Obama, Change And Torture

[masuki bance]

Barack Obama means change – except on torture
A bid to carry on prosecuting a man who had been tortured under Bush even though his tormentors knew him to be innocent chills the marrow

From The Sunday Times
October 11, 2009
(*Author of both pieces) Andrew Sullivan

...This scenario did not take place in communist China or Ahmadinejad’s Iran. It took place under the authority of the United States of America. One individual, we now know for sure, was tortured by interrogators who knew he was innocent but were determined to save face. Mercifully, the US is not China or Iran and an independent judiciary, after years of this man’s illegal imprisonment and torture, finally provided him with the writ of habeas corpus. Shockingly, although Barack Obama’s justice department knew the details of this case, it persisted with the Bush administration’s attempt to prosecute him. Last week, the Obama administration also backed a legal provision to withhold permanently all unreleased photographic evidence of torture in sites and prisons far away from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. And some of us believed we were voting for change.

After writing about this case on my blog, a justice department trial lawyer wrote me an e-mail. In part it read: “The conclusion drawn by each of my colleagues — some of whom are liberal Democrats, some of whom are conservative, law-and-order Republicans — is, to a person, that the detention and interrogation programmes the United States implemented in the months and years following 9/11 is not only a complete abrogation and violation of international law and, in many cases, federal law — it is also fundamentally immoral.

“ We also agree that the al-Rabiah case is by far the most egregious yet to come to light. To repeat: yet to come to light. I can only guess that there are other, far worse cases.”

Well, we will at some point find out.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article6869291.ece

*11 Oct 2009 07:39 pm The Daily Dish- Andrew Sullivan

The president is currently repeating his belief that torture is always wrong and yet his own administration has just continued the prosecution of a Gitmo detainee we gave long known was innocent of anything. Obama has indeed ended torture going forward and deserves mad props for that; but he has so balked at holding America accountable for the past that he has come close at times to being complicit in the war crimes of huis predecessor. The http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article6869291.ece">case of Fouad al-Rabiah is one such instance. It's such an appalling story, such a betrayal of the American idea, that it still beggars belief. I've written about this on the Dish before but my column today tries to sum it up in one digestible piece:

We know that an American interrogator, operating under the authority of the US government, said the following words to a detainee:

“There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent.”

That’s from page 41 of the court memorandum and order, releasing al-Rabiah. Al-Rabiah was captured in Pakistan in December 2001. He had an unlikely history for a top Al-Qaeda commander and strategist. He had spent 20 years at a desk job for Kuwait Airways. As the journalist Andy Worthington has painstakingly reported — and the court reiterated — he was also a humanitarian volunteer for Muslim refugees. Yet informants had described him as an Al-Qaeda supporter and confidant of Osama Bin Laden, and before he knew what was happening to him, he was whisked away to Guantanamo.

The informants’ accounts were riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. In her ruling, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly noted that “the only consistency with respect to allegations is that they repeatedly change over time”. The one incriminating statement was given by another inmate after he had been subjected to sleep deprivation and coercion. So the only option left to prove that al-Rabiah had not been captured by mistake was his own confession.

The interrogators’ notes, forced into the open by the court, gave the game away. In the judge’s words, although “al-Rabiah’s interrogators ultimately extracted confessions from him”, they “never believed his confessions, based on the comments they included in their interrogation reports”. In fact, “the evidence in the record during this period consists mainly of an assessment made by an intelligence analyst that alRabiah should not have been detained”.

That CIA analyst, moreover, had told the justice department this was his judgment. Rather than withdraw the prosecution, however, the decision was made to get al-Rabiah to confess. He didn’t and wouldn’t. So he was subject to sleep deprivation and other unspecified “interrogation techniques” that led him to suffer “from serious depression, losing weight in a substantial way, and very stressed because of the constant moves, deprived of sleep and worried about the consequences for his children”.

Continued http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article6869291.ece">here.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/obama-change-and-torture.html

____________________________________________________________________________

I was unaware that we were still trying to prosecute Fouad al-Rabiah.



*Disclaimer- For those that may get confused, everything above the dividing line is the writing of one Andrew Sullivan, including the subject title. Links are provided, as always, for confirmation and further reading. Thank you for your kind indulgence.

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[johnaries]

3. "Obama has indeed ended torture". nt

[vaberella]

4. What is your point with the post?

Obama ended torture. That's the end of it. He has also stated that if there are any prosecutions he will not deny the process of them if AG Holder deems them necessary. Third, when it comes to the man in question, as we've read in the past (which you chose to ignore), ALL dedtainees are cases are currently being reviewed. Some prisoners have been set free, and others have not. But all of their cases are being rereviewed currently. There are several hundred detainees who are being held and everyone is being reviewed and Obama still doesn't have a full cabinet on board. He's working through that, most are already going to have new trials in the States and some are just awaiting prison sentences and a place to put them. Your posts make no sense. That being said, I find your post totally disingenuous and ridiculous. I'm not going into any crap about identity since I have no proof of that in your case. However, you continously post disingenuous, or dirty articles that have little truth in arguments. In some cases going as far as posting aricles that are riddled with right-wing talking points.

[HamdenRice]

5. The takeaway: OBAMA HAS ENDED TORTURE

What to do with someone who may have committed acts of terrorism and was tortured under the Bush administration is a difficult issue. Deciding to prosecute that person is not the same as condoning torture.

Once again:

OBAMA HAS ENDED TORTURE.