CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy Outside Vilnius, Lithuania

Related information:

CIA Director Reveals Spec Ops Report: US Needs Hit Squads, ‘Manhunting Agency’

Italy convicts 23 CIA agents in rendition trial

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

US Spy Agencies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Twitter and Even Amazon Book Reviews


The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.


Outside Lithuania the CIA used a former barn to interrogate al Qaeda members.

Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.

“The activities in that prison were illegal,” said human rights researcher John Sifton. “They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions.”

Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the “black site” in 2004.

Lithuania agreed to allow the CIA prison after President George W. Bush visited the country in 2002 and pledged support for Lithuania’s efforts to join NATO.

“The new members of NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role in getting them into that organization that they would do anything the U.S. asked for during that period,” said former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant. “They were eager to please and eager to be cooperative on security and on intelligence matters.”

Read moreCIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy Outside Vilnius, Lithuania

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

This is a MUST-READ.

This is “winning the hearts and minds of people” in action. This is how the US creates real terrorists.

Soldiers wake up! You die for nothing in Afghanistan except corporate profit benefiting only the elite.


The following videos were posted to YouTube by the Real News Network on Oct. 26 and Nov. 4, 2009.

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”

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Former UK ambassador Craig Murray

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is “endemic” to the country’s justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a “totalitarian” state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

Suspects in Uzbekistan’s gulags “were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”

“I was absolutely stunned — it changed my whole world view in an instant — to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn’t do the torture ourselves,” Murray said.

IT’S THE PIPELINE, STUPID

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan’s natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

“The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan,” Murray noted.

Read moreFormer UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

President Obama signs law blocking release of torture photos

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President Barack Obama received a great deal of media attention on Wednesday for signing a historic hate-crimes bill into law. But, on the same day, the US president also signed a Homeland Security spending bill that received far less attention, even though it effectively blocks efforts by activists to reveal photos of detainee abuse in US custody.

“We are disappointed that the president has signed a law giving the Defense Department the authority to hide evidence of its own misconduct, and we hope the defense secretary will not take advantage of that authority by suppressing photos related to the abuse of prisoners,” Jameel Jaffer, national security director for the ACLU, said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the House and Senate inserted language into the Homeland Security appropriations bill that would shield photos of detainees in the US’s war on terror from the Freedom of Information Act. The language, which was added at the prodding of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), effectively blocks an ACLU lawsuit currently before the courts that would have forced the government to release the photos under Freedom of Information statutes.

As Daphne Eviatar noted at the Washington Independent, “President Obama initially agreed to release the photos, but changed his mind after consulting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others at the Pentagon, who warned the photos would endanger US servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

At issue are 21 photos of detainees in US custody that the Department of Defense has been fighting tooth and nail from releasing. As Raw Story reported earlier this year, those photos may show acts of sexual abuse being carried out against detainees.

Major General Antonio Taguba, the author of a report on allegations of detainee abuse in U.S. prisons in Iraq, said that photos exist depicting the following:

–An American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner.
–A male translator apparently raping a male detainee.
–A female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Other photographs depict sexual assaults on prisoners with a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube, according to Taguba.

Read morePresident Obama signs law blocking release of torture photos

US intelligence budget: $75 billion and 200,000 employees; Fusion centers to access classified military intelligence

Continuing change!


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Dennis Cutler Blair (born 1947), is the third and current Director of National Intelligence and a retired United States Navy four-star admiral.

Speaking at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club September 15, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis C. Blair, disclosed that the current annual budget for the 16 agency U.S. “Intelligence Community” (IC) clocks-in at $75 billion and employs some 200,000 operatives world-wide, including private contractors.

In unveiling an unclassified version of the National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), Blair asserts he is seeking to break down “this old distinction between military and nonmilitary intelligence,” stating that the “traditional fault line” separating secretive military programs from overall intelligence activities “is no longer relevant.”

