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04
Aug

FBI concedes Aafia Siddiqui in US custody: lawyer

By Dazeylin 1 Comment
Categories: Afghanistan, Bagram, CIA Black Sites, Children, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Disappeared, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, Extraordinary Rendition, Kabul Prison, Pakistan, Torture, Torture flights, USA, human rights and war crimes

aafia1

By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan.

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda.

Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information.

“I don’t believe that they just found Aafia,” she said. “I believe that she was there all along.”

The fate of her three young, American-born children is still unknown.

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03
Aug

Pakistani scientist alive, in custody

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Abuse, Afghanistan, Bagram, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, Female Detainee, Grey Lady of Bagram, Kabul Prison, Khalil Janahi and Prisoner 650

By Farah Stockman
Globe Staff

300h

Female activists rallied in Karachi, Pakistan,

on Thursday demanding the release of

Aafia Siddiqui, who is in custody in

Afghanistan.

(RIZWAN TABASSUM/ AFP/ Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - Five years after her disappearance, an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist accused of belonging to an Al Qaeda cell based in Boston, is alive and in custody in Afghanistan, her family’s attorney said yesterday.

“It has been confirmed by the FBI that Aafia Siddiqui is alive,” said Elaine Whitfield Sharp, a lawyer for Siddiqui’s family, who said she spoke to an FBI official on Thursday. “She is injured but alive, and she is in Afghanistan.”

The news sheds some light on one of the most intriguing local mysteries in the war on terrorism.

Siddiqui, who lived in Roxbury and studied at Brandeis University as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her.

For five years, US and Pakistani authorities have denied knowing her whereabouts. But human rights groups and Siddiqui’s relatives have long suspected that she had been captured in Karachi and secretly taken into custody.

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20
May

Report Details Interrogation Debate

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", ACLU, Abu Ghraib, Abuse, Bagram, C.I.A., Camp X-Ray, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, DoD, Guantanamo, Kabul Prison, Kandahar, Torture, Torture flights, USA, human rights and war crimes

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON ? F. B. I. agents complained repeatedly, beginning in 2002, about the harsh interrogation tactics that military and C. I. A. interrogators were using in questioning terrorism suspects, like making them do dog tricks and parade in the nude in front of female soldiers, but their complaints appear to have had little effect, according to an exhaustive report released Tuesday by the Justice Department?s inspector general.

The report describes major and repeated clashes between F. B. I. agents and their counterparts over the rough methods being used on detainees in Guant?namo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq ? some of which, according to the inspector general, may have violated the Defense Department?s own policies at the time.
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25
Apr

The Bush Team’s Geneva Hypocrisy

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Bagram, Black Site, Bush Lies, C.I.A., Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, DoD, Drugs, Executative Powers Abuse, Extended Solitary Confinement, Extraordinary Rendition, Female Detainee, Geneva Conventions, Guantanamo, Hayden, Kabul Prison, Lies of the U.S. Administration, Rumsfeld, Sleep Deprivation, Torture, Torture flights, USA, human rights, war crimes and waterboarding

By Jason Leopold

Newly released U. S. government documents, detailing how Bush administration officials punched legalistic holes in the Geneva Convention’s protections of war captives, stand in stark contrast to the outrage some of the same officials expressed in the first week of the Iraq War when Iraqi TV interviewed several captured American soldiers.

Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush and other administration officials orchestrated a chorus of outrage, citing those TV scenes as proof of the Iraq’s government contempt for international law in general and the Geneva Convention in particular.

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21
Apr

Our Very Own Axis of Evil in Guantánamo A former prisoner describes the foul essence of the Bush presidency

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Afghanistan, Bagram, Black Site, C.I.A., Camp X-Ray, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Ghost, Guantanamo, Kabul Prison, Kandahar, Military Tribunal, Morocco, Sleep Deprivation, Torture, Use of doctors in torture, war crimes and waterboarding

by Nat Hentoff

If the deciders at the White House, the Justice Department, and the CIA who are responsible for war crimes ever face the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials—or at least an unsparing Congressional investigation—an essential witness against them will be Murat Kurnaz. His book, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo (Palgrave MacMillan), has just been published.

CBS’s 60 Minutes, keeping Edward R. Murrow’s legacy alive, provided an introduction to Kurnaz on March 30, with Scott Pelley detailing how, three months after
9/11, this German citizen “found himself in a [U. S.] prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one”—even though a secret government file eventually revealed “information from the FBI, German intelligence and even the U. S. military pointing to his innocence.” Even then, he was kept in his cage.

The tortures inflicted on Murat Kurnaz—first in a CIA “black site” in Afghanistan, later at Guantánamo Bay—included “holding his head under water, administering electric shocks to the soles of his feet, and hanging him suspended from the ceiling of an aircraft hangar and kept alive by doctors.” Kurnaz recalls that every five or six hours, he was pulled down, “and the doctor came. He looked into my eyes. He checked my heart and when he said, ‘OK,’ then they pulled me back up.”

As I’ve pointed out here before, there has been no Congressional investigation, with subpoenas, of the war crimes committed by American doctors and psychologists in the prisons of Guantánamo, Iraq, and the CIA’s “black sites” all over the world as they advised our torturers on how they could most effectively continue to practice their craft.

Click here to read the rest of Our Very Own Axis of Evil in Guantánamo A former prisoner describes the foul essence of the Bush presidency

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20
Apr

German Citizen Held by US Forces as Terror Suspect

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Afghanistan, Detainee, Germany and Kabul Prison

German Citizen Held by US Forces as Terror Suspect A German soldier looking through binoculars from a military tank in Afghanistan US authorities in Afghanistan have been holding a German terror suspect in custody for months, the German government said. The German of Afghan origin was said to have been on a US base without authorization.

Germany has troops in Afghanistan“I can confirm to you that a German national is in American custody in Afghanistan,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Reuters TV in Dortmund, in western Germany, on Saturday, April 19.

“We are making an effort with the American government for a release,” Steinmeier said.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter SteinmeierBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: German Foreign Minister Steinmeier spoke with the US about the suspect

The German weekly magazine Der Spiegel had earlier reported that the citizen was a 41-year-old German man who, according to German security authorities, posed no terror threat.

US forces have apparently been holding the man since early January. “He is accused of being on an American base without permission,” German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said. Der Spiegel’s online portal had named the man as Gholam Ghaus Z., saying he had been in Afghanistan to visit relatives.

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20
Apr

German Held in US Custody in Kabul

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Afghanistan, Detainee, Germany, Kabul Prison, Lies of the U.S. Administration, Murat Kurnaz and USA

The US military have been holding a German citizen in custody in Kabul after he tried to buy a shaver in a military supermarket. German intelligence agencies have found no grounds for suspecting he could be a terrorist and the German foreign ministry is now working to secure his release.

The US military have been holding a German citizen in custody in Kabul since the beginning of the year over accusations that he was on a US base without authorization.

Gholam Ghaus Z., a 41-year-old of Afghan origin from Wuppertal in western Germany, had travelled to Kabul to visit relatives. When he entered a US military supermarket to buy a shaver in January he was arrested on suspicion of terrorism. The fact that he had banknotes in different currencies and telephone cards from several countries seemed to be enough to warrant his arrest. Although hours of interrogations did not provide any evidence that he was a terrorist, Z. man has been in US custody for the almost four months.

Officials with the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, have already questioned him in Kabul. Meanwhile Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has looked into his background in Germany and found no grounds for suspicion. “It was all totally clean,” a high-ranking security expert told SPIEGEL.

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14
Apr

ICRC tells warring sides to spare Afghan civilians

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Bagram, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Geneva Conventions, ICRC, Kabul Prison, Kandahar, Lies of the U.S. Administration, Pul-i-Charkhi, Taliban Prisoner, Torture, USA and human rights

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL, April 14 (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross has urged the Afghan military, foreign troops and Taliban insurgents to spare civilians during combat, the organisation’s global chief said on Monday.

Jakob Kellenberger also said suspected Taliban prisoners held by the U. S. military at Bagram were concerned about their fate and pressed the Afghan government for judicial guarantees and better treatment for the inmates it holds at Pul-i-Charkhi jail.

Former detainees have complained of being ill-treated and tortured and many are kept without trial at the Afghan jail on the eastern outskirts of Kabul.

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11
Apr

Rights Group: Afghan Trials Unfair

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Afghanistan, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Kabul Prison, Pul-i-Charkhi and human rights

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)

A human rights group charged on Thursday that Afghanistan is prosecuting detainees transferred from U.S.-run prisons in arbitrary and unfair trials with little evidence.

Human Rights First lauded the Afghan government’s decision to try the detainees, formerly held in the prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Bagram, Afghanistan, in a court of law. But the New York-based group said in a new report that the legal proceedings are unfairly based on little more than allegations by American officials.

“Where there is evidence of criminal activity, persons should be tried in proceedings that comport with international fair trial standards,” Human Rights First said in its report. “In Afghanistan, the trials of former Bagram and Guantanamo detainees being conducted since October 2007 fall far short of this mark.”

Click here to read the rest of Rights Group: Afghan Trials Unfair

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08
Apr

The Torture Memo, and the Outrage

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, Bagram, Black Site, C.I.A., Camp Bucca, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Detainee Treatment Act, Extraordinary Rendition, Female Detainee, Guantanamo, Interrogators, Kabul Prison, Military Commission, Military Tribunal, Sleep Deprivation, Torture, Torture flights, USA, war crimes and waterboarding
nyc-torture.jpg

To the Editor:

Re “ ’03 U.S. Memo Approved Harsh Interrogations” (front page, April 2):

It’s high time that the authors of the Bush administration’s legal recipe book for torture be brought out of the kitchen and into the courtroom. Yet despite volumes of highly credible evidence of human rights crimes, or even war crimes, a negligent Congress continues to fail miserably in its responsibility to mandate proper investigations into these cruel policies.

The United States’ moral and political standing in the world have completely eroded, and legitimate prosecutions of crimes against humanity against the United States have been compromised. Congress must finally face its own complicity in torture with concrete measures — not shortsighted hearings — by ordering a full, independent investigation into how torture became United States modus operandi and holding those responsible accountable.

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23
Mar

A funny kind of Christian

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Camp Bucca, Detainee, Ghost, Guantanamo, Iraq, Kabul Prison, Lies of the U.S. Administration, Pul-i-Charkhi, Torture, USA and waterboarding

His thirst for scapegoats shows how poorly George Bush understands the meaning of Easter.

By Giles Fraser the vicar of Putney giles.fraser@btinternet.com

Somewhere in the Middle East, Jesus Christ is strapped to a bench, his head wrapped in clingfilm. He furiously sucks against the plastic. A hole is pierced, but only so that a filthy rag can be stuffed back into his mouth. He is turned upside down and water slowly poured into the rag. The torturer whispers religious abuse. If you are God, save yourself you fucking idiot. Fighting to pull in oxygen through the increasingly saturated rag, his lungs start to fill up with water. Someone punches him in the stomach.

 

Perhaps this is how we ought to be re-telling the story of Christ’s passion. For ever since the cross became a piece of jewellery, it has been drained of its power to sicken. Even before this the Romans had taken their hated instrument of torture and turned it into the logo of a new religion. Few makeovers can have been so historically significant. The very secular cross was transformed into a sort of club badge for Christians, something to be proud of.

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22
Mar

Manacled, starved, beaten: a rendition victim’s story

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abu Ghraib, Detainee, Disappeared, Extraordinary Rendition, Ghost, Kabul Prison, Saudi Arabia, Torture and Yemen

By Kim Sengupta

Khaled al-Maqtari’s nightmare began when American troops arrived at the al-Ghufran market in Fallujah in January 2004. He was arrested along with other terrorist suspects and taken to Abu Ghraib jail. For the next four years he was held captive, moved from country to country and suffered, he says, appalling torture.

Mr al-Maqtari, from Yemen, was one of the many inmates in the US’s secret “ghost detention” who disappeared into an international network of prisons, their whereabouts unknown to family and friends. British soldiers, he claims, were involved in investigating him although they did not play any part in the abuse.

Details of what Mr al-Maqtari, 31, says was done to him emerge after a recent admission from the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband (after previous denials) that the island of Diego Garcia, a British territory, had been used in American rendition flights.

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