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تقرير التعذيب
في هذا الكتاب قصص من قصص التعذيب التي يندى لها جبين الإنسانية، وفيه تقارير موثقة عن وحشية أولئك الأشخاص الذين يلبسون ثوب الإنسان، ويحملون بين ضلوعهم قلوب الوحوش.
كان من المفترض أن يحوك كلٌّ من باديلا، وأبي زبيدة، وبنيام محمَّد مؤامرةً تهدف إلى تفجير قنبلة قذرة في إحدى كبريات المدن الأمريكيَّة؛ ولكنَّ أولئك الثَّلاثة كانوا قد عُذِّبوا الواحد تلو الآخر تعذيبًا ممنهجًا؛ حيث عُذِّب أبو زبيدة في سجن سريٍّ من سجون الـ CIA في تايلاند، وعُذِّب محمَّد على أيدي مُعذِّبين
بالوكالة في المغرب، وعلى أيدي عملاء أمريكيين في باكستان وأفغانستان، أمَّا باديلا فقد عُذِّب في سجن على سفينة من سفن أسطول تشارلستون (Charleston) الأمريكيِّ؛ وكلَّما زادت معاملتهم سوءً ازدادت خططهم غرابةً وخيالًا.
ليس تعذيب النَّاس هو ما يهم، إذ ينصُّ الميثاق المناهض للتَّعذيب، وغير ذلك من المعاملات والعقوبات اللَّاإنسانية والمهينة، على ما يأتي:
«لا يمكن أن تكون الظُّروف الاستثنائيَّة مهما كانت، سواء أكانت ظروف دولة، أم ظروف حرب، أم تهديدًا بحرب، ذريعةً لممارسة التعذيب».
وبموجب هذا الميثاق الذي أجازته الولايات المتَّحدة في عام 1994م، وأدخلته في قوانين محلِّية مختلفة، فإنَّه يُخضِع أولئك الذين يقومون بالتَّعذيب، أو يشاركون فيه إلى حكم جنائيٍّ مهما كانوا يظنون أنَّهم فاعلون، وأنَّ من يُعذَّبُ كائنًا من كان، فإنَّ له الحقَّ في التَّعويض العادل، وإن كان لا شيء يعوض سنين العمر، والعذاب النفسي والجسدي الذي حلَّ بؤلئك الأشخاص.
كان من المفترض أن يحوك كلٌّ من باديلا، وأبي زبيدة، وبنيام محمَّد مؤامرةً تهدف إلى تفجير قنبلة قذرة في إحدى كبريات المدن الأمريكيَّة؛ ولكنَّ أولئك الثَّلاثة كانوا قد عُذِّبوا الواحد تلو الآخر تعذيبًا ممنهجًا؛ حيث عُذِّب أبو زبيدة في سجن سريٍّ من سجون الـ CIA في تايلاند، وعُذِّب محمَّد على أيدي مُعذِّبين
بالوكالة في المغرب، وعلى أيدي عملاء أمريكيين في باكستان وأفغانستان، أمَّا باديلا فقد عُذِّب في سجن على سفينة من سفن أسطول تشارلستون (Charleston) الأمريكيِّ؛ وكلَّما زادت معاملتهم سوءً ازدادت خططهم غرابةً وخيالًا.
ليس تعذيب النَّاس هو ما يهم، إذ ينصُّ الميثاق المناهض للتَّعذيب، وغير ذلك من المعاملات والعقوبات اللَّاإنسانية والمهينة، على ما يأتي:
«لا يمكن أن تكون الظُّروف الاستثنائيَّة مهما كانت، سواء أكانت ظروف دولة، أم ظروف حرب، أم تهديدًا بحرب، ذريعةً لممارسة التعذيب».
وبموجب هذا الميثاق الذي أجازته الولايات المتَّحدة في عام 1994م، وأدخلته في قوانين محلِّية مختلفة، فإنَّه يُخضِع أولئك الذين يقومون بالتَّعذيب، أو يشاركون فيه إلى حكم جنائيٍّ مهما كانوا يظنون أنَّهم فاعلون، وأنَّ من يُعذَّبُ كائنًا من كان، فإنَّ له الحقَّ في التَّعويض العادل، وإن كان لا شيء يعوض سنين العمر، والعذاب النفسي والجسدي الذي حلَّ بؤلئك الأشخاص.
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
544 pages, Paperback
First published February 14, 2012
6 people are currently reading
134 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 13, 2014
Well, the timing of me reading this perfectly coincided with the Senate Intelligence Committee's "report," which I must say I'm glad a few folks in DC grabbed their metaphoric cojones and cast this issue into the harsh light of truth for the mouth-breathing rabble, but sadly it came 12 years too late. I was in Iraq in 2004 when the photos from those inbred hillbillies at Abu Ghraib were discovered, IEDs blossomed along roadways like bloody sunflowers, and the last thread of respect for US idealism was lost throughout most of the Middle East. Don't get me wrong, the invasion of Iraq in the first place was a web of candy-coated lies, but let's stick to the topic at hand. US foreign policy doesn't earn any respect. We are the land of pure hypocrisy and amnesic historical memory (http://www.psmag.com/navigation/polit...).