As if to emphasize the sweeping nature of Blair’s remarks, Federal Computer Week reported September 17 that “some non-federal officials with the necessary clearances who work at intelligence fusion centers around the country will soon have limited access to classified terrorism-related information that resides in the Defense Department’s classified network.” According to the publication:

Read moreUS intelligence budget: $75 billion and 200,000 employees; Fusion centers to access classified military intelligence

CIA doctors face human experimentation claims

Related article: CIA refuses order to release torture documents


Medical ethics group says physicians monitored ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and studied their effectiveness

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A US flag at Camp Delta in Guantánamo Bay. Photograph: Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty Images

Doctors and psychologists the CIA employed to monitor its “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation, a medical ethics watchdog has alleged.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a not-for-profit group that has investigated the role of medical personnel in alleged incidents of torture at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites, accuses doctors of being far more involved than hitherto understood.

PHR says health professionals participated at every stage in the development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA’s secret “torture programme”.

The American Medical Association, the largest body of physicians in the US, said it was in open dialogue with the Obama administration and other government agencies over the role of doctors. “The participation of physicians in torture and interrogation is a violation of core ethical values,” it said.

The most incendiary accusation of PHR’s latest report, Aiding Torture, is that doctors actively monitored the CIA’s interrogation techniques with a view to determining their effectiveness, using detainees as human subjects without their consent. The report concludes that such data gathering was “a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation”.

Human experimentation without consent has been prohibited in any setting since 1947, when the Nuremberg Code, which resulted from the prosecution of Nazi doctors, set down 10 sacrosanct principles. The code states that voluntary consent of subjects is essential and that all unnecessary physical and mental suffering should be avoided.

The Geneva conventions also ban medical experiments on prisoners and prisoners of war, which they describe as “grave breaches”. Under CIA guidelines, doctors and psychologists were required to be present during the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques on detainees.

In April, a leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross found that medical staff employed by the CIA had been present during waterboarding, and had even used what appeared to be a pulse oxymeter, placed on the prisoner’s finger to monitor his oxygen saturation during the procedure. The Red Cross condemned such activities as a “gross breach of medical ethics”. PHR has based its accusation of possible experimentation on the 2004 report of the CIA’s own inspector general into the agency’s interrogation methods, which was finally published two weeks ago after pressure from the courts.

An appendix to the report, marked “top secret”, provides guidelines to employees of the CIA’s internal Office of Medical Services “supporting the detention of terrorists turned over to the CIA for interrogation”.

Read moreCIA doctors face human experimentation claims

CIA refuses order to release torture documents

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The Central Intelligence Agency has refused to turn over documents they were ordered to produce to a civil rights group under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

A federal judge ordered the agency to produce the documents — relating to the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program and secret prisons — by Monday, or provide a justification for withholding them. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Obama’s Justice Department has refused to provide more documents. The Department had been instructed to release a presidential directive authorizing CIA “black sites” as well as CIA inspector general (IG) records and documents from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel regarding the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

In a filing Monday, the CIA said they wouldn’t turn over the documents, claiming their publication would threaten national security.

Read moreCIA refuses order to release torture documents

How a lawyer unearthed US torture documents

Now revealing the TRUTH has become a recruitment beacon for Al-Qaeda!

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“It is error alone which needs the support of government.  Truth can stand by itself. ”
– Thomas Jefferson

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies. Let the revolution begin!”
– Ron Paul


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Jameel Jaffer dug up torture memos.

One of the key figures behind the cascade of documents detailing torture and abuse within America’s global “war on terror” happens to be a Canadian-born graduate of Toronto’s Upper Canada College.

Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer born in London, Ont., was instrumental in filing and fighting an unlikely Freedom of Information Act request that eventually unearthed thousands of pages of secret documents which illustrated damning evidence of U.S. government complicity in violations of international humanitarian law.

“A lot of the documents describe abuses that are really horrific,” he said in an interview. “It was hard to believe that these incidents had occurred in facilities run by the United States.”

