Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Switchboard >

Torture of Iraqi prisoners

Page: 1 2 3 4(5)6

pointless and uncalled for

07:03 / 20.05.04

And quotes related to the recently relesased pictures lead me to believe that the US High Command is comprised of angsty 15 year olds.

"I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure," he said. "We are looking into the abyss."

08:47 / 20.05.04

An act we are restricted from doing

what act?

pointless and uncalled for

09:31 / 20.05.04

he deserves hard time, in a room without a window.

Jack The Bodiless

11:47 / 20.05.04

It's not a question of what he deserves. That's a moveable feast - I'm sure several different posters here, all excited and distressed by the horrific news and pictures steadily dribbling out into the infosphere, can give us several wholly different viewpoints on what Sivits, and others like him, 'deserve'. And it doesn't help anyone to come up with increasingly imaginative ways of punishing him 'correctly' or 'appropriately' for what he's done.

You know, the more I think about this, the more I truly believe that the US administration still has no idea that we've been living in an age for well over ten years now, where any information can be made readily available to be accessed by anyone across the world with a computer, and that that accessibility is increasing at a phenomenal rate. They seem to genuinely be surprised that this information is leaking, and that 'secrets' are getting out within a matter of days instead of the decades they're used to...

17:00 / 20.05.04

And it doesn't help anyone to come up with increasingly imaginative ways of punishing him 'correctly' or 'appropriately' for what he's done.

Pots and kettles.

Think about it.

the more I truly believe that the US administration still has no idea that we've been living in an age for well over ten years now, where any information can be made readily available to be accessed by anyone across the world with a computer

Well, with this administration especially -- they are, after all, CEOs. And any of us who work in a corporate environment know how CEOs get along with computers, right?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:01 / 21.05.04

Now a website claims there are previously unheard American voices on the soundtrack to Nik Berg's murder.

I'm currently unconvinced. The sound is so poor that I couldn't be sure that it is an American voice, or that they are saying what this report believes they are saying. I can't even be sure that this is 'the original' soundtrack and not one that's been rerecorded somewhere and picked up some voices of people who weren't there. But for the 'hmmm...' value.

pointless and uncalled for

06:33 / 21.05.04

I've had a look at some of this and I'm also unconvinced. I haven't actually listened to the clip but in general all of the theories and reports going around are far to varied and contentious to be reliable. It's taking the same for as those that gave us conclusive evidence that a plane did not crash into the Pentagon. Too much stuff is being shoehorned into the theory and other pertinent factors being left unmentioned.

I like the supposed link about the chairs. I have the same chair in my back garden. I wonder if the conspiracy theorists will try to pin this all on me?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:29 / 21.05.04

Dunno. Are you a lizard?

12:55 / 21.05.04

It's just unfortunate that, punishment fitting or no, Sivit's deal was struck so that he'd testify against the other soldiers in the prison - not (as one would hope or expect) to testify in order to establish whether or not the abuse was dictated from on high.

14:01 / 21.05.04

Rumsfeld recently stated that what happened in the prison is abuse, not torture. Can anyone verify what the legal difference is between the two?

15:55 / 21.05.04

The legal difference appears to be vague - in most cases, torture is defined as a "profound" or "prolonged" abuse. However, I believe (as stated earlier) that torture is a blanket term, and needs to be more keenly defined.

It may or may not be moot, though. In terms of the Geneva Convention, "abuse", "humiliation", and "torture" are all violations.

16:33 / 21.05.04

SK;
thought you meant that.
thing is, what he deserves and what i would argue for if i were the prosecutor are very diferent things.

in my model of TheWayThingsShouldBe, many offences would carry smaller penalties than they do, and a good few would varry more weighty senetnces than they do.

its not my planet, and i get that.

the reason i mentioned what i think he deserves was to counter the suggestion that he has in some way made it all better, or at least quits, by losing his job and status and being outed as a right cunt.

i honestly dont think he will be as unanimously villified as people think.

he's not seen as a sex offender, and i bet the aryans will take him under thier wing in the slammer.

07:08 / 22.05.04

OG - I think the point is also moot because Rumsfeld has now invested so much in not calling the abuse in Abu Grahib that he will move heaven and earth to ensure that that particular charge will not appear in any court martial.

In other news... the US extends death in custody probe .

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:49 / 22.05.04

Whoah. Let's look at the numbers here.

We've got 1,800 photos of torture.

We've got 37 dead in custody.

If Rumsfeld can spin this in any way other than the obvious, then I give up.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:04 / 22.05.04

Plus, according to Newsnight last night, the US has also aoutsourced the really nasty prisoner torture to countries like Egypt...