Here, Siems and his team at http://www.thetorturereport.org have done an excellent job of investigative reporting guided by objectivity and human rights to expose not only the monsters among us (look to the Stanford Prison experiment, the social-psychology of genocides, and so many others), but also those who questioned the policies and procedures from their inception.
Once again accountability and justice should reign supreme, but my guess is that absolutely no one will be tried for these crimes against human rights, international laws, the Constitution, and simple morality.
*I also read somewhere that Amazon was selling the Senate committee's report for $3 a pop and it was a "big seller." It's FREE, public information. Better yet, read THIS book instead.
Here, Siems and his team at http://www.thetorturereport.org have done an excellent job of investigative reporting guided by objectivity and human rights to expose not only the monsters among us (look to the Stanford Prison experiment, the social-psychology of genocides, and so many others), but also those who questioned the policies and procedures from their inception.
Once again accountability and justice should reign supreme, but my guess is that absolutely no one will be tried for these crimes against human rights, international laws, the Constitution, and simple morality.
*I also read somewhere that Amazon was selling the Senate committee's report for $3 a pop and it was a "big seller." It's FREE, public information. Better yet, read THIS book instead.
July 16, 2012
NOTE: I have given a rating to this book only because I didn't want it to appear that I was giving a review of zero stars. Those of you who follow my reviews closely will know that the fact the author of this book has the same last name as I do is no coincidence: he is my brother. Therefore, ethics dictate that I recuse myself from the matter of discussing the merits of the writing.
That disclaimer being offered, what I will say is that is that this book touches on one of the deepest core issues of a democratic society: the level of trust people put in their government to make decisions on their behalf, and the question of whether that trust is merited. At that, leaving aside the book itself, the issues behind its writing clearly should be of interest to all who would wish to have a government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." —James Madison
That disclaimer being offered, what I will say is that is that this book touches on one of the deepest core issues of a democratic society: the level of trust people put in their government to make decisions on their behalf, and the question of whether that trust is merited. At that, leaving aside the book itself, the issues behind its writing clearly should be of interest to all who would wish to have a government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." —James Madison
December 29, 2020
“The repression of terrorism spirals around as unpredictably as the terrorist act itself. No one knows where it will stop, or what turnabouts there may yet be. There is no possible distinction, at the level of images and information, between the spectacular and the symbolic, no possible distinction between the ‘crime’ and the crackdown. And it is this uncontrollable unleashing of reversibility that is terrorism’s true victory. A victory that is visible in the subterranean ramifications and infiltrations of the event – not just in the direct economic, political, financial slump in the whole of the system – and the resulting moral and psychological downturn – but in the slump in the value-system, in the whole ideology of freedom, of free circulation, and so on, on which the Western world prided itself, and on which it drew to exert its hold over the rest of the world.” —Jean Baudrillard, “The Spirit of Terrorism”
Before 9/11, interrogating terrorists was a niche job reserved for the eggheads at the FBI (Ali Soufan) who could be bothered to research their subjects and disarm them by arguing the logic of their beliefs. This meant, among other things, reading books and case files, studying the history and development of Islamist terrorism, familiarizing oneself with cultural customs, and learning the languages spoken by the interrogees. The humanities-inflected nature of this work evidences a pretty obvious truth: interrogations are an art, not a science. And the success the FBI had with the subjects captured after the east Africa embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, the thwarted millennium plots, and even 9/11, show that those interrogators were very good artists indeed. But after 9/11, when all of a sudden a lot of government officials and law-enforcement agencies started to care about Islamist terrorism, interrogating terrorists became something a lot more people saw mattered. And with a war in Afghanistan quickly following the attacks, there were also a lot more people being captured who needed questioning. Enter Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, the two CIA contractors who devised a (so-called) scientific system intended to quickly extract the actionable intelligence being withheld by the interrogees be reverse-engineering the US military’s SERE torture-resistance training techniques. These techniques, it turns out, were themselves derived from the torture techniques employed by the Chinese during the Korean War and the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, were used to compel American POWs from those wars to sign false statements denouncing the US, and were universally regarded by military personnel to NOT WORK when it came to getting truthful information. Enter John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the two White House counselors who determined that al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were not POWs but “enemy combatants,” and as such were NOT privy the protections described by the Geneva Conventions respecting torture, that the SERE-derived enhanced interrogation techniques only constituted torture when the interrogator intended to do lasting physical or psychological harm to the interrogee, and that enemy combatants shall not be extended habeas corpus, thus allowing for indefinite detention. Enter Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, who approved the EIT program, abetted the detention and torture of suspected terrorists, and decreed that interrogators needed to find the connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. This