tortur – Page 4

Ny meningsmåling: Folk vil ikke tolerere tortur, uanset hvad

I USA, ganske vist (I Danmark er jeg ikke sikker på, jeg har lyst til at kende svaret). Men alligevel. Glenn Greenwald:

One of the most common and most corrosive aspects of our political discourse is the endless assertions — based on nothing — about what “Americans believe.” It is exceedingly conventional wisdom that Americans generally view the world through the prism of Jack Bauer and therefore want our government to torture, want Guantanamo kept opened, and do not want suspected Terrorists to be tried in civilian courts inside the U.S. It is even more commonly asserted that Americans do not want, and even further, would never tolerate, criminal investigations into the various crimes of Bush officials.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday negates all of those beliefs. Here was the question that was asked about torture — note that it’s phrased in the most pro-torture manner possible, because it is grounded in the ludicrous, 24-clichéd “ticking time bomb” excuse that is the most commonly used argument by torture advocates:

Q. Obama has said that under his administration the United States will not use torture as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism, no matter what the circumstance. Do you support this position not to use torture, or do you think there are cases in which the United States should consider torture against terrorism suspects?

By a wide margin — 58-40% — Americans say that torture should never be used, no matter the circumstances.

Altså: Et stort flertal af amerikanerne mener, at tortur ikke må og kan anvendes. Under. Nogen. Omstændigheder.

George W. Bush og hans slæng har altså ikke haft den opbakning til at tilsidesætte menneskerettighederne i Irak-krigen og “krigen mod terror”, som ellers ofte tages for givet.

Link: New poll on torture and investigations negates Beltway conventional wisdom

Obama lægger hårdt ud

“Krigen mod terror” rulles næsten hele vejen tilbage på Obamas andendag som præsident. Bush-regeringens krig mod terror og de mange menneskerettighedskrænkelser i Guantánamo og diverse hemmelige fængsler kan snart være fortid.

Mere i The Guardian:

Barack Obama embarked on the wholesale deconstruction of George Bush’s war on terror, shutting down the CIA’s secret prison network, banning torture and rendition, and calling for a new set of rules for detainees. The repudiation of Bush’s thinking on national security yesterday also saw the appointment of a high-powered envoy to the Middle East.

Obama’s decision to permanently shut down the CIA’s clandestine interrogation centres went far beyond the widely anticipated move to wind down the Guantánamo Bay detention centre within a year.

He cast his scrapping of the legal apparatus set up by Bush as a way for America to reclaim the moral high ground in the fight against al-Qaida.

“We are not, as I said during the inauguration, going to continue with the false choice between our safety and our ideals,” Obama said at the signing ceremony. “We intend to win this fight. We are going to win it on our own terms.”

In a sign of the sweeping rejection of the legal standards set by Bush, officials briefing reporters at the White House yesterday said the new administration would not be guided by any of the opinions on torture and detainees issued by the justice department after 11 September 2001.

Instead, Obama, in three executive orders, renewed the US commitment to the Geneva convention on the treatment of detainees.

Der er endnu et stykke tilbage at gå, således er den berygtede Patriot Act stadig i kraft.

Obama træder nu også ind i Mellemøst-konflikten og opfordrer Israel til at åbne Gazas grænser til omverdenen. Således Politiken:

»Nu må vi vise en udstrakt hånd til de, som søger fred, og som led i en varig våbenhvile bør Gazas grænser være åbne for at tillade, at nødhjælp og varer kan strømme«, sagde Obama, da han udpegede to veteraner til særlige udsendinge i Mellemøsten, Afghanistan og Pakistan.

Udtalelserne er dog foreløbig vage, og her er der endnu længere tilbage at gå. Mellemøstkonflikten er i det hele taget et meget farligt område for Obama at bevæge sig ind på. På trods af disse “men’er” er det svært at sige sig fri for en vis tilfredshed med, at Obama så hurtigt begynder at lægge afstand til Bush-æraen.

Det er i hvert fald meget, meget vigtigt, at man tager et opgør med den udbredte brug af tortur og drab på civile i “krigen mod terror”. Nu venter vi bare på retssagerne.

Amerikansk dommer: Sag frafaldes, fangen blev torteret

Den amerikanske dommer Susan J. Crawford, der har til opgave at vurdere, om Guantanamo-fanger kan retsforfølges, har opgivet at rejse sag mod en saudi-arabisk statsborger, fordi vedkommende blev udsat for ødelæggende tortur, skriver Washington Post:

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani’s health led to her conclusion. “The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.

Så nu er det officielt, med en amerikansk dommers ord. Hvornår starter retssagerne?

Link: Guantanamo Detainee Was Tortured, Says US Official

Irak: Hvordan skabes en terrorist?

Kevin Drum citerer “Matthew Alexander“, en amerikansk afhøringsofficer, der afviste brugen af tortur og i stedet svor til mere traditionelle og effektive afhøringsmetoder:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq….How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

After my return from Iraq, I began to write about my experiences because I felt obliged, as a military officer, not only to point out the broken wheel but to try to fix it. When I submitted the manuscript of my book about my Iraq experiences to the Defense Department for a standard review to ensure that it did not contain classified information, I got a nasty shock. Pentagon officials delayed the review past the first printing date and then redacted an extraordinary amount of unclassified material — including passages copied verbatim from the Army’s unclassified Field Manual on interrogations and material vibrantly displayed on the Army’s own Web site. I sued, first to get the review completed and later to appeal the redactions. Apparently, some members of the military command are not only unconvinced by the arguments against torture; they don’t even want the public to hear them.

Link: How to Break a Terrorist

Psykisk syge mishandles

Danmark, det oplyste, velstående land, hvor få har for meget og færre for lidt. Og hvor en lille gruppe af psykisk syges torteres og mishandles som intet andet sted i Europa:

Psykisk syge bliver mishandlet, når de lægges i bælte dagligt i flere måneder på lukkede psykiatriske afdelinger i Danmark. Og personalet bruger ulovlig tvang mod patienter på det hospital, hvor de mest sindssyge er indlagt.

Sådan lyder konklusionen fra Europarådets Torturkomité, der besøgte to hospitaler i februar. I en rapport om Danmark kalder komitéen det en »hastesag«, at regeringen begrænser brugen af tvang.

»Der er ingen lægelig grund til at fiksere patienter så meget, som man gør i Danmark. Vi har aldrig besøgt et land, der bruger bæltefiksering så længe som jer. Det er mishandling af patienterne«, siger Torturkomitéens delegationsleder, den islandske psykiater Petur Hauksson.

Delegationen besøgte blandt andet Sikringsafdelingen i Nykøbing Sjælland, hvor landets mest farlige sindssyge kriminelle er indlagt. Her så de en patient, der var blevet lagt i bælte en eller flere gange om dagen gennem en seks måneder lang periode. En anden havde været i bælte dagligt i fire måneder, mens en tredje havde ligget i bæltet en måned i træk.

Komitéens udsendte så også en »nedværdigende« tvangsmetode, som den aldrig havde set før. Fikseringen ligner den, man har set på Guantánamofangerne. Patienternes arme var sat fast til et bælte om maven. En rem mellem fødderne sikrede, at de kun kunne gå med korte skridt.

I dag er jeg ekstra stolt af at være dansker. Er der nogen, der ved, hvor man kan gå hen og brække sig?

USA – torturens spydspids

Leftist scumbag Andrew Sullivan opsummerer, hvordan USA nu står i spidsen for torturens globale revival:

A new survey of global public opinion [PDF] reveals the appalling truth. Americans are now among the people on earth most supportive of government’s torturing prisoners. The United States is in the same public opinion ballpark as some of the most disgusting regimes on the planet:

Support for the unequivocal position was highest in Spain (82%), Great Britain (82%) and France (82%), followed by Mexico (73%), China (66%), the Palestinian territories (66%), Poland (62%), Indonesia (61%), and the Ukraine (59%). In five countries either modest majorities or pluralities support a ban on all torture: Azerbaijan (54%), Egypt (54%), the United States (53%), Russia (49%), and Iran (43%). South Koreans are divided.

So America’s peers in the fight against torture, in terms of public opinion are Azerbaijan, Egypt, Russia, and Iran. This is what America now is: a country with the moral values of countries that routinely torture and abuse prisoners, like Egypt and Iran.

Gad vide om diverse Hollywoodfilm af den slags, hvor den heltemodige cop tæver det levende dagslys ud af skurke, som herefter straks kryber til korset, spiller ind – jeg holder selv meget af Hollywood-film, men har det ikke altid helt godt med den konstante legitimering af politivold.

Eftersom tortur stort set altid rammer folk, som senere viser sig at være uskyldige, er det i alle tilfælde knap så hensigtsmæssigt; er voldelige overgreb virkelig altid helt fjong, når bare de bliver begået af folk i uniform?

Sully runder af:

The only other countries where support for torturing terror suspects has grown are India, Nigeria, Turkey, South Korea and Egypt. In all other developed countries, support for an absolute ban on torture has actually risen in the past two years. America is now leading the way in legitimizing and celebrating torture as a legitimate tool for governments.

This is the Bush-Cheney legacy – to be continued under McCain-Palin. McCain was once a torture victim, but since 2006 has supported the torture of prisoners by the CIA. In fact, prisoners across the world who have been tortured by the CIA in the last two years can, in the terror of their cells, know that John McCain made it possible, by caving into the war criminals in the White House in 2006.

How can the country that pioneered the Geneva Conventions now be a nation more supportive of torture than any other developed nation on earth? Of course, it matters that we have had a president and vice-president actively endorsing and campaigning for the use of torture, and torturing prisoners routinely in jails where there is no escape and no due process. But the key segment of the pro-torture enthusiasts are evangelical Christians. Yes: evangelical Christians are now the greatest supporters of doing to prisoners what was once done to Christ.

Det er dem, vi følger som en hund sin herre: de torterende, krigsførende amerikanere og deres gale kristne evangelister. Men selvfølgelig holder vi dem skarpt op på vore egne standarder for menneskerettigheder! – der er endda set eksempler på, at CIA-hold er blevet nægtet kaffe, når de tanker op i Kastrup på vejen fra Guantanamo til Damaskus.

Se blot, hvordan vor egen standhaftige Fogh viser den frie verdens leder, hvor skabet skal stå.

Guantanamo – amerikansk tortur med britisk hjælp

Fra dagens Guardian, om en retssag, der skal afklare efterretningstjenesten MI5s mulige indblanding i en sag om bortførelse og tortur af en britisk borger:

Mohamed, a UK resident, was initially held in Pakistan in 2002 and was later secretly rendered to Morocco, where he claimed that he was tortured and had his penis lacerated while further threats were made. He was then flown by the US authorities to Afghanistan, where he claims he was subjected to further ill-treatment and interrogation, at the end of which he said that he would have said anything to avoid further punishment

In September 2004, he was taken to Guantánamo Bay, where he is still held. He claims that all his confessions were a result of the torture. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

Den amerikanske regering ser helst ikke, at den britiske domstol afklarer, hvad der er sket:

‘The US state department today warned that disclosure of secret information in the case of a British resident said to have been tortured before he was sent to Guantánamo Bay would cause “serious and lasting damage” to security relations between the two countries – the “national security of the UK” would be affected’
Oversættelse: “National security would be affected” = “det er alt for pinligt for os, det her”

Er der noget om tortur-snakken? En af de implicerede efterretningsagenter var i hvert fald bange for at udtale sig under vidneansvar:

Last week, in the initial hearing of the case, the high court found that MI5 had participated in the unlawful interrogation of Mohamed. It emerged that one MI5 officer was so concerned about incriminating himself that he initially declined to answer questions from the judges even in private… It was disclosed that the officer, Witness B, was questioned about alleged war crimes, including torture, under the international criminal court act.

Det tyder som udgangspunkt ikke godt. Vi bemærker, at som altid, når det handler om Guantanamo og de mennesker, der er havnet i dette helvede af en moderne koncentrationslejr, er det en helt usædvanligt ubehagelig historie.

Jeg håber, de skyldige ender med at få deres straf (og det er ikke den efter alt at dømme ganske uskyldige hr. Mohamed, jeg tænker på).

Imperiets sande ansigt

Britiske soldater anklages nu for seksuelle overgreb på en dengang kun 14-årig fange i Irak, et af de “brune” lande, der for tiden ikke skønnes at kunne “klare sig selv” og som “vores” drenge derfor er nødt til at boltre sig i – hvis det for nogen lyder som det 19. århundredes kolonialisme, er det, fordi det ret klart er den, vi er kommet tilbage til.

Som Lenin fra Lenin’s Tomb gør opmærksom på, er der ikke noget særligt usædvanligt ved sådanne angreb, der formentlig er en helt naturlig konsekvens af den racisme, der ligger til grund for hele besættelsen og det sprog, den forsvares i:

This sort of daily, often quite arbitrary, violence by forces who accept the minimum possible responsibility for their behaviour is just so much background noise to the war against barbarism/extremism/terrorism/savagery/etc. It just blends into the screams from the torture chambers and the crunch of metal against bone as troops shoot up cars at checkpoints or lob missiles into houses. The fact that this is perfectly ordinary behaviour by imperialist troops, under whatever authority and of whatever nationality, is always missed. Whether in Kosovo, Somalia or Haiti, whether the military mission is conducted under the NATO brand or the UN brand, there always emerges some sickening stories of systematic physical and sexual abuse of the supposed recipients of humanitarian largesse.

Den eneste grund til at vi overhovedet hører om den aktuelle sag er måske, at den er ekstrem – alle de “almindelige” tilfælde af overgreb og tortur forsvinder i mængden: “Had it been left at a whipping and beating for the crime of stealing milk, it may not have ever been reported.”

Hvornår begynder de første, tilsvarende sager om danske soldaters optræden i Afghanistan mon at dukke op? Et land, hvor USA stadig opretholder store fangelejre, hvor tortur praktiseres præcis så rutinemæssigt som på Guantánamo. Hvad har danske soldater dog at gøre på den galej – og så som “allierede”?