Tag: torture

UK woman said she wanted to be tortured and killed on fetish site — her body was found in shallow grave in the US

The boyfriend of a woman who allegedly paid someone to torture and kill her said that she had been suffering from mental illness before the shocking events, according to Florida authorities.

Sonia Exelby was reported missing in October before police were able to trace her to an Airbnb in Reddick and found her remains nearby.

Exelby boarded a flight to Florida and arrived on Oct. 10, according to an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The FDLE said that Exelby posted on a fetish website that she was willing to pay someone to torture and kill her.

A week after she arrived in Florida, her remains were found in a shallow grave.

Investigators linked her to a man named Dwain Hall, who had used her bank card and tried to use her credit cards.

When they interviewed him, he gave conflicting accounts of how they met.

Police said they gathered evidence pointing to Hall as Exelby’s alleged killer.

Authorities said Hall purchased rope and gun cleaner among other items at a Walmart in Gainesville on Oct. 10. After that purchase, he made a second purchase of a shovel. He then allegedly went to pick up Exelby at the airport, and they both went to an Airbnb that he had rented.

The next day, he charged $1,200 to Exelby’s bank card.

Authorities said he recorded a video of Exelby showing her with cuts and bruises, and asking her to say that she consented to being stabbed.

Exelby sent a message to a friend via the Discord app expressing regret.

“I’m so, so scared. I’m so broken and in so much pain. … I thought he’d do it quick and not give my mind time to stew,” she wrote.

On Oct. 14, Hall allegedly sent a package to a friend that authorities said contained a knife that had traces of Exelby’s blood. It also had a bracelet with DNA from both Exelby and Hall.

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Dick Cheney’s Legacy Is One of Brutal Carnage

On March 15, 2006, the United States was nearly three years into its second Iraq war. After over a decade of brutal sanctions and continuous bombing, in spring 2003, the US had launched a full-scale invasion of the oil-rich Middle Eastern nation. The invasion was a flagrant violation of international law. After toppling Iraq’s Ba’athist government, a former on-again, off-again ally of Washington, the United States and its allies began a protracted military occupation of Iraq. The neocolonial affair was particularly brutal. Such is the nature of seeking to impose your presence by military force on a people who do not wish it and are willing to use force to oppose it.

That day, March 15, soldiers approached the home of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma’ee, an Iraqi farmer . Allegedly they were looking for an individual believed to be responsible for the deaths of two US soldiers and a facilitator for al-Qaeda recruitment in Iraq. In the version told by US troops, someone from the house fired on the approaching soldiers, prompting a twenty-five-minute confrontation. Eventually the soldiers entered the house, killing all of the residents.

This included not just Al-Majma’ee, but his wife; his three children, Hawra’a, Aisha, and Husam, who were between the ages of five months and five years old; his seventy-four-year-old mother, Turkiya Majeed Ali; and two nieces, Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf, who were five and three years old. An autopsy performed on the deceased “revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.” After slaughtering the family execution style, US soldiers called in an air strike, destroying the house. The presumed reason for the bombardment was to cover up evidence of the extrajudicial killings.

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History Will Not Be Kind to Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney died this week. He leaves behind a wretched legacy.

Cheney reached the pinnacle of his influence as George W. Bush’s vice president, a position from which he orchestrated the Iraq War and helped bring about one of the most intrusive pieces of legislation ever to have been leveled against the American people.

Democrats reflexively abhorred Cheney as veep, but as GOP voters became more averse to foreign intervention, he became a symbol of everything that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy. As Jack Kenny said in 2011, “[Cheney’s] impact on and, to a large extent, direction of foreign policy during the Bush presidency suggests that if he was and is a conservative, his is the kind of conservatism George Will described as believing that ‘government can’t run Amtrak, but it can run the Middle East.’”

Iraq Intervention: Why?

As vice president, Cheney was the loudest voice to advocate the invasion of Iraq. He broadcast the false narrative that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction with great zeal. But that wasn’t his first foray into Iraq, or the first time he led an invasion under a Bush. Cheney oversaw Operation Desert Storm in 1991 as secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush. And in between Bush presidencies, when he wasn’t busy planning invasions into Iraq, Cheney worked as the CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil companies.

It just so happens that Iraq is considered one of the top five oil-rich countries. And if it were up to Cheney, American soldiers would’ve been sent into other oil-rich Middle Eastern nations. According to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Cheney had grand plans to deploy American soldiers all over the Middle East. Kenny writes:

In his new book, A Journey: My Political Life, Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recalls that Cheney wanted the United States to go to war not only with Afghanistan and Iraq, but with a number of other countries in the Middle East, as he believed the world must be “made anew.” “He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it — Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.,” Blair wrote. “In other words, [Cheney] thought the world had to be made anew, and that after 11 September, it had to be done by force and with urgency. So he was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.”

Journalist and author Robert Parry also suspected these wider ambitions, which had been kept out of earshot of the American public. He wrote:

There have been indications of this larger neoconservative strategy to attack America’s — and Israel’s — “enemies” starting with Iraq and then moving on to Syria and Iran, but rarely has this more expansive plan for regional war been shared explicitly with the American public.

“Agency of the President”

Cheney once said, “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It’s a nice way to operate, actually.” This is related to the common perception that he was more powerful than the president. “At the minimum, Cheney was a co-equal to Bush and is widely understood to be perhaps the most effective vice president in history,” renowned left-wing journalist Seymour Hersh recently wrote. Kenny pointed out that one of the nicknames Cheney acquired as veep was “’Management,’ as in ‘Better check with management first.’” He wrote:

Former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) described the free hand Cheney appeared to have in his dealings with Congress. “Dick could make a deal,” Gramm told [Barton Gellman], author of Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. “He didn’t have to check with the president, not as far as I could tell. I’m sure at the end of the day, he would fill the president in on what happened. But Dick had the agency of the president.”

CFR Ties

While Cheney is rightly recognized, even by mainstream standards, as a negative influence on American policies, one important element that’s been widely overlooked in his ties to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a subversive foreign-policy think tank that we like to refer to as the “Deep State nervous system.” Cheney was a CFR life member. He served on its board of directors from 1987 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1995, and was also its director at one point. Interestingly, he mentioned none of this in his 500-plus-page memoir, In My Time. In 2011, the former Wyoming lawmaker admitted during a visit to CFR headquarters that he had intentionally kept his ties to the organization a secret:

It’s good to be back at the Council on Foreign Relations. I’ve been a member for a long time, and was actually a director for some period of time. I never mentioned that when I was campaigning for reelection back home in Wyoming, but it stood me in good stead.

After his death, the CFR posted a warm tribute to him:

A steadfast steward of the Council, Cheney brought to our community the same seriousness of purpose, strategic insight, and commitment to public service that defined his distinguished career in government and the private sector. Cheney’s decades of leadership — as vice president of the United States, secretary of defense, member of Congress, and senior White House official — reflected a lifetime devoted to strengthening the United States’ national security and its role in the world. The Council is grateful to have counted Cheney as a member, director, and friend. We extend our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.

Many would disagree with the CFR’s characterization. It’s difficult to see how sacrificing thousands of American lives and racking up debt to pay for overseas wars and fueling legislation that allows the government to spy on Americans have made the country stronger. Cheney was a key architect of the post-9/11 response. And as such, he helped finagle congressional approval for the PATRIOT Act, a wholly un-American piece of legislation that has greatly expanded the government’s ability to surveil Americans. He coordinated amendments with administration officials and reconciled the House and Senate versions. His chief of staff,  Scooter Libby, was also involved in high-level meetings about the act.

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Dick Cheney (1941–2025): The Dark Legacy of a War Criminal

Former U.S. vice president Richard “Dick” Cheney died on 3 November 2025 at age 84; his family said he had suffered from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. Best known for steering national security policy after the 9/11 attacks, he became the dominant force behind a “war on terror” that unleashed torture, preventive war and mass surveillance. Amnesty International has described him as one of the principal architects of a program that amounted to torture, while the Brown University Costs of War project attributes more than 900,000 deaths and trillions of dollars in spending to the post‑9/11 wars he championed. Cheney’s legacy is one of unprecedented destruction and the erosion of civil liberties.

From prudence to preemption

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell resisted calls to topple Saddam Hussein. Cheney argued that invading Baghdad would force the U.S. to occupy Iraq alone, risk its territorial integrity, and require unacceptable casualties: “It’s a quagmire if you go that far,” he told PBS’s Frontline in 1994, asking how many additional dead Americans Saddam was worth. Those words reflect a prudence that vanished after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Within days, the vice president laid out a radical new doctrine. On NBC’s Meet the Press he said America must operate on the “dark side,” spend time in the shadows, and use “any means at our disposal” to achieve its objectives.

Cheney’s longtime counsel, David Addington, and Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee drafted memos arguing that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees captured in the war on terror. The State Department’s legal advisor warned that claiming the president could suspend the Geneva Conventions was legally flawed and would reverse over a century of U.S. policy. Cheney pressed ahead, telling the Washington Times that he “signed off” on the CIA’s secret detention and rendition program and, as a principal participant in National Security Council meetings, he authorized the agency’s interrogation program, including waterboarding. In 2006 he called waterboarding a “no‑brainer,” and in 2009 he acknowledged knowing about the practice “as a general policy that we had approved.”

Torture and the repudiation of law

The vice president’s embrace of waterboarding ignored that the technique has long been treated as torture under U.S. and international law. Amnesty International notes that Japanese officials were convicted at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials for subjecting U.S. pilots to waterboarding, and U.S. courts have sentenced sheriffs to prison for using the technique. Amnesty stresses that its status as torture is “not a matter of opinion.” The Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that approving aggressive interrogation techniques sent a message that physical pressure and degradation were acceptable treatment for detainees. Amnesty calls Cheney “one of the principal architects of a policy that amounted to torture.”

Cheney’s legal defense of the program was rife with distortions. He misrepresented Justice Department opinions, falsely suggested Japanese waterboarders were never prosecuted, overstated detainee recidivism, insisted detainees had no rights under the Geneva Conventions, and repeated unproven claims of ties between Saddam Hussein and al‑Qaeda.

The road to Baghdad and the case for war

He cautioned against occupying Iraq in 1994 but became the administration’s leading voice for war nine years later. On March 16, 2003 he declared that Saddam had “reconstituted nuclear weapons” and that Americans would be greeted as liberators. These claims proved false. He insisted there was “no doubt” Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and ties to al‑Qaeda, yet evidence was lacking. Retired colonel Lawrence Wilkerson later alleged the administration manipulated intelligence to justify invasion and suggested that Cheney’s push to ignore the Geneva Conventions may constitute a war crime.

Cheney’s radicalism was not limited to Iraq. He championed a “unitary executive” theory contending that the president alone decides matters within the executive branch. Legal scholar Martin Lederman observed that he sidelined dissenting views in the military and intelligence agencies. Chip Gibbons, writing in Jacobin, describes him as an enemy of democracy whose agenda included war, indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance, and torture.

Human cost: war, death, and permanent surveillance

The human toll of Cheney’s policies is staggering. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that more than 940,000 people have been killed by direct post‑9/11 violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan, including over 432,000 civilians. Indirect deaths raise the toll into the millions. In Iraq alone, about 29,199 bombs were dropped, causing heavy civilian casualties, and a 2006 survey estimated over 600,000 civilian deaths. Current Affairs compares Cheney’s record to that of serial killer Samuel Little, concluding that “Little was strictly an amateur.”

The costs extended beyond foreign battlefields. Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute writes that in a more reasonable world, people like Cheney would be forgotten, shamed, and disgraced. The post‑9/11 wars did nothing to enhance freedom, yet thousands of American families paid with their blood and millions continue to pay through taxes and inflation. McMaken lists domestic infringements such as the Patriot Act, warrantless surveillance, TSA groping, and FISA abuses, and none of the architects have been held accountable.

Colonel Wilkerson, Powell’s former chief of staff, told ABC News that Cheney “was president for all practical purposes” during Bush’s first term and feared being tried as a war criminal. The Washington Post dubbed him the “vice-president for torture,” and Wilkerson said his push to disregard the Geneva Conventions amounted to an international crime. Chip Gibbons asserts that he “reduced nations to rubble, shredded the Bill of Rights, and enacted programs of surveillance, abduction, detention, and torture.”

The culture of impunity Cheney helped foster has not faded. Politicians continued to accept his endorsements despite his record, while he insisted the CIA’s interrogation techniques did not violate international agreements and his allies still argued for expansive presidential war powers.

An opinion essay by law professor Ziyad Motala in Al Jazeera argues that Cheney is the architect of some of the most disastrous foreign and domestic policies of the early twenty‑first century. Motala contends that Cheney’s policies left “a trail of death and destabilization” and that the havoc unleashed by the Iraq War and the broader “war on terror” continues to reverberate, causing “suffering and instability far surpassing anything Trump has wrought.” He notes that estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths range from hundreds of thousands to well over a million and that the war destabilized an entire region, paving the way for extremist groups like ISIL and ongoing cycles of violence and displacement. The war drained trillions from the U.S. economy and left thousands of U.S. troops dead and many more with life‑altering physical and psychological wounds.