Jaffer told the Star last night that this type of lengthy and expensive legal muck-raking is unlikely to occur in Canada because grants and funding are so scarce. “There are people doing this kind of work in Canada and they have a tough job,” he said.”

The request was filed by Jaffer and fellow ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh – daughter of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – in October 2003, before the disturbingly iconic Abu Ghraib prison photographs emerged. When those photos came out in April of 2004, they spurred Jaffer and Singh to press their request in court, which is sometimes the only way to successfully pursue an FOI request.

Six years later, more than 130,000 pages of previously classified evidence has trickled out; much of it has been seized upon by critics of America’s seemingly unending global war on terrorism.

The documents uncovered by Jaffer and Singh are a gruesome testament to the grim realities of the post-9/11 world: they revealed fissures between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military over how to treat detainees at Guantanamo Bay; vivid descriptions of conditions within the CIA’s overseas “black site” prisons, where detainees were sent without trial; the Justice Department “torture memos,” which revealed prominent U.S. officials had essentially signed-off on torture; and autopsies of prisoners who died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The evidence has been seized upon by supporters of the war as well, who say Jaffer and the ACLU have given a propaganda weapon and recruitment beacon for Al Qaeda.

“In general, I think our position is that national security is increasingly used as a pretext to suppress information that would embarrass government officials and information related to criminal activity,” Jaffer told the Star. “And we think that the abuse of national security for those ends is something that, in the end, jeopardizes not just security but democracy as well, and that’s really what motivates a lot of these cases.”

Read moreHow a lawyer unearthed US torture documents

Yes, you will! FORCED vaccinations, isolation & quarantine, health care interrogations and mandatory ‘decontaminations’

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Source: Here

Obama, the Bush’s, the Clinton’s, Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner are all puppets of the elite and so was Hitler.

– Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts: Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs:
“Will Americans realize that they are not ruled by elected representatives but by an oligarchy that owns the Washington whorehouse? Will Americans ever understand that they are impotent serfs?”

Related video (MUST-SEE):
Massachusetts ’swine flu’ legislation: A $1000 fine per day or up to 30 days in prison for each day that you do not follow the emergency declaration rules


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(NaturalNews) The United States of America is devolving into medical fascism and Massachusetts is leading the way with the passage of a new bill, the “Pandemic Response Bill” 2028, reportedly just passed by the MA state Senate and now awaiting approval in the House. This bill suspends virtually all Constitutional rights of Massachusetts citizens and forces anyone “suspected” of being infected to submit to interrogations, “decontaminations” and vaccines.

It’s also sets fines up to $1,000 per day for anyone who refuses to submit to quarantines, vaccinations, decontamination efforts or to follow any other verbal order by virtually any state-licensed law enforcement or medical personnel. You can read the text yourself here: http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/sen…

Here’s some of the language contained in the bill:

(Violation of 4th Amendment: Illegal search and seizure)

During either type of declared emergency, a local public health authority… may exercise authority… to require the owner or occupier of premises to permit entry into and investigation of the premises; to close, direct, and compel the evacuation of, or to decontaminate or cause to be
decontaminated any building or facility; to destroy any material; to restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons;

(Violation of 14th Amendment; illegal arrest without a warrant)

…an officer authorized to serve criminal process may arrest without a warrant any person whom the officer has probable cause to believe has violated an order given to effectuate the purposes of this subsection and shall use reasonable diligence to enforce such order. [Gunpoint]

(Government price controls)

The attorney general, in consultation with the office of consumer affairs and business regulation, and upon the declaration by the governor that a supply emergency exists, shall take appropriate action to ensure that no person shall sell a product or service that is at a price that unreasonably exceeds the price charged before the emergency.

“Involuntary Transportation” (also known as kidnapping)

Law enforcement authorities, upon order of the commissioner or his agent or at the request of a local public health authority pursuant to such order, shall assist emergency medical technicians or other appropriate medical personnel in the involuntary transportation of such person to the tuberculosis treatment center.

$1,000 / day in fines

Any person who knowingly violates an order, as to which noncompliance
poses a serious danger to public health as determined by the commissioner or the local public health authority, shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 30 days or a fine of not more than one thousand dollars per day that the violation continues, or both.

Forced vaccinations

Furthermore, when the commissioner or a local public health authority within its jurisdiction determines that either or both of the following measures are necessary to prevent a serious danger to the public health the commissioner or local public health authority may exercise the following authority: (1) to vaccinate or provide precautionary prophylaxis to individuals as protection against communicable disease…

Forced quarantine for those who refuse (illegal imprisonment without charge)

An individual who is unable or unwilling to submit to vaccination or treatment shall not be required to submit to such procedures but may be isolated or quarantined pursuant to section 96 of chapter 111 if his or her refusal poses a serious danger to public health or results in uncertainty whether he or she has been exposed to or is infected with a disease or condition that poses a serious danger to public health, as determined by the commissioner, or a local public health authority operating within its jurisdiction.

Arrest for refusal to be “decontaminated”

If an individual is unable or unwilling to submit to decontamination or procedures necessary for diagnosis, the decontamination or diagnosis procedures may proceed only pursuant to an order of the superior court… During the time necessary to obtain such court order, such individual may be isolated or quarantined pursuant to section 96 of chapter 111 if his or her refusal to submit to decontamination or diagnosis procedures poses a serious danger to public health or results in uncertainty whether he or she has been exposed to or is infected with a disease or condition that poses a serious danger to public health.

Interrogation

When the commissioner or a local public health authority within its jurisdiction reasonably believes that a person may have been exposed to a disease or condition that poses a threat to the public health, in addition to their authority under section 96 of chapter 111, the commissioner or the local public health authority may detain the person for as long as may be reasonably necessary for the commissioner or the local public health authority, to convey information to the person regarding the disease or condition and to obtain contact information… If a person detained under subsection (1) refuses to provide the information requested, the person may be isolated or quarantined pursuant to section 96 of chapter 111 if his or her refusal poses a serious danger to public health…

Forced isolation and quarantine

An order for isolation or quarantine may include any individual who is unwilling or unable to undergo vaccination, precautionary prophylaxis, medical treatment, decontamination, medical examinations, tests, or specimen collection and whose refusal of one or more of these measures poses a serious danger to public health or results in uncertainty whether he or she has been exposed to or is infected with a disease or condition that poses a serious danger to public health.

Forced entry into any home or building…

There’s a lot more in this bill, including language that allows Mass. police to enter any home or building without a search warrant, to destroy any object or building they suspect may pose a threat to public safety, to order the closing and / or decontamination of any facility using highly toxic chemical decontamination agents, and to arrest, detain and interrogate anyone who gets in their way.

Meanwhile, all state law enforcement and medical personnel are granted complete immunity from prosecution for their part in violating your Constitutional rights. So if they violate your right to due process, or they accidentally destroy your home, or they kill your family dog because they suspect it might be infected, you have absolutely zero recourse.

Under this bill, Massachusetts becomes a medical police state. There is no debating it. It’s all written, clear as day, in this law: The citizens of Massachusetts will have no rights, period. The Constitution is ancient history. You are now the property of the State.

Read moreYes, you will! FORCED vaccinations, isolation & quarantine, health care interrogations and mandatory ‘decontaminations’

CIA Report: Interrogators Threatened to Kill And Rape Family Members of Detainees

CIA interrogators threatened to kill and rape relatives of detainees, including the September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a declassified report shows.

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A CIA interrogator threatened to kill the children of the the September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed if al-Qa’eda attacked the US again, according to a declassified report. Photo: AP

The report, released on Monday by the US Justice Department, said that a CIA interrogator told Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that if any other attacks happened in the United States, “We’re going to kill your children”.

Another interrogator allegedly tried to convince a detainee that his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him. The interrogator later denied making the threat.

The report, written in 2004, was made public after a legal petition by the American Council for Civil Liberties. It also reportedly disclosed how interrogators conducted mock executions and threatened a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole with a gun and a power drill.

“Ten years from now we’re going to be sorry we’re doing this [but] it has to be done,” one unidentified CIA officer said in the report, predicting that interrogators would someday have to appear in court to answer for such tactics.

It was released as the government launched a criminal investigation into the spy agency’s “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane” practices in the wake of the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the US, and as President Barack Obama ordered the creation of a new unit for interrogating terrorist suspects, taking responsibility away from the CIA.

Related article:  ‘Inhumane’ CIA terror tactics spur criminal probe

The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group will answer to the White House and be run by FBI officials from the bureau’s Washington headquarters. It will follow guidelines set by the US army’s field manual, which conforms to international law.

Read moreCIA Report: Interrogators Threatened to Kill And Rape Family Members of Detainees

Dick Cheney ordered CIA to hide counter-terrorism plan

Dick Cheney, the former Vice President, ordered the CIA to hide a mysterious counter-terrorism programme from Congress for eight years, despite US laws demanding its disclosure.

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Dick Cheney, the former Vice President, ordered the CIA to hide a mysterious counter-terrorism programme from Congress for eight years, despite US laws demanding its disclosure. Photo: AP

The programme was shut down on the very day the Obama administration learned of its existence last month. Details remain cloaked in secrecy, however, and assurances have been given that it was never activated.

That has not prevented lurid speculation of an alleged Mossad-style elimination unit, or possible anti-terror operations inside America, which the CIA is legally barred from conducting.

Related articles:
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of CIA Project (New York Times)
Cheney told CIA to withhold information: report (Reuters)

Mr Cheney is also the possible target of a criminal investigation for allegedly permitting torture by the CIA. It emerged at the weekend that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, may appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether members of the Bush Administration broke the law by allowing the CIA use “waterboarding” on terror suspects.

The Focus is now on the antiterrorist programme which Leon Panetta, the CIA director, was only briefed about on June 23, four months after he took office. Officials told the New York Times that “the unidentified programme was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress” in the months just after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Mr Panetta was sufficiently alarmed by what he learned to close down the programme immediately. The following day, he briefed members of the Senate and House intelligence committees about the former Vice President’s deception.

Mr Panetta told the Congressmen that for the past eight years, Mr Cheney had deliberately kept the oversight committees in the dark about the antiterrorist measures.

Read moreDick Cheney ordered CIA to hide counter-terrorism plan

London’s Metropolitan Police accused of waterboarding drug suspects

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The claims are part of an investigation which includes accusations that evidence was fabricated and suspects’ property was stolen

Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of a major anti-corruption inquiry, The Times has learnt.

The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects’ property. It has already led to the abandonment of a drug trial and the suspension of several police officers.

However, senior policing officials are most alarmed by the claim that officers in Enfield, North London, used the controversial CIA interrogation technique to simulate drowning. Scotland Yard is appointing a new borough commander in Enfield in a move that is being seen as an attempt by Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, to enforce a regime of “intrusive supervision”.

The waterboarding claims will fuel the debate about police conduct that has raged in the wake of hundreds of public complaints of brutality at the anti-G20 protests in April.

The part of the inquiry focusing on alleged police brutality has been taken over by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It is examining the conduct of six officers connected to drug raids in November in which four men and a woman were arrested at addresses in Enfield and Tottenham. Police said they found a large amount of cannabis and the suspects were charged with importation of a Class C drug. The case was abandoned four months later when the Crown Prosecution Service said it would not have been in the public interest to proceed. It is understood that the trial, by revealing the torture claims, would have compromised the criminal investigation into the six officers.

Read moreLondon’s Metropolitan Police accused of waterboarding drug suspects

Obama’s Homeland Security Nominee Withdraws Amid Questions About Torture


Philip Mudd was nominated for an intelligence post. (AP)

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s nominee to lead intelligence efforts at the Department of Homeland Security withdrew Friday after it became clear that lawmakers would raise questions about his role in the Bush administration’s interrogation programs.

Philip Mudd, who has 24 years of intelligence experience, said in a letter to the White House that he worried that his nomination could become a “distraction” from President Obama’s agenda.

Mr. Mudd is now a deputy in Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterterrorism unit. Before that, he was deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Counterterrorism Center. It was in the latter post that legislators believed Mr. Mudd became deeply involved with the government’s enhanced interrogation efforts, including the use of the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.

A White House aide said the president was well aware of Mr. Mudd’s links with interrogation programs that the Obama administration has described as torture. Still, the aide said Mr. Obama had complete confidence that Mr. Mudd was the best person for the Homeland Security post.

Read moreObama’s Homeland Security Nominee Withdraws Amid Questions About Torture

Supreme Court: Suspects can be interrogated without lawyer

“The Obama administration had asked the court to overturn Michigan v. Jackson, disappointing civil rights and civil liberties groups that expected President Barack Obama to reverse the policies of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.”


WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a long-standing ruling that stopped police from initiating questions unless a defendant’s lawyer was present, a move that will make it easier for prosecutors to interrogate suspects.

The high court, in a 5-4 ruling, overturned the 1986 Michigan v. Jackson ruling, which said police may not initiate questioning of a defendant who has a lawyer or has asked for one unless the attorney is present. The Michigan ruling applied even to defendants who agreed to talk to the authorities without their lawyers.

The court’s conservatives overturned that opinion, with Justice Antonin Scalia saying “it was poorly reasoned.”

Under the Jackson opinion, police could not even ask a defendant who had been appointed a lawyer if he wanted to talk, Scalia said.

“It would be completely unjustified to presume that a defendant’s consent to police-initiated interrogation was involuntary or coerced simply because he had previously been appointed a lawyer,” Scalia said in the court’s opinion.

Read moreSupreme Court: Suspects can be interrogated without lawyer

Former Senior Interrogator in Iraq Dissects Cheney’s Lies and Distortions

As a senior interrogator in Iraq (and a former criminal investigator), there was a lesson I learned that served me well: there’s more to be learned from what someone doesn’t say than from what they do say. Let me dissect former Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech on National Security using this model and my interrogation skills.

First, VP Cheney said, “This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately… it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do.” He further stated, “It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so.” That is simply untrue. Anyone who served in Iraq, and veterans on both sides of the aisle have made this argument, knows that the foreign fighters did not come to Iraq en masse until after the revelations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. I heard this from captured foreign fighters day in and day out when I was supervising interrogations in Iraq. What the former vice president didn’t say is the fact that the dislike of our policies in the Middle East were not enough to make thousands of Muslim men pick up arms against us before these revelations. Torture and abuse became Al Qaida’s number one recruiting tool and cost us American lives.

Secondly, the former vice president, in saying that waterboarding is not torture, never mentions the fact that it was the United States and its Allies, during the Tokyo Trials, that helped convict a Japanese soldier for war crimes for waterboarding one of Jimmie Doolittle’s Raiders. Have our morals and values changed in fifty years? He also did not mention that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln both prohibited their troops from torturing prisoners of war. Washington specifically used the term “injure” — no mention of severe mental or physical pain.

Thirdly, the former vice president never mentioned the Senate testimony of Ali Soufan, the FBI interrogator who successfully interrogated Abu Zubaydah and learned the identity of Jose Padilla, the dirty bomber, and the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) was the mastermind behind 9/11. We’ll never know what more we could have discovered from Abu Zubaydah had not CIA contractors taken over the interrogations and used waterboarding and other harsh techniques. Also, glaringly absent from the former vice president’s speech was any mention of the fact that the former administration never brought Osama bin Laden to justice and that our best chance to locate him would have been through KSM or Abu Zubaydah had they not been waterboarded.

Read moreFormer Senior Interrogator in Iraq Dissects Cheney’s Lies and Distortions

Here Are a Few of the Torture Photos Obama Doesn’t Want You To See

Obama has changed his mind, and is now trying to prevent the release of the torture photos.

Related article: President Obama Reverses Course on Releasing More Detainee Abuse Photographs

Here are just a few of the photos he doesn’t want you to see (leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald several years ago ):

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Read moreHere Are a Few of the Torture Photos Obama Doesn’t Want You To See

Ex-FBI agent: Waterboarding produced no actionable intel


This video is from C-SPAN 3, broadcast May 13, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com

A former FBI agent who interrogated suspected terrorists told a Senate panel Wednesday that no actionable intelligence was gained from “enhanced interrogations” such as waterboarding.

“I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as enhanced interrogation techniques,” said Ali Soufan who worked for the FBI from 1997 to 2005. “These techniques, from an operational perspective, are slow, ineffective, unreliable, and harmed our efforts to defeat al Qaeda.”

Soufan said that intelligent interrogation techniques used by the FBI were “in sharp contrast to the enhanced interrogation method that instead tries to subjugate the detainee into submission through humiliation and cruelty. The idea behind it is to force the detainee to see the interrogator as the master who controls his pain. It’s merely an exercise in trying to force compliance rather than elicit cooperation.”

“One major problem is that it is ineffective. Al Qaeda are trained to resist torture,” he said.

“In contrast, when we interrogated using intelligent interrogation methods [on Abu Zubaydah] within the first hour we gained important actionable intelligence.”

Read moreEx-FBI agent: Waterboarding produced no actionable intel

President Obama Reverses Course on Releasing More Detainee Abuse Photographs

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More change!


President Obama defended his decision to fight the release of photos showing detainee abuse Wednesday afternoon, saying it would only put American troops in harms way and create a backlash against Americans.

“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,” the president said before departing on his trip to Arizona. “Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse.”

The move is a complete 180. In a letter from the Justice Department to a federal judge on April 23, the Obama administration announced that the Pentagon would turn over 44 photographs showing detainee abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Bush administration.

But in a letter sent this afternoon to the District Court Judge in the case, Alvin Hellerstein of the US District Court in the Southern District of New York, acting US Attorney Lev Dassin, writes that while his previous April 23 letter informed the court that the Obama administration had decided not to seek certiorari of the Second Circuit Court’s ruling to force the release of the photographs, his office had “been informed today that, upon further reflection at the highest levels of Government, the Government has decided to pursue further options regarding that decision, including but not limited to the option of seeking certiorari.”

The deadline for that decision is June 9.

The photographs are part of a 2003 Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU for all information relating to the treatment of detainees — the same battle that led to President Obama’s decision to release memos from the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel providing legal justifications for brutal interrogation methods, many of which the International Committee of the Red Cross calls torture.

Read morePresident Obama Reverses Course on Releasing More Detainee Abuse Photographs

CIA kept terror suspects awake for 11 days

More than 25 of the CIA’s war-on-terror prisoners were subjected to sleep deprivation for as long as 11 days at a time during the administration of former president George Bush, according to The Los Angeles Times.

At one stage during the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days, the Times reported, citing memoranda made public by the Justice department last month.

The limit was later reduced to just over a week, the report stated.

Sleep deprivation was one of the most important elements in the CIA’s interrogation programme, seen as more effective than more violent techniques used to help break the will of suspects.

Within the CIA it was seen as having the advantage of eroding a prisoner’s will without leaving lasting damage.

Read moreCIA kept terror suspects awake for 11 days

Obama and the War Criminals


Added: 2. Mai 2009
Source: YouTube

Five Things You Should Know About the Torture Memos

By Judge Andrew Napolitano

No. 1. I have read the 175 pages of legal memoranda (the memos) that the Department of Justice (DoJ) released last week. They consist of letters written by Bush DoJ officials to the Deputy General Counsel of the CIA concerning the techniques that may be used by American intelligence agents when interrogating high value detainees at facilities outside the U.S. The memos describe in vivid, gut-wrenching detail the procedures that the CIA apparently inquired about. The memos then proceed to authorize every procedure asked about, and to commend the CIA for taking the time to ask.

Read moreObama and the War Criminals

US tried to gag British man tortured in Guantanamo

Captive told he would be freed if he pleaded guilty and agreed not to speak to media


‘The facts reflect the way the US government has tried to cover up… the torture’ said Clive Stafford Smith, Director of legal group Reprieve

The American government tried to force a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay to drop allegations of torture in return for his release, court documents published yesterday revealed.

Binyam Mohamed, 30, held by the US for nearly seven years, was told by the American military that he could win his freedom if he pleaded guilty to terrorism charges, ended his High Court case to prove his claims of torture and agreed not to speak to the media about his ordeal. He rejected the deal.

Details of the extraordinary plea bargain were seized on by Mr Mohamed’s lawyers as further evidence to support his allegations that he was illegally detained and brutally tortured after his capture by Pakistani and US security agents in 2002.

The document released by the High Court in London reveals that the plea bargain was offered last year while Mr Mohamed was held in the US naval base in Cuba, but after terrorism allegations against him had been dropped. Mr Mohamed was eventually released from Guantanamo Bay this year and allowed to return home.

Read moreUS tried to gag British man tortured in Guantanamo

Many at Gitmo are innocent – Ex-Bush administration official

Six to seven years in prison at Guantanamo being innocent!



Camp Delta detention compound, which has housed foreign prisoners since 2002, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba. (AP)

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. “There are still innocent people there,” Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. “Some have been there six or seven years.”

Don’t miss: Former CIA officer: Bush should have executed Gitmo detainees

Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a “mosaic” of intelligence.

“It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance,” Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather “sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.”

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate “who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation.”

Read moreMany at Gitmo are innocent – Ex-Bush administration official

Red Cross Described Torture at CIA Jails

Secret Report Implies That U.S. Violated International Law

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.

At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group’s strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the report.

“The ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture,” Danner quoted the report as saying.

Read moreRed Cross Described Torture at CIA Jails

The Obama Deception

See also: Ron Paul: Obama Foreign Policy Identical To Bush


1:51:21 – 12.03.2009
Source: Google Video

CIA destroyed terror interrogation tapes

The CIA has admitted to destroying 92 videotapes of interrogation sessions with terrorist suspects.

The revelation that far more tapes had been destroyed than previously acknowledged came in a letter filed by US government lawyers in New York.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking more details of the Bush administration’s terror interrogation programmes following the September 11 attacks.

“The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed. Ninety two videotapes were destroyed,” said the letter written by Lev Dassin, the acting US attorney.

Amrit Singh, an ACLU lawyer, said the CIA should be held in contempt of court for holding back the information for so long.

“The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court’s order,” she said in a statement.

The tapes also became a contentious issue in the trial of the September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, after prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then after the trial was over, acknowledged two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.

Read moreCIA destroyed terror interrogation tapes

UN attacks Britain over torture claims

Investigator raises ‘very clear allegations’ that MI5 broke international law

Britain may have broken international law on torture, ministers have been warned by the United Nations. Professor Manfred Nowak, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, has alerted ministers to a range of concerns, including claims that MI5 officers were complicit in the maltreatment of suspects.

The Austrian law professor warned that Britain has breached the UN convention on torture, and he revealed that he was organising a fact-finding mission to Pakistan, whose security services allegedly tortured terror suspects before the captives were questioned by British intelligence.

It is the first time the UN’s senior torture investigator has directly criticised a British government. Human rights groups said it was highly significant. Clare Algar, executive director of legal charity Reprieve, said: “This is a further significant embarrassment for the British government and reinforces the fact that we really need an independent review into what has been going on.”

Related article: Ministers refuse to answer torture questions (Guardian)

Nowak appeared to criticise the foreign secretary, David Miliband, for blocking the release of US files allegedly confirming MI5 involvement in the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed. Miliband said releasing the documents could do “real and significant damage” to British national security.

Read moreUN attacks Britain over torture claims