Rendition – the act of nabbing somebody in one country and illegally transporting them to another – started long before the Bush administration. But now, a specific allegation in the days of Barack Obama. Scott Horton reports: Raymond Azar, a 45-year-old Lebanese construction manager with a grade school education, is employed by Sima International, a…
Showing all posts tagged torture
The basis of Iran’s sham trials
A welcome admission by the Islamic Republic: A top judiciary official acknowledged Saturday that some detainees arrested after post-election protests had been tortured in Iranian prisons, the first such acknowledgment by a senior Iranian official. If only we weren’t so unsurprised.
The sign of a mature democracy is accountability
A powerful ACLU video about America’s bitter soul over torture: The language used is directly from Bush era torture memos.
Can we show you how to crush balls?
Dictators, writes Andrew Sullivan, Washington is your friend: There isn’t a tyrant anywhere who isn’t more legitimate today because of Dick Cheney’s adoption of torture as an American value.
Standing upright is very painful
Australian comedy team The Chaser take on one of the architects of the Bush administration torture program, John Yoo:
Remembering the rules of medicine
Doctors who were involved in torture in the post 9/11 environment should surely be prosecuted or at least sanctioned. A debate that is long overdue.
Torture in Israel
Yesh Din is a leading Israeli human rights group. A legal adviser to the organisation writes about a court case that highlights the barbarity in the occupied, West Bank: “Is slapping the heads of Palestinians allowed or not?” the prosecutor asked, and [Colonel Itai] Virob spilled the occupation’s contaminated truth: “A slap, sometimes a punch…
The luxury of distance and money
Sometimes, Jewish blogger Richard Silverstein nails it: Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. spoke in Canada yesterday, each earning more than $150K for the gig. Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone possessing enough wisdom to be worth paying such a sum to them for dispensing it. But I guess enough people are star struck that they…
Who says we’re better than autocracy?
How many more cases of Western-approved torture before we accept our complicity in the dark arts? The home secretary Jacqui Smith faces legal action over allegations that MI5 agents colluded in the torture of a British former civil servant by Bangladeshi intelligence officers. Lawyers for the British man, Jamil Rahman, are to file a damages…
How to recruit more terrorists
A former US interrogator in Iraq rebukes Dick Cheney for his recent torture speech: