US Acts to Avert Defense tactic expected in Al Qaeda Trial

[babylonsister]

US Acts to Avert Defense tactic expected in Al Qaeda Trial
by Scott Shane and David Johnston


WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials said yesterday that they are confident that charges against six suspected members of Al Qaeda would survive expected defense contentions that the cases are based on unreliable statements obtained using controversial interrogation methods.0213 01

The officials confirmed that the Justice Department and the Pentagon, aware of probable legal challenges involving possible mistreatment of prisoners, began an extensive effort in late 2006 to rebuild the cases against the six men using what officials called “clean teams” of agents and military investigators.

By interviewing the prisoners again, and reassembling other evidence against them, the prosecutors could present evidence in court that would be harder for defense lawyers to challenge. But some legal specialists said that approach might not defuse defense arguments that the initial investigations were tainted.

The chief military prosecutor for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Army Colonel Lawrence J. Morris, declined to discuss the details of how prosecutors would deal with questions about the treatment of captured terrorism suspects. But, Morris added, “we will take very seriously our burden to present trustworthy evidence on which a panel can rely” in reaching a verdict in a case.

Dozens of FBI agents have spent hundreds of hours at the Guantanamo detention center interviewing potential witnesses and suspects. In effect, they re-created intelligence files, thus avoiding information that might be tainted because it was obtained during interrogations using controversial techniques. The legal tactic was described yesterday by The Washington Post.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/13/7027/

[rox63]

1. Isn't this commonly known as evidence-tampering? n/t

[PDJane]

2. Yes, but since when has that mattered to these criminals?

[endarkenment]

3. Interrogations with captives already destroyed by years of torture.

They have been carefully attempting to limit torture to a few specific acts, permitting them to contend that the prolonged psychological torture regime that these people have been put throught does not constitute compelled testimony.

[babylonsister]

4. Seems like they want to get rid of the evidence-literally.

I think they want to hush these captives up so they can't ever share with us what happened to them.

[endarkenment]

5. the standard program they've used on all of their captives

is at this point pretty well documented, plus folks like Hicks, who will be able to talk freely pretty soon, will be able to fill in any missing details. The standard program is designed as described in some detail in Klein's Shock Doctrine and elsewhere:

"In a fascinating and alarming examination of the underside of recent history, she notes the affinities between the policies of shock therapy imposed in the course of neo-liberal market reform and the techniques of torture that have been routinely used by the US in the course of the "war on terror". Klein begins her first chapter with a moving account of a conversation she had with a victim of a covert programme of mind-control experiments, carried out in Canada in the 1950s, which used people suffering from minor psychiatric ailments to try out techniques of "de-patterning" that aimed to scramble and reshape their personalities.

Employing electroshock therapy, sensory deprivation and drug-induced comas, these experiments helped develop some of the "coercive interrogation techniques" that have been practised in Guantánamo Bay. Klein uses torture as a metaphor, and does not claim any cause-and-effect link between its re-emergence and the rise of neo-liberal shock therapy; but she does point to some disquieting similarities. Individuals and societies have been "de-patterned" with the aim of remaking them on a better, more rational model. In each case, the experiments have failed, while inflicting lasting and often irreparable damage on those who were subjected to them."
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/reviews/end-world-we-know-it

We've all seen the pictures of the hooded bound captives, the ear muffs face masks and gloves. The routine practice is extreme psychological sensory deprivation torture designed to completely breakdown the individual. Our Congress has not even opened this up to investigation. They are diverting us with the red herring of waterboarding and it is working.

[babylonsister]

7. I keep thinking of Saddam. "Dead men tell no tales." nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. Its an experiment that they will use later in the US

The nazis use these tactics in Germany.....nominated

[Disturbed]

8. "controversial interrogation methods"

Translation: Torture

Methods used at GITMO

1.Prolonged sleep deprivation,
2.Sensory deprivation,
3.Extremely painful "stress positions,"
4.Sensory bombardment (such as prolonged loud noise and/or bright lights),
5.Forced nakedness,
6.Sexual humiliation,
7.Cultural humiliation (such as desecration of holy scriptures),
8.Being subjected to extreme cold that induces hypothermia,
9.Exploitation of phobias,
10.Simulation of the experience of drowning and controlled drowning, i.e., waterboarding.

* These Detainees were at secret prisons before being sent to GITMO. No one will ever know what was
done to them at those secret prisons.

[gratuitous]

9. Uh, once you lose your virginity

It's lost, no matter how celibate you are afterwards.