|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
April 16th,
2009 - Obama Releases Bush Torture Memos |
|
Obama Releases Bush Torture Memos Insects, sleep deprivation and waterboarding among approved techniques
by the Bush administration By Ewen MacAskill The Guardian April 16, 2009 Barack Obama today released
four top secret memos that allowed the CIA under the Bush administration to
torture al-Qaida and other suspects held at Guantánamo and secret detention
centres round the world. But, in an accompanying
statement, Obama ruled out prosecutions against those who had been involved.
It is a "time for reflection, not retribution," he said. The memos provide an insight
into the techniques used by the CIA and the legal basis on which the Bush
administration gave the go-ahead. In the first of the memos,
dated 1 August 2002, the justice department gave the go-ahead to John Rizzo,
then acting general counsel to the CIA, for operatives to move to the
"increased pressure phase" in interrogating an al-Qaida suspect. Ten techniques are approved,
listed as: attention grasp, walling (in which the suspect could be pushed
into a wall), a facial hold, a facial slap, cramped confinement, wall
standing, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box (the suspect
had a fear of insects) and the waterboard. In the latter, "the
individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately
four feet by seven feet. The individual's feet are generally elevated. A
cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth
in a controlled manner. … produces the perception of 'suffocation and
incipient panic'." 'Walling' involved use of a
plastic neck collar to slam suspects into a specially-built wall that the CIA
said made the impact sound worse than it actually was. Other methods include
food deprivation. The techniques were applied
to at least 14 suspects. The Bush administration, in
particular former vice-president Dick Cheney, claimed that waterboarding did
not amount to torture but the Obama adminstration has ruled that it is. Obama
ordered the closure of Guantánamo and the CIA secret detention sites abroad. In spite of that, civil
rights organisations have been disappointed by a series of rulings by the
Obama administration that have protected a lot of material relating to
Guantánamo and the sites abroad. The release of the memos today reversed that
trend, though there will be unhappiness over the immunity from prosecution. Obama, in a statement from
the White House, said: "In releasing these memos, it is our intention to
assure those who carrying out their duties relying in good faith upon the
legal advice from the department of justice that they will not be subject to
prosecution." Anthony Romero, the ACLU
executive director, said: "President Obama's assertion that there should
not be prosecutions of government officials who may have committed crimes before
a thorough investigation has been carried out is simply untenable." The ACLU described the legal
basis for torture as spurious. Echoing the president, the
attorney-general, Eric Holder, reiterated that there would be no prosecution
of CIA operatives working within the guidelines set by the Bush
administration."It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women
working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the
justice department," Holder said. The director of the CIA,
Leon Panetta, told CIA employees that "this is not the end of the road
on these issues", apparently in expectation of Congressional inquiries
and court actions abroad. He promised legal and financial help for any CIA
employees who faced such action. In Spain, the chances of
court action against six senior Bush administration members over the torture
receded today after a ruling by the attorney-general, Candido Conde-Pumpido. He said that any such action
should be heard in a US court rather than a Spanish one, and that he would
not allow Spain's legal system to be used as a plaything for political ends. "If there is a reason
to file a complaint against these people, it should be done before local
courts with jurisdiction, in other words in the United States," he told
reporters. Spanish human rights lawyers
last month asked Judge Baltasar Garzón, who indicted the former Chilean
president Augusto Pinochet in 1998, to consider filing charges against the
former US attorney-general, Alberto Gonzales, and five others. External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/16/torture-memos-bush-administration |