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The American Torture Story Being Ignored  

By Countercurrents

22 April, 2015
Countercurrents.org

“Stories” of torture by the U.S. authorities are surfacing while the reports are being ignored. The photo below by Reuters shows a part of the torture-story:

Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Amnesty International USA has accused concerned authorities in the Washington DC of “sweeping under the carpet” a December Senate report that the CIA tortured militants using the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” during the post 9/11 War on Terror. The organization cites a few of those “stories”:

 “The U.S. disappeared more than 100 men from 2002 to 2008. Many were tortured, humiliated and otherwise abused. The government used clinical words like ‘enhanced interrogation' and ‘stress positions' to obscure the truth, including:

# forced rectal feeding used to humiliate and exert control over men;

# men hung naked except for diapers, shackled into positions where they were forcibly deprived of sleep;

# in some cases lasting for several days;

# one "technique" involved stripping men, wrapping their naked bodies in Mylar tape, and dragging them up and down hallways while punching and slapping them.”

The Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) cites these incidents in its campaign against tortures.

The AIUSA said: “This is a story that had to be told - and now it must be read. Shockingly, the Justice Department is apparently refusing to read it, even though the agency should be reviewing any new evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Instead, the Justice Department is keeping the report locked away in a sealed envelope.”

The AIUSA said:

“There are more than 6,000 pages to this American Torture Story: a Senate committee spent years reviewing millions of government documents to piece together a landmark report known as the ‘Senate torture report.' More than ever before, we know how and why these abuses occurred.

The human rights organization said:

“The American Torture Story has been buried for far too long.

“The Justice Department can't bury the truth.”

In its campaign the AIUSA said:

“If they have not read the report we will send it to them - one page at a time!

“SEND THE REPORT ONE PAGE AT A TIME”

The AIUSA has initiated a campaign program that has begun from April 21. Under the program, national weeks of action will be observed in April 27 - May 8. It has called upon all human rights activists to participate in the National Weeks of Action to Stop Torture. CALL-IN DAYS will be observed on April 22 and May 6. On these days the AIUSA calls on to pick up the phone and call the Justice Department, demanding that they read the report. The organization suggests April 27 to be observed as Social Media Challenge: “If the Justice Department has not read the report, you can read it to them. Engage with Justice Department officials over social media and send them a video of you reading an excerpt of the report.”

It said:

"Top of Form

JOIN US & SEND THEM THE REPORT, ONE PAGE AT A TIME”

Naureen Shah, a researcher for Amnesty, accused the Obama administration of ignoring the painstaking five year investigation, which culminated in the Senate Report.

Amnesty says the US government has given de-facto impunity to those involved in rendition and torture and “has failed to respond to the report in any way whatsoever.”

“Major US agencies implicated in the Senate summary, including the Departments of Justice and State, have even kept the full report in sealed envelopes, and locked away,” said the Amnesty report.

The organization's website shows a page of the report, one of those is shown below:

American Torture Story

*The page displayed above is one page from a released summary of the report. The page is randomly generated.

The CIA torture report, published in December last year, examined the agency's use of torture post 9/11. The full report is 6,700 pages and is classified. The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) only published a heavily redacted 480-page summary of its investigation into CIA mistreatment and abuse of terror suspects.

The probe examined the CIA's maltreatment of Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons throughout the Middle East, Europe and Asia, and detailed assistance offered by foreign allied states.

Amnesty demands that the Justice Department and the White House disclose the names of those involved and the locations of all the secret prisons used in the program.

“The US Department of Justice (DoJ) must without further delay reopen and expand its investigation into CIA secret detention, rendition and interrogation programmes and practices, ensure that its scope and conduct meet international law and standards, and bring to justice in fair trials all the persons, regardless of their level of office or former level of office, suspected of being involved in the commission of crimes under international law, such as torture and enforced disappearance,” the report says.

The identity of all those held either by the US government or at the request of foreign governments must also be disclosed, says the rights group.

Other media reports said:

European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) confirmed Poland's complicity in CIA torture program in February. It ruled the Polish government had to conclude its investigation and pay damages.

It was then expected the ruling would put pressure on other countries to end the secrecy about their involvement in the CIA's global torture program. It's been known that Romania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Thailand also hosted CIA's black sites.






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