellow soldiers, including beatings and humiliations he said were intended only to deliver physical or psychological pain...

Neely's account sheds new light on the early days of Guantanamo, where guards were hastily deployed in January 2002 and were soon confronted by men stumbling out of planes, shackled and wearing blackout goggles.

They were held in chain-link cages and moved to more permanent structures three months later.

The soldiers, many of them still in their teens, had no detailed standard operating procedures and were taught hardly anything about the Geneva Conventions, which provide guidelines for humane treatment of prisoners of war, Neely said, though some learned about them on their own initiative...

Only months had passed since the Sept. 11 attacks, and Neely said many of the guards wanted revenge. Especially before the first Red Cross visit, he said guards were seizing on any apparent infractions to "get some" by hurting the detainees. The soldiers' behavior seemed justified at the time, he said, because they were told "these are the worst terrorists in the world."

He said one medic punched a handcuffed prisoner in the face for refusing to swallow a liquid nutritional supplement, and another bragged about cruelly stretching a prisoner's torn muscles during what was supposed to be physical therapy treatments.

He said detainees were forced to submit to take showers and defecate into buckets in full view of female soldiers, against Islamic customs.

When a detainee yelled an expletive at a female guard, he said a crew of soldiers beat the man up and held him down so that the woman could repeatedly strike him in the face.

Neely says he feels personally ashamed for how he treated that elderly detainee the first day. As he recalls it, the man made a movement to resist on his way to his cage, and he responded by shoving the shackled man headfirst to the ground, bruising and scraping his face.
Other soldiers hog-tied him and left him in the sun for hours.

Only later did Neely learn — from another detainee — that the man had jerked away thinking he was about to be executed.

"I just felt horrible," Neely recalled...

Neely acknowledged that by talking about his experiences, he also has broken the nondisclosure pledge he signed before leaving Guantanamo.
He also says a lawyer told him the document he signed could not be enforced...

Neely said discussing his experience now has helped put it behind him.
"Speaking out is a good way to deal with this," he said.


Important links:

Testimony of Spc. Brandon Neely

The Guantanamo Testimonials Project

Obama signs executive orders to close Guantanamo Bay and end torture

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama issued four executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration on the war on terror, including one requiring that the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay be closed within a year.

A second executive order formally bans torture by requiring that the Army field manual be used as the guide for terror interrogations. The order essentially ends the Bush administration's CIA program of enhanced interrogation methods.

A third executive order establishes an interagency task force to lead a systematic review of detention policies and procedures and a review of all individual cases.

A fourth executive order delays the trial of Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident who has been contesting his detention for more than five years as an enemy combatant in a military brig without the government bringing any charges against him...

BBC: Guantanamo agents 'used torture'

BBC, January 14, 2009

US agents at Guantanamo Bay tortured a Saudi man suspected of involvement in the 11 September attacks, the official overseeing trials at the camp has said.

Susan Crawford told the Washington Post newspaper that Mohammad al-Qahtani had been left in a "life-threatening condition" after being interrogated.

The Pentagon said their methods were legal in 2002, when the interviews took place - though some were now banned.

Mr Qahtani remains at Guantanamo, but all charges against him were dropped...

"His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case," she said.

Ms Crawford, who was appointed convening authority for military commissions in February 2007, said Mr Qahtani had been interrogated for 18 to 20 hours a day almost continuously for eight weeks...

In her newspaper interview, Ms Crawford said she was shocked, upset and embarrassed by the treatment of the detainee.

She said: "If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques?

"How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."

According to a report by Amnesty International, Mr Qahtani was at various times forced to wear women's clothes and was tied by a lead and forced to perform animal tricks.

And the document, published last May, also contained allegations that dogs had been used on two occasions to "terrorise" the detainee...

Despite her decision to drop the prosecution, Ms Crawford said Mr Qahtani remained a "very dangerous man".

"There's no doubt in my mind he would have been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001," she said.

