Key document said to outline waterboarding techniques
Reuters May 9, 08 6:30 AM CDT
(Newser)
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A federal judge has ordered the CIA to release a 2002 memo believed to outline interrogation methods that may amount to torture. The ACLU, which brought the suit sparking the order, claims that the memo details harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, and calls it "one of the most important torture documents still being withheld by the Bush administration." The judge will decide whether to make the memo public on Monday, reports Reuters.
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OPINION
Senator denies not voting for Bush in 2000
Huffington Post May 6, 08 6:37 PM CDT
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John McCain said after the 2000 election he hadn’t voted for George Bush, Arianna Huffington wrote yesterday, and the bombshell has provoked angry denials from the camp of the future GOP nominee, whom she once "admired and even loved." Firing back, the Huffington Post founder further details McCain’s “Shakespearean” fall from maverick status.
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MI5 outsourced brutal interrogations to Pakistan, say lawyers
Guardian (UK) Apr 29, 08 3:40 AM CDT
(Newser)
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British intelligence officers have been accused of sending citizens to a Pakistani agency to be tortured, reports the Guardian. MI5 officials requested Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency to arrest British terror suspects in the country, where they were subjected to beatings, whippings, sleep deprivation and fingernail extraction, according to lawyers for the victims.
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Employee alleges torture; company calls it 'team-building exercise'
Washington Post Apr 14, 08 11:45 AM CDT
(Newser)
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A Utah sales rep is suing his company after his boss waterboarded him as a “team-building exercise” outside a Provo office park, the Washington Post reports. Sure, the man volunteered, but he says he had no idea what he getting himself into. “I’m not getting any air,” Chad Hudgens says. “The sensation that’s going through my head is ‘I’m going to drown.’”
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President's wartime powers override law, document argued
Washington Post Apr 2, 08 3:42 AM CDT
(Newser)
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Laws banning torture and assault should not apply to US military interrogators overseas, argues a 2003 Justice Department memo released yesterday. The Defense Department was told not to rely on the memo nine months after it was issued, but it established a legal foundation for controversial interrogations, the Washington Post reports. The document contends that presidential wartime powers override laws and treaties, and details justifications for using aggressive tactics against suspected terrorists.
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Pentagon rips 'outlandish' claims of shocks, hanging
CBS Mar 30, 08 4:30 AM CDT
(Newser)
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A former terror suspect will reveal details of tortures he suffered in 5 years of US custody tonight on 60 Minutes, reports CBS News. American authorities seized the ethnic Turk in Pakistan and continued to torture him even after determining he was innocent, he charges. The Pentagon refutes his claims. "The abuses are not only unsubstantiated and implausible, they are simply outlandish," said a Pentagon spokesman in a statement.
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Lynndie England implicates ex-defense sec in interview
Stern (Germany) Mar 19, 08 4:37 AM CDT
(Newser)
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Lynndie England spent nearly a year and a half in jail for her role in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. In her first interview since her release, she tells the German news magazine Stern that she was sorry about the pictures of Iraqi detainees but insisted that "what we did happens in war." England also insists that "the media" are to blame for publishing the photos and stoking anti-American sentiment that followed the Abu Ghraib scandal.
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THEATER REVIEW
New satire depicts US-Britain alliance
as a gay love affair
New York Times Mar 17, 08 11:41 AM CDT
(Newser)
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What if the "special relationship" were a sexual relationship? In Caryl Churchill's 45-minute play, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? , a codependent love affair between a reticent, adoring older Englishman and a young, brash, dominating American (called Sam, as in Uncle) stands in for a certain US-British alliance that led to the Iraq war. Churchill's new play, which opened last night at the Public Theater in New York, is both uncontrollably angry and surprisingly tender, writes the New York Times ' critic.
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Prisoner finally freed without charge was hung upside down, beaten
Reuters Mar 14, 08 5:10 AM CDT
(Newser)
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A Yemeni man was held by the US in secret prisons for nearly three years and subjected to torture after his capture in Iraq, a human rights group has charged in a condemnation of America's "cruel" defiance of international law. The man, Khaled al-Maqtari, was held in Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, secret jails in Afghanistan, and a CIA prison in an unknown location, where he was hung upside down by a chain, beaten and drenched with icy water, Reuters reports.
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He's off to sell world view on international tour
Daily Telegraph (UK) Mar 14, 08 2:45 AM CDT
(Newser)
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John McCain charged yesterday that early withdrawal from Iraq proposed by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would trigger "genocide" across the region. He launched his latest attack on his Democratic rivals on the eve of his planned international tour to Britain, France, Israel, Jordan and possibly Iraq to pitch his war strategy to America's allies, reports the Daily Telegraph .
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State Dept. report drops China from top 10 worst abusers despite poor record
New York Times Mar 12, 08 10:26 AM CDT
(Newser)
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The State Department has taken China off its list of the world's 10 worst human rights abusers, the New York Time s reports. China's human rights record "remained poor," the department's annual report said, with abuses including "extrajudicial killings, torture, and coerced confessions of prisoners." Officials declined to explain why the country was dropped from the list or whether it had anything to do with the Beijing Olympics.
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