Tag: tortur

Tortur i de Arabiske emirater

Tortur er noget af det frygteligste man kan forestille sig. Og det er utroligt at man i 2009 stadig kan have stater der torturer. Se her de afskyelige videooptagelser fra de Arabiske Emirater hvor et medlem af kongehuset forlyster sig med at torturere en stakkel.

Noter i øvrigt at denne form for tortur ikke er tortur ifølge George Bushs regering – eftersom den ikke har til hensigt at dræbe eller permanent skade personen. Og den nye præsident, den åh-så-populære Obama  har som vi har påvist andetsteds udtalt at de CIA-agenter der udførte torturen ikke skal straffes! Kun bagmændene. Som om torturbødlerne havde kniven mod struben.

Hvornår mon den danske regering begynder at tage afstand fra krigen mod terror? Fra årene efter 2001 hvor man opgave alle retsprincipper i angst og panik?

link til tortur

Tortur: Hvorfor Obamas afvisning af at rejse sag ikke er i orden

Brugeren PaulR slår hovedet på sømmet i en kommentar på Boing Boing:

When you learn something, you learn in two ways. For example, you learn that the derivative of f(x)=3x is f(x) = 3. You also learn that you hate calculus.
(I don’t, but this way it’s funnier.)

So when, for example, your government says:
“Under no circumstance will we use the Death Penalty. EVEN IF the victim as a little girl who was raped. EVEN IF the victim was a policeman. EVEN IF the victim was the Prime Minister. EVEN IF the victim was home-invaded.”
or
“You will not be charged directly for medical care, and that care will be based on need, not on ability to pay.”

When the elite Canadian Airborne Regiment was found to have tortured a Somali teenager in 1993, the regiment was disbanded. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_Affair – warning graphic photo.

In these cases, the government also sends out a very strong message that human life has value. This message has a subtle but powerful effect on the population.

In Texas, the penal system denies any shred of humanity to prisoners on death row. Even the possibility of making/writing a final statement in the days just before their execution. Y’see, the prisoner’s life has no meaning. He’s just pond scum.
Likewise with torture:
When the American government doesn’t punish torture,
EVEN THOUGH it’s banned by international law,
EVEN THOUGH the Nuremburg trials established that “I was just following orders” isn’t a valid excuse,
EVEN THOUGH it’s illegal according to American law,
EVEN THOUGH it’s been proven, over and over that IT DOESN’T WORK!,
then you give the green light to anyone else who wants to torture.

Now, how can Americans be surprised when torture is performed in other places? How can the American government, the only one that might have influence on the leaders in the UAE, even express their concerns about this story without looking like hypocrites?

Det er nødvendigt, én gang for alle, at slå fast at tortur er strafbart og ulovligt uanset om man har fået lov til det af sine overordnede, eller ligefrem ordre til det. Der skal ikke være straffrihed for den slags, med mindre man vil have Guantanamoer og Abu Ghraib’er over det hele.

• Læs også: Obama giver frit lejde til torturbødler

Obama giver frit lejde til torturbødler

Nürnberg-domstolene fastlagde det princip, at man ikke kan undskylde en åbenlyst ulovlig handling med, at den skete efter ordre.

I dag synes den amerikanske regering at have forladt dette princip – Barack Obama har frigivet dokumenter fra Bush-administrationen, der sort på hvidt autoriserer forskellige former for tortur, men præsidenten udelukker samtidig, at nogen kan retsforfølges for de forbrydelser, der er begået på den konto.

Og hvilke metoder er det så, der hermed er erklæret straffri? Udover waterboarding er det bl.a. søvnmangel og tortur med insekter:

Ten techniques are approved, listed as: attention grasp, walling (in which the suspect could be pushed into a wall), a facial hold, a facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box (the suspect had a fear of insects) and the waterboard. In the latter, “the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual’s feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner……..produces the perception of ‘suffocation and incipient panic’.”

‘Walling’ involved use of a plastic neck collar to slam suspects into a specially-built wall that the CIA said made the impact sound worse than it actually was. Other methods include food deprivation.

civil rights organisations have been disappointed by a series of rulings by the Obama administration that have protected a lot of material relating to Guantánamo and the sites abroad. The release of the memos today reversed that trend, though there will be unhappiness over the immunity from prosecution.

Obama, in a statement from the White House, said: “In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carrying out their duties relying in good faith upon the legal advice from the department of justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”

Anthony Romero, the ACLU executive director, said: “President Obama’s assertion that there should not be prosecutions of government officials who may have committed crimes before a thorough investigation has been carried out is simply untenable.”

Og ja, Romero har ret – det er intet mindre end en skandale. Kan jeg nu også bortføre min nabo og underkaste ham eller hende alle de behandlinger, der fremgår af Bush-administrationens liste af “anerkendte teknikker” og slippe for straf efter lex Obama?

Hvis vi skal stole på, at det vitterlig er slut med Bush-regeringens forbrydelser, med tortur og kidnapninger og bombetogter mod civile, kan intet mindre end et retsopgør gøre det – fromme erklæringer om, at det skal man nok lade være med at gøre i fremtiden, er ikke nok. Som det er, er Obamas erklæringer jo slet og ret en garanti til gerningsmændene om, at de bare kan tage ekstra hårdt fat i de Forenede Staters tjeneste – de kan alligevel ikke straffes. Det er simpelt hen ikke godt nok.

Link: Barack Obama releases Bush administration torture memos

Regeringen fanget i løgn på løgn..

Ser ud til at amerikanerne har fortalt udenrigsminister Per Stig Møller at de i al hemmelighed i samarbejde med de etiopiske myndigheder har bortført og afhørt(læs: tortureret) en dansk statsborger. Per Stig nægter dog at have gjort noget forkert ved ikke at underrette mandens familie og folketinget. Fyren har nemlig ikke SELV fortalt udenrigsministeriet om tilbageholdelsen. Citat:

“Den pågældende fange har ikke på noget tidspunkt fortalt Udenrigsministeriet, at han skulle være blevet mishandlet, tilbageholdt eller transporteret af amerikanerne. Derfor har jeg heller ikke i mine hjemlige politiske kontakter gjort noget særligt ud af den amerikanske vinkel«.”

Øhm? Så når amerikanerne påstår der er masseødelæggelsesvåben i Irak – så dræber vi gerne løs. Men når de fortæller at de hjælper med at tilbageholde danskere i hemmelige fængsler – så har de ingen troværdighed?

Per Stig Møller er her virkelig på den tyndeste is overhovedet muligt! Et tre-årigt barn kan gennemskue den løgn. Men han kan jo også finde på hvad som helst, eftersom DF gerne ser alle danske statsborgere der er islamister, tortureret og smidt ud af landet.

Folkestyret viser virkelig nogle grimme sider for tiden.

link

Touché

Here, in miniature, is a classic example of that whole British approach to our relationship with the US, which I call the Jeeves school of diplomacy. Impeccable manners; a discreet smile; always perfect loyalty in public; but privately murmuring insistently, “Is that wise, Sir?” And back home in Jeeves’s own club, frequented – as devotees of PG Wodehouse will recall – only by gentlemen’s gentlemen (ie butlers), you tut-tut about the foolish conduct of the masters.

This has, in some measure, been a British approach for more than 60 years, ever since hegemony passed across the Atlantic. (For this Jeeves was himself a master once.) But it has been a national strategy with ever diminishing returns, and it has no remedy for the circumstance that Bertie Wooster goes berserk. What does Jeeves do when Wooster starts torturing people in a back room, or getting a Moroccan butcher to do the penis-slashing for him? What if Wooster embarks on what you believe is a dangerous and mistaken war? From everything we know so far, the British Jeeves’s answer was to murmur by turns: “Might I assist you, Sir?”; and “Is that wise, Sir?” That was the approach not just on particular horrors like extraordinary rendition but also on the Iraq war and the whole misbegotten concept of the “Global War on Terror”. For all along, the Foreign Office, and much of the British government, knew better, knew that this was not wise or right, and would privately tell you so.

Danmark er i sammenhængen så ikke Bertie Woosters Jeeves, men hans jagthund. Men ellers, touché.

Torturofre laver terror

Det kommer nu som en overraskelse for den danske forsvarsminister Søren Gade, at hvis man bortfører folk til udlandet og torturer dem i årevis, så har de en tendens til at blive bitre og nedbrudte. Nogle endda så bitre at når man så lukker dem ud igen, så begynder de at bekæmpe netop de mennesker der var skyld i torturen.