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:19 / 22.05.04

I just had a reality check.

For God's sake. Guantanamo is so far outside Geneva it's not even a joke. There is no "unlawful combatant" category in international law. Geneva states very clearly that all belligerants shall be accorded Prisoner of War status unless and until a commission determines otherwise. There has been none. Civilians and resistance fighters are specifically covered. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that he's responsible for the Guantanamo regime (see Newsweek's rather belated scoop).

So the US Administration is violating Geneva's war crimes statutes, right? Anyone see why that isn't so? In which case, why the hell is this a surprise? Just because it's happening outside the deliberately established 'law does not apply' zone?

I'm so angry with myself I could puke. It's not the torture which is news. It's the location.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:20 / 22.05.04

Outsourcing of torture is nothing new... there was a wicked article in last week's New Statesman detailing ALL MANNER of the shit. However, champagne socialists that they are, NS don't offer their web pages for free.

When I have time (gimme a day or so) I'll post the relevant bits plus their list of sources. It's one of those "well, I assumed they were doing this, but I never really reckoned it was this callous" reads.

21:04 / 22.05.04

Tycho - yes, it's pretty clear that the U.S. is in violation of the Geneva convention in at least two locations. Rumsfeld is directly responsible (by definition of his job and by definition of the convention) and should be forced to resign, as well as face charges. Why he hasn't been is beyond me.

02:46 / 23.05.04

This is news?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:43 / 23.05.04

It gets better. The quisling council that will run Iraq on behalf of the US after the 30th June has signed an agreement that grants US and UK troops immunity from prosecution by Iraqis in Iraqi courts. This obviously saves US/UK troops from entirely malicious prosecutions by people related to people they might have killed.

I fully expect there will be some other announcement in the next few weeks that will make it more difficult for the people to hear about when their Government decides to torture people too, they might decide to outsource completely to countries like Egypt and Pakistan.

15:58 / 14.06.04

Four UK troops face court martial

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:31 / 15.06.04

It does seem now that Piers Morgan's sole mistake was to publish the wrong set of photos of torture, namely the ones that weren't real. Does anyone think those might have been rushed out in the hopes that when the real ones came to light it was hoped that the British public would get them mixed up in their minds and think these were more faked photos. Hmmm, methinks I should be Faxing my MP.com to find out whether if these photos are genuine Tony Blair will sack Geoff Hoon or whether the latter will do the decent thing and resign.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:44 / 15.06.04

Fax Your MP.

Dear Mr MP,

I've read with concern in the news today of the four British troops that are being court-martialed over claims of grave abuse to Iraqi prisoners (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3808475.stm), in what seems to be a similar manner to that for which American servicemen and women have already started being convicted in American military courts. In both cases there appear to be photographs depicting the torture and those taking part in it.

Of course, similar allegations were made earlier in the year by The Daily Mirror and when those photographs turned out to be fake the editor, Piers Morgan, was forced to take responsibility for the errors of judgement of him and his staff and was fired (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3716151.stm).

If these troops are found guilty, and these photos prove to be genuine, will Tony Blair ask for Geoff Hoon to take responsibility for those under him and resign? And if Mr. Hoon declines, will Mr. Blair fire him. It would be a curious double standard if we hold those in the media to a higher standard than those in the highest offices of British Government.

Yours sincerely,
...

23:44 / 16.06.04

Well, well, well.... looks like Rummy's been caught with his hand in the war crime jar.

Pentagon officials tell NBC News that late last year, at the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held “off the books” — hidden entirely from the International Red Cross and anyone else — in possible violation of international law.

I've been waiting for a nice smoky gun like this to make the headlines.

A fall of geckos

08:40 / 17.07.04

There's a report in Salon that the investigative journalist Seymore Hersh has claimed that the Pentagon has a tape of children being sodomised in the prison.

This is the direct quote from Hersh:
"Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

As of yet Hersh hasn't confirmed that he's seen a copy of this.

This is pretty fucking horrific, and quite obviously crosses the line from abuse into torture (not that I'm suggesting the earlier atrocities weren't torture).

18:02 / 19.07.04

Here's a transcript of the RealPlayer video of Hersh's speech.

Rumsfeld is on record saying there are worse images out there. This may be them.

14:18 / 20.07.04

These images MUST come out. I have serious doubts they shall however...

A fall of geckos

11:35 / 21.07.04

"These images MUST come out. I have serious doubts they shall however..."