The economic burden of these wars is also staggering. Nearly twenty years after the United States invaded Afghanistan, the global war on terror had cost about $8 trillion. That figure includes not only Department of Defense spending but also State Department expenditures, care for veterans, Department of Homeland Security funds, and interest payments on war borrowing. Brown’s Cost of War Project Co‑director Catherine Lutz said the Pentagon now absorbs the majority of federal discretionary spending, yet most people do not realize the scale of this funding. She warned that these costs will continue for decades as the country pays for veterans’ care and the environmental damage wrought by the wars.

Cheney championed the Patriot Act as a key pillar of the “war on terror” and campaigned aggressively to renew its provisions. In January 2006 he and President Bush launched a “double‑barrelled assault” on critics of domestic surveillance and opponents of the law; Cheney told the Heritage Foundation that Americans could not afford “one day” without the Patriot Act. Civil liberties groups argue that the Patriot Act dramatically expanded government surveillance powers at the expense of constitutional freedoms. Under the law, investigators can monitor online communications on an extremely low legal standard, and secret court orders can compel companies to hand over lists of what people read or which websites they visit. The American Civil Liberties Union notes that the law is enforced in secret, weakens judicial review, and allows agents to seize business and communications records without probable cause. By 2004 the ACLU had filed lawsuits challenging these provisions and denounced the administration’s claim that there were no abuses as a “red herring.” The Patriot Act turned ordinary Americans into subjects of a vast dragnet, chilling free speech and giving the executive branch powers reminiscent of past crises.

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Dick Cheney, War Criminal and Torturer, Dead at 84

Former U.S. Vice President Richard “Dick” Cheney died on November 3, 2025 at age 84; his family said he had suffered from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. Best known for steering national security policy after the 9/11 attacks, he became the dominant force behind a Global War on Terror that unleashed torture, preemptive war, and mass surveillance. Amnesty International has described him as one of the principal architects of a program that amounted to torture, while the Brown University Costs of War project attributes more than 900,000 deaths and trillions of dollars in spending to the post‑9/11 wars he championed. Dick Cheney’s legacy is one of unprecedented destruction and the erosion of civil liberties.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, then-Defense Secretary Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell resisted calls to topple Saddam Hussein. Cheney argued that invading Baghdad would force the United States to occupy Iraq alone, risk its territorial integrity, and require unacceptable casualties. “It’s a quagmire if you go that far,” he told PBS’s Frontline in 1994, asking how many additional dead Americans Saddam was worth. Those words reflect a prudence that vanished after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Within days, the vice president laid out a radical new doctrine. On NBC’s Meet the Press he said America must operate on the “dark side,” spend time in the shadows, and use “any means at our disposal” to achieve its objectives.

Cheney’s longtime counsel, David Addington, and Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee drafted memos arguing that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees captured in the Global War on Terror. The State Department’s legal advisor warned that claiming the president could suspend the Geneva Conventions was legally flawed and would reverse over a century of U.S. policy. Cheney pressed ahead, telling The Washington Times that he “signed off” on the CIA’s secret detention and rendition program and, as a principal participant in National Security Council meetings, he authorized the agency’s interrogation program, including waterboarding. In 2006 he called waterboarding a “no‑brainer,” and in 2009 he acknowledged knowing about the practice “as a general policy that we had approved.”

The vice president’s embrace of waterboarding ignored that the technique has long been treated as torture under U.S. and international law. Amnesty International notes that Japanese officials were convicted at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials for subjecting American pilots to waterboarding, and U.S. courts have sentenced sheriffs to prison for using the technique. Amnesty stresses that its status as torture is “not a matter of opinion.” The Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that approving aggressive interrogation techniques sent a message that physical pressure and degradation were acceptable treatment for detainees. Amnesty calls Cheney “one of the principal architects of a policy that amounted to torture.”

Cheney’s legal defense of the program was rife with distortions. He misrepresented Justice Department opinions, falsely suggested Japanese waterboarders were never prosecuted, overstated detainee recidivism, insisted detainees had no rights under the Geneva Conventions, and repeated unproven claims of ties between Saddam Hussein and al‑Qaeda.