Nogle ville måske kalde en sådan kamp for legitim – eller ihvertfald en logisk konsekvens af tortur og brud på menneskerettighederne. Men ikke den danske og britiske regering der nu har krævet at den afghanske regering rydder op efter NATOs dumheder. Således udtaler formand for de menige danske soldater i Hærens Konstabel- og Korporalforening Flemming Vinther: “Jeg tror, at mange soldater oplever sådan noget enormt krænkende. Man skal naturligvis følge de spilleregler om retssikkerhed, som vi er i Afghanistan for at fremme. Men vi må også regne med, at politikerne får styr på det her”

Jamen kære Flemming, der er jo netop det man ikke har gjort – man har IKKE fulgt spillereglerne, man har bortført, tortureret og holdt disse mennesker kidnappet i årevis. Jeg er da ked af at de danske soldater er blevet “krænkede” – men det skulle man jo så måske have tænkt over, da man begyndte at udlevere mere eller mindre tilfældige afghanere til de amerikanske soldater, velvidende at de ville blive mishandlet?

Flemming Vinther må vist være kandidat til årets clueless-award. For man skal da være både historie-blind og særdeles, nå ja – dum, hvis man troede at tortur og mishandlingen ville gøre fangerne til blide lam. Naturligvis er der en del af fangerne der har begået selvmord efter deres ophold – og nogle er vel også så fysisk og psykisk knækkede at de for altid vil være grøntsager. Men de resterende er oplagte kandidater til martyrer og ledere af oprøret mod NATO i Afghanistan. Også kan Søren Gade og Flemming Vinther være nok så krænkede. De kan jo selv prøve at blive indespærret, tortureret og mishandlede i 5-10 år – så kan vi jo se om deres definition af “krænket” har ændret sig.

link til det danske forsvars dummeste medlemmer

Brown, Blair – for retten, medskyldige i tortur?

Ja, hvor meget skal der egentlig til, før man kan betragtes som rigtig medskyldig?

Timoty Garton Ash skriver i The Guardian, at tiden må være kommet for at give sagen om tortur af briter eller med de britiske myndigheders stiltiende accept videre til anklagemyndigheden:

You do not need to believe that he was harmless to find the treatment of Mohamed over these seven years shocking and shameful. Yes, he seems to have been just a pretty mixed-up young guy, led astray by some version of Islamism. So were the London bombers. If we are to take the high court’s judgment as our gold standard then we must also note its view that Mohamed was “a serious potential threat to the national security of the United Kingdom”. But that, in the British government’s own repeatedly stated view, does not justify torture. Centuries of common law and more recently embraced international obligations unite on this: torture is never justified. Never.

The strong impression that Britain became complicit in Mohamed’s torture derives particularly from the testimony of an MI5 officer identified only as Witness B, who interviewed Mohamed – in what Witness B surreally describes as “very cordial circumstances” – in Pakistan some five weeks after his arrest in spring 2002. The high court finds that he and others in M15, “including persons more senior to Witness B”, must have read reports (still kept secret) about the circumstances of Mohamed’s illegal detention and treatment in Pakistan. Whether or not it was Witness B who produced the truly Pinteresque threatening remark that Mohamed would need more sugar in his tea “where you’re going” (Witness B denies it), the high court finds that MI5 continued to “facilitate” interviews by and on behalf of the US, knowing full well that Mohamed was being interrogated in a third country…

Then there was the British government’s withholding of information that could have enabled Mohamed to argue in his defence, before the American military commission, that the confessions he did make were exacted under duress. The high court is eloquent on this, quoting an English common-law judgment from 1783 that “a confession forced from the mind by the flattery of hope or by the torture of fear comes in so questionable a shape when it is to be considered as the evidence of guilt, that no credit ought to be given to it; and therefore it is rejected”. As we know, the foreign secretary argued that Mohamed could not be offered the only available means to this ancient redress because it would threaten national security. Subsequently, he argued that some of this information could not be made public because the US government had said that to do so would endanger British-American intelligence sharing – that sacred heart of our alleged special relationship with Washington. Then it turned out the Foreign Office had asked the US government to say that.

Den normalt meget borgerlige og moderate Timothy Garton Ash lægger ikke fingrene imellem i sin konklusion: Hvis den britiske regering nogensinde vil gøre sig forhåbninger om at kunne tage ordet “menneskerettigheder” i sin mund igen uden at folk griner eller ryster på hovedet, er man nødt til at komme til bunds i det her – eller, som han selv udtrykker det:

“Until we have got to the bottom of this dark well, using the unrestricted searchlight of the law, any lectures the British government tries to deliver to others on respect for human rights will be dismissed as rank hypocrisy.”

