Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Raw Story
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Monday refused to dismiss a lawsuit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for creating policies that caused American civilians to be tortured by the U.S. military in Iraq.
In a 2 to 1 decision, the court ruled that the lawsuit filed by Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, two American citizens who were allegedly tortured at a U.S. military prison in Iraq in 2006, provided adequate evidence that Rumsfeld was personally responsible for their treatment and that Rumsfeld was not entitled to qualified immunity.
"If the plaintiffs’ allegations are true, two young American civilians were trying to do the right thing by becoming whistleblowers to the U.S. government, but found themselves detained in prison and tortured by their own government, without notice to their families and with no sign of when the harsh physical and psychological abuse would end," they wrote their decision (PDF).
The court did not address the factual allegations made by Vance and Ertel, only the validity of their lawsuit. The former Bush and current Obama administration have tried to have the case dismissed.
The two young men moved to Iraq in 2005 and 2006 to help "rebuild the country and achieve democracy." They worked for a privately-owned security company called Shield Group Security.
Vance and Ertel began working with the FBI after they became suspicious that Shield Group Security was engaged in corruption and other illegal activities. The two men shared Shield Group Security documents with U.S. officials and reported their observations, including evidence that U.S. and Iraqi government officials were involved with illegal arms trading, stockpiling of weapons, and bribery...[Full Article]
Labels: Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, torture
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Raw Story
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has been unable to visit with Private Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of leaking State Department cables to WikiLeaks, despite being a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"I put in a request to the secretary of defense, who referred me to the secretary of the army, who referred me to the secretary of the navy, who referred me to the secretary of defense, and still not an answer on whether or not I can visit Private Manning," Rep. Kucinich explained to Scott Horton of KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles on Friday.
He previously announced he would visit Manning to investigate reports that he had been subjected to abuse while in custody.
Manning attorney David Coombs revealed last week that for at least two nights in row, the Army private had been "stripped naked" for as long as seven hours at a time.
In the mornings, he was left without clothes and forced to stand at attention.
"No one held prisoner anywhere in America should be tortured," Rep. Kucinich told Horton. "And the fact that he’s awaiting trial and they’re doing this to him raises serious questions about our criminal justice process. And I’m going to continue my efforts to address the plight of Private Manning and to try to stop this outrageous treatment of him."...[Full Article]
Labels: Bradley Manning, Dennis Kucinich, torture, WikiLeaks
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Police Taser/Torture 64 Year Old Man With A Heart Condition In June 2009
A lawsuit has been launched against the sheriff's office in Marin County, Calif., over an episode in which deputies barged uninvited into a 64-year-old man's home and shot him three times with a Taser, screaming "stop resisting" while the incapacitated victim writhed in pain on the floor.
The sheriff's version of the episode was that watching "selected" video segments of the events may mislead people.
The incident was reported by KGO-TV in San Francisco, which posted a video:
The episode developed late in June when Peter McFarland, a consultant, returned home one night from a charity fundraiser and fell on his front steps, injuring his knee. Paramedics were called to treat his injury.
Then as the paramedics departed, McFarland reported, two deputies barged in.
"All of a sudden they just showed up, came in here like there was a fire," he said.
The deputies insisted on taking him to a hospital for an evaluation, according to the television report.
"We're going to take you to the hospital for an evaluation," one deputy says on the video. "You said if you had a gun you'd shoot yourself in the head."
McFarland said that statement was no more than hyperbole, reflecting how much pain he was in from his fall and the fact he was exhausted.
He refused to go and argued with the deputies. He told them to get out of his house and got up to go to bed.
That's when he was shot by the deputies, three times. The officers were yelling, "Stop resisting. Stop resisting," as he screamed unintelligibly while writhing uncontrollably on the floor.
His wife was pleading for the officers to stop, telling them McFarland had a heart condition.
John Scott, McFarland's attorney, told the television station it is "hard to imagine something this shocking could happen."
McFarland was arrested and charged with resisting arrest, but the charges later were dismissed. The attorney told the station the officers had no search warrant or any legal reason to enter the private home.
The station interviewed Dr. Byron Lee, a cardiologist, who said "the Taser has some real risks that if you can get Tasered in the right places, you can cause sudden death and cardiac arrest."