Earlier this week, advisers to president-elect Barack Obama confirmed he would issue an order for the closure of Guantanamo Bay within days of taking office.

But no decision has yet been announced on the future of Mr Qahtani and other inmates who are deemed too dangerous to release, but may be impossible to prosecute.

I'm Home, but Still Haunted by Guantanamo

By Jumah al Dossari, former Guantanamo Bay detainee
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Published in the Washington Post

Reporter/writer's note:

I've covered the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2004 as military correspondent for The Post. Jumah al Dossari first caught my attention in October 2005, when I heard the story of his gruesome suicide attempt during a visit from his lawyer. Then known as Detainee #261, Dossari clearly was making a public plea for help. Though the U.S. military has said many times that all detainees at Guantanamo are treated humanely and that Dossari had been getting the help he needed, detention in Guantanamo apparently became more than he could bear. His wish to die humanized the desperation of many detainees held indefinitely at the facility.

U.S. officials maintained for years that Dossari was a dangerous terrorist who had been arrested after going to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against U.S. forces. Dossari also spent some time in the United States and allegedly tried to recruit terrorists with fiery sermons, something that obviously raised concerns among his interrogators and jailers. Nevertheless, he was never charged with a crime, never admitted any connection to terrorism and was ultimately released to Saudi Arabia in July 2007.

His return to freedom has been smooth. He is employed, married and doing well. When I talked to him by cellphone from Dammam late last year, he spoke of a hope and a peace and a forgiveness that arose from his "black days" behind bars at Guantanamo.

-- Josh White
---

DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia

It has been a little over a year since I left the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but I still have trouble sleeping sometimes. On a recent restless night, I found a DVD entitled "United 93" beside the family television set. I had no idea what it was about, but I started watching. When I realized that it was about the hijacked American plane that had crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, I began to cry. It reminded me of a very simple question I had asked myself countless times during my 5 1/2 years in Guantanamo: When will humans start treating each other with respect, whatever our religion or color?

I arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002 after Pakistani forces handed me over to the United States, probably, I suspect, for a bounty. I had been in Afghanistan to assess the progress of a mosque-building project there, funded by people in my native Saudi Arabia. I knew that Afghanistan was a dangerous place, but I was paid for the trip and I needed the money, so I went. It is a decision I will always regret. When the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan in November 2001, I fled to Pakistan. At a border checkpoint, I asked Pakistani guards for help getting to the Saudi embassy. Instead, they put me in a prison, where I was kept for days with shackles on my legs.

After several weeks, I was blindfolded and flown with other detainees to a U.S. military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Upon our arrival there, we were thrown to the ground. Someone hit my head and forced his boot into my mouth. Despite the freezing Afghan winter, I spent several weeks in an open tent circled with barbed wire. I still have scars from my time in Kandahar. One is from a cigarette that was extinguished on my wrist and the other from the time I was pushed to a floor covered with broken glass.

One night about two weeks after our arrival, some soldiers came and cut off my clothes and put me in an orange suit. They fitted me with very tight goggles so that I could not see and put something over my ears so that I could not hear. I was chained to the floor of a plane for several hours, then again to the floor of another for what seemed like an eternity. When they pulled us off the second plane, we had no idea where we were.

It was Guantanamo.

We were taken to Camp X-Ray, which consists of cages of the sort that would normally hold animals. Imprisoned in these cages, we were forbidden to move and sometimes forbidden to pray. Later, the guards allowed us to pray and even to turn around, but whenever new detainees arrived, we were again prohibited from doing anything but sitting still.

Physical brutality was not uncommon during those first years at Guantanamo. In Camp X-Ray, several soldiers once beat me so badly that I spent three days in intensive care. My face and body were still swollen and covered in bruises when I left the hospital. During one interrogation, my questioner, apparently dissatisfied with my answers, slammed my head against the table. During others, I was shackled to the floor for hours.

