Our Nation Does Torture

Despite the protestations of Barack Obama during the joint session of congress we do still torture and he has signed off on it. Even with his executive order to end Guantanamo Bay, prisoner abuse has increased, according to among many sources the Pentagon itself. But Guantanamo is not the only one place we are holding people without trial, Bagram Air Force base is just as illegal and according to our own reports still is plagued by torture. We are holding humans indefinitely at Bagram; not giving them chance to challenge that detention as all civilized nations demand and while they wait their treatment can be described as nothing but torturous. (Especially by the high standards the US used to set for itself before the American values hating Bush Administration) To make it worse Obama agreed to continue rendition, the practice where by we send captured suspected terrorists to country's that torture to get information from them. Obama administration says that we won't allow them to torture, so why send them to those nations why not just bring them to US territory (whether here or on Armed Forces base which is also US territory)? Because despite Obama's words, we want those nations to torture the prisoners. 2 AMAZING ARTICLES YOU MUST READ describe what this looks like. A case where someone we tortured through rendition speaks. And The New Yorker The Hard Cases talks about a prisoner arrested after 9/11 on suspicion of a link to terrorism but when pressed to prove it is yanked from the courts to rot indefinitely without trial. This totally unAmerican behavior is being continued, among others, by the Obama administration. PRESIDENT OBAMA - YOU ARE ALLOWING TORTURE. The prisoner, known internally as EC#2, is an alleged Al Qaeda sleeper agent named Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. He has been held in isolation in the brig for more than five years, although he has never stood trial or been convicted of any crime. Under rules established by the Bush Administration, suspected terrorists such as Marri were denied the legal protections traditionally afforded by the Constitution. Unless the Obama Administration overhauls the nation’s terrorism policies, Marri—who claims that he is innocent—will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. On September 10, 2001, Marri, a citizen of Qatar, who is now forty-three, came to America with his family. He had a student visa, and his ostensible purpose was to study computer programming at a small university in Peoria, Illinois. That December, he was arrested as a material witness in an investigation of the September 11th attacks. However, when Marri was on the verge of standing trial, in June, 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the military to seize him and hold him indefinitely. The Bush Administration contended that America was in a full-fledged war against terrorists, and that the President could therefore invoke extraordinary executive powers to detain Marri until the end of hostilities, on the basis of still secret evidence. That day, Marri was put on a military jet to Charleston, and since then he has been living as the only prisoner in an eighty-bed high-security wing of the brig, with no visits from family, friends, or the media. Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who has taken the lead role in Marri’s legal defense, says that the Bush Administration’s decision to leave him in sustained isolation was akin to stranding him on a desert island. “It’s a Robinson Crusoe-like situation,” he told me. In 2005, Hafetz challenged the constitutionality of Marri’s imprisonment. A lower court affirmed the government’s right to detain him indefinitely. After several appeals, the case is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in April. Hafetz calls the Marri case a pivotal test of “the most far-reaching use of detention powers” ever asserted by an American President. The most important a first hand account by Mohamed Farag Bashmilah who was held at a CIA black site for 2 years then released without warning. If he was a danger why release him, and if he wasn't wouldn't trying him in a court have gotten to that same conclusion? We don't need to take away rights to find out the truth from suspected terrorists. Here is his amazing account please read and forward to friends: From October 2003 until May 2005, I was illegally detained by the U.S. government and held in CIA-run "black sites" with no contact with the outside world. On May 5, 2005, without explanation, my American captors removed me from my cell and cuffed, hooded, and bundled me onto a plane that delivered me to Sana'a, Yemen. I was transferred into the custody of my own government, which held me -- apparently at the behest of the United States -- until March 27, 2006, when I was finally released, never once having faced any terrorism-related charges. Since my release, the U.S. government has never explained why I was detained and has blocked all attempts to find out more about my detention. What I do know is that the Jordanian government -- after torturing me for several days -- handed me over to a U.S. "rendition team" in Amman, which then abducted me, forced me onto a plane, and flew me to Afghanistan. During this, and several other transfers between CIA prisons, I was subjected to a brutal and deeply humiliating "preparation" ritual. I was stripped naked, dressed in a diaper, shackled, blindfolded and hooded, and then boarded onto a waiting plane. I was forced into painful positions, often reeling from the blows and kicks of the men who had "prepared" me for flight. During my detention, I agonized constantly about my family back in Yemen, knowing they had no idea where I was. They never once received information about who had taken me, why I was taken, or even whether I was alive. They were never contacted by the U.S. government or the International Committee of the Red Cross. My mother and wife were in such anguish that they had to be hospitalized for illness, stress, and anxiety. My father passed away while I was disappeared and I am still distraught thinking that he died without knowing whether I was dead or alive. I continue to suffer from bouts of illness that medical doctors attribute to the treatment I experienced in the "black sites." My physical symptoms are made worse by the anxiety caused by never knowing where I was held, and not having any form of acknowledgment that I was disappeared and tortured by the U.S. government. Please go read the whole thing. RSS