A Must Hear: Tony Lagouranis, On US Torture of Iraqi's

[kevinmc]

Tony Lagouranis, former US army interrogator in Iraq, talks to Owen Bennett-Jones on The Interview.

BBC

When the US-led invasion of Iraq happened in 2003, Tony Lagouranis was at an army training school in Arizona, learning how to be a military interrogator. He was taught by the rules, the Geneva Convention on how to treat detainees. Then he was sent to Iraq, where he says these rules no longer applied.

Tony Lagouranis talks openly to Owen Bennett-Jones about his experiences in the infamous prison in Baghdad - Abu Ghraib. He descirbes the 'enhanced interrogation techniques' his military superiors ordered him to use to try to extract intelligence. Sleep deprivation, stress positions, dogs and hypothermia were all methods Tony Lagouranis employed, but he deeply regrets what went on there now 'Torture never works' he says.


I have heard this and it is shocking. Tony Lagouranis tells things I have never heard on US News about torturing Iraqi's. I Strongly recommend listening to this interview.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/the_interview.shtml

[IndyOp]

1. Lagouranis is doing brave, brave work...

He was on DemocracyNow! on February 22nd, 2007 and Amy said she wanted to have him come back when his book was published.

AMY GOODMAN: Tony Lagouranis is one of the former Army interrogators who met with the show’s writers in November. He served for a year in Iraq, joins us in the studio from Chicago. And in our firehouse studio, we’re joined by David Danzig, director of the Prime Time Torture Project for Human Rights First. He was also in the group that met with the producers of 24. We asked Joel Surnow, the creator of 24, or any representative from the show to be on the program, but they declined our request.

Tony Lagouranis, tell us why you met with the 24 producers to talk about your concerns.

TONY LAGOURANIS: Well, when David Danzig from Human Rights First asked me to go out there and speak to them, I thought it was a good idea, because I did see interrogators copying some of the methods and the posture of -- not specifically 24, but certainly television programs, which increasingly have gotten more egregious with regard to torture.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you see? Explain what you saw in Iraq and where you were.

TONY LAGOURANIS: Well, the problem was that when we were interrogating in Iraq in 2004, we were being told that Geneva Conventions didn't comply. So we didn't have training that informed us what to do anymore, because we were taught according to Geneva Conventions. So people were getting ideas from television. And among the things that I saw people doing that they got from television was water-boarding, mock execution, using mock torture. They wanted to hook up one of our translators to an electric generator and pretend that they were torturing him and allow prisoners to see that so that they thought that they would experience the same thing. These were techniques -- I’m sorry, go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you see soldiers watching 24 in Iraq?

TONY LAGOURANIS: You know, I wasn't aware of the show 24 in Iraq, but I do remember seeing people watching television shows that depicted torture, and 24 might have been one of them.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/22/1448252&mode=thread&tid=25