Jeremy Scahill: Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama

[balantz]

Run time: 10:55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSdj4Lu_oo8   Posted on YouTube: May 19, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: May 19, 2009 By DU Member: balantz Views on DU: 2254

 
Jeremy Scahill: "Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama"

Jeremy Scahill reports the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners including gang beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals. This force officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force has been labelled the Extreme Repression Force by Guantanamo prisoners and human rights lawyers call their actions illegal.

[pleah]

1. K&R And that is why we will never see prosecutions for torture.

imo

[dotymed]

11. CHANGE YOU CAN COUNT ON?

Where is this "change?" We have no choice but civil
disobedience and the creation of a viable third party, that IS
NOT connected to the other parties. Dennis Kucinich and Bernie
Saunders would make great candidates. If our country continues
like this, we have no hope. It has been obvious for quite
awhile that Dem and Rep. parties are 2 different arms of the
same party. We have to DEMAND publicly financed elections and
take all money (except salaries) out of politics.

[mmonk]

2. Yep, I've heard of them.

I've also heard they went a little wild on the prisoners when it was learned Gitmo would close.

[cooolandrew]

3. OK I'm in denial till this becomes official, too much for my brain to compute. >

Sorry but I don't get it till there is some form of official expalination. Because there's something about this that doesn't gel with everything else we know. Denial it's just a safe place for sanity that's all I can say.

[balantz]

4. Turn off the TV. MSM will only provide corporate oligarchy propaganda nonsense.

One has to seek out the real news in order to keep informed.

[sattahipdeep]

14. Arrest warrants have already been issued or will be soon.

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights has said it “is conceivable that arrest warrants have already been issued or will be soon. Indictments will almost surely follow. The torture team’s travel options are narrowing.”

http://www.ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/ccr-applauds-spanish-judge%E2%80%99s-decision-open-new-criminal-investigation-u.s.-t


The Spanish writ does not name specific defendants or suspects in its investigation, but rather seeks to investigate the role of those who planned, coordinated and implemented the torture of its citizens and residents. “This systematic plan may point to the existence of a coordinated action for the commission of a multiplicity of torture crimes… a plan that would seem to approximate an official level and that, therefore, would give rise to criminal liability for the various schemes of committing, ordering, designing, and authorizing this systematic plan of torture.” On April 29, Garzon gave the green light to the investigation citing Spain’s Universal Jurisdiction law.

Judge Garzon says the treatment of these men, combined with recently declassified US documents show “an approved systematic plan of torture and ill-treatment on persons deprived of their freedom without any charge and without the basic rights of all detainees as set out and required by applicable international treaties.”

http://rebelreports.com/post/109514909/spanish-investigation-reveals-an-approved-systematic

[mmonk]

15. We're going to have to count on a western democracy out there

somewhere. Let's hope they don't get weak kneed.

[struggle4progress]

5. Does Scahill have any evidence for this claim that we're still torturing prisoners?

[waiting for hope]

7. Read his article at Alternet -

~Snip~

IRF-ing Continues Under Obama

On Jan. 7, 2009, a prisoner named Yasin Ismael threw a shoe in frustration at the inside of a cage to which he had been confined. The guards accused Ismael of attacking them and called in an IRF team.

According to his attorneys, "The team shackled him, and he put up no resistance. They then beat him. They blocked his nose and mouth until he felt that he would suffocate and hit him repeatedly in the ribs and head. They then took him back to his cell. As he was being taken back, a guard urinated on his head. Mr. Ismael was badly injured, and his ear started to bleed, leaving a large stain on his pillow."

Less than two weeks later, on Jan. 22, newly inaugurated President Obama issued an executive order requiring the closure of Guantánamo within a year and also ordered a review of the status of the prisoners held there, requiring "humane standards of confinement" in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

But one month later, the Center for Constitutional Rights released a report titled "Conditions of Confinement at Guantánamo: Still In Violation of the Law," which found that abuses continued. In fact, one Guantanamo lawyer, Ahmed Ghappour, said that his clients were reporting "a ramping up in abuse" since Obama was elected, including "beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-force feeding detainees who are on hunger strike," according to Reuters.

"Certainly in my experience there have been many, many more reported incidents of abuse since the inauguration," Ghappour said.

While the dominant media coverage of the U.S. torture apparatus has portrayed these tactics as part of a "Bush era" system that Obama has now ended, when it comes to the IRF teams, that is simply not true. "etainees live in constant fear of physical violence. Frequent attacks by IRF teams heighten this anxiety and reinforce that violence can be inflicted by the guards at any moment for any perceived infraction, or sometimes without provocation or explanation," according to CCR.

In early February 2009, at least 16 men were on hunger strike at Guantanamo's Camp 6 and refused to leave their cells for "force feeding." IRF teams violently extracted them from their cells with the "men being dragged, beaten and stepped on, and their arms and fingers twisted painfully." Tubes were then forced down their noses, which one prisoner described as "torture, torture, torture."

