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The Guantánamo Bay war court is now costing US taxpayers over $7,600 per minute, according to new Pentagon figures.
Carting the necessary personnel and support to the remote Cuban base
has escalated costs for the military commissions, a memo from the top
Pentagon commissions official indicated. The controversial tribunals at
Guantánamo have attracted criticisms over their inefficiency from their
inception, in addition to international concerns about their capacity to
distribute justice.
The Pentagon estimates come as the chief prosecutor in the
commissions proposed relaxing major secrecy restrictions preventing
defense lawyers from addressing torture inflicted on defendants by the
CIA and its international allies – the first suggested classification
changes for the war court after the Senate released portions of its
landmark inquiry into CIA torture.
Vaughn
Ary, the retired marine two-star general who oversees the commissions
as the chief convening authority, declared his dissatisfaction with the
tempo and cost of the tribunals in a December memo. READ MORE
by Igor VolskyPosted on
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report
on the CIA’s extensive use of torture reveals that the agency regularly
misled the White House and Congress about the information it had
obtained from detainees and used techniques that are far more brutal
than it — or former Bush administration officials — had previously
acknowledged.
For instance, President George W. Bush insisted that “[t]his government does not torture people”
and claimed that the intelligence it produced was instrumental to
preventing terrorism on American soil and capturing high-value targets,
including Osama bin Laden. But the Committee’s five year investigation —
and examination of more than six million CIA documents — reveals all of
those assertions to be false
For its part, the CIA acknowledged that it “did not always live up
to the high standards that we set for ourselves” and “made mistakes” in
how it ran the program, particularly “early on” when the CIA “was
unprepared and lacked the core competencies required.” However, it
insisted that “there are too many flaws for [this report] to stand as
the official record of the program” and strongly disputed “that the
agency’s assessments were willfully misrepresented in a calculated
effort to manipulate.”
Republicans are similarly shielding
the agency from criticism, claiming that the report is “ideologically
motivated and distorted recounting of historical events.” “The fact that
the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation program developed significant
intelligence that helped us identify and capture important al-Qa’ida
terrorists, disrupt their ongoing plotting, and take down Usama Bin
Ladin is incontrovertible,” Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Saxby
Chambliss (R-GA), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, said in a statement. READ MORE
The report released by the Senate Intelligence
Committee on Tuesday is the first public accounting
of the CIA’s use of what critics call torture on al-Qaeda
detainees held at 'black sites' in Europe and Asia after
the Sept. 11 attacks.
The report from the
Senate Intelligence Committee is the first public accounting of the
CIA’s use of what critics call torture on Al Qaeda detainees. The
summary discloses for the first time that 119 prisoners were held in CIA
custody and that 26 or more were held because of mistaken identities or
bad intelligence.
WASHINGTON — The CIA abused dozens of terror suspects in the years
after 9/11, misled policymakers about what it was doing and then falsely
claimed the harsh interrogations made America safer, a scathing Senate
report charged Tuesday.
Beginning in 2002, the interrogations played out at secret, shadowy
detention facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, including an
Afghanistan site called the “dungeon.”
The tough tactics included stripping suspects, depriving them of sleep
for days at a time, waterboarding them, and confining them in boxes.
Some were placed in ice baths, or force-fed rectally. Captives were
slapped, slammed against walls, and bombarded with threats that they
would be killed or family members would be harmed.
The newlyreleased 500-plus-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report delivers
a scathing critique of the CIA's post-9/11 interrogation programs,
revealing previously unknown abuses, deceptions of the media, and
attempts to avoid Congressional oversight.
Among the horrifying
abuses detailed in the Senate report: Waterboarding, a torture mechanism
that brings the subject to the verge of drowning, was far more popular
than the CIA had let on; "rectal feedings" and "rectal hydrations" were
used to strip detainees of any measures of autonomy; and a particularly
damning segment of the report notes that the CIA did not punish an agent
who killed a detainee in the course of interrogations. The summary is
based on millions of documents surveyed over five years, and is just a
fraction of the length of the full, still-classified, 6,000-page report. READ MORE
Detainees at Guantanamo Bay are watched by military police. (photo: Reuters)
By Carol Rosenberg, The Miami Herald
16 January 12
The Obama administration may want to look
forward but but other countries are still interested in determining
whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.
Spanish judge on Friday re-launched an investigation into the alleged
torture of detainees held at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, one day after a British authorities launched a probe into CIA
renditions to Libya.
The twin developments demonstrated that while the
Obama administration has stuck to its promise not to investigate whether
Bush administration officials acted illegally by authorizing the use of
harsh interrogation techniques, other countries are still interested in
determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated
international law.
In Madrid, Judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez handed
down a 19-page decision Friday in which he said he would seek additional
information - medical data, a translation of a Human Rights Watch
report, elaboration on material made public by WikiLeaks, and testimony
from three senior U.S. military officers who served at Guantánamo - in
the case of four released Guantánamo captives who allege they were
humiliated and subjected to torture while in U.S. custody. READ MORE
Famed Nigerian author and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa at a rally, 1993. (photo: Greenpeace/AP)
By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
27 February 12
Can international companies be sued in the U.S. over ties to foreign regimes that commit human rights abuses?
wo
years ago, the Supreme Court said corporations were like people and had
the same free-speech rights to spend unlimited sums on campaigns ads.
Now, in a major test of human rights law, the justices will decide
whether corporations are like people when they are sued for aiding
foreign regimes that kill or torture their own people.
It would "create a weird paradox" if the corporations
are people when funding campaigns but not when they violate human
rights, said Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.
At issue is an obscure 18th century law unearthed by
human rights lawyers in the 1980s and increasingly used against U.S.
corporations whose work overseas has entangled them with brutal regimes.
On Tuesday, the justices will hear an appeal of a suit
accusing Royal Dutch Petroleum and its Shell subsidiary in the United
States of aiding a former Nigerian regime whose military police
tortured, raped and executed minority residents in the oil-rich delta.
The victims included famed Nigerian author and environmental activist
Ken Saro-Wiwa. READ MORE
One of the most troubling legacies of 9/11 is the United States'
decision to resort to torture to fight terrorism. Torture has tarnished
the United States' reputation and undermined the rule of law. Although
the worst abuses may be in the past, it will be a long time before the
United States can regain the legitimacy and credibility it has lost.
The United States' systematic use of torture has been extensively documented.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, human rights organizations
and the United States Senate have all detailed the gross mistreatment
of prisoners in US custody as part of the "war on terror." Interrogation
methods included not only such infamous tactics as waterboarding, but
also extreme sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation and sleep
deprivation. Although these tactics may not leave physical marks, they
cause profound pain and suffering. In their own way, these tactics are
as barbaric as the rack and screw of medieval torture chambers. READ MORE
Spanish judge on Friday re-launched an investigation into the alleged
torture of detainees held at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, one day after a British authorities launched a probe into CIA
renditions to Libya.
wo
years ago, the Supreme Court said corporations were like people and had
the same free-speech rights to spend unlimited sums on campaigns ads.
Now, in a major test of human rights law, the justices will decide
whether corporations are like people when they are sued for aiding
foreign regimes that kill or torture their own people.