The station later reported when the sheriff responded to concerns about the incident.
The sheriff's office's written statement to the station said, "The decision to resort to the use of force is never taken lightly and deputy sheriffs (sic) undergo an extensive amount of on-going training to ensure those decisions are both appropriate and fall within the guidelines established by law and department policy."
The station said the officers also said watching someone being jolted is hard.
"That reaction can all too often also be influenced by using only small, selected segments of a much lengthier video that better depicts the complexity of the event in question."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tased in His Own House: California Man Sues Police
Peter McFarland's Attorney Said Repeated Use of Taser Could Have Killed the 64-Year-Old Cancer Survivor
A 911 call for help after a fall ended with a 64-year-old cancer survivor getting Tased three times by police in his California home, an action his attorney said could have killed him.
Marin County sheriff's deputies turned a Taser on Peter McFarland when he refused to go to the hospital and allegedly became belligerent.
"These are deadly weapons, and he had a heart condition," McFarland's attorney, John Scott, told "Good Morning America." " He could have easily been killed here."
McFarland can be seen screaming in agony on a police video, lying on the floor as the officers pumped high-powered volts of electricity into his back.
Scott said his client has recovered physically from the June 2009 incident, but that he's suing not only for compensation for his injuries but also to raise awareness about the "use of Tasers in situations where force is not warranted."
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64 Year Old Man Tasered in His Home
Labels: police brutality, taser, torture
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Now that Canada is officially the most oppressive and backward dictatorship in the west, will authorities be allowed to cover-up the Abu-Ghraib style incarceration methods Toronto police engaged in during the G20 summit this past weekend, where women were arrested and subsequently raped by male cops?
In the video below, journalist Amy Miller describes how women arrested by Toronto police were threatened with rape, that numerous women were strip-searched by male officers and that one severely traumatized woman was sexually molested by police who stuck their fingers up her vagina.
“I was told I was going to be gang banged. I was told that I was never going to want to act as a journalist again by making sure I was going to be repeatedly raped while I was in jail,” she said.
Sexual penetration of an individual against their will is called rape. If these reports are accurate, and there’s no reason to think otherwise given everything else we’ve witnessed not only over the past few days but over the past several years in Canada, Toronto police officers are not only brutal thugs who like to lie about the law, unlawfully arrest people, snatch and grab protesters using unmarked cars, and beat up journalists from major newspapers, but they are also rapists who prey on innocent women.
We have now learned that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair engaged in mass public deception by lying about the claim that Toronto’s “Public Works Act” mandated G20 protesters to show their ID. The law doesn’t exist, it was never passed. The police officers who cited this law when arresting Charlie Veitch were knowingly engaging in wrongful arrest and should be sued.
Likewise, the goons who brutally molested women Abu-Ghraib style need to be identified and prosecuted. Miller should seek out the victims and bring charges against those involved, and not allow these monsters to cover-up their shameful behavior.
UPDATE: We have now learned that four journalists, including Miller, have “filed complaints with Ontario’s police watchdog, with allegations that police physically assaulted or threatened to sexually assault the females when they were arrested during the Toronto G20 summit.”
In addition, Guardian journalist Jesse Rosenfeld has spoken publicly of his ordeal at the hands of G20 police.
“I was grabbed on each side and hit in the stomach and back and pounced on by officers. I kept asking them why they were beating me because I wasn’t resisting arrest. But they lifted my leg and twisted my ankle,” said Rosenfield.
Labels: G20, police, rape, Toronto, torture
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) has filed a report and urgent appeal with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that the Judge Rotenberg Center for the disabled, located in Massachusetts, violates the UN Convention against Torture.
The rights group submitted their report this week, titled "Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term Restraint in the United States on Children and Adults with Disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center," after an in-depth investigation revealed use of restraint boards, isolation, food deprivation and electric shocks in efforts to control the behaviors of its disabled and emotionally troubled students.
Findings in the MDRI report include the center's practice of subjecting children to electric shocks on the legs, arms, soles of feet and torso -- in many cases for years -- as well as some for more than a decade. Electronic shocks are administered by remote-controlled packs attached to a child's back called a Graduated Electronic Decelerators (GEI).
The disabilities group notes that stun guns typically deliver three to four milliamps per shock. GEI packs, meanwhile, shock students with 45 milliamps -- more than ten times the amperage of a typical stun gun...
Labels: Massachusetts, mental disabilities, torture
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
BAGHDAD — The torture of Iraqi detainees at a secret prison in Baghdad was far more systematic and brutal than initially reported, Human Rights Watch reported on Tuesday.
The existence of the prison, which housed mostly Sunni Arab prisoners, has created a political furor in Iraq, prompted government denials and fanned sectarian tensions.
“Abu Ghraib was a picnic” compared with the secret prison, said Sheik Abdullah Humedi Ajeel al-Yawar, one of the most influential Sunni Arab tribal leaders in the northern province of Nineveh, where the detainees were rounded up by Iraqi soldiers based on suspicions that they had links to the insurgency and brought to Baghdad with little due process. Abu Ghraib is the prison at which American guards tortured Iraqi prisoners, severely damaging Iraqis’ trust in the United States.
Human Rights Watch gained access on Monday to about 300 male detainees transferred from the once secret prison at the Old Muthanna military airfield to the Rusafa prison in Baghdad and documented its findings, which it described as “credible and consistent,” in a draft report provided to The New York Times on Tuesday by the rights group.
The group said it had interviewed 42 detainees who displayed fresh scars and wounds. Many said they were raped, sodomized with broomsticks and pistol barrels, or forced to engage in sexual acts with one another and their jailers.
All said they were tortured by being hung upside down and then whipped and kicked before being suffocated with a plastic bag. Those who passed out were revived, they said, with electric shocks to their genitals and other parts of their bodies...
Labels: Baghdad, Iraq, secret prison, torture
Friday, April 16, 2010
(CNN) -- The destruction of nearly 100 videotapes showing the harsh interrogation of two al Qaeda detainees in 2005 triggered concerns within the CIA over whether it was adequately cleared, according to newly released documents.
Then-White House counsel Harriet Miers also was "livid" about not being informed about the action in advance, the documents show.
The documents -- with large sections blacked out -- were released Thursday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union...
Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, harsh interrogation, tapes, torture
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The former head of MI5 has claimed US intelligence agencies "concealed" their mistreatment of terror suspects.
Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller said she only discovered alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded after retiring in 2007.
In a lecture at the House of Lords, she said the US had been "very keen to conceal from us what was happening".
Her comments follow controversy over UK agents' alleged collusion with US counterparts using torture techniques...
Labels: MI5, torture, UK, United Kingdom, United States, US
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
A former Guantanamo Bay inmate was effectively tortured by US authorities while in CIA custody in Pakistan, according to intelligence notes released Wednesday by a British court.
The court forced the UK government to release 2002 US intelligence notes conveyed to Britain on the treatment of Binyam Mohamed, who was shackled and warned he would "disappear" if he refused to cooperate with US interrogators. He was also subjected to long-term sleep deprivation, the notes said...
Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, torture
Monday, February 8, 2010
A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.
Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.
As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.
Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.
Labels: soldier, torture, waterboard
Friday, January 15, 2010
I thought this was a pretty good illustration of the sociopathic mentality of some of these royal families who get off on torturing others (he ordered the video be made because he "liked to watch the torture sessions later", "At one point, Issa tells the cameraman to get a close-up. "Get closer. Get closer. Get closer. Let his suffering show,"", showing he, like many of his "elite" counterparts are sociopathic sexual sadists, I'm sure he has amassed many similar videos of him abusing slaves and other unfortunates), and the global establishment's willingness to allow them to continue torturing/abusing with impunity. The story is a bit old now but he was just yesterday acquitted of any wrong doing so I thought it was worth posting quickly. Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahayan is the son of the late President of the UAE, the half brother of Manchester City owner Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of current President of the UAE Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and brother of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (pictured below with the sociopathic Arabic "elite" royal families' best buddies in America, the Bush family's GWB [the Bushes are known to be just as sadistic in their abuse of slaves])...
Labels: torture, UAE, United Arab Emirates
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