In April, Mohammad al-Qurani, a 21-year-old Guantánamo prisoner from Chad managed to call Al-Jazeera and described a recent beating: "This treatment started about 20 days before Obama came into power, and since then I've been subjected to it almost every day," he said. "Since Obama took charge, he has not shown us that anything will change."

~Snip~

Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama

[balantz]

8. Thanks WFH, you beat me to it. I was looking for one of the articles about the continuing abuse n/t

[struggle4progress]

9. Scahill seems to have the February CCR report and the April story about Mohammad al-Qurani

The al-Qurani story is somewhat odd, since apparently a US court this January ordered release of al-Qurani, and it's not at all clear (1) why officials would be attacking a man who's already convinced a US court he should be freed or (2) why officials would be beating the crap out of someone and then allowing him to make phone calls to report the abuse. The al-Qurani story, of course, could be true -- stranger things have happened -- but

The issues raised in the CCR report, of course, highlight the need for more transparency ASAP

But neither of these is recent news


Guantanamo prisoner Mohammad al-Qurani phones al-Jazeera to say nothing has changed
April 17, 2009
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25344053-2703,00.html

Current Conditions of Confinement at Guantanamo
http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/reports/current-conditions-confinement-guantanamo

[izquierdista]

16. It's abundant

Watch any of the "Locked Up" series on MSNBC and you will see this is standard operating procedure in ANY US prison. If the prisoner won't comply with an order, the "response team" is sent in to make him submit. Guantanamo is simply the crowning achievement in the hierarchy of sadism. The people who perpetrate this really love the "force" in "law enFORCEment", and would be severely depressed if they couldn't beat the shit out of someone.

[waiting for hope]

6. Sad reality indeed -

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you say Nancy Pelosi knew about the torture?


JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, the fact is that Nancy Pelosi was fumbling in her press conference through a statement that someone else clearly wrote for her. This is not some secret that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on this. In fact, the Washington Post reported on this in 2007, that she had been briefed and that other Democrats that were senior figures in the Democratic leadership, particularly on the Intelligence Committee, had received briefings about the tactics that were being used at Guantanamo.


I think what’s going to be important is that we know that some of the members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, who were briefed actually pushed for stronger tactics to be used during these briefings. I think one of the reasons why the Democrats are—the Democratic leadership is not pushing for a special independent prosecutor in this case is because if you actually examine the record, you will find that the Democrats funded these programs, supported these programs, and refused to speak up when it actually mattered. That’s the pattern we saw through the eight years of the Bush administration. Now that the Democrats are in power, you see Obama—the right wing tries to say flip-flopping—you see Obama upholding the consistent one-party system in this country when it comes to foreign policy.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/19/jeremy_scahill_little_known_military_thug

Think about it - if any member of Congress, especially a Democrat, that pushed for harder "enhanced interrogation tactics" .. they would most certainly lose their seat the next election cycle - doesn't matter that they were just "doing what Bush was doing" - the fodder to be used against them would be huge.

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

10. I'm so sorry I voted for Barack Obama.

I won't next time around.

Don't bother pflaming me about this, I've got my own stories of continued personal torture on his watch.

[Crowman1979]

12. I'm with you!

I mean the democrats have the majority in congress but are too chickenshit about either getting re-elected, being complicit with torture, gaining campaign funds or making bi-partisan deals with the devil (Gross Old Perverts), than to make any actual changes that the american people demanded.

I'm making my list of other parties to vote for instead of the two major schills, if they keep this spineless act up.

[izquierdista]

17. I'm not disappointed with him

Because I had very low expectations to begin with.

[sattahipdeep]

13. We Need the Names of These IRF team members!

"There were usually five people on an IRF team. On this occasion there were eight of them."?

"The officer Smith was the MP sergeant who was punching him."?

"Then, in front of the Guantanamo physicians"?

"According to attorney Julia Tarver, one of her clients"

http://www.alternet.org/rights/140022/little_known_military_thug_squad_still_brutalizing_prisoners_at_gitmo_under_obama/?page=4


"A medical examination cited in the Spanish investigation confirmed"
that Deghayes suffered from blindness of the right eye, fracture of the nasal bone and fracture of the right index finger, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and "profound" depression.

IRF-ing Continues Under Obama?

"In early February 2009"

http://www.alternet.org/rights/140022/little_known_military_thug_squad_still_brutalizing_prisoners_at_gitmo_under_obama/?page=5

[sattahipdeep]

18. What did they know and when did they know it?

Cofer Black was head of the Counterterrorist Center when the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah began — he’s now an official with Blackwater Xe — and Jose Rodriguez, he of the torture-tapes destruction scandal, took over for Black in May 2002. What did they know and when did they know it? How many of the communications to CIA headqurters listed in the logs were from CIA interrogators at Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation chamber objecting to Mitchell’s techniques?

http://washingtonindependent.com/43909/james-mitchell-asked-please-can-i-torture-abu-zubaydah-did-alberto-gonzales-say-yes

“non-lethal” is a misnomer, deaths do occur.