US Government Documents: Proof of "Ghost Detention", Torture, Death

Last night we closed an update with a note that CNN had just reported on hundreds of pages of documents obtained by Amnesty International USA, New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and the Center for Constitutional Rights — which established that the Pentagon sought loopholes in the Geneva Conventions to hide “ghost detainees”. They also confirmed that the Bush Administration delayed the release of Guantanamo Bay detainees to avoid negative publicity.

This morning the American Civil Liberties Union has released two pages from a Department of Defense document concerning the death of two detainees at Camp Bagram in Afghanistan:

"In both cases, for example, [prisoners] were handcuffed to fixed objects above their heads in order to keep them awake. Additionally, interrogations in both incidents involved the use of physical violence, including kicking, beating, and the use of "compliance blows" which involved striking the [prisoners] legs with the [interrogators] knees. In both cases, blunt force trauma to the legs was implicated in the deaths. In one case, a pulmonary embolism developed as a consequence of the blunt force trauma, and in the other case pre-existing coronary artery disease was complicated by the blunt force trauma.

Seven years after the Bush Administration effectively set aside the Geneva Conventions, declaring they were not relevant to US detentions from Guantanamo Bay to Camp Bagram to CIA "black sites" in North Africa and Eastern Europe, five years after Abu Ghraib, here are the documents establishing not only that detainees were tortured and, yes, murdered. Here is the evidence that US Government officials sanctioned the renditions and "enhanced interrogations" and that they were willing to lie to cover up the programme they had authorised.

It was with a sense of expectation that I have just turned to the headlines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London. And here is what I found: nothing. I cannot find the story in any "mainstream" US or British newspaper this morning.

Full credit to CNN. And full credit to Harper's, Mother Jones and The Raw Story because, without outlets such as these, "ghost detainees" --- and what happens to them --- would remain, well, ghosts.

Failing the Torture Test? Obama Blocks Judicial Review of Bush Rendition Policy

Update: Irony Alert. State Department's DipNotes says, "Acting Spokesman [Robert] Wood states that with this President and this Secretary, human rights is a high priority issue."

As we debated on Enduring America whether President Obama was going to make a meaningful change to the Bush Administration's rendition policy, preventing the despatch of detainees to countries where they might be tortured or denied legal rights, I was waiting for developments in a court case in San Francisco. Five plaintiffs were suing a subsidiary of Boeing, Jeppesen, which carried out rendition flights.

Well, the news is now out that the President's men want to keep the matter behind closed doors:

A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn't changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.

An American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented the plaintiffs reacted:

We are shocked and deeply disappointed that the Justice Department has chosen to continue the Bush administration’s practice of dodging judicial scrutiny of extraordinary rendition and torture. This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course. Now we must hope that the court will assert its independence by rejecting the government’s false claims of state secrets and allowing the victims of torture and rendition their day in court.

Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan offer damning indictments of the Obama Administration and the Justice Department, while a New York Times article confirms the original leak of the Government's position.