Link: If Britain became complicit in torture, we must discover who is to blame

På Guantanamo for at læse satire

Hvor meget eller lidt skal der egentlig til, for at man bliver mistænkt for at være terrorist og sendt til Guantanamo?

Den britiske borger Binyam Mohamed blev sendt afsted og mistede syv år af sit liv, fordi han havde læst en satirisk artikel om, “hvordan man laver en brintbombe”, skriver Mail on Sunday:

A British ‘resident’ held at Guantanamo Bay was identified as a terrorist after confessing he had visited a  website on how to build a nuclear weapon, it was revealed last night.

Binyam Mohamed, a former UK asylum seeker, admitted to having read the ‘instructions’ after allegedly being beaten, hung up by his wrists for a week and having a gun held to his head in a Pakistani jail.

It was this confession that apparently convinced the CIA that they were holding a top Al Qaeda terrorist.

But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the offending article – called How To Build An H-Bomb – was first published in a US satirical magazine and later placed on a series of websites.

Written by Barbara Ehrenreich, the publication’s food editor, Rolling Stone journalist Peter Biskind and scientist Michio Kaku, it claims that a nuclear weapon can be made ‘using a bicycle pump’ and with liquid uranium ‘poured into a bucket and swung round’.

Despite its clear satirical bent, the story led the CIA to accuse 30-year-old Mohamed, a caretaker, of plotting a dirty bomb attack, before subjecting him to its ‘extraordinary rendition programme’.

During his eight-year imprisonment, Mohamed has allegedly been flown to secret torture centres in Pakistan, Morocco, an American-run jail known as the Dark Prison near Kabul in Afghanistan and, finally, to Guantanamo Bay.

The Foreign Secretary is refusing to release classified documents relating to Mohamed’s detention.

Det har senere vist sig, at den britiske regering selv bad den amerikanske udsende en erklæring om, at det kunne “true forholdet mellem de to lande”, om dokumentationen for den tortur, Mohamed blev udsat for, blev offentliggjort – fordi det naturligvis er pinligt for den britiske regering, at de nu kommer frem, at de i alle disse år har kendt til, bifaldet og assisteret fremmede magters tortur mod deres egne borgere.

Det er pinligt for den britiske regering, som sagt, og for de ministre, som måske kan retsforfølges. Tortur er vold og mishandling og dermed ulovligt  – selv mod en suspekt person som Binyam Mohamed, der uomtvisteligt har gjort sig skyldig i at læse en satirisk artikel på nettet. Gad vide, hvor mange år på Guantanamo man kunne få for at se en video med Jon Stewart eller Ricky Gervais?

Via Lenin’s Tomb.

Fogh protesterede over USAs behandling af fanger – og sendte flere afsted…

Ét af de største politiske fejlgreb herhjemme de sidste år har været oppositionens svagheder når det gælder kritik af Foghs støtte til USAs krig mod terror. Eller rettere sagt, det torturvælde som USA under George Bush havde opbygget. Officielt var Fogh og regeringen imod tortur og kz-lejre – i praksis fodrede de den amerikanske torturfabrik med fanger.

På trods af disse klare konflikter har oppositionen ikke formået at pille regeringen ned – selv den klokkeklare dokumentarfilm “Den hemmelige krig” blev ikke udnyttet – det endte i skænderi om nogle skuldermærker og næsepilleri.

Der kommer dog flere og flere nye informationer frem om regeringens store bedrag – således kan det nu afsløres at regeringen sammen med EU afleverede en officiel protestskrivelse mod USAs behandling af fanger – hvorefter Fogh godkendte udlevering af flere – tydeligvis helt bevidst om at de blev sendt direkte til torturkammeret.

Fogh afviser naturligvis sagen – “der er intet nyt” udtaler han – og det har han jo sådan set ret i. Det står stadig klokkeklart at regeringen overtrådte alle konventioner og udleverede fanger til et land, de vidste ville tortere dem.

Om oppositionen kan få noget særlig ud af sagen er naturligvis tvivlsomt. Fogh er jo støttet af Dansk Folkeparti der støtter tortur af muslimer. Men mon ikke sagen får alarmklokkerne til at ringe hos nogle anstændige konservative?

link til Foghs løgne