Showing posts with label gitmo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gitmo. Show all posts

Saturday, December 16, 2017

Torture Continues at Guantanamo

Torture Continues at Guantanamo | Guantanamo | Guantanamo Bay Sleuth Journal Special Interests US News World News


It never ended under Obama at US torture prisons worldwide, Guantanamo the tip of the iceberg.


The practice continues under Trump. He believes it works. Clear evidence proves otherwise.


He believes if it doesn’t work, detainees deserve it anyway. The vast majority in US torture prisons post-9/11 were innocent victims, wrongfully called terrorists, brutalized for their faith and ethnicity – their pain and suffering ignored, largely unreported by Western media.


International law is clear and unequivocal. Torture is illegal at all times, under all circumstances with no allowed exceptions.


It’s mostly used for punishment and control, not to obtain useful information. Most, maybe all, detainees in US torture prisons have nothing to tell.


They’ll say anything their torturers want to hear to stop the pain. Most everyone would do the same thing.


Common US torture methods include waterboarding (simulating drowning), severe beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, hooding, prolonged isolation under extreme heat or cold, deafening noice, use of stress positions, along with sexual humiliation and abuse.


Founded by civil and human rights attorney Clive Stafford Smith, UK-based Reprieve “fight(s) for the victims of extreme human rights abuses with legal action and public education.”


The group’s main focus is on the death penalty, indefinite detentions without trial, extraordinary renditions, extrajudicial killings and torture.


Last October, it published seven facts most people don’t know about Guantanamo, as follows:


“1. Most detainees were sold to the US for enormous bounties.


2. The Bush administration decided that the prisoners had no rights, and Reprieve was a big part of changing that.”


3. All the prisoners initially faced the death penalty.


4. At least 15 children have been held in Guantanamo.


5. More men have died in Guantanamo than have been convicted of a crime.


6. Over 90% of Guantanamo detainees have been released without charge.


7. Guantanamo is possibly the world’s most expensive prison.”


It costs Washington around $445 million to keep Guantanamo’s 41 prisoners incarcerated – $29,000 per prisoner daily, a shocking waste of money on top of committing grievous human rights abuses.


Of the roughly 775 Guantanamo detainees since its detention facilities opened in January 2002, only four were convicted of a crime.


The vast majority were held uncharged and untried, their fundamental rights denied. At least 10 were killed by prison guards or other US personnel, falsely listed as suicides.


The ACLU called torture and abuse at Guantanamo one of the most shameful episodes in US history, urging its facilities to be shut down.


The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) led the fight against indefinite detention and torture at Guantanamo – calling it an “island prison designed to exist beyond the rule of law.”


Trump vowed to resume sending prisoners there, saying he wants to “load it up with some bad dudes.” CCR continues working for the release of remaining detainees, seeking closure of the facility.


UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer said he has information that Ammar al-Baluchi, falsely accused of involvement in 9/11, is being tortured and abused at Guantanamo, explaining:


“In addition to the long-term effects of past torture, noise and vibrations are reportedly still being used against him, resulting in constant sleep deprivation and related physical and mental disorders, for which he allegedly does not receive adequate medical attention.”


Other detainees perhaps are treated the same way. Melzer called for prosecution of US officials responsible for involvement in torture, issuing a statement saying:


“By failing to prosecute the crime of torture in CIA custody, the US is in clear violation of the Convention against Torture, and is sending a dangerous message of complacency and impunity to officials in the US and around the world.”


He and his predecessors were denied access Guantanamo – to learn firsthand what apparently still goes on.


The post Torture Continues at Guantanamo appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Secret Letter from 9/11 Mastermind to Obama Confirms CIA Blowback ‘Conspiracy Theory’

Washington, D.C. — A letter written by the man accused of being the mastermind behind the attacks on 9/11 has just been released. Within the 18 pages of this letter are accusations of tyranny, empire, and murder, who the mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, says are the reasons for the tragic attacks a decade and a half ago.


The letter was drafted in 2014, from the confines of Guantánamo prison and dated January 2015. It was to be delivered to Obama two years ago, however, it did not reach him until last month — on his way out of the White House. The Miami Herald sought to obtain a copy of this letter and it was published this week.


The letter, in which Mohammed address Obama as “the head of the snake” and president of “the country of oppression and tyranny,” was kept secret by prison officials who said it should be suppressed as propaganda.


When reading the letter, it becomes perfectly clear as to why they wanted it suppressed — it provides a motive for the murderous attacks on 9/11, other than ‘the terrorists hate our freedom.’


“Your hands are still wet with the blood of our brothers and sisters and children who were killed in Gaza,” writes Mohammed as he starts the letter accusing the US of facilitating Israeli aggression against the Palestinian state. In fact, Israel is mentioned 38 times within the 18 pages.


Mohammed was captured in 2003 and didn’t confess to FBI and CIA agents that he was a member of al-Qaeda and responsible for the 9/11 attacks — until 3 1/2 years later — after being in the CIA’s secret prison network, where he was waterboarded nearly 200 times.