is the story of the US torture program – a story still being pieced together from millions of pages of declassified government and agency documents – that Siems attempts to wrestle into coherence in The Torture Report. To that end, Siems’ efforts are laudable—this is, in a sense, an impossible project that he’s attempted out of a sense of duty and morality. Siems tries to circumscribe the scope of this thing by focusing on the legal clusterfuck that EITs presented, and the experiences of the tortured detainees whose legal challenges made it to the courts. This book is also, I’m afraid, a bit of a slog. There are so many names and so many dates and so many cases and so many acronyms and so many sources that a clear narrative is hard to glean. What Siems manages to show here, though, is that a bunch of guys who watched 24 every week and thought it was a documentary, who thought reading was for nerds, and who thought that the brutality of 9/11 justified any and all reciprocal brutality, took charge of interrogating suspected terrorists, found support in the White House OLC and the White House, and then found themselves in the very trap that they were always going to get caught by: the information extracted through torture will never be enough to satisfy the torturers, necessitating ever more of it. This is called “force drift” and is the widening gyre that turned a bad idea into a national tragedy. And yet the fact the US (once again) gave up any claim at being a moral leader isn’t the only tragedy here. Tragic too is that fact that none of this information could be used in court to try actual crimes that some of these detainees were actually guilty of. Anyway, Baudrillard is right—we became the monsters we were accused of being and the terrorists won.
Before 9/11, interrogating terrorists was a niche job reserved for the eggheads at the FBI (Ali Soufan) who could be bothered to research their subjects and disarm them by arguing the logic of their beliefs. This meant, among other things, reading books and case files, studying the history and development of Islamist terrorism, familiarizing oneself with cultural customs, and learning the languages spoken by the interrogees. The humanities-inflected nature of this work evidences a pretty obvious truth: interrogations are an art, not a science. And the success the FBI had with the subjects captured after the east Africa embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, the thwarted millennium plots, and even 9/11, show that those interrogators were very good artists indeed. But after 9/11, when all of a sudden a lot of government officials and law-enforcement agencies started to care about Islamist terrorism, interrogating terrorists became something a lot more people saw mattered. And with a war in Afghanistan quickly following the attacks, there were also a lot more people being captured who needed questioning. Enter Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, the two CIA contractors who devised a (so-called) scientific system intended to quickly extract the actionable intelligence being withheld by the interrogees be reverse-engineering the US military’s SERE torture-resistance training techniques. These techniques, it turns out, were themselves derived from the torture techniques employed by the Chinese during the Korean War and the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, were used to compel American POWs from those wars to sign false statements denouncing the US, and were universally regarded by military personnel to NOT WORK when it came to getting truthful information. Enter John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the two White House counselors who determined that al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were not POWs but “enemy combatants,” and as such were NOT privy the protections described by the Geneva Conventions respecting torture, that the SERE-derived enhanced interrogation techniques only constituted torture when the interrogator intended to do lasting physical or psychological harm to the interrogee, and that enemy combatants shall not be extended habeas corpus, thus allowing for indefinite detention. Enter Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, who approved the EIT program, abetted the detention and torture of suspected terrorists, and decreed that interrogators needed to find the connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. This is the story of the US torture program – a story still being pieced together from millions of pages of declassified government and agency documents – that Siems attempts to wrestle into coherence in The Torture Report. To that end, Siems’ efforts are laudable—this is, in a sense, an impossible project that he’s attempted out of a sense of duty and morality. Siems tries to circumscribe the scope of this thing by focusing on the legal clusterfuck that EITs presented, and the experiences of the tortured detainees whose legal challenges made it to the courts. This book is also, I’m afraid, a bit of a slog. There are so many names and so many dates and so many cases and so many acronyms and so many sources that a clear narrative is hard to glean. What Siems manages to show here, though, is that a bunch of guys who watched 24 every week and thought it was a documentary, who thought reading was for nerds, and who thought that the brutality of 9/11 justified any and all reciprocal brutality, took charge of interrogating suspected terrorists, found support in the White House OLC and the White House, and then found themselves in the very trap that they were always going to get caught by: the information extracted through torture will never be enough to satisfy the torturers, necessitating ever more of it. This is called “force drift” and is the widening gyre that turned a bad idea into a national tragedy. And yet the fact the US (once again) gave up any claim at being a moral leader isn’t the only tragedy here. Tragic too is that fact that none of this information could be used in court to try actual crimes that some of these detainees were actually guilty of. Anyway, Baudrillard is right—we became the monsters we were accused of being and the terrorists won.
September 21, 2023
Excellent work by Larry Siems! It is so incredibly disgusting how the government can get away with torturing human beings!!! I definitely look at the "mighty" US government in a very different light 🤮
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews