Amer Abu Halil, a West Bank resident who was active in Hamas and was jailed without trial, recalls the wartime routine he endured in Israel's Ketziot Prison.
...this is not simply the story of one “rogue cop.” It is a window into the anti-Black violence perpetrated routinely by police in this country, as part of a brutal and racist system.
“If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.”
...we will continue to...ensure that the story of Abu Ghraib won’t be defined by what is in those photographs, but instead what was done about it.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time...
Addameer has hard evidence on the crimes of torture and ill-treatment committed against a number of detainees held at interrogation centers since late August 2019.
The ugly legacy of George W. Bush’s torture program continues to haunt U.S. foreign policy as the “poster child” for waterboarding, Abu Zubaydah, makes an appeal for his release from Guantanamo, writes Marjorie Cohn.
Torture and the mistreatment of detainees in the custody of intelligence personnel is, was and shall continue to be unethical and morally wrong. Under US law, torture and mistreatment of detainees is also very illegal. Even the most junior level intelligence officials know that this is, and has been, the case for decades. US torture programs were authorized at the highest levels of government knowingly violating US law.
The New York Times editorial - in the paper of record - demanded that those responsible for the vicious torture policies be brought to trial. Any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington; the former CIA director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered.
Efrain Rios Montt, who ruthlessly ruled Guatemala in the early 1980s, is currently standing trial for genocide. The burden of justice and nation healing falls on the Guatemalan people: it is their dictator who stands trial and their people who suffered under him. But Americans (and Guatemalans) ought to remember that Rios Montt had big friends in Washington. President Bill Clinton apologized in 1999, saying that the U.S. support for the death squads "was wrong."
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