Psyche, Science, and Society

The Torture Report: What the Documents Say About America’s Post-9/11 Torture Program

An important forthcoming book The Torture Report: What the Documents Say About America’s Post-9/11 Torture Program described by the author:

The “war on terror,” brought to light by Freedom of Information Act litigation. As the lead author of the ACLU’s report on these documents, Larry Siems is in a unique position to chronicle who did what, to whom and when. This book, written with the pace and intensity of a thriller, serves as a tragic reminder of what happens when commitments to law, common sense, and human dignity are cast aside, when it becomes difficult to discern the difference between two groups intent on perpetrating extreme violence on their fellow human beings.

Divided into three sections, The Torture Report presents a stunning array of eyewitness and first-person reports—by victims, perpetrators, dissenters, and investigators—of the CIA’s White House-orchestrated interrogations in illegal, secret prisons around the world; the Pentagon’s “special projects,” in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; plots real and imagined, and much more.

January 9th, 2012

Annul the PENS Report

Read and sign our petition to annul the PENS Report.

November 21st, 2011

Watch police calmly plan and execute the UC Davis

Another video shows the calm deliberation of the police as they plan the pepper spraying of UC Davis students. It is now clear that a large sector of the campus police force is dedicated not to protecting students but to brutalizing them. Any decent university would disband the entire force and start over with a force dedicated to preserving peace and the right to dissent:

I must say that UC Davis is giving its students an excellent education in the true nature of the modern “liberal” state, dedicated as it is to the preservation of privilege and power at all costs. as the first Mayor Daley expressed so beautifully after the police riot in 1968: “The police aren’t here to create disorder. They’re here to preserve it.“

November 20th, 2011

Dryboarding at GTMO

Almerindo Ojeda has raised new questions regarding the mysterious deaths of three prisoners at Guantanamo in June 2006. He raises the possibility that the deaths occurred under torture using a technique known as “dryboarding”:

Death in Guantanamo: Suicide or Dryboarding?

By Almerindo Ojeda

On June 10, 2006, three Guantánamo prisoners were found dead in their cells. Two days later, a Department of Defense (DoD) news release described these deaths as suicides. The news release quoted Camp Commander Harry Harris, who described these suicides as acts of asymmetric warfaremeant to advance al-Qaeda’s cause in the war on terror.

The news release was categorical with regards to the self-inflicted nature of the deaths. And the camp commander was equally certain of their hostile intent. Yet the news release was curiously guarded about themanner of these deaths – the three “appear” to have hanged themselves with nooses made of bed sheets and clothing, it said.

The deaths of these three individuals was the subject of an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). The much-awaited report of this investigation concluded that these deaths were indeed self-inflicted. Yet, a close reading of the heavily redacted material released by the NCIS raises more than a few questions, both for this researcher and for others, regarding the exact circumstances of these deaths. To wit:

• Why did the prisoners have their hands tied when they were found hanging in their cells? (NCIS185, NCIS950,NCIS1012, NCIS958, AUTO693-1)
• Is it possible to tie one’s own hands?
• Why were the prisoners gagged with cloth? They were already going to kill themselves by silent suffocation through hanging; why suffocate themselves silently twice? (NCIS966,NCIS975, NCIS1073f, NCIS1079, NCIS1091)
• Why did all three prisoners have masks – or mask-like contraptions – on their faces as they hanged? (AUTO693-1,NCIS950, NCIS990f)
• Is it physically possible to hang yourself bound, masked and gagged?
• Why was there a bloody T-shirt around the neck of one of the prisoners found hanging in his cell? (NCIS1113)
• Rigor mortis had begun to set in on the prisoners when they were discovered. Consequently, they had to have been hanging for two hours before they were discovered. According to Standard Operating Procedures, each of the prisoners had to be visually inspected every ten minutes. That means six inspections per prisoner per hour, or 36 inspections overall. How could the guards have missed the hangings in 36 visual inspections? (NCIS1025, NCIS1070,NCIS1078f, AUTO693-8, AUTO588-7)
• Why were the neck organs (the larynx, the hyoid bone and the thyroid cartillage) removed from one of the corpses? According to subsequent autopsies done privately, these would be essential in establishing whether or not hanging was the cause of death (AUT693-5)
• Why is there a page missing from a log book begun on the day the deaths were discovered and recording the entries and exits to the cell block where the suicides took place? (NCIS1354)

Incidentally, the information that the dead prisoners were gagged with rags came out before the NCIS report was even begun. This information was provided by Col. Michael Bumgarner, one of the Guantánamo commanders. Speaking to The Charlotte Observer, Col. Bumgarner said that the prisoners who had hanged themselves, “each had a ball of cloth in their mouth either for choking or muffling their voices.”

