A recently-released Pentagon report admits to interrogating
Guantanamo Bay prisoners after administering mind-altering treatments to
them - often forcibly against their will - but stresses it was not done
for the purposes of interrogation.
The report by the inspector general of the US Department of Defense
obtained by truth-out.org under the Freedom of Information Act, found
that some Gitmo inmates were questioned while receiving prescribed
psychoactive treatments.
The Pentagon has tried to justify the facility staff’s actions, saying that “nowhere
in the medical records did we find any evidence of mind-altering drugs
being administered for the purpose of interrogation,” as the report states on page 13.
“The detainees were not given drugs as a means to facilitate interrogation,” insisted Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale.
But
the report does admit that “certain detainees, diagnosed as having
serious mental health conditions being treated with psychoactive
medications on a continuing basis, were interrogated.”
The inspector general also notes that “numerous” inmates have complained of being medicated against their will, but adds that wardens have used treatments known as “chemical restraints” to quell the aggressive individuals.
“Some detainees were involuntarily medicated to help control serious mental illnesses,” says a former commander of the Joint Medical Group at Guantanamo.
The report further admits that drugs administered "could impair an individual's ability to provide accurate information."
The
medication under question, known as Haldol, has been used for over 50
years, and is often administered in psychiatric wards. Several side
effects including depression, suicidal behavior and heart attacks are
known to exist.
The Pentagon spokesman has refused to comment
about how often such substances are used at the detention center, where
the US has locked up nearly 170 men, writes the Washington Post.-[Full Article]
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be tried at the US military base in Cuba rather than in a civilian court on American soil Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, has been in detention at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba since his capture in Pakistan in 2003. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk,
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, will be tried by a military commission in Guantánamo. It is the latest retreat by the Obama administration from its much-vaunted plans to overhaul the legal processing of terror suspects.
Mohammed and four other terror suspects will be put on trial through a military system that President Obama had vowed to abolish when he began in office in January 2009. The White House had declared its intent in 2009 to push them through the civilian justice system with a landmark trial at the federal court in Manhattan, a stone's throw away from Ground Zero.
But the proposal invoked a groundswell of opposition, most powerfully from New York residents and the mayor of the city, Michael Bloomberg.
The US attorney general, Eric Holder, was expected to announce the administration's U-turn at a press conference in Guantánamo.
The about-face is hugely symbolic as Mohammed was al-Qaida's main architect of 9/11, according to the commission of inquiry into the terrorist outrages convened in New York. How he is treated arguably sets the tone for America's legal handling of terror suspects.
Obama had wanted to bring that legal process back into the norms of civilian justice. But he was thwarted by a wall of opposition from Republicans in Congress, backed by some Democrats.
Republicans inserted a provision into the latest defence budget effectively banning the use of Pentagon funds to transfer Guantánamo detainees to the mainland, thus blocking any civilian trials. Obama initially promised to repeal the restriction, but last month he backtracked by allowing the resumption of military commission trials at the US base in Cuba.
Bloomberg also did a volte face. Initially, he approved the idea of a civilian trial for Mohammed in downtown Manhattan, but then turned against it, arguing that it would cost the city more than $400m (£248m) in security alone.
Other opponents claimed that it would again make New York the target of terrorists' wrath.
Never Forget, a group of family members of victims of the attacks, as well as emergency workers and former military personnel, welcomed the announcement. "We are relieved that President Obama has abandoned his plan to try the 9/11 conspirators in a civilian court on US soil. Prosecuting war criminals, whose only connection to this country is the location of their victims, in military commissions is the right thing to do."
[Webmaster - Trying the defendents in a military tribunal instead of a civilian court will have the following effects. It will:
Give our criminal federal government much greater control of the procedure and presentation of the evidence
Allow them to hide the rigged procedure/show from public scrutiny
Enable them to manipulate the outcome with much greater ease to their benefit
The criminal federal government, led by Kenyan-born (his wife says so at 2:15 in this video!so is she a liar?) usurper, Barry Soetoro cannot afford to have an open fair trial examining the evidence from the events surrounding 9/11/2001. The public would know right away that the attacks were set up by Neocon Republicans (Bush, Cheney, the PNAC group, etc.), segments of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement, and Israel's Mossad. And now they are telling us that Al Qaeda is our "ally" in Libya? Wake up and quit being sheep! Look at the evidence... Quit being dupes of the criminal federal government and the Zionist-controlled corporate media!]
The right to liberty is one of the foundation rights of a free people. The idea that any US President can bypass Congress and bypass the Courts by issuing an Executive Order setting up a new legal system for indefinite detention of people should rightfully scare the hell out of the American people.
Advisors in the Obama administration have floated the idea of creating a special new legal system to indefinitely detain people by Executive Order. Why? To do something with the people wrongfully imprisoned in Guantanamo. Why not follow the law and try them? The government knows it will not be able to win prosecutions against them because they were tortured by the US.
Guantanamo is coming up on its ninth anniversary - a horrifying stain on the character of the US commitment to justice. President Obama knows well that Guantanamo is the most powerful recruitment tool for those challenging the US. Unfortunately, this proposal for indefinite detention will prolong the corrosive effects of the illegal and immoral detentions at Guantanamo rightly condemned world-wide...
