United States Senate against some, not all, torture

This video from the USA says about itself:

Horrific Depths Of CIA Torture Exposed

3 June 2015

Newly cleared documents reveal that the CIA’s torture techniques have been more sadistic, more brutal than the 2014 Senate report revealed. Today we’re going to be talking about one particular detainee Majid Khan, a man who was originally arrested by Pakistani police in Karachi back in 2003.

Cenk Uygur (The Young Turks) and John Iadarola (Think Tank) break it down. Are techniques like this ever justifiable? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Read more here.

“The CIA’s use of torture was far more “brutal and sadistic” than was disclosed in last year’s controversial US Senate report into the agency’s interrogation techniques, according to new information from a Guantanamo Bay detainee.

The newly declassified accounts of the torture of Majid Khan, a so-called “high value detainee”, describe in graphic detail how he was sexually assaulted, hung from a beam for several days without a break and half-drowned in tubs of freezing water.

The descriptions are contained in 27 pages of notes from interviews between Mr Khan and his legal team that were cleared for release by the US government on Tuesday.”

By James Tweedie:

United States: Senators vote for partial ban on torture

Thursday 18th June 2015

‘Cruel’ interrogation methods still authorised

THE US Senate voted on Tuesday to ban some forms of torture including waterboarding, rectal feeding, mock executions, hooding prisoners and sexual humiliation.

An amendment to a defence Bill was introduced by Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and passed by 78 votes to 21.

It makes the US Army Field Manual on Interrogations the standard for all branches of the US government and grants the International Committee of the Red Cross access to detainees.

However, the army manual allows interrogation methods such as stress positions and sleep deprivation, which a group of doctors called “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” in a 2013 letter to the government.

Ms Feinstein said the amendment was needed in case the current presidential executive order banning torture was lifted by a future president.

“Whatever one may think of the CIA’s former detention and interrogation programme, we should all agree that there should be no turning back to the era of torture,” she said.

Torture methods “corrode our moral standing, and ultimately they undermine any counterterrorism policies they are intended to support,” she added.

Mr McCain claims to have been tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, though this is denied by his captors and those who treated his injuries.

“I know from personal experience that abuse of prisoners does not provide good, reliable intelligence,” he said.

“I firmly believe that all people, even captured enemies, are protected by basic human rights.

“Our enemies act without conscience. We must not.

“We must continue to insist that the methods we employ in this fight for peace and freedom must always, always, be as right and honourable as the goals and ideals we fight for.”

Since the beginning of the “war on terror” in 2001, US military forces and intelligence agencies have allegedly tortured both prisoners of war and civilian terrorism suspects at numerous extra–judicial prisons and “black sites,” including Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

The amended defence authorisation Bill must now be approved by the House of Representatives, the lower house of Congress.

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