Tag: torture

The CIA’s anal ‘feeding tube’ torture

Last week in a federal courtroom at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an American physician hired by the Pentagon testified about the CIA’s use of rectal “feeding” tubes on prisoners it detained and tortured in Thailand from 2001 to 2006.

The physician, Sondra S. Crosby, M.D., an expert on tortures and other trauma, described the painful repeated insertion of plastic tubes into the anal cavity of the defendant in the case, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, over a period of four years. Al-Nashiri is on trial for conspiracy to bomb the USS Cole in October 2000.

The hearing at which Dr. Crosby testified was ordered by the military judge when defense counsel told him the nature and extent of the torture visited upon their client by the CIA and its contractors. Dr. Crosby was given access to CIA raw notes and reports, some of which had not been seen by the investigators who produced the 2014 U.S. Senate 500-page documented study on CIA torture during the administration of President George W. Bush.

The site in Thailand at which al-Nashiri was tortured was run by Gina Haspel, the future CIA director, nicknamed by her colleagues “Bloody Gina.” The CIA infamously made videos of the torture of al-Nashiri and others, which Haspel destroyed.

Dr. Crosby, who was harshly critical of the CIA’s use of this internationally condemned interrogation technique, which is criminal under federal law, revealed that the CIA notes reflected that al-Nashiri and others who received this barbaric treatment were actually being fed nutrients via these anal tubes. She told the court that this must have been a subterfuge as there is simply no biological means to nourish a person via the person’s anal cavity.

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These Bizarre CIA Documents Expose The Most Horrifying Secrets

“The Central Intelligence Agency has been a core part of the United States’ defense against foreign and domestic enemies for decades. However, it has attracted plenty of criticism for its methods and motives over the years. Declassified documents have only fuelled this criticism, revealing all manner of unethical or illegal conduct hidden in the CIA’s closet. Many of the declassified secrets are more absurd than creepy. Wacky plots and absurd technology like bird spy drones, catfish spy drones, dragonfly spy drones – a lot of animal spy drones, come to think of it – are among the stranger revelations from declassified archives. However, some of these documents reveal far more gruesome secrets. Plans for political assassinations, mind control, torture, and even inciting international wars reveal that the CIA has gotten up to far more than the public ever suspected.”

The Legacy of George W. Bush and His Torturers

In the days and months following the attacks of 9/11, the government laid the blame for orchestrating the attacks on Osama bin Ladin. Then, after bin Ladin was murdered in his home in Pakistan in 2011, the government decided that the true mastermind of 9/11 was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

By the time of bin Ladin’s death, Mohammed had already been tortured by CIA agents for two years in Pakistan and charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder, to be tried before an American military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Throughout the entire existence of the U.S. military detention camp at Gitmo, no one has been tried for causing or carrying out the crimes of 9/11. The government only tried one person for crimes related to 9/11. That was Zacharias Moussaoui who pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to being the 20th hijacker and then was tried in a penalty phase trial where the issue was life in prison or death. The government spent millions in its death penalty case, which it lost. A civilian jury sentenced Moussaoui, who never harmed a hair on the head of anyone, to life in prison.

Mohammed, meanwhile, and four other alleged conspirators, have been awaiting trial since their arrivals at Gitmo in 2006. Since then, numerous government military and civilian prosecutors, as well as numerous military judges, have rotated into and out of the case.

The concept of military tribunals was born in the administration of President George W. Bush, who argued that 9/11, though conducted by civilians, was an attack of military magnitude and thus warranted a military response. This pathetic knee-jerk argument, of course, not only brought us the fruitless and destructive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; it also brought a host of legal problems unforeseen by Bush and his revenge-over-justice thirsty colleagues.