Totally agree - if these images are kicking round the Pentagon, they're going to sit on them.

There's a post on Cory Doctorow's blog indicating that there appears to be evidence for those claims in the supporting statements that accompany the Taguba Report - the Washington Post's currently hosting copies of the relevant pages here, and
here.

"I saw [name deleted] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15 - 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn't covered and I saw [name deleted] who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid's ass. I couldn't see the face of the kid because his face wasn't in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures. [name deleted], I think he is [deleted] because of his accent, and he was not skinny or short, and he acted like a homosexual (gay). And that was in cell #23 as best as I remember."

It's horrific stuff.

There's also a news article here on secret interrogation centres, with the Human Rights First report he mentions "Ending Secret Detentions," which can be found here.

Ending Secret Detentions is a longish document (47 pages) but I'd really recommend reading it. Although there hasn't yet been any indication of torture at many of these centres, the fact that they’re secret prisons holding unidentified prisoners is enough to make me very concerned, especially in the wake of the Abu Ghraib abuses.

What's really worrying me now is that the Abu Ghraib scandal will blow over without the full extent of the problem being exposed, but the methods will continue in other places.

02:19 / 23.07.04

Army Investigates 94 Cases of Abuse

Thirty-nine prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001 and there have been 94 cases of proven or suspected abuse, the Army said Thursday in a broad new report giving a more precise and higher estimate of the scale of the abuse.

The Army inspector general's report also gives new details about the alleged abuses, including evidence that troops conspired to make Iraqi prisoners jump off a bridge, that one interrogator hit a prisoner in the head during questioning and that a sergeant told subordinates to "rough up" detainees.

The acting Army secretary and its top general said they took responsibility for the abuses while insisting that they were not sanctioned by Army leadership. "These actions, while regrettable, are aberrations," said Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker said mistakes were understandable, though not excusable. Troops must be trained to contain their anger at prisoners who had been trying to kill them, he said. "It's in the middle of a rumble that this is happening," Schoomaker said.

20:44 / 01.01.05

So given that new, sickenening details have emerged on Gitmo tortures, and with the recent nomination of Alberto "Torture Solicitor" Gonzalez for attorney general, much of these same old 'rare aberrations' are popping up again.

Does anyone know (as it was an issue with my neo-con brother-in-law over the holidays), whether a nation must be a signee of the Geneva Conventions for the US to respect human rights in matters of wartime, with respect to that nation? Is the US legally bound to uphold those conventions if the nation they're occupying is not a member?

04:11 / 02.01.05

Well, I found this guide to the conventions.

Interestingly, it says mercenaries neither have rights to be treated as combatants or prisoners of war -- so that might be a precedent for the "unlawful combatant" concept. (The "combatant" entry is also interesting along those lines.)

What you need for your discussion, however is the entry on war crimes:

War crimes are againt the customary laws of war which are applicable in any conflict, regardless of whether the country in question is a signatory to the Geneva Convention. They include the rights listed in the common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions (Convention I, Article 3) and the basics of human rights law – freedom from torture, mutilation and rape, slavery, and willful killing. Customary law also forbids genocide, crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes.

The "customary law" entry reiterates this -- it doesn't matter what country you're in, the conventions are there to outline what the basic rules of war should be.

10:17 / 03.01.05

On the most recent torture revelations, I found this little excerpt from the Guardian a little... shall we say, puzzling...

For the time being - possibly forever - the report cannot be published, because the Americans claim that the torture allegations amount to descriptions of classified interrogation methods.

So... the US government is, basically, saying, "You can't talk about all the torture going on - that's classified interrogation methods, that is"?

Did someone mention something about directives from on high?

10:18 / 03.01.05

(Source, for those who want it...)

10:24 / 24.07.05

This thread is pretty much permanently bumpable; torture in the news seems to have become something of a fact of life. Given that:

Prosecuting our fine boys in uniform? It's political correctness gone MAAAAHHD!

In a debate in the House of Lords earlier this month Lord Boyce, a former chief of the defence staff, said the 'armed forces are under legal siege and being pushed in the direction in which an order could be seen as improper or legally unsound. They are being pushed by people schooled in political correctness.'

Is it really the case that sincere opposition to torture has become an out-of-the-mainstream position?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:59 / 25.07.05

The Express was supporting our boys on Saturday by an article that said that the Americans are doing the same sort of stuff and getting away with it, the unspoken follow-on being that if they are getting away with it, why shouldn't we, not we should pressure the Americans to let in the tiniest bit of accountability in their actions.

Page: 1 2 3 4(5)6