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Over 1,000 South Koreans Brutally Tortured, Drugged, Enslaved by Chinese-Linked Crime Syndicates in Southeast Asia

Over 1,000 South Koreans were scammed, brutally tortured, drugged and enslaved by Chinese-linked crime syndicates in southeast Asia.

Via Yonhap News.

Horrific video was released showing the South Koreans being electricuted and beaten by their handlers.

A massive human trafficking and torture network has been uncovered in Cambodia, involving more than one thousand South Koreans who were deceived, confined, and forced into criminal labor under Chinese-run compounds.

Many of these victims were subjected to forced drug injections to keep them awake or submissive while carrying out online fraud and money-laundering operations for their captors.

According to Yonhap News (Oct 20, 2025) and multiple verified Korean sources, the body of a 22-year-old South Korean university student was found in Kampot Province after he had been abducted, tortured, and killed. His death represents only one case within a much larger system that continues to operate across Southeast Asia.

Thousands of Koreans—mostly young men and women—were lured by fake employment ads and trafficked into Chinese-controlled criminal compounds in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar.
Once inside, they were stripped of their passports, confined behind guarded fences, and beaten, electrocuted, drugged, and forced to work up to 20 hours a day.
Those who resisted were brutally punished or killed.

Leaked footage and survivor accounts show victims being forced to scam their own citizens online, turning them into both perpetrators and victims under extreme duress.
Several survivors reported that captors used narcotics and psychotropic drugs to suppress resistance and maintain total control.

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Gaza officials formally accuse Israel of organ theft, demand international probe

Gaza’s Government Media Office formally accused Israel on 17 October of stealing organs from Palestinians after Israel returned 120 mutilated bodies following the recent ceasefire, including some who had been tortured to death.

“We formally accuse the Israeli army of stealing organs from the martyrs,” stated Dr. Ismail al-Thawabta, Director General of the Media Office, while demanding an international investigation into Israel’s “torture, mutilation, and organ theft.”

The 120 bodies “arrived in extremely poor and distressing condition,” including blindfolded, bound, crushed under tanks, and missing corneas, livers, and limbs, Thawabta stated.

“The Israeli occupation executed many of them in cold blood. A large number were found blindfolded, with their hands and feet bound, and others showed signs of hanging or close-range gunfire,” he added.

“We also found bodies showing clear evidence of severe torture until death.”

Thawabta explained that Israeli authorities refused to provide the names of the victims, making it extremely difficult for authorities in Gaza to identify them.

After the release of the bodies, families of missing Palestinians rushed to hospitals—especially Nasser Hospital—trying to see if their relatives were among them. But many remain unidentified and will have to be buried anonymously.

“The health system in Gaza is almost completely collapsed. We lack the equipment for DNA testing and forensic analysis. Some families could only identify their loved ones from personal belongings or clothing. If we cannot identify the rest, we will be forced, sadly, to document and bury them anonymously, to preserve human dignity,” Thawabta added.

According to the Media Office’s data, 9,500 Palestinians remain missing, most of them trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

“Entire families—father, mother, children—remain buried for nearly two years,” the Media Office director stated.

The bodies are difficult to locate due to the sheer amount of destruction Israeli bombing has caused, and because Israel has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s heavy machinery, bulldozers, and excavators, preventing rescue operations.

“Even now, despite the ceasefire, all crossings remain closed, and Israel blocks the entry of rescue machinery. This is a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in modern history—over 3,000 families completely wiped out, another 6,000 families killed with only one survivor,” Thawabta added.

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German Mayor Tortured For Hours In Basement By Her Own Adopted Daughter, Leaked Police Docs Show

The story of the Social Democrat (SPD) mayor from Herdecke, Iris Stalzer, has taken yet another incredible turn.

New information now reveals that her 17-year-old adopted daughter reportedly tortured Stalzer for hours, nearly killing her own mother. Despite these details, the daughter still has not been arrested.

Stalzer has spoken to the police about what transpired during her ordeal, and now, the details have been leaked to Bild newspaper.

On Oct. 7, at 12:05 p.m., Stalzer’s daughter called emergency services saying her mother had been attacked by several men, was severely injured and was barely conscious.

A witness off the street found the politician bleeding in her armchair in the living room. Later, the adopted daughter told police that was also how she found her mother.

However, despite claims of “several men” torturing the mother, it turns out this was reportedly an orchestrated lie to cover up the horror that had occurred inside the house. Police have since learned that the mother was subjected to grueling torture for hours in the basement of the house.

The suspect attacked Stalzer with deodorant spray and a lighter, trying to set her hair and clothes on fire. The adopted daughter said she wanted revenge; however, it is still remains unclear what she wanted to take revenge for.

The adopted daughter also had two kitchen knives, which she used to stab and slice the politician’s body. Stazler faced critical injuries, including 13 stab wounds.

One of the bloody knives was also found in the 15-year-old adopted son’s backpack, along with bloody clothing from the daughter. The other knife was also found in his room.

Police investigators also found that large traces of blood were scrubbed from the scene, which were later revealed by the police forensics team.

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Howard Rubin, ex-NYC financier with ties to George Soros, arrested for allegedly sex-trafficking women to ‘sex dungeon’ penthouse: feds

A retired Big Apple financier with past ties to George Soros allegedly “tortured” former Playboy models and other women in a Midtown penthouse turned soundproofed BDSM “sex dungeon” for years, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Howard Rubin, 70, was arrested by federal authorities at his home in Fairfield, Ct., Friday morning on charges he sex-trafficked at least 10 women between 2009 and 2019, luring them to swanky New York City hotels and the leased luxury pad near Central Park — where he restrained, beat and electrocuted them, the Brooklyn US Attorney’s Office charged.

The famed former money manager – known as “Howie” or “H” and worth at least tens of millions of dollars – even appeared to revel in the stomach-turning encounters in text messages with his personal assistant, Jennifer Powers, who is also facing sex-trafficking charges tied to the scheme.

“As alleged, the defendants used Rubin’s wealth to mislead and recruit women to engage in commercial sex acts, where Rubin then tortured women beyond their consent, causing lasting physical and/or psychological pain, in some cases physical injuries,” Brooklyn US Attorney Joseph Nocella said in a statement.

One of the West 57th Street penthouse bedrooms was soundproofed and painted red, and had a device that was used to shock or electrocute the women, the feds said. The room also had a cross and bed with restraints where the women would be bound and gagged, according to the authorities.

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The Feds Defend Their Tortures Again

While the public’s attention this summer has been drawn to masked ICE agents arresting folks without warrants, presidentially imposed sales taxes on goods emanating from foreign countries that have been invalidated by three federal courts, and the fruitless Kabuki dance between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, last month, the federal government continues its slow assault on the Constitution at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In April, the feds suffered a major setback when a military judge ruled that evidence obtained under and as a result of torture is inadmissible at the trial of Ammar al-Baluchi, who is one of the five remaining defendants accused in the attacks of 9/11. Al-Baluchi is the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind of the attacks. So-called because Osama bin Laden was the person designated by the feds as the mastermind until they murdered him and his family – without any 9/11-related charges having been filed against him – in his home in Pakistan.

Mohammed and al-Baluchi were to have been tried together, along with their three alleged accomplices when the feds decided that the torture of Mohammed was too egregious for them to defend in a public courtroom.

So, the prosecutors then initiated plea negotiations with Mohammed’s defense lawyers, which resulted in a plea agreement that was accepted by the court, the defense, the prosecutors and their bosses in the Department of Defense. Then the Secretary of Defense at the time, Lloyd Austin, overruled the general in charge of the prosecutions and directed the prosecutors who had initiated, drafted and publicly accepted the plea agreement to ask the court to nullify it.

Following standard rules of criminal procedure, the court declined to nullify the Mohammed plea agreement since, by the time Sec. Austin objected to it, it had become a binding contract. An appeals court disagreed, and the Mohammed case is now back in the military trial court without a trial date.

There is no trial date because there is no trial judge assigned to the case. The trial judge who accepted Mohammed’s guilty plea has since retired, and no judge has been assigned; nor are any judges volunteering for the case. The case docket consists of 40,000+ pages of documents for a judge to read prior to trial.

Whoever the judge is will be the fourth on the case. The prosecution team has changed as many times as well.

Why is this happening? Largely because military justice is to justice as military music is to music – slow, heavy, ponderous, unending and repetitive. Had President George W. Bush not created, and his successors not accepted, the crafting of a Devil’s Island 90 miles from Florida and instead permitted the Department of Justice and civilian federal judges to handle these cases, they would have been resolved 20 years ago.

But Bush believed that at Gitmo his torturers could do as they wished. He argued that because Gitmo is in Cuba, the Constitution didn’t apply, federal laws couldn’t be enforced and those meddlesome federal judges couldn’t interfere.

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