The deceased were known officially as Ali Abdullah Ahmed (ISN 693), Mana Shaman Allabardi al Tabi (ISN 588), and Yasser Talal al Zahrani (ISN 93). Their lifeless bodies were found hanging in cells A5, A12 and A8, respectively, of Alpha Block, Camp 1, Camp Delta (NCIS938).

The Testimonies of Several Guards And One Commander

In January 2010, Scott Horton published an explosive article in Harper’s Magazine. In it, he told about Staff Sgt. Joseph Hickman, who was guarding the entrance to Camp Delta on the night of the deaths. Early that night, Sergeant Hickman saw a white van pick up three prisoners from the Camp and drive them to a secretive facility within the Guantánamo Naval Base. Then, about an hour before the bodies were found hanging in their cells, the van returned and backed up to the entrance of the clinic as if to unload something. Hickman went to the clinic and a medical corpsman informed him that three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic. The corpsman furthermore told him that they had died because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised.

Spc. Tony Davila, also serving at Guantánamo at the time, was likewise told, according to Harper’s, that the prisoners had died as the result of having rags stuffed down their throats.

The article in Harper’s Magazine adds two critical questions to the nine raised thus far:

• Who were the three prisoners taken to the secret facility on the evening of the deaths?
• What happened to them there?

In addition to this information, two Guantanamo guards other than the ones mentioned thus far told Horton that no prisoners were taken from the regular cell blocks to the clinic that night. Several guards also confirmed to him that Bumgarner had acknowledged the gagging early on. Indeed, according to Harper’s, the colonel called a meeting of personnel on the morning of the deaths; at that meeting, he is said to have told those in attendance that, “you all know three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death.” (The Guantánamo Suicides, §5)

“He also told them,” Horton continued, “that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored.”

The Dryboarding Of Ali Al-Marri

Ali Saleh al-Marri is a citizen of Qatar who entered the United States lawfully in September 2011. Ostensibly, he had come with his wife and five children to pursue graduate studies at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois – the same institution from which he had earned a bachelors degree in 1991. On December 12, 2001, Mr. al-Marri was arrested by the FBI as an alleged material witness of the terrorist attacks of September 11 (Complaint,§§14-15).

Mr. al-Marri was initially detained at the Peoria County Jail. From there, he was transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, and then back to the Peoria County Jail in May 2003. By then, Mr. al-Marri had been detained without charge for 17 months, most of which he had spent in solitary confinement (Complaint, §§15-16, 21).

On June 23, 2003, then-president George W. Bush designated Mr. al-Marri an enemy combatant and had him transferred to the US Naval consolidated brig in Charleston, South Carolina, the same prison that once housed alleged dirty-bomber Jose Padilla, former Guantánamo prisoner Yasser Hamdi and former Guantánamo Chaplain James Yee. Mr. al-Marri remained at the brig until February 2009. By then, he had been held for more than seven years – all without charge; all in virtual isolation (Complaint, §§25-26).

In 2008, President Obama transferred Mr. al-Marri’s case to the federal court system, where he pleaded guilty of supporting al-Qaeda and was sentenced to 15 years. He is now held at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He received a reduced sentence for time served and the harsh conditions of his confinement and is due to be released in January 2015 (Federal Bureau of Prisons web site).

This December, Mr. al-Marri will have spent ten years in custody. Of these years, the most brutal were the first year and a half he spent at the Naval consolidated brig, from June 2003 to October 2004. There he was held incommunicado – meaning that he was denied any contact with the outside world, including his family, his lawyers and even the International Committee of the Red Cross. His only human contact then was with government officials during interrogation sessions, or with guards when they delivered trays of food through a slot in his cell door, escorted him to shower or took him to a concrete cage for “recreation” (Memorandum, p. 4).