While there is certainly no reason to take an accused terrorist’s word, former Congressman Ron Paul has been saying this for decades. And, as the Free Thought Project has reported on multiple occasions, US foreign policy creates terrorism. As Paul said after the terror attacks in Paris in 2015:



The interventionists will do anything to prevent Americans from seeing that their foreign policies are perpetuating terrorism and inspiring others to seek to harm us. The neocons know that when it is understood that blowback is real – that people seek to attack us not because we are good and free but because we bomb and occupy their countries – their stranglehold over foreign policy will begin to slip.



That is why each time there is an event like the killings in Paris earlier this month, they rush to the television stations to terrify Americans into agreeing to even more bombing, more occupation, more surveillance at home, and more curtailment of our civil liberties. They tell us we have to do it in order to fight terrorism, but their policies actually increase terrorism.



If that sounds harsh, consider the recently-released 2015 Global Terrorism Index report. The report shows that deaths from terrorism have increased dramatically over the last 15 years – a period coinciding with the “war on terrorism” that was supposed to end terrorism.



The report Paul mentioned above noted a sharp increase in terror:



Terrorist activity increased by 80 per cent in 2014 to its highest recorded level. …The number of people who have died from terrorist activity has increased nine-fold since the year 2000.



For decades, the US and its Western allies have been violently and frequently meddling in the Middle East. Beginning with the clandestine overthrow of democratically elected leaders, moving on to financing violent extremist groups, and morphing into full blown invasions of entire countries, the Middle East has been the target of destruction since at least 1953.



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Ignoring all of the treachery, corruption, and death exported from the US in the last 70 years, the troglodytes in D.C. continue to assert that ‘the terrorists hate our freedom.’ Sadly, the propaganda being shoved down the throats of Americans by these ill-informed political puppets, preserves this idiotic assertion.


Millions have died in the West’s relentless pursuit of nation building and controlling oil, all of it is written off as “collateral damage,” and the clueless politicians march on.


In the accused terrorist’s letter, Mohammed mentions “the blood of the innocents your drone attacks killed in Waziristan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere around the globe.” Killing innocent people fosters resentment and ultimately terrorism.


No one is siding with Mohammed here, but when trying to find solutions to terrorism, these words should not be ignored.


Do you think that the children of those slain by a decade bombing and constant threats of drone strikes will simply forget about the atrocities inflicted upon them? Do you think that the parents who watched their babies blown apart by predator drones, or the hospital workers who watched as US bombs rained down from the sky — will just turn the other cheek?


Ignoring the nation building conducted by the United States over the last seven decades is as ignorant as it is dangerous. Continuing an interventionist foreign policy does nothing to keep America safe — in fact, it has the exact opposite effect and the CIA even has a word for it.



It is called BLOWBACK.


However, anyone who talks about Blowback, including Ron Paul, is written off as a conspiracy theorist or a kook.



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However, consider this simple math — every time a bomb drops in the Middle East by the West, in their relentless and murderous pursuit to dominate the region for special interests, a dozen ‘terrorists’ are born.





The reality is that since 9-11, the US and their NATO allies have made the situation even worse as they fostered a breeding ground for extremist and fundamentalist groups. As Americans sat back on their couches and watched the “Shock and Awe” on CNN, the US was sowing the seeds for perpetual war.


They were planting a garden in which a million Bin Ladens would later bloom.


This policy played right into the hands of the, then, tiny and insignificant fundamentalist groups who managed, allegedly at the direction of Mohammed, to carry out the deadliest terror attack ever on US soil. Now, a group who was never heard of 3 years ago is recruiting people on a global scale and growing their ranks daily.


Sadly, the United States is showing no signs of reversing course, and they are playing right into the hands of these terror groups — who feed off the West’s foreign policy.


As the Free Thought Project’s Jay Syrmopolous points out, if there is one thing that Islamic fundamentalists and neocon war hawks agree on, it’s that there should be no “grayzone”; only black and white.


The grayzone is the zone of peaceful coexistence. Eliminating the grayzone – and rendering a world as black & white the flag of the Islamic state is the ultimate goal of fundamentalists on all sides.


In fact, a recent ISIS publication, titled Extinction of the Grayzone made clear that the strategy has been at play since the attacks on 9/11.



“The grayzone is critically endangered, rather on the brink of extinction. It’s endangerment began with the blessed operation of September 11th, as these operations manifested two camps before the world for mankind to choose between, a camp of Islam… and a camp of kufr – the crusader coalition.”



ISIS is trying to create a world war, and the West is helping to foster it. A group of murderous sociopaths has their finger on the hair trigger that is a nuclear holocaust. It is sheer insanity!



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This letter, which is irresponsibly being written off and ignored by the mainstream media, should serve as a wake-up call — not because a terrorist is providing wisdom — but because of the same reason psychologists try to figure out why people murder.


Until we address the actual cause, the symptoms will continue until there are no more rights and the world lives in a perpetual state of fear and violence. At least for now, we have a choice.



Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. and now on Steemit