About 10 percent of the 240 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when President Obama took office were "leaders, operatives and facilitators involved in plots against the United States," but the majority were low-level fighters, according to a previously undisclosed government report. About 5 percent of the detainees could not be categorized at all.
The final report by the Guantanamo Review Task Force recommends that 126 of the detainees be transferred either to their homes or to a third country; that 36 be prosecuted in either federal court or a military commission; and that 48 be held indefinitely under the laws of war. A group of 30 Yemenis was approved for release if security conditions in their home country improve...
The U.S. military is getting set to expand its controversial detention camp at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan — just as new reports of a “black jail” inside the facility are surfacing.
In a solicitation issued today, the U.S. military put out a request for a contractor to build three new detention housing units next to the existing facility, known formally as the Afghan National Detention Facility at Parwan (Bagram is in the southwest corner of Parwan Province). As of last September, 645 prisoners were held there.
The cost of the project — which will include construction of one special housing unit and two detention housing units — is projected to run between $10 million and $25 million. The contractor will have approximately nine months to complete the entire project.
Presumably, these new buildings are in addition to Bagram’s separate and previously clandestine detention facility, revealed by the International Committee of the Red Cross yesterday. Nine former prisoners say they were abused there, according to the BBC...
George W Bush knew that hundreds of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay were innocent - but covered the fact up for political reasons, a top former aide has told a U.S. court.
Retired Army Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, testified that officials 'knew that they had seized and were holding innocent men at Guantanamo Bay'.
'I discussed the issue of the Guantánamo detainees with Secretary Powell,' he said. 'I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President [Dick] Cheney and [Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.'
'They knew and they covered it up': Former U.S. President George Bush, right, and his Vice President Dick Cheney, left (file photo)
Former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, left, also knew about the detainees' innocence, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, right, is said to have believed
'They simply refused to release them out of fear of political repercussions,' he continued.
Colonel Wilkerson heaped most of his criticism on the heads of of Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Cheney, saying they knew that the majority of the 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were not guilty of any crimes.
His assertion is understood to have been backed by General Powell, the Times has reported.
General Powell left the Bush administration in 2005 in anger over the false information that he unknowlingly used to make the case for the war in Iraq.
Parts of the document were quoted by the Associated Press, while further quotes - including the Bush quote - emerged in the Times, which said it had obtained a copy.
Cover-up: Detainees in Guantánamo Bay (file photo)
The declaration emerged after a Sudanese worker freed from Guantánamo in 2007 sued the U.S. government...
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.
The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.
Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.
General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.
Colonel Wilkerson, a long-time critic of the Bush Administration’s approach to counter-terrorism and the war in Iraq, claimed that the majority of detainees — children as young as 12 and men as old as 93, he said — never saw a US soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been taken...
The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Powell, the former secretary of state, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantanamo detainee.
declined to comment on an article published in the Times of London Friday that reported innocent men were kept at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp because the Bush administration feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.
The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Powell, the former secretary of state, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantanamo detainee.
Peggy Cifrino, principal assistant to Powell, said in a written statement to Fox News, "General Powell has not seen Colonel Wilkerson's declaration and, therefore, cannot provide a comment. Nor, obviously, can 'it be understood that he backed' the declaration as reported by Tim Reid of The Times."
The Times of London reported that George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney
and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld knew in 2002 that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo were innocent, but the administration believed that it was "politically impossible to release them"...
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson’s serious accusations against the Bush White House over Guantánamo Bay are made to support the cause of Adel Hassan Hamad, a former detainee who is now seeking compensation from the United States.
In July 2002 Mr Hamad, now 52, who worked for a Muslim humanitarian organisation, was asleep in his flat in Peshawar when it was raided by heavily armed men. He says that he believes there was also an American with them.
To this day Mr Hamad says that he does not know why he was seized. He believes that the Pakistani military, to which he had refused to give supplies from his workplace, retaliated by telling the Americans that he was a terrorist...
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, has charged in a sworn affidavit that top officials of the Bush administration — including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush himself — knowingly left innocent detainees to languish in prison to avoid political fallout. “Their view was that innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years was justified by the broader war on terror and the capture of the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks, or other acts of terrorism,” Colonel Wilkerson stated.
Wilkerson, a longtime critic of the Bush detainee process, wrote the affidavit in support of the lawsuit by former Guantanamo detainee Adel Hassan Hamad, who was innocent. The Bush administration repatriated Hamad to Sudan without charges on December 12, 2007 after five years of detention. Wilkerson calls Hamad one of the “victims of incompetent battlefield vetting.”...
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
20 Percent of Released Detainees Returning to Terrorism Washington (CNN) -- The number of former detainees once held by the U.S. in Cuba but now returning to terrorism activity has risen from 14 percent to 20 percent, according to a senior Defense official.
A classified report by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) says that one in five former detainees returned or are suspected to have returned to terrorist activity after leaving the U.S. prison facility. That is an increase from 14 percent from a similar report by the DIA released in April, according to the official familiar with the new report...
