woensdag 17 februari 2010

Martelen 115


The Real Roots of the CIA's Rendition & Black Sites Program

by: H.P. Albarelli Jr. and Jeffrey Kaye, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

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(Image: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted:ArtMakesMeSmile, DecadeNull, LoveMissB)

On Tuesday, February 10, the British High Court finally released a "seven-paragraph court document showing that MI5 officers were involved in the ill-treatment of a British resident, Binyam Mohamed." The document is itself a summary of 42 classified CIA documents given to the British in 2002. The US government has threatened the British government that the US-British intelligence relationship could be damaged if this material were released. The revelations regarding Mohamed's torture, which include documentation of the fact the US conducted "continuous sleep deprivation" under threats of harm, rendition, or being "disappeared," were criticized by the British court as being "at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities," and in violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

The Mohamed case is the most prominent of a number of cases that have come to public attention. While the timeline of Mohamed's torture places the implementation of the Bush administration's so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" many months prior to their questionable legal justification in the August 1, 2002, Jay Bybee memo to the CIA, the use of torture and rendition has a much earlier provenance. Over the past decade, many Americans have been shocked and disturbed about the CIA's secret program of rendition and torture carried out in numerous secret sites (dubbed "black sites" by the CIA) around the globe. The dimensions of this program for the most part are still classified "Eyes Only" in the intelligence community, but the program's roots can be clearly discovered in the early 1950's with the CIA's Artichoke Project. Perhaps the best and strangest case illustrating this can be found in the agency's own files. This is the so-called "Lyle O. Kelly case." The facts of this case are drawn from declassified government documents.

An Early Example of Torture and Rendition: "The Kelly Case"

In late January 1952, Morse Allen, a CIA Security Office official, was summoned to the office of his superior, security deputy chief Robert L. Bannerman, where he met with another agency official to discuss what Bannerman initially introduced as "the Kelly case." Wrote Allen, in a subsequent memorandum for his files, the official "explained in substance the Kelly case as follows: "Kelly, (whose real name is Dimitrov), is a 29-year-old Bulgarian and was the head of a small political party based in Greece and ostentively [sic] working for Bulgarian independence." The official described Dimitrov [whose first name was Dimitre] to Allen as "being young, ambitious, bright ... a sort of a 'man-on-a-horse' type but a typical Balkan politician."

The official continued explaining to Allen that months earlier CIA field operatives discovered that Dimitrov was seriously considering becoming a double agent for the French Intelligence Service. "Accordingly," states the memo, "a plot was rigged in which [Dimitrov] was told he was going to be assassinated and as a protective he was placed in custody of the Greek Police." Successfully duped, Dimitrov was then thrown into prison. There he was subjected to interrogation and torture, and he witnessed the brutal torture of other persons the CIA had induced authorities to imprison. Greek intelligence and law enforcement agencies were especially barbaric in their methods. Highly respected Operation Gladio historian Daniele Ganser describes the treatment of prisoners: "Their toes and fingernails were torn out. Their feet were beaten with sticks, until the skin came off and their bones were broken. Sharp objects were shoved into their vaginas. Filthy rags, often soaked in urine, and sometimes excrement, were pushed down their throats to throttle them, tubes were inserted into their anus and water driven in under very high pressure, and electro shocks were applied to their heads."

According to Allen's memo, after holding Dimitrov for six months the Greek authorities decided he was no more than "a nuisance" and they told the CIA "to take him back." Because the agency was unable to dispose of Dimitrov in Greece, the memo states, the CIA flew him to a secret interrogation center at Fort Clayton in Panama. In the 1950's, Fort Clayton, along with nearby sister installations Forts Amador and Gulick, the initial homes of the Army's notorious School of the Americas, served as a secret prison and interrogation centers for double agents and others kidnapped and spirited out of Europe and other locations. Beginning in 1951, Fort Amador, and reportedly Fort Gulick, were extensively used by the Army and the CIA as a secret experimental site for developing behavior modification techniques and a wide range of drugs, including "truth drugs," mescaline, LSD and heroin. Former CIA officials have also long claimed that Forts Clayton and Amador in the 1950's hosted a number of secret Army assassination teams that operated throughout North and South America, Europe and Southeast Asia.

There in Panama, Dimitrov was again aggressively interrogated, and then confined as "a psychopathic patient" to a high-security hospital ward at Fort Clayton. Allen's memo makes a point of stating: "[Dimitrov] is not a psychopathic personality."

The Artichoke Treatment

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/the-real-roots-cias-rendition-black-sites-program56956

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stopwar.org.uk

We don't do torture, says David Miliband. Oh yes we do

Human rights lawyers Phil Shiner and Clive Stafford-Smith say torture and abuse by UK soldiers and security services is comparable to what the US has done in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base, and complicity goes to the highest levels of government services.


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By Robin Beste
Stop the War Coalition
16 February 2010



That Baha Mousa was by no means the only Iraqi unlawfully killed (or murdered) by UK Forces inside UK facilities; [Independent] [Guardian]
That the Five Techniques banned from Northern Ireland returned as Standard Operating Procedure; [Times] [Times]
That coercive interrogation techniques used by interrogators within the Joint Forward Interrogation Team went much further than the Five Techniques; [Independent]
That PIL has at least 50 cases. In fact we have over 70 taking into account cases on the way to us; [BBC] [Independent] [Independent] [CNN] [Guardian]
That UK Forces routinely ill-treated/abused Iraqis (leaving aside the use of coercive interrogation techniques); [Independent] [Independent]
That UK Forces routinely detained Iraqis for months/years without due process apparently for no good reason (and in circumstances where even the lower standard of internment for imperative reasons of security could not be met);
That UK Forces routinely used techniques designed to sexually humiliate/debase male Muslims; [Independent] these included cases involving forcing a 14 year old to give oral sex to an adult male, [Telegraph] forcing Iraqis including this 14 year old to adopt prolonged simulated anal sex positions,[Independent] forcing male Muslims to masturbate in public [link], playing Muslims hardcore pornography all night during Ramadan [link], forcing young men into Abu Ghraib like "piled up body positions"[Independent], and male rape.[Guardian]
That UK Forces through women routinely debased male Muslims by having sexual intercourse with male soldiers in front of them, exposing their own genitals and breasts, caressing and fondling them and attempting to have sex with them. [Times] [Daily Mail]
That UK Forces routinely beat and abused for no good reason Iraqi children, elderly men and women in their own homes.
That finally when we thought the nation could sink no lower UK Forces appear to have abducted, tortured and murdered a 62 year old grandmother. This was the front page story in the Independent on Monday 11 January 2010.
For more information on Phil Shiner's human rights work see the Public Interest Lawyers website

For more information on Clive Stafford-Smith's human rights work see the Reprieve website

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