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GOV. RON DESANTIS OVERSAW TORTURE IN GUANTÁNAMO AS A MILITARY LAWYER

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s political star is on the rise, with many commentators identifying him as the heir apparent to a post-Trump GOP. For someone with such an immense public persona, DeSantis has been curiously tight-lipped about his military past. A bombshell new report from journalist and Army veteran Mike Prysner on his podcast Eyes Left now reveals why. According to former Guantánamo Bay detainee Mansoor Adayfi, DeSantis oversaw torture in Guantánamo, greenlighting everything from beatings to forced feedings of hunger-striking detainees. After his stint in Guantánamo, DeSantis was deployed to Fallujah to act as the US military’s human rights lawyer during the Second Gulf War. Mike Prysner joins TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez to discuss his reporting, and what DeSantis’s past tells us about the future he has in store for all of us.

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Cop Found Guilty After Video Showed Him Savagely Torture Handcuffed Man & Cover It Up

 In 2020, a federal grand jury returned a 12-count indictment against three very bad cops – officers Joseph Chase Winkle, Jeremy Gibson, and sergeant Joseph Krejsa of the Muncie Police Department for their roles in using excessive force and attempting to cover up the misconduct. Video from the officers’ body cameras was crucial in securing the charges.

The indictment charges Winkle with nine felonies, Gibson with one felony offense, and Krejsa with two felony offenses. Now, nearly two years later, and Winkle has pleaded guilty to 11 counts while Gibson has pleaded to one. Krejsa remains on paid leave.

“According to the superseding indictment, Winkle’s actions included kicking, punching, knee striking, and using a taser on arrestees without justification, and resulted in bodily injury to the arrestees,” a news release from the US Attorney’s Office read.

The maximum penalty for the deprivation-of-rights offenses is 10 years in prison and the maximum penalty for false report offenses is 20 years of imprisonment, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

According to the charges, one of the victims suffered serious injuries from Winkle’s attack and another was knocked unconscious.

Body camera video from one of the arrests shows Winkle and another officer handcuffing a compliant man before deploying a taser on him causing him to writhe in pain. As the handcuffed man squirms in agony, the officer viciously attacked him with fists, tasers, and knee strikes.

Gibson was involved in similar attacks and is accused of depriving victims of their right to be free from excessive force by stomping on them and delivering multiple knee strikes.

Krejsa sat back and watched his two subordinates beat their victims and helped them cover it up afterward.

As RTV6 reported at the time, on one occasion, Krejsa minimized the level of force used by Winkle during one arrest, and, on another occasion, falsely represented that a different Muncie Police Department sergeant cleared Winkle of his use of force when it was actually Krejsa who conducted that review.

In other words, they investigated themselves and found they did nothing wrong.

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‘Wires To My Genitalia’: UN Report Details How Both Russia And Ukraine Tortured Prisoners Of War

Both Ukraine and Russia have committed acts against prisoners of war that amount to torture, a United Nations human rights body said in a report Tuesday.

The Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) cited instances of both Ukrainian and Russian forces subjecting prisoners of war (POWs) to electric shocks, beatings and forced nudity, according to testimony from over 300 prisoners interviewed during the course of several months, the organization found. A “vast majority” of Ukrainian POWs reported experiencing torture, while reports from Russian detainees were localized to three specific holding centers early in the conflict, mission leader Matilda Bogner said.

“The fundamental obligation of a state is to treat all prisoners of war in their power humanely at all times — from the very moment they are captured until their release and repatriation,” Bogner said, adding that Ukraine and Russia have both acceded to the Third Geneva Convention mandating fair treatment of former prisoners of war.

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German Newspaper Debunks Fake Ukrainian Story of ‘Russian Torture’

A pile of gold teeth, which Ukraine alleged had been pulled from civilians by Russian troops to torture them, actually belonged to a local dentist, Bild reported on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry posted a picture on Twitter of what it called “a torture chamber” in Peski Radkovskiye, a town in Kharkov Region. The photo depicted a gas mask, which, according to the ministry, was used to torture the local population, and a box of gold dental crowns lying on the grass.

“How many more will be found in occupied Ukraine?” it asked, hinting that it was Russian troops who had committed the atrocities.

However, according to Bild, the teeth apparently belonged to patients of a local dentist, not to Ukrainian torture victims.

“These teeth look like those stolen from my collection,” Sergey, 60, told the outlet when he was shown the photo distributed by the Ukrainian authorities. “I’m the only dentist here. So if they were found here, they must have come from me.”

When asked if the teeth could have come from dead people, the dentist categorically dismissed the notion. “Oh God, no! They belonged to the people I’ve treated all these years. I pulled out these teeth because they were bad,” he explained.

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Senate doesn’t have to release full CIA torture report, judge rules

The U.S. Senate does not have to release its full report detailing the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation and detention program following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Journalist Shawn Musgrave sought the 6,700-page document, citing a “common law right of access” to public records. The legal argument is conceptually similar to the Freedom of Information Act. Congress is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in 2016 that the report was a congressional record. Musgrave’s legal argument was made in an attempt to get around that limitation.

Common law right of access is decided in the District of Columbia Circuit based on a two-part test that requires a determination that the document is a public record and then balancing the government’s interest in keeping the document secret against the public’s interest in disclosure.

District of Columbia District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the report “does not qualify as a public record subject to the common law right of public access” because although it was part of the committee’s investigation, it was aimed at gathering information and did not make recommendations or propose legislation. Therefore, she said, it falls under the protections of the 1st Amendment‘s speech and debate clause protecting legislators’ speech while crafting legislation.

The government interest in keeping the information secret outweighs public interest, Howell wrote.

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Supreme Court Tortures the Constitution Again

The Supreme Court ruled in March that Americans have no right to learn the grisly details of CIA torture because the CIA has never formally confessed its crimes. The case symbolizes how the rule of law has become little more than legal mumbo-jumbo to shroud official crimes. And it is another grim reminder that Americans cannot rely on politically approved lawyers wearing bat suits to save their freedoms.

In 2002, the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian radical, in Pakistan and falsely believed he was a kingpin with al Qaeda. The CIA tortured him for years in Thailand and Poland. As Justice Neal Gorsuch noted, the CIA “waterboarded Zubaydah at least 80 times, simulated live burials in coffins for hundreds of hours,” and brutalized him to keep him awake for six days in a row. The CIA has admitted some of the details of the torture, and Zubaydah’s name was mentioned more than a thousand times in a 683-page Senate report released in 2014 on the CIA torture regime. But the Supreme Court permitted the CIA to pretend that the case is still secret.

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The NYT Acknowledges the CIA’s Big Lie for Gina Haspel

The  New York Times has finally acknowledged Gina Haspel’s direct involvement in the Central Intelligence Agency’s policy of torture and abuse.  On June 4, 2022, an article provided details of Haspel’s role as chief of the CIA base twenty years ago that was known for conducting the most sadistic acts of torture and abuse.  At her confirmation hearings to become CIA director in 2018, Haspel refused to answer any direct questions about her role in the policy of torture and abuse, which included the waterboarding of a Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.  The CIA stopped me from writing about Haspel’s role in my 2018 memoir, “Whistleblower at the CIA.”

As a result of CIA’s censorship, I joined a lawsuit with four former federal employees to end the government’s suppression of our writings on national security issues.  Last month, the Supreme Court allowed to stand a court ruling that denied our case, which had been presented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union.  The government has a legitimate interest in protecting bona fide secrets, but the CIA’s review system is opaque, exceeding legitimate security boundaries, and compromising free speech.  The Haspel case exposes the dangers of government censorship; the failures of the Senate’s confirmation process; and the CIA’s ability to avoid accountability for its transgressions.

At the closing of Haspel’s hearing, the chairman of the intelligence committee, Richard Burr (R/NC), told her that “you have acted morally, ethically and legally over a distinguished 30-year career.”  Surely the members of the committee knew of Haspel’s role in torture and abuse.  This would be particularly true for the senior Democrat on the committee, Diane Feinstein, who led the committee’s investigation of the CIA program.

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