British Unit Used Sleep Deprivation, Stress Positions, Hooding
It looks like the Brits are discovering they were engaged in the same kind of torture we were in Iraq.
Fresh evidence has emerged that British military intelligence ran a secret operation in Iraq which authorised degrading and unlawful treatment of prisoners. Documents reveal that prisoners were kept hooded for long periods in intense heat and deprived of sleep by defence intelligence officers. They also reveal that officers running the operation claimed to be answerable only “directly to London”.
The revelations will further embarrass the British government, which last month was forced to release documents showing it knew that UK resident and terror suspect Binyam Mohamed had been tortured in Pakistan.
The latest documents emerged during the inquiry into Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel worker beaten to death while in the custody of British troops in September 2003. The inquiry is looking into how interrogation techniques banned by the Government in 1972 and considered torture and degrading treatment were used again in Iraq.
Lawyers believe the new evidence supports suspicions that an intelligence unit – the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT) which operated in Iraq – used illegal “coercive techniques” and was not answerable to military commanders in Iraq, despite official denials it operated independently.
Not that I’m the least bit surprised, mind you. Mostly I’m hopeful that if the Brits come clean on the systematic torture in Iraq and elsewhere, we might be forced to, too.
So America and Britain are industrialized nations but not civilized nations. Unless, of course we decide to bring government criminals to justice.
That’s what I’m hoping. The decisions on Binyam Mohamed, the subsequent investigation of MI6 (ongoing, I hope), the Chilcot inquiry, and now this — I’m hoping they break things open for the rest of us, at least for our courts.
Hmmm, “Joint Forward Interrogation Team”. Who spent time in JSOC, in a “forward” assignment to Iraq in that time frame?
Goodness those tactical command teams really muff things up.
I take it that son of klynn is reading this thread? *wink*
*g*
Should have been…
muffed…
Oops.
The other word works in a way!
Oh, I wasn’t questioning the tense. I was just struck by what a dear word “muff” is.
Too many viewings of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Our family favorite line from the film, “Had your chance, muffed it!”
This morning on Here and Now I listened to a part of the interview with terrorism expert, Jessica Sterns. One point she made is about the strong ties of humiliation/degredation and terrorism.
IOW – for all the snickering over at DOJ about their advocacy for humiliation and degredation of helpless detainees, there was nothing more guaranteed to foster terrorism.
Wait. Really? Now, who could have ever expected that?
You’ve watched The Power of Nightmares, right? I think I remember you commenting about it once. Anyway, it explained how Sayyid Qutb came by his philosophy and reasons for founding the Muslim Brotherhood
From wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares
bmaz, the good thing is that apparently we found Sadaam’s/Osama’s nukes after all.
I guess in a post about the Brits it’s not too tangential to mention that I’ve been receiving emails (pssssst – this is all confidential guys, I’ve only received them bc I’m a confidential and reliable kind of person) from Cap’n J. England, explaining that he and his intel crew found nukes, drugs and several millions in a little operation in Iraq. They are all keeping it quiet for now, but he’d really like me to keep an eye on the money for him and will give me a modest 10% for my trouble…
Who could have ever expected that Nigerian scamming would turn so patriotic
Am awaiting my invitation to be patriotic.
If you could just keep watch on the boxes of money while I’m being sleep deprived (by my dog who wants to go chase deer at 4 am) I’d be willing to share my patriotic duties and funding with you.
Back to the real world – EW I’m glad to see more coming from this Mousa investigation.
Here’s an older story about his killing that I am linking bc of the picture it ran of his wife and two small children.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/16/baha-mousa-inquiry-corporal-allegations
We we file things like the affidavits and Arar and el-Masri’s case, one thing the stories here in the US never include is a picture of the children whose fathers we tortured.
In any event, when it looked like the military “investigation” re: Mousa’s killing wasn’t going many places, I thought that might be the end of it. Instead, having an actual set of checks and balances and institutions that weren’t involved in torture themselves, as well as some insitutions whose members were singled out for torture themselves not that long ago, has given some teeth to the continuing non-military investigation.
Anyway – look at the face of those children and then read what our DOJ says is fine to do to anyone with the wrong kind of name.
All I’ve ever been offered in one of those e-mails is money. Some people have all the luck …. (Some of them are clearly not native users of American English, either.)
As long as this is just between you and me:
Obviously, anyone who can spell Mississippi and get that it’s the Hospitality State (apparently Mississippians are detailed with the duties of going around stocking hotel room refrigerators and torturing rebels for the late Zawahiri) and who has junior intelligent officers is a native. ;) I guess that along with the “hard drugs” they found some other supplies that allowed them to reach a state of high secrecy.
I got this one:
Yes, you are exactly who a competent Intel Pro like this would confide in and trust.
The US Treasury thanks you for this reported income.
This is a particular problem for the Brits because they’ve been through this before (even if it was more than 30 years ago) and this stuff is illegal there. They even had a name for it: the five techniques.
In fairness, I thought it was settled here too; but I was clearly wrong again.
I believe that the Five Techniques have only been ruled to be illegal in Europe. In other words, I don’t think a ruling from the ECHR applies in Iraq. And since they also ruled that the Five Techniques were not torture, it’s the ECHR’s opinion that they don’t run afoul of the CAT.