In later years, such physical assaults subsided, but they were replaced by something more painful: I was deprived of human contact. For several months, the military held me in solitary confinement after a suicide attempt. I had no clothes other than a pair of shorts and no bed but a dirty plastic mat. The air conditioner was on 24 hours a day; the cell's cold metal walls made it feel as though I was living inside a freezer. There was no faucet, so I had to use the water in the toilet for drinking and washing.

I was transferred to the maximum-security Camp Five in May 2004. There I lived -- if that word can be used -- in a cell with cement walls. I was permitted to exercise once or twice a week; otherwise, I was alone in my cell at all times. I had nothing to occupy my mind except a Koran and some censored letters from my family. Interrogators told me that I would live like that for 50 years.

While I was in Camp Five, the military gave me a piece of paper that laid out the allegations against me. I had been in Guantanamo at that point for 2 1/2 years. My lawyer later told me that I had received this paper as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that detainees were to be allowed to have court hearings. We never got the promised hearings; instead, we went through military hearings at Guantanamo in which we were not shown any evidence or allowed to have lawyers. All we got was the piece of paper.

Some of the allegations were silly. One said that I had gone to Afghanistan for military training in 1989. The truth was that I had told an interrogator about a trip I had made to Afghanistan for a weekend as an overweight 16-year old after the war with the Soviet Union there ended. This trip was sponsored by the Saudi government, which had helped fund the Afghan mujaheddin and was celebrating -- with the United States -- the defeat of the Soviets.

Only one of the allegations seemed to be directly related to what is called the "War on Terror." It said that I had been "present at Tora Bora." No other details were provided. I had never heard of Tora Bora (although I later learned that it was Osama bin Laden's suspected hiding place, where U.S. forces battled the Taliban in December 2001). Later, I learned that a Yemeni detainee had told interrogators that I had been there, along with many others, because he hoped to be released if he was seen as cooperating with the U.S. military.

I know that there have been newspaper stories saying that I recruited people to go to al-Qaeda training camps. But the sheet of paper the military gave me said nothing about recruiting, which is not something I have ever done.

There were many times in Guantanamo when I felt as though I was falling apart, like a sandcastle being washed out by the tide. I lost all hope and faith. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I was destroyed. I decided that I preferred death to life, and I attempted suicide several times.

Once, during a break in a meeting with my attorney, I cut my arm with a razor and tried to hang myself. I do not remember it, but apparently my attorney returned earlier than I had told him to and found me suspended by my neck from the cell wall, unconscious and covered in blood. I broke a vertebra but survived with surgery.

Between suicide attempts, I tried desperately to hold on to the few fleeting moments of light that presented themselves to me. I met every few months with my attorneys and felt better whenever they were in Guantanamo, but my despair would return within a day of their departure. On occasion, I was helped by compassionate guards. After the beating in Camp X-Ray, a young female guard appeared at my cage, looking to make sure that no other guards were watching. "I'm sorry for what happened to you," she whispered to me. "You're a human being just like us." These words were a temporary balm for my bruises and loneliness. Ultimately, though, I believe it was God who did not allow me to die.

In July 2007, a colonel told me that I was going home. He did not explain why I was suddenly no longer too dangerous to live in freedom. Four days later, I was put on a Saudi government plane. When we landed in Riyadh and I saw my family, I was overwhelmed. We all cried and hugged. I said hello to someone I thought was my sister only to hear her say, "Daddy." I looked at her face again and saw that it was my daughter, who had grown from a 7-year-old child to a 13-year-old young woman while I'd been gone.

In Guantanamo, I was very angry with the people who had decided to hold me thousands of miles from home without charging or trying me. I was very angry with the people who kept me in isolation even when I was at my most desperate. I was very angry about having no rights at all. I was not angry with Americans in general and I even drew comfort from some, such as my lawyers and the kind soldier. But I could scarcely comprehend how U.S. policy had allowed me to be treated as I had been.

On the plane ride home, though, I decided that I would have to forgive to go on with my life. I also know that Sept. 11 was a great tragedy that caused some people to do dark things that they would not otherwise do. This knowledge helped me forget my miserable existence in Guantanamo and open my heart to life again, including to my recent re-marriage.

