torture – Wis[s]e Words

We’re Still Torturing Prisoners At Guantanamo

Published on April 15, 2013Leave a comment

Prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay (and wasn’t that supposed to have been clsoed during Obama’s first term) are being tortured through force feeding:

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I know something about what having a feeding tube put into you can feel like, even in the best of circumstances, because Sandra had to had one a couple of times during her long illnesses. She hated those things, had had bad experiences with them before to the point of suffering panic attacks just by the thought she had to have one again. Don’t forget that these are tubes that have to be shoved down your nose, through your throat into your stomach, then have to be kept in there for as long as you need feeding that way. Even when you undergo it voluntarily, knowing why you need it, it’s uncomfortable and painful at best. When it’s done involuntarily, against your wishes? That’s torture.

(Title and story from Unfogged.)

One more reason why I’ll never ever visit America

Published on August 1, 2011

Don’t watch this video because it will only upset you. It shows the deliberate torture of a homeless man by California police officers for “resisting arrest”. Not content with tasering him a half dozen times, they then beat them up so bad he needed to be put on life support in hospital where he died a few days later. From the Gawker report:

Thomas—who suffered from schizophrenia, and was homeless—caught the attention of the police after someone reported that a burglar was breaking into cars parked near a Fullerton bus station. When officers approached Thomas in the depot parking lot and tried to arrest him, he resisted. What happened after that is a topic the Fullerton Police Department doesn’t seem too enthusiastic to discuss—but the sound of Thomas’s voice certainly speaks on their behalf. And as this gruesome photo shows, the six officers involved in the altercation beat Thomas beyond recognition; after several days on life support, Thomas was taken off the machines and died. (To be fair, two cops suffered broken bones.) Update: According to this report, a police sergeant stated on July 20 that, contrary to several news reports, no officers suffered from broken bones as a result of the Thomas incident—only “soft tissue damage.”

Did Thomas actually resist arrest? Mark Turgeon, who witnessed the beating, says no:

“They kept beating him and Tasering him. I could hear zapping, and he wasn’t even moving,” said Turgeon. “He had one arm in front of him like this, he wasn’t resisting. And they kept telling him, ‘He’s resisting, quit resisting,’ and he wasn’t resisting.”

The picture they refer too is gruesome and like the video should not be viewed because it will only upset you. But perhaps we need upsetting, to see the reality of what “the thin blue line” is up to. What hit me about this story is that the poor guy was beaten up while he cried for his dad, an ex-cop himself, and was only thirtyseven when he died, the same age as I’ll be next week. That could’ve been me, if I had been less lucky.

Dutch cops aren’t always squeeky clean either and I’m smart enough to know they don’t always have to be my friend, but I feel a hell of a lot more comfortable approaching them in public, or have them approach me, then I would be in the United States. Dutch cops aren’t convinced of their own superiority and obsessed by respect and authority the way American coppers are.

Dutch airline pilot was junta murderer

Published on September 24, 2009

Julio Ponch

Last Tuesday a Dutch airline pilot, a naturalised Argentinian, was arrested in Spain, just when he was stepping aboard his plane for his last flight back to the Netherlands before retirement, with his wife and son present for it. The reason for this heavyhanded arrest? He’s been charged with having been involved with the death flights carried out by the junta that ruled Argentinia between 1976 and 1983. Julio Poch supposedly was stationed at the infamous ESMA, the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics, which was turned into a prison and torture centre, from which hundreds. if not thousands of prisoners were taken into flights over the open ocean, then dropped out of the plane. Allegedly Poch had been bragging about this to some of his co-workers once the Argentinian junta was back in the news again due to the marriage of crown prince Willem Alexander to Maxima Zorreguita, daughter of one of the ministers involved with the junta…

That was back in 2000, so why it took nine years for this guy to be arrested is a question the Dutch justice ministry needs to answer. The Netherlands doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Argentina, unlike Spain, which is the reason he was arrested there, but the Dutch authorities could’ve at the very least informed their Argentine colleagues about Poch. It’s a bit of a trend, I’m afraid. The Netherlands is very lax when it comes to dealing with known war criminals and such like, despite its rhetoric. It just isn’t a priority for either the government or the police.

But the arrest of Julio Ponch, though decades after his suspected crimes, is still good news for those wanting some justice for the victims of America’s War on Terror. Thirty years from now, will we see arrests of pilots of extraordinary rendition flights?

How torture was used to sell the War on Iraq

Published on May 18, 2009

We now know (and had suspected earlier) that the bush regime used torture to “find” links between Iraq and Al-Quida. This “evidence” was to be used to justify the invasion of Iraq, with various stories about Al-Quida conencteds planted in the (usually pliant) media. Alex lays out the timetable:

But what strikes me as interesting is that it corresponds well with the PR-driven schedule for the famous dossiers and the run-up to war in general. Recall the “Downing Street Memo”, written in late July. The facts and intelligence were being fixed around the policy. This culminated in the first coordinated spin drive in the autumn. At the same time as Abu Zubeydah was being lashed to the board, the White House Iraq Group and the Iraq Communications Group were being established to coordinate transatlantic PR operations. The first dossier would be launched in September. Interestingly, I’m seeing a spike in search requests for both organisations.

A second wave of propaganda activity was then launched in the spring as the key UN and parliamentary votes approached and the military time-table counted down. And, sure enough, there was a second bout of torture; on this occasion, extra torture was approved by Donald Rumsfeld before the authorisation was taken back.

Start with the outcome you want, structure your process to get these answers, then repackage and sell the polished turds to suckers while omitting the gruesome details ; it’s amazing how much the selling of the War on Iraq resembles what was happening in American finance in the same period. The moral of both is to never assume shit is shinola just because some well respected source tells you so. On a more serious note, this is more evidence that torture does work, just not in the way 24 wants us to believe. The Bush thugs wanted links between Al-Quida and Iraq and they got them. That these links were made up by people desperate to avoid more “simulated drowning” was one of those details omitted in the breathless NYT writeups about meeting Mohammed Atta in Praque.

Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side – Clive Stafford Smith

Published on August 17, 2008

Cover of Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side

Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side
Clive Stafford Smith
307 pages including index
published in 2007

Lord knowns there have been a lot of depressing books published about America’s war on terror; not to mention a metric shitload of blogs writing about it, including my own. So what good is yet another book decrying the injustices committed at Guantanamo Bay? After all, if you don’t know about them by now, you’ll never know. But when the author is one of the lawyer volunteers defending the victims of the war on terror, who has been coming to Guantanamo for years and who also manages to inject some humour in what’s otherwise a bloody dreary subject.

Clive Stafford Smith is somebody who has a lot of experience with worthwhile but hopeless causes, as he spent years working on death penalty cases in the American Deep South. When the news about the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp became known he didn’t hesitate, but immediately got involved. Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side is based on his personal experiences at Guantanamo. The title is a reference to the fact that all the lawyers have to stay on the leeward side of the bay and therefore have to take the morning ferry to get to their clients each day. Surprisingly for a book on such a dark subject matter, Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side is quite funny in places, due to the absurdity of some of the situations Clive Stafford Smith and his clients find themselves in.