I’m not excusing anything. I’m just applying what I know about Ulster to this issue.
Reports of torture by the troops trained at the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre at Chicksands have been made before. Here’s some photos of a demonstration held in front of the Joint Services Interrogation Center at Chicksands, in May 2004. I think this goes back to the breaking news of Mousa’s death originally.
From a 2007 UK Independent story:
What’s new here appears to be the documentation on the JFIT, and the question of its chain of command. That’s very important, but I’m not too optimistic it will lead to any great accounting with the British use of torture. On the other hand, I have to remember that Britain is not America, and the British people may take a different road that those in this country.
The UK and the US have a long history of cooperation on torture and interrogation, going back, of course, to MKULTRA days — really WWII. But we know even less about the British programs than the U.S. one. If it hadn’t been for the controversies around use of the Five Techniques (wall-standing stress position, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, and deprivation of food and drink) on the IRA prisoners in the early 1970s, we would know even less than we do now.
For info on British torture, read John McGuffin’s The Guinea Pigs (available to read online), or the more recent book, Brainwash (St. Martin’s Press, 2007), by British journalist Dominic Streatfeild. The latter is only about 20% on the British experience, however.
Something’s got to give, sooner or later.
Keep up the great work, EW!http://www.irishresistancebooks.com/guineapigs/guineapigs.htm
Jeff, I’ve been reading around trying to figure out how Mousa’s case got to a formal inquiry (it took a long time, 2003-08). I’m still not sure of all the steps, but it appears again that, as in the case of Binyam Mohamed, the High Court, backed up a year later by the Law Lords (now their Supremes), forced it, and the ministry of defence gave in. Here’s a Guardian backgrounder from 2008.
In the UK, it seems that if you can just get these cases to the superior courts, things will happen and the government will actually accept what the courts say. That’s already at least one step further than we’ve got in my country, although I’m hoping our Supremes are taking notes. (Ours are good but a lot more, ah, reserved.)
A tweet from Dan Froomkin alerted me to this only partially OT story. Caution: anyone on blood pressure medication should make sure they are at full dosage before reading.
I’m sure this is all a case of mistaken identity. Remember all those “borrowed” British passports, so it had to be somebody else.
Now that the congress has some free time……
What started this? 9-11.
That changed everything including following the law.
Mary, pictures of their children that can’t be because they’re not human.
Can we get KSM’s kids on milk cartons so we can find them, they should be healed of all those bug bites by now. I would want my kid at my trial.
OT – A little light reading in a 4 page article in GQ by former CIA Officer Robert Baer:
A Dagger to the CIA
And Jeff Stein’s take over at WaPo:
Ex-spies still agitated over CIA’s Afghan losses
Totally OT – Via Politico, Jane’s favorite faux journalist gets hired by the WaPo:
WaPo hires Weigel
Shorter WaPo: “Tea Party!”
If there is ever going to be accountability it will likely come from outside of the US
Interested readers should pursue this relevant 2008 column by Frontline investigative reporter, W. Scott Malone, who is, shall we say, well-connected among special forces types:
While macabre and chilling, the entire column is worth reading. I could not find any clips to the BBC film mentioned online, but it is in the British Film Institute database.
Do you know if Army Rangers/Green Berets received this training?
Perhaps Tillman saw examples of oppressing the oppressed instead of “liberating the oppressed?”
Certainly in the past, perhaps now. I know they get top level SERE training. I don’t know what Tillman saw or thought.
and this one:
Amen to that!
I sometimes get those solicitation emails, too, but I haven’t saved any of them.
Bob in AZ
O/T For all the wrong reasons ($$$), but at least it’s done.
Halliburton, KBR drop court appeal in rape case
LINK.
Not done. It goes to trial, which is what Jamie Leigh Jones wanted. KBR was appealing NOT to have a trial, but in light of the AL FOOKIN FRANKEN amendment, they’ve decided not to appeal the decision, and therefore Jones gets her day in court. (And, probably, KBR pays a good bit more to make things right for her.)
I smell the aroma of large settlement. And I know this odor.
and bmaz @40. Thank you, and Yesssssssssssssssss!
I’m pretty sure someone already linked the story on the habeas petition granted today, but part of it just caught my eye:
Did we know about death threats from boats at Guantanamo before? I don’t remember seeing that one before. As Jeff noted up at #31, this is over the line even for the really bad guys.
No, John Yoo has opined that is functionally no different than a little o’le water dousing or water boarding. It is only simulated concern of death by drowning ya know.
I guess we already knew, too. Here is a copy of a WSJ story from 2007 that has that accusation.
Just did a post on it.
Given that we’ve only recently learned that John Yoo, whose advice was used to set DOD guidelines, deemed mock execution torture, they may be in a bit of trouble.
Yeah, that’s why it stood out to me.
Well, and if you haven’t read Rosenberg’s version (she is STILL doing utterly superb work on Gitmo), not that this judge was the guy who started the govt’s Hamdan headache.
Is there no end to what goons can dream up to do to innocent human beings?
The inquiry is looking into how interrogation techniques banned by the Government in 1972 and considered torture and degrading treatment were used again in Iraq.
We don’t torture, we’re a civilized nation…
Au Pairs ‘Armagh’, written in 1980 about then-ongoing British torture in occupied northern Ireland.