When I was watching "United 93," I thought of the soldier who had offered me compassion in Guantanamo. Her words reminded me that we all share common values, and only by holding on to them can we ensure that there is mercy and brotherhood in the world. After more than five years in Guantanamo, I can think of nothing more important.

ALSO READ:

Who are the 16 Saudis released from Guantánamo?

Omar Khadr: The interrogation

Omar Khadr: The interrogation
Video captures righteous indignation
Colin Freeze and Omar El Akkad

WATCH VIDEO

Globe and Mail Update

July 15, 2008 at 8:04 AM EDT

Before the rage, the resignation and the tears, came the trust. Teenaged prisoner Omar Khadr seemed sure that his countrymen from Canada had come to Cuba to help him and spoke freely when they asked questions.

On the second day, the reality almost visibly dawned on his face. Agents had asked about his links to al-Qaeda, about his friends and family in Afghanistan, about whether he really thought dozens of black-eyed virgins awaited him in janna, or paradise.

The teenager realized the obvious. The Canadian agents weren't there to help. They were there to mine him for information. So he wept. He denied everything. He pulled at his hair and pulled down his orange prisoner's suit. He showed his war wounds, which nearly killed him during a battle with U.S. soldiers six months earlier.

From behind the flaps of a ventilation shaft, a hidden camera caught all the rage and righteous indignation of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen raised by fundamentalist parents in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The 16-year-old al-Qaeda suspect and Guantanamo Bay detainee was facing allegations that he murdered a U.S. soldier.

After a series of Canadian court orders, remarkable footage of federal agents questioning Mr. Khadr was released Tuesday morning - starting with an eight-minute highlight reel released at 5 a.m., and a full seven hours of footage to come later in the afternoon.

The largest portion of the eight-minute segment shows a sobbing Mr. Khadr with his head buried in his hands, repeatedly moaning "help me, help me."

The grainy footage marks the first video of a Guantanamo Bay interrogation. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service prefers to describe the meetings as "interviews".

Mr. Khadr sits in one small room for the first half of the released footage. There is little in the first room other than a desk and vents in the walls. In another room, he sits on a small couch. The rooms are similar to rooms currently in the Guantanamo prison camps. Reporters were given a tour of such a room earlier this year. The military uses the word "reservation" to refer to prisoners' meetings with interrogators — the rooms are where the "reservations" take place.

During the meetings, Mr. Khadr wears an orange jumpsuit — at the time, the orange uniforms were synonymous with all Guantanamo prisoners. Today, the orange uniform is reserved for the most unco-operative prisoners. Mr. Khadr today wears the white uniform of the most compliant prisoners.

Mr. Khadr's mood varies from dejected to hopeless for much of the released footage. At one point he lifts his shirt over his head to show extensive wounds he suffered during the 2002 Afghan firefight where he was captured.

"You say this is healthy?" he tells his interrogator. "I can't move my arm."

His interrogator, whose face is obscured by a black circle as per government security rules, is not sympathetic.

"You look like you're doing well to me," he replies. "I'm not a doctor but I think you're getting good medical care."

In another part of the footage, Mr. Khadr says "I lost my eyes. I lost my feet," referring to his injuries.

"No, you still have your eyes, and your feet are still at the ends of your legs," his interrogator replies.

Mr. Khadr's mood appears to have gotten significantly worse between one set of interviews and the next, something that causes his interrogator much frustration.

The interrogator tells Mr. Khadr that he understands the situation is stressful, but by using a strategy of non-co-operation he isn't helping himself.

At one point, the interrogator talks to Mr. Khadr about the detained Canadian's wish to go home. The interrogator says he can't help Mr. Khadr with that, but suggests Mr. Khadr help him stay in Guantanamo.

"The weather's nice [in Guantanamo]," the interrogator says. "No snow."

The joke falls flat.

The footage is part of more than seven hours that was released by the government to Mr. Khadr's lawyers. The rest of the footage is expected to be released later Tuesday.

"The videos do not show Omar Khadr being tortured or mistreated during the interrogations," Mr. Khadr's Canadian lawyer, Nathan Whitling, said in a press release accompanying the video. "As documents released last week show, Guantanamo Bay authorities manipulated Omar's environment outside the interrogation room before Canadian interrogations to induce co-operation within the interrogation room."

Documents made public last week show that Mr. Khadr was subjected to weeks of sleep deprivation by U.S. military officials before being interviewed by Canadian officials, and that the Canadians were aware of the sleep deprivation.

Mr. Khadr was sent to Guantanamo after being captured in Afghanistan in 2002. The footage, compiled from three days of interviews taped six months after his capture, is being released by his defence team. Edmonton lawyers Mr. Whitling and Dennis Edney, who fought a successful legal battle for the DVDs to be disclosed, now hope to shame Canadian politicians into lobbying Washington for the repatriation of the now-21-year-old, still jailed, but not convicted after six years.

The video will allow the public its first glimpse of an interview undertaken inside the U.S. military jail for terrorism suspects that operates on leased land in Cuba. It is also the first footage ever shown of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in action during its 24-year history.

Three CSIS agents were sent down to question Mr. Khadr, not to lend any sympathy to him. Their mission was to gather information that might safeguard national security. Visuals of the agents' faces and audio of certain questions are edited out for security reasons.

A Department of Foreign Affairs official was along for the interviews, and had a role split between gathering intelligence and ascertaining the prisoner's well being. DFAIT's Jim Gould later wrote a briefing note stating he had met a "screwed up young man" whose trust had been abused by just about everyone who had ever been responsible for him.

Ottawa has been bracing for the video's release for weeks. Various government agencies have been coordinating their talking points in response to the footage – while both the government and Mr. Khadr's defence lawyers agree that the footage does not show Mr. Khadr being tortured or mistreated, both have a keen interest in the Canadian public's response to the video.

Mr. Khadr's defence team released the eight-minute "highlight reel" shortly before 6 a.m. Ottawa time Tuesday – in time for most morning news shows. Canadian news web sites quickly carried copies of the video.

Ottawa, too, is paying attention. When a reporter called CSIS's media line early Tuesday morning, news coverage of the Khadr tape could be heard from televisions in the background.

The rest of the world is also watching. Within hours of the video's release, news stories began to surface around the planet, including on the front pages of The New York Times and BBC web sites.

When a Democracy deems it necessary to torture a 16-year old kid

Videos show Khadr crying in detention 16-year-old also pulling hair, covering face, shedding prison tunic

Steven Edwards
Canwest News Service


Monday, July 14, 2008

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=0436bad1-d0db-4bf6-a831-67378ea60e78


NEW YORK - A 16-year-old Omar Khadr is seen pulling at his hair, covering his face and shedding his tunic in stills taken from videotapes of Canadian officials interrogating the Toronto-born terror suspect in Guantanamo Bay.

They are significant because they are the first publicly released photographs of Khadr, now 21, since his capture by U.S. forces following a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002.

The public will also get its first opportunity to view excerpts of the videotapes when Khadr's lawyers place a 10-minute sequence on a website that is yet to be determined.

Khadr is seen in the photographs wearing an orange tunic, which U.S. authorities in Guantanamo have long made detainees they consider unco-operative wear.

He is also reported to be crying on several occasions.

The lawyers plan to release DVDs of the full seven hours of interrogations at a news conference Tuesday in Edmonton, where the offices of the Canadian members of Khadr's legal team are located.

The Supreme Court of Canada recently ordered the federal government to release the tapes and a series of related documents to the lawyers, who had launched successive actions to obtain the formerly confidential files.

Khadr's Pentagon-assigned military lawyer may use the tapes as part of the Canadian's defence. Khadr is scheduled to be tried before a U.S. military commission in early October on five war crimes charges, including the murder of a US soldier in a grenade attack during the 2002 firefight.

Notes U.S. officials wrote of the interrogations are included in some of the accompanying documents that were released by the lawyers separately last week.

The interrogations took place over four days from Feb. 13, 2003, at the U.S. naval base in Cuba following Khadr's transfer from detention in Afghanistan the previous October.

Sitting in a folding chair on the first day, Khadr ate a burger and drank a soda, according to one report, whose author said he could not hear what was being said.

Khadr "mumbled and had his head down" on the second day, the author said. The detainee also would "not look at his interviewers."

The author said when the Canadian officials asked Khadr why his demeanour had changed, he replied: "Promise you'll protect me from the Americans."

Khadr also said he had been tortured while detained in Afghanistan, the U.S. official wrote, and said everything he had told the Canadians the previous day "was a lie."

The Canadians asked Khadr if he'd spoken with anyone the previous night, and Khadr "denied anyone coached him," the U.S. official says. "He covered his eyes and began to cry heavily."

The U.S. official describes how Khadr removed his shirt, saying it was to show wounds on his back and shoulder. Khadr was shot and suffered shrapnel wounds during the firefight in Afghanistan.

"Khadr put his head back in his hands and cried heavily," said the official.

Khadr sat on a couch on the third day, the official writes. "He declined food that was offered to him."

The official said the Canadians asked Khadr about members of his family, among them his father, whom the U.S. has accused of being chief financier to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Khadr's father was killed in an anti-terrorist raid in Pakistan in 2003.

On the fourth day the official says the Canadian interrogators "began to get more confrontational with Khadr, who "denied killing anyone."

"Khadr began to cry and was crying when the interrogators left," the official says.

A horrific story that seems like a page from resigned Attorney General Alberto Gonazales' memos on torture

May be this couple can apply for his job, since they have the experience. Or even better, may be they can hire him as their lawyer. He can probably do it pro bono since he is an expert on ways to legalize and justify torture.

It is a shame what some humans are capable of doing to fellow humans, forgetting that God is All-Mighty, All Just.

---

Alleged slavery victim testifies of stunning abuse
Newsday (New York)
November 6, 2007
BY ROBERT E. KESSLER


For almost six hours yesterday, the small Indonesian woman spoke about what she said were 5 1/2 years of semi-starvation and an incomprehensible gamut of abuse and cruelty in the home of a wealthy Muttontown couple.

The 51-year-old-woman, named Samirah, testified through a court interpreter at the federal trial of the couple, Varsha Sabhnani and her husband, Mahender. They are accused of enslaving Samirah and another Indonesian woman, Enung, 46, and also harboring them as illegal immigrants...

Samirah testified that she was beaten numerous times - with a rolling pin, a light brown umbrella, two short-handled bamboo brooms - plus was cut frequently with the point of an orange-bladed knife, scalded with boiling water, and pinched by Varsha Sabhnani's long fingernails so hard that they drew blood...

Samirah also testified about the time she said she was forced to work while wearing a pair of glasses whose lenses had been covered with plastic wrapping tape so she could barely see, and about the time she said she was stripped naked and had the tape wrapped over her body, head and eyes.

When the tape was pulled off, it took parts of her body hair with it, Samirah said...

The source of the abuse and torture, which occurred almost daily, Samirah said, was Varsha Sabhnani's belief that she did not meet her standards as a maid.

But Samirah said it was impossible to work to anyone's standards given the fact that she usually worked from 4 a.m. to past midnight, was dressed in rags without underwear, and did not have enough food to live on without eating from the Sabhnanis' garbage cans, or begging from two woman employees who worked in the office of the perfume business...

As another form of punishment, Samirah said, she was forced to eat dozens of hot chili peppers and tablespoons of hot chili powder.

The beatings and the forced eating of chili made her unable to control her bodily functions and she often vomited, urinated or defecated when being abused, she said.

One time, Samirah said that when she vomited, Varsha Sabhnani beat her and tried to force her to eat her own vomit. When she was was unable to do that, Sabhnani mixed the vomit with a liquid and salt and required her to drink that mixture, Samirah said...