During this period, Mr. al-Marri was held in a 6-by-9-foot cell, denied basic necessities, including adequate clothing, recreation, and hygiene items such as a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and toilet paper. Sometimes the water to his cell was cut off for up to 20 days. If Mr. al-Marri needed water to drink or to wash himself, he had to ring a buzzer. Brig staff would often fail to respond for several hours. Brig staff also interfered with Mr. al-Marri’s practice of his religion. A devout Muslim, he was denied water to purify himself, a prayer rug, and a kofi to cover his head during prayer. When he used his shirt as a substitute, he was punished by having his shirt removed. He was prohibited from knowing the time of day and the direction to Mecca, thus preventing him from properly fulfilling the Muslim requirement of praying five times a day. The only religious item he was permitted was a Koran – but it was sometimes taken away and desecrated (Memorandum, pp. 5-6).

While held incommunicado, Mr. al-Marri was subjected to a brutal interrogation regime which included stress positions, prolonged exposures to cold temperatures, extreme sensory deprivation, and threats of violence or death to himself or to others. Interrogators, for example, told Mr. al-Marri that they would send him to Egypt or to Saudi Arabia to be tortured, sodomized and forced to watch as his wife was raped in front of him. They also threatened to make him disappear so that no one would know where he was (Memorandum, pp. 4-5).

But of all the interrogation techniques that Mr. al-Marri endured, there is one that is, potentially, of great importance for an accurate interpretation of the deaths at Guantánamo in 2006. Yet, it would have gone unnoticed were it not for a recent articleby Tony Bartelme in Charleston’s Post and Courier.

Indeed, on one occasion, interrogators decided to stuff Mr. al-Marri’s mouth with cloth and cover his mouth with heavy duct tape – a technique of controlled suffocation that Mr. al-Marri’s lawyer, Andrew Savage, has called dryboarding. Dryboarding is not just a criminal practice; it is a potentially lethal procedure. As he was being dryboarded, Mr. al-Marri tried to relieve the pain caused by the duct tape by loosening the tape with his lips. He succeeded. Taking note of this, the interrogators taped his mouth again, but this time more tightly. At this point, Mr. al-Marri began to choke to death. Panicking, the interrogators acted quickly and removed the tape, thus managing, narrowly, to keep Mr. al-Marri alive (Memorandum, p. 5).

This account of the events is apparently undisputed. Ms. Joanna Baltes, who appeared on behalf of the government in the sentencing of Mr. al-Marri, seems to have acknowledged that this incident took place. She also recognized that this procedure was inconsistent with the Army Field Manual (Sentencing, pp. 259, 261). There are no signs, however, that anyone has been held accountable for carrying it out.

Video recordings of this incident exist, but have been repeatedly denied to Mr. al-Marri’s legal team on grounds of national security (Sentencing, p. 261; Andrew Savage, personal communication).

Suicide or Dryboarding?

The dryboarding of Mr. al-Marri raises an unavoidable question:Did the three individuals found hanging in Guantánamo die from dryboarding rather than by hanging? If so, they would be cases not of multiple suicide, but rather of torture leading to multiple loss of life.

Whether the Guantánamo prisoners died from hanging or from dryboarding is something for a thorough, independent and transparent inquiry to determine – the NCIS investigation was none of these. If it had been thorough, it would have disposed of all the questions we raised above; if it had been independent, it would not have been carried out by the Navy, which runs the Guantanamo Naval Base; and if it had been transparent, it would not have censored more than half of its report.

Be that as it may, it is clear that dryboarding can dispose, singlehandedly, of all the questions we have raised thus far – especially the questions regarding the need for gagging with cloth and for using masks or mask-like contraptions. They would be nothing short of essential to the task at hand.

The dryboarding hypothesis would also explain the binding of the hands, the fact that no hanging was observed after 36 visual inspections, the removal of the organs of the neck, and the missing pages in the log book – the latter being attempts at destroying evidence of a crime. It would also void the need for dubious appeals to self-binding and hobbled hangings. Similarly, it would identify the prisoners taken from Camp Delta and reveal their fate.

And the violent conditions necessitated by dryboarding could account for the bruising and bloodied T-shirt. Even the guarded description of the manner of death in the early news release would make sense under a dryboarding scenario.

