War on Terror Analysis: Was Bush Detention Programme "Human Experimentation"? (Leopold)

Jason Leopold write for Truthout:

High-value detainees captured during the Bush administration’s “war on terror” who were subjected to brutal torture techniques were part of a Nazi Germany-type program involving illegal human experimentation, the purpose of which was to collect research “data,” according to a disturbing new report that calls on President Barack Obama, Congress and other government agencies to immediately launch inquiries and Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the allegations.

"Experiments in Torture": Text of Physicians for Human Rights Report

The findings contained in the 27-page report, “Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program,” is based on extensive research of previously declassified government documents that shows the crucial role medical personnel played in in establishing and justifying the legality of the Bush administration’s torture program.


The report said the research and experimentation of detainees its authors have documented is not only a violation of the Geneva Conventions, but is a grave breach of international laws, such as the Nuremberg Code, established after atrocities committed by Nazis were exposed in the aftermath of World War II.

“Health professionals working for and on behalf of the CIA monitored the interrogations of detainees, collected and analyzed the results of [the] interrogations, and sought to derive generalizable inferences to be applied to subsequent interrogations,” states an executive summary of the report, prepared by Physicians for Human Rights. “Such acts may be seen as the conduct of research and experimentation by health professionals on prisoners, which could violate accepted standards of medical ethics, as well as domestic and international law. These practices could, in some cases, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

For example, PHR said the drowning method known as waterboarding was monitored in early 2002 by medical personnel who collected data about how detainees responded to the torture technique. The data was then used by Steven Bradbury, the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), to write a legal opinion in 2004 advising CIA interrogators on how to administer the technique, referred to in the PHR report as “Waterboarding 2.0.”

“According to the Bradbury memoranda, [CIA Office of Medical Services] teams, based on their observation of detainee responses to waterboarding, replaced water in the waterboarding procedure with saline solution ostensibly to reduce the detainees’ risk of contracting pneumonia and/or hyponatremia, a condition of low sodium levels in the blood caused by free water intoxication, which can lead to brain edema and herniation, coma, and death,” the report says. In Bradbury’s torture memo, he wrote that “based on advice of medical personnel, the CIA requires that saline solution be used instead of plain water to reduce the possibility of hyponatremia (i.e. reduced concentration of sodium in the blood) if the detainee drinks the water.”

PHR noted that the presence of CIA medical personnel during the waterboarding sessions “could represent evidence of human experimentation” because it underscores “the danger and harm inherent in the practice of waterboarding and the enlistment of medical personnel in an effort to disguise a universally recognized tactic as a ‘safe, legal and effective’ interrogation tactic.”

CIA medical personnel also obtained experimental research data by subjecting more than 25 detainees to a combination of torture techniques, including sleep deprivation, according to the report, as a way of understanding “whether one type of of application over another would increase the subjects’ susceptibility to severe pain.” The information derived from the research informed “subsequent [torture] practices.”

“This investigation had no direct clinical health care application, nor was it in the detainees’ personal interest, nor part of their medical management,” the report says. “It appears to have been used primarily to enable the Bush administration to assess the legality of the tactics, and to inform medical monitoring policy and procedure for future application of the techniques.”

Frank Donaghue, PHR’s chief executive officer, said the report appears to demonstrate that the CIA violated “all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation.”

Read rest of article....

Iran Analysis: One Year After the Election (Shafaee)

Masoud Shafaee writes for The Guardian of London:

At the beginning of June last year, a thaw in Iranian-American relations looked increasingly likely. President Obama had been inaugurated less than five months earlier, promising the leaders of the Islamic Republic that America would "extend" its hand if the Iranians were willing to "unclench" their fists. Having been vilified as part of an "axis of evil" by the Bush administration, the Iranian leadership suddenly faced a harder time painting the United States, with its charismatic new president and his middle name of Hussein, as "the Great Satan". Obama even recognised Iran's right to enrich uranium, something the previous administration had refused to do.

In Iran, a similar political realignment was under way. The country not only faced staggering inflation and unemployment, but had had three sets of UN Security Council sanctions imposed on it since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office. With two-thirds of its population under the age of 30 and pressing for more social freedoms, the incumbent president was by no means a popular candidate heading into the 2009 election.



In the final weeks of the campaign, the progressive-minded youth mobilised en masse to ensure that he would not be re-elected. As Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main reform candidate and eventual figurehead of the Green movement, put it just before election day, the atmosphere in the country was "similar to the first days after … the revolution".

But Mousavi was by no means a foe of the establishment either. Having served as prime minister for almost the whole of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war and under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic's founding father, Mousavi had the respect of many in the establishment. In fact, he was one of only four candidates not disqualified from running for president in 2009 by the Guardian Council, the regime's constitutional vetting body. Even at present, Mousavi stresses the importance of staying true to Khomeini's vision and within the constitution's framework.

Which is what made the rigging of last year's election so remarkable. For the Islamic Republic, Mousavi was the right man at the right time: a former revolutionary suited to steering Iran through rapprochement with a remarkably different White House. With respect to Iran's nuclear programme, the core issue guiding its foreign policy, he openly statedthat he would not compromise on the country's inalienable rights. President Obama even posited just five days after the contested election that policy differences between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad "may not be as great as [had] been advertised".

Policy differences aside, the Islamic Republic's image would have greatly benefited from a Mousavi presidency. In a region dominated by authoritarian Arab states, Iran's theocracy has always been the exception. What's more, the democratic elements of the Islamic Republic's constitution – however tattered they may now be – have been a source of the regime's authority. The election of a socially progressive reformist over a far-right incumbent would have done much for its perceived legitimacy. Perhaps this is why the vote was so lopsidedly fixed.

Driven by motives of political survival, a fringe "New Right" ultimately took Iran hostage. Not wanting to relinquish power through its loss at the polls, the current administration has not only weakened the regime, but in the face of an enduring and growing opposition, has perhaps hastened its demise.

On the nuclear front, Iran is facing a fourth set of Security Council sanctions –the first since Obama took office. The uranium-for-fuel deal that the White House was proposing back in February is now being rebuffed after Iran agreed to come to the table following Turkish and Brazilian mediation. And with the hastily rigged election, the Islamic Republic has suffered considerable harm to its image and to its clout. Ahmadinejad's second term was widely seen as illegitimate from the start, and the regime chose not only to reaffirm the election results but to severely repress the opposition. Whatever "democratic" lustre the Islamic republic once had has surely now been irreparably tarnished.

More consequentially, perhaps, the regime has lost its religious standing in the eyes of countless Muslims. In a region with an increasing number of devout followers – be they Sunni or Shia – it was always the Islamic component of the "Islamic republic" that earned Iran admiration outside its borders. A year after the election, in the face of overwhelming evidence of state-sanctioned murder, torture and even rape, the regime's moral authority is in shreds. Several of Iran's grand ayatollahs have even publicly blasted the government during the last year. As the late dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, