Missing teen runs
into Calif. gym
chained, bruised
San Jose Mercury News 6 hours, 27 minutes ago
(Newser)
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A California couple was arrested yesterday, the San Jose Mercury News reports, after a teen they’re accused of kidnapping stumbled into a gym, bloodied and burned, and asked employees to hide him. The 16-year-old also said he’d been tortured; police say he went missing from a Sacramento foster home last year.
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Hospital staff horrified by condition of bodies recovered from Jewish center
Daily Telegraph (UK) 17 hours, 9 minutes ago
(Newser)
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Jews taken hostage in the Mumbai attacks were tortured by their captors before being bound together and executed, the Daily Telegraph reports. Doctors in the hospital where victims' bodies were taken say the level of brutality evident was among the most disturbing sight of their careers. Six Jewish victims have been confirmed, but Israeli authorities believe the toll could rise to eight.
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Brennan withdraws under pressure but denies backing torture
Los Angeles Times Nov 26, 08 4:46 AM CST
(Newser)
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Barack Obama's top intelligence adviser and his first choice for CIA director has withdrawn his name from consideration, the Los Angeles Times reports. John Brennan, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, was branded by some liberal groups as a proponent of the harsh interrogation techniques used against terrorist suspects during the Bush administration. Brennan insists he opposed such techniques.
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Positions likely to be filled with pragmatists
Wall Street Journal Nov 11, 08 11:33 AM CST
(Newser)
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Barack Obama isn’t likely to deliver the radical intelligence policy overhaul many civil liberty groups are craving, advisers tell the Wall Street Journal. Those advisers include former Republican supporters and centrist Clinton officials. “He’s going to take a very centrist approach,” said an ex-Bush and Clinton counterintelligence official. In particular, Obama is unlikely to curtail domestic spying, since he recently voted to expand NSA eavesdropping powers.
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Fearing backlash, CIA sought and received support
Washington Post Oct 15, 08 7:17 AM CDT
(Newser)
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The Bush administration gave its blessing in writing for the CIA to use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques in two secret memos that have only now come to light, the Washington Post reveals. Intelligence officials sought to get something on paper in 2003—more than a year after the secret interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects began—to cover their backs in the event of public criticism, according to security sources.
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Prison staff saw to prisoner's health, he says
Guardian (UK) Oct 14, 08 11:39 AM CDT
(Newser)
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John McCain’s claims that he was tortured while imprisoned in Vietnam are false, says the head guard at the prison where he was held. “On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded,” said the guard. He noted that conditions at the prison were “tough, though not inhuman,” the Guardian reports.
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Agents would be safe from prosecution if they acted in good faith
CNN Jul 25, 08 1:00 AM CDT
(Newser)
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The Bush administration advised the CIA in 2002 that its agents would not be prosecuted on anti-torture legislation as long as they professed an "honest belief" that their actions would not cause severe pain and anguish, CNN reports. The memo is one of three made public by the ACLU, and the rights group says they prove the Justice Department essentially sanctioned torture.
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Prisoners speak out after 4 were allegedly killed this spring
NPR Jul 14, 08 6:30 AM CDT
(Newser)
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Overcrowding and disease are comparatively minor problems for inmates in Russia's alleged "torture prisons," where convicts are said to suffer regular beatings. Officials insist that they probe all complaints, but NPR has yielded harrowing stories from ex-inmates after four were reportedly clubbed to death this spring. "God help you," one former prisoner said, "if you end up in a Russian jail."
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Pregnancy spike among victims as militia crushes Mugabe opposition
Times (UK) Jul 6, 08 8:30 AM CDT
(Newser)
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Teenage pregnancy rates have spiked after youth militia members began raping Zimbabwean girls in President Robert Mugabe's torture camps, human rights workers tell the Times of London . The stigma against rape victims has kept the victims mostly silent, but a single hospital saw a spike of 16 expectant teenagers, and the trend is thought to be fairly widespread.
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Brits jolted by
brutal killings
BBC Jul 4, 08 5:32 AM CDT
(Newser)
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Scotland Yard detectives are investigating the "frenzied" murder of two French research students in their flat on a quiet London street, the BBC reports. The biochemistry students were tied up and stabbed a total of 243 times before being set alight. A man was seen running from the building after an explosion.
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GLOSSIES
Controversial writer puts his money where his mouth is, takes plunge for Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair Jul 3, 08 3:10 PM CDT
(Newser)
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"You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it simulates the feeling of drowning," Christopher Hitchens writes of waterboarding in Vanity Fair . "You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning," concludes the author, who experienced the controversial interrogation technique himself. "I find I don't want to tell you how little time I lasted."
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Technicality KOs case at center of recent movie
Reuters Jul 1, 08 7:56 AM CDT
(Newser)
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A Canadian software engineer has lost an appeal against the US for his torture in Syria on a technicality, Reuters reports. Syrian-born Maher Arar, whose story inspired the Hollywood movie Rendition , was forced off a flight in New York in 2002 and shipped to Syria, where he says he was tortured for more than a year.
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Torture claims will be central to defense
Washington Post Jul 1, 08 2:18 AM CDT
(Newser)
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A suspected al-Qaeda terrorist held at Guantanamo Bay for six years has been charged with masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors and injured 50 others. The treatment of Saudi prisoner Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri in custody, which included waterboarding by interrogators, will be a key element of his defense, reports the Washington Post.
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