But there is more. Two of the documents in the NCIS report affirm that the rags in the mouths of the deceased were socks. One of these socks was described as white athletic; the other as white nylon (NCIS1073f, NCIS1091). Interestingly, the cloth used in the dryboarding of Mr. al-Marri was also a sock (Andrew Savage, personal communication).

In light of the unanswered questions, one thing remains clear: there is a need for a thorough, independent and transparent investigation into the June 10, 2006, deaths at Guantánamo and, more broadly, for a thorough, independent and transparent inquiry into all the practices and policies of detention enacted since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

To view in full the documents cited in this report, click here.

 

November 14th, 2011

Thom Hartmann: Will Corporations get the Right to Commit Genocide?

Corporations are people when they get the right to buy elections. But they are not eligible to be sued for murder, rape, or torture, a Federal Appeals Court has ruled. The Roberts Supreme Court agrees to take this up.

October 20th, 2011

Former Libyan rebels now torturing

One of the saddest aspects of the situation in Libya was that, as the nonviolent protests were crushed, the understandable resort to armed struggle and the ensuing civil war created brutalizing forces on all sides. now, with rebel victory, comes word that some of the former rebels are now turning themselves into torturers. a small positive sign is that it appears that civilian authorities are trying to curtail this transformation.

If the rebels turned victors don’t stop their brutality soon, they will both destabilize the country and create a new authoritarianism to replace the defeated old one. Human rights are for everyone or they are secure for no one.

A NYT piece on the new torture replacing the old torture:

Anti-Qaddafi Fighters Are Accused of Torture

By Kareem Fahim

TRIPOLI, Libya — First there were the blindfold, the wrist-scarring handcuffs and the death threats. Then came beatings and electric shocks. In the fog of pain, the detainee, who said he had done nothing wrong, would have confessed to anything, he later recalled.

The techniques were familiar to Libyans, but the perpetrators were not: they were former rebels, according to the detainee, a 36-year-old man who said he had worked in military intelligence for the government of Col.Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The man, who requested that his name not be published because he feared retribution from his former captors, said he was arrested by armed former rebels almost two weeks ago, held in a building for four days and tortured.

His story was impossible to immediately verify, but he displayed what he said was evidence of the torture: huge bruises and welts on his legs, stripes of black and blue across the back of his thighs, and scars on his feet and ankles that he said marked the spots where his captors attached electrical wires.

He was later transferred to another building in Tripoli, across the street from the cabinet offices of the Transitional National Council, the former rebels’ provisional government. There, in cells with fresh blood on the walls, he was held for another day until he was released, with apologies, by a former rebel official, he said.

Now, he is moving to Tunisia, he said. “I do not trust anyone in Libya.”

His case underscores the growing concern about armed brigades of former rebel fighters in the Libyan capital who rushed to fill the power vacuum after Colonel Qaddafi’s forces fled more than a month ago. In a city with weak central authority and a justice system being rebuilt almost from scratch, the fighters have become detectives, prosecutors, judges and jailers, many of whom answer only to their own commanders, or to no one.

The fighters have detained thousands of people; some are criminal suspects, former officials or Qaddafi soldiers. Others simply come from towns that opposed the revolution. Some are being held in prisons, others at makeshift, and sometimes secret, detention centers.

Some are being tortured. The ordeal of the 36-year-old detainee bore similarities to cases recorded by the group Human Rights Watch in six facilities administered by the anti-Qaddafi forces in Tripoli. In a report released Friday, the group said that detainees reported abuse including beatings and electric shocks. None of the 53 detainees interviewed, the group said, had been brought before a judge.

“What we’re seeing is a symptom of a fundamental problem,” said Tom Malinowski, the group’s Washington director. “Civilians have good plans but lack authority over the militia groups.” Mr. Malinowski credited the transitional government with allowing observers to visit detention centers, and said that some were well run. He added, “I doubt there’s a civilian official who knows where all the facilities are.”

Human Rights Watch reported that many of the people arrested by militias, brigades and other security groups associated with the transitional government were sub-Saharan Africans or dark-skinned Libyans. In some cases, the former rebel guards at detention facilities forced sub-Saharan African prisoners to perform manual labor.

