Nearly a year ago, I asked If Obama Withdrew the Yoo, Bradbury Torture Memos, What Government Opinion Now Covers The AFM and Appendix M? The question has direct relevance today, because the Army Field Manual on interrogation (FM 2-22.3) and its Appendix M governs current interrogation policy at Guantanamo, where a major hunger strike of over 100 detainees [...]
Once upon a time, Daily Kos had numerous diaries on the ongoing use of torture by the United States, or on the false evidence, much of it wrung from tortured prisoners held by the US or by foreign countries via rendition, that was used to start the Iraq War. But today, such diaries are the [...]
Journalist Michael Otterman, author of the excellent book, American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, was kind enough to forward to me some months ago a document he obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. The document consists of the after-action reports made by Colonel Steven Kleinman and Terrence Russell, two of [...]
U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said today that the body of Allal Ab-Aljallil Abd al-Rahman Abd (aka Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif) was repatriated to Yemen. The SOUTHCOM statement did not indicate the date or time the body was returned, nor who received the remains. On November 26, Jason Leopold at Truthout broke the story that Latif’s death would be attributed [...]
While much has been written about the victims of the Atomic Bombs dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II, very little is known by Americans of the fate of the victims of that bombing. Known as the Hibakusha, their medical condition for years was the subject [...]
Charlie Savage at the New York Times reports that “several people briefed on a Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry” into the death of Guantanamo detainee Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, who was found unresponsive in his cell last September, have revealed that the prisoner “died from an overdose of psychiatric medication.” As Savage notes, the military autopsy has [...]
Last Friday, November 9, Elisa Massimino, President and CEO of Human Rights First (HRF), hosted a press call with retired Rear Admiral Don Guter. HRF, along with a number of other human rights and legal groups, are calling upon President Barack Obama to fulfill his January 2009 pledge to close Guantanamo’s detention facility. Admiral Guter [...]
The battle within the American Psychological Association (APA) to bring that organization into line with other human rights groups and attorney organizations in opposing the use of psychological personnel in national security interrogations accelerated last month when a prominent APA official came out strongly against a petition to annul APA’s ethics policy on national security [...]
Gregory B. Saathoff M.D. is the latest mental health professional to weigh in on the Manssor Arbabsiar case. Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel has been dissecting aspects of Saathoff’s narrative of events surrounding Arbabsiar’s interrogation and confession (see here, here, and here). I want to look more closely at the claims Saathoff makes in an October 3 “Forensic Psychiatric Evaluation” on Arbabsiar’s [...]
Two psychologists with the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology have written an open letter to current American Psychological Association (APA) President Suzanne Bennett Johnson. The letter excoriates the APA Ethics Office for refusing to censure blatant cases of psychologist involvement in torture or other related crimes. Doctors Steven Reisner and Trudy Bond review three cases [...]