Detainees suspected of the most serious crimes, including murder and rape, received the worst abuse, the report said.

The 36-year-old detainee said bad luck, not guilt, had led to his arrest and torture, after he tried to buy a gun to replace one confiscated by the former rebels. Soon, the man found himself accused of supplying arms to a Qaddafi cell.

From their accents, he guessed that some of his captors were from the mountain city of Zintan. One was kind, loosening his blindfold and his handcuffs. Another asked him to write his life story on a few sheets of paper.

He broke down crying, he recalled. “How can I write my whole life story? What do they want from me?”

The beatings started on the third day. Some guards cursed him as a former intelligence officer, and others chanted, “The blood of the martyrs will not be shed in vain.” He was strung from the ceiling and his legs were beaten, he said.

On the fourth day, he was transferred to a former government building in Tripoli. His fellow captives, he said, included someone accused of wearing a pro-Qaddafi hat, several women and a man who had been helping the transitional government secure the former government’s secret files.

A doctor treated him, and one of his captors congratulated him on being cleared of wrongdoing, adding, “This is a clean revolution.”

 

October 1st, 2011

US STD research in Guatemala killed at least 83

The US commission investigating STD research unwittingly conducted on Guatemalans in the 1940s has concluded that “at least 83 people died as a result of the “study” AFP reports We are still waiting for a comparable investigation of, and governmental apology for, similarly unethical CIA torture research.

Unethical U.S. research killed 83 in Guatemala: panel

WASHINGTON — At least 83 people died as human guinea pigs in macabre US research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s, a commission ordered by President Barack Obama concluded Monday.

Nearly 5,500 people were subjected to diagnostic testing and more than 1,300 were exposed to venereal diseases by human contact or inoculations in research meant to test the drug penicillin, the presidential commission found.

Within that group, “we believe that there were 83 deaths,” said Stephen Hauser a member of the commission, which has pored over 125,000 documents linked to the shocking episode since being set up by Obama last November.

Among the 1,300 people exposed to STDs during research between 1946 and 1948, “under 700 received some form of treatment as best as could be documented,” Hauser said.

Obama personally apologized to Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom in October before ordering a thorough review of what happened. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the experiments as “clearly unethical.”

This sentiment was clearly expressed by the commission, which said US government researchers must have known they were contravening ethical standards by deliberately infecting mental patients with syphilis.

Commission president Amy Gutmann called it an “historic injustice,” and said the inquiry aimed to “honor the victims and make sure it never happens again.”

“It was not an accident that this happened in Guatemala,” Gutmann said. “Some of the people involved said we could not do this in our own country.”

The US researchers “systematically failed to act in accordance with minimal respect for human rights and morality in the conduct of research,” she said, citing “substantial evidence” of an attempted cover-up.

A Guatemalan study, which was never published, came to light in 2010 after Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby stumbled upon archived documents outlining the experiment led by controversial US doctor John Cutler.

Cutler and his fellow researchers enrolled 1,500 people in Guatemala, including mental patients, for the study, which aimed to find out if penicillin could be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

Initially, the researchers infected female Guatemalan commercial sex workers with gonorrhea or syphilis, and then encouraged them to have unprotected sex with soldiers or prison inmates.

Neither were the subjects told what the purpose of the research was nor were they warned of its potentially fatal consequences.

Cutler, who died in 2003, was also involved in a highly controversial study known as the Tuskegee Experiment in which hundreds of African-American men with late-stage syphilis were observed but given no treatment between 1932 and 1972.

The Guatemalan president has called the 1946-1948 experiments conducted by the US National Institutes of Health “crimes against humanity” and ordered his own investigation.

August 30th, 2011

Bahrain Center for Human Rights: Members of Bahraini royal family beating & torturing political prisoners

As Obama and US allies condemn the murderous regime in Syria and bomb that in Libya, they are largely silent on the horrors being perpetrated by US allies Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in repressing the majority of the population in Bahrain. These horrors include arresting, torturing, and prosecuting medical personnel for the crime of treating nonviolent protesters against this oppressive regime. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights is asking for help in response to this disturbing report.

While it isn’t clear exactly what aid they are requesting, US citizens should demand that all military and police aid to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cease until the repression in Bahrain ends and all foreign, including Saudi, troops are withdrawn. Of course, with a large US naval base in Bahrain, and the extent of dependence on Saudi oil, US support for these brutal dictatorships will likely continue irregardless of the degree of repression. The regime surely knows this. :

Some members of the Bahraini royal family beating & torturing political prisoners

Swedish Citizen tortured by Nasser Alkhalifa, son of King Hamad

16 August 2011

The BCHR expresses grave concern and is alarmed to learn that members of the Alkhalifa family have personally been involved in beating and torturing pro-democracy protesters. After the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain the Center has been receiving reports from victims that they were subjected to severe beatings and torture by people they identified as members of the Bahraini royal family. Five members of Alkhalifa have been specifically mentioned by victims, they are: Noura Alkhalifa, Khalifa Bin Ahmed Alkhalifa, Khalifa Bin Abdulla Alkhalifa and sons of the King, Khaled Bin Hamad Alkhalifa and Nasser Bin Hamad Alkhalifa. One of the victims subjected to torture by Nasser Bin Hamad Alkhalifa is Swedish citizen, Mohammed Habeeb Al-Muqdad, currently imprisoned at Al-Gurain military prison.

Detention Centers

The first victim to speak out was poet Ms Ayat Al-Qurmuzi, who was imprisoned for reading a couple of anti-government poems during the pearl roundabout peaceful protest. Ayat was arrested by masked civilians and blindfolded, after her release she spoke of being tortured by men and women. One of the women she claims tortured her was Noura Alkhalifa. Ayat gave a detailed account of what she was subjected to on the hands of Noura. Among other things Ayat said Noura cursed her, spat on her, and slapped her many times across the face. Noura threatened Ayat that her tongue would be cut off, when Ayat refused to open her mouth, Noura hit her with a broom on her mouth. Noura also spat into Ayats mouth and used electric shocks on Ayats face. As Noura Alkhaifa tortured Ayat she repeated slurs against shias and said “the people you criticize are your masters, and they will remain in power forever, whether you like it or not”.

Another victim is doctor Fatima Hajji. On the 17th of April Noura Alkhalifa and 25 masked men attacked Dr. Fatimas flat in the village of Bani Jamra and arrested her. During interrogations Noora demanded that Fatima confess, when Fatima said she had done nothing but treat patients Noura replied “If you do not confess I will have to torture you the way I tortured Doctor Ali Al-Ekri.” She added that detainees Roula Al-Saffar and Ghassan Dhaif had already confessed.

Noura started slapping and cursing Fatima continuously for about 25 minutes. Then she used a hose to beat her on her feet. When Noura Alkhalifa looked through Dr. Fatimas blackberry and saw two emails, one to Human Rights Watch about her suspension and the other about Martyr Ahmed Shams she shouted at Dr. Fatima “How dare you ruin the image of our government”, then electrocuted her on her face.

Fatima was told to confess that she had pretended to cry in front of foreign media, and that she had stolen 100 bags of blood from the blood bank and given it out to protesters to spill on themselves and pretend to be injured. She was forced to sign a confession after being threatened with rape. Fatima was also sexually harassed by men under the supervision of Noura. She was forced to stand on one leg, make animal noises, sing and dance.

Fatima Al-Bagali who is a student at the teaching college in University of Bahrain was arrested on the 9th of May 2011. She was blindfolded and taken to West Riffa detention center. Where Khalifa Bin Ahmed Alkhalifa The center director interrogated her about a speech she had given on Pearl Square, and about antigovernment comments she had made on facebook. Khalifa beat Fatima, slapping and kicking her as he said “You shia are ungrateful to your masters the Al-Khalifa”. In addition, some of the police officers threatened to rape Fatima if she dared to speak about what she had been subjected to.

Another victim also testified that he was interrogated by Khalifa Bin Ahmed AlKhalifa, who had a picture of the victim in a peaceful protest by the Ministry of Information. The victim says he was asked repeatedly about his participation in that protest, then was blindfolded, beaten and electrocuted on his genitals.

In another case, three of the activists arrested and sentenced for attempting to overthrow the regime also reported that they had been beaten by members of the royal family. The first, Abdulla Isa Al-Mahroos, said he was beaten by Nasser Bin hamad Alkhalifa, and that Nassar forced him to open his mouth then spat in his mouth. Al-Mahroos was also beaten by Head of the Security Apparatus Khalifa Bin Abdulla Alkhalifa. Who kicked him repeatedly in the stomach and ordered the prison guards to walk over his stomach which caused internal bleeding in the abdomen. Afterwhich Al-Mahroos was transferred to the military hospital where he had two surgeries.

The second is Swedish citizen Mohammed Habib Al-Muqdad, who was detained in an underground prison in the National Security Apparatus in the Fort. Al-Muqdad recalls that while being tortured suddenly everybody was silent. He heard his torturers say “your majesty” someone asked him “do you know who I am?” When Al-Muqdad said no, his blindfold was removed and the man infront of him said “I’m Prince Nasser Bin Hamad Al-Khalifa. When you protested outside our castle in Safriya, only a wall separated us”. Then Nasser asked Al-Muqdad what chants he had said that day at the protest. When Almuqdad said “Down Down Hamad” Nasser slapped Al-Muqdad who fell to the ground, then with the help of torturers beat him severely.

There is a wealth of evidence confirming that, at the very least, the government and the ruling establishment had knowledge and condoned the actions of the security forces. The most notable example of this is the actions and speeches of Nasser Al Khalifa , the son of the reigning monarch. In a public forum, on state television, Nasser Al Khalifa threatened retribution to all those involved in the protests regardless of their position in society and their profession. In a telling final statement, Nasser Al Khalifa noted that, as an island state, those involved in the protests in Bahrain had “nowhere to escape too”. If any doubt could be attributed to his unequivocal assertions, such doubt would be obliterated by the actions of the government and the personal actions of Nasser Al Khalifa. Within a few hours of this statement, the systematic targeting of athletes involved in the protests commenced. To compound this, Nasser himself became personally involved in the torture.

Mohammed Hassan Jawad (64 yrs old) was blindfolded and handcuffed when Nasser Bin Hamad asked him “do you know who I am, its Nasser with you” Then the son of the king started interrogating Mr. Jawad about the Safriya protest and accusing him of organizing the protest. To force him to confess, Nasser beat Mr. Jawad with a hose on his head until he fell to the ground. Then Nasser started kicking him mostly on his back, while swearing at shia clerics and imams.

Al-Safriya checkpoint

Different victims beaten at tha Al-Safriya checkpoint (close to the palace of the king) gave their testimonies but asked we do not share their names out of fear for their safety. The first is a bus driver who was driving high school students when he was stopped under gun point by the Bahraini army at the checkpoint. He was shocked when Nasser Bin Hamad, son of the King, came wearing a military uniform and started beating him. The victim says Nasser never used his hands but kicked him, in sensitive areas, in his head and chest, and mostly on his face until he started bleeding. When soldiers told Nasser that they would beat him, Nasser replied “No leave him to me”. After severe beating the victim was arrested for two weeks until the marks on his body faded.

The second victim was stopped at the same checkpoint, where Khaled Bin Hamad, son of King Hamad, ordered him to get out of his car and lie down on the ground. Khaled ordered that the victims car and phone get searched. When an anti government message was found on his phone, Khaled started kicking the victim. The beating continued for two hours and a half, by Khaled and other soldiers with him, until the victims nose and mouth bled. The victim was then forced to kiss Khaleds shoes. While beating the victim Khaled asked him how many times he had been to Pearl Square and swore at shia, and their leaders. This victim was detained for 2 months with no charges or trial.

In the third case at Al-Safriya checkpoint, an older man with two sons were stopped. The older man was told to put his head down in respect to the “Sheikh” (member of royal family), his sons were dragged out of the car and thrown on the ground infront of Khaled Bin Hamad Alkhalifa. Khaled was wearing a military uniform, and started beating the two boys using his gun. Khaled asked the boys about a sticker on their car which read “Sunni and Shia are brothers” he made them read it out loud then said “We are not brothers, all shia are homosexuals.” The boys said they were beaten severely by Khaled and Saudi soldiers. When a Saudi soldier called the victims “dogs”, Khaled said “These are not dogs, they’re pigs. At least our dogs are loyal”.

These are a few of the reports brought to the BCHR about torture and mistreatment by members of the royal family. Many other victims came forward but were afraid they would be targeted if they spoke out and asked us not to include their accounts in our report. Putting members of the royal family in the positions of torturers and interrogators will only lead to more mistrust and anger towards the monarchy. The BCHR also observes that most of the victims tortured or beaten by members of the royal family, were subjected to insults directed towards one sect of the population.

The BCHR demands an investigation into the crimes of the five members of the the royal family mentioned in this report and that all those responsible for mistreating and torturing prisoners be brought to justice.

 

2 comments August 19th, 2011

Criminal charges sought against MA woman who filmed brutal police beating

Springfield, MA police don’t want you to see this video. A Springfield police officer has filed n application for a criminal complaint against the woman who filmed his buddy’s brutality. Because, in this country, the right of police to beat black people is enshrined in the Constitution and only the state can record everyone, or so the Massachusetts legislature thinks:

http://video-embed.masslive.com/services/player/bcpid634584505001?bctid=605857696001

Raw Story explains the story behind the video:

Police officer seeks criminal charges against woman who videotaped police beating

By Eric W. Dolan

A police officer from Springfield, Massachusetts has filed an application for a criminal complaint against a woman who recorded his fellow officer beating a black suspect while he stood by, according to The Republican.

In November 2009, Tyrisha Greene made a 20-minute recording of now-retired Springfield patrolman Jeffrey M. Asher repeatedly beating Melvin Jones III with a flashlight during a traffic stop. The recording shows a group of other officers standing around Jones without intervening.

Jones was partially blinded in one eye from the attack, and had bones all over his face broken. The officers claimed that Jones grabbed one of their guns as they tried to arrest him and that Asher struck Jones with his flashlight in order to “disorientate him.”

But a grand jury rejected that claim, finding no evidence that Jones behaved aggressively towards them.

Michael Sedergren was one of the four officers disciplined for the incident. He was suspended for 45 days. Sedergren claims Greene violated the state’s wiretapping laws by recording him without his consent.

“If officer Sedergren feels his rights were violated under the law then he has the opportunity to make his case in court, just like everyone else,” Sedergren’s lawyer said.

“When you start charging people who have videotaped police wrongfulness, it borders on, in my opinion, an attempt to silence people,” Democratic Rep. Benjamin Swan told The Republican.

“I think it would be dangerous if this person were to be charged with a crime,” added the Rev. Talbert W. Swan, president of the NAACP’s Springfield branch. “It would say to the public that we don’t have the right to hold law enforcement accountable for their actions.”

Jones has been charged with shoplifting, domestic battery and drug trafficking on separate occasions since 2009.

August 12th, 2011

New York psychology licensing board doesn’t have to investigate torture, court rules

For years we activist psychologists have been trying to get the APA and state licensing boards to act against psychologists allegedly involved in detainee abuse. So far, every venue has refused to act. Lawsuits in several states have tried to compel the state boards to investigate the allegations. With one exception, all boards have failed to conduct any sort of investigation. Today word comes that a New York juge has decided in favor of the board’s right to do do nothing in the case of psychologist John Leso, implicated in the torture of Mohamed al-Qhatani at Guantanamo:

A New York judge has declined to force an investigation into whether an Army psychologist developed abusive interrogation techniques for Guantanamo Bay detainees and should be stripped of his license.

The ruling was made public Thursday. It says another psychologist who brought the case cannot force a state agency to investigate complaints of professional misconduct.

….

The case sought to compel a state licensing office to look into psychologist John Leso. The agency says his Army work fell outside its scope.

The board’s reasoning is that psychology involves helping people. If skills are used intentionally to harm, then that does not involve the practice of psychology and is immune to board action, despite the fact that Army regulations require that their “Behavioral Science Consultants” have state licenses and uses the existence of these licenses as the basis for not investigating the professional ethics of these psychologists. Thus, torture and abuse by licensed psychologists is nobody’s business, constructing a perfect web of protection for torturers.

BTW, the American Psychological Association (APA) has had multiple complaints against Leso since August 2006 and has so far done nothing in the five years since the first complaint was filed. Their last excuse was that they were waiting to see what New York state would do. Now that New York has decided they don’t have jurisdiction, what new excuse will the APA come up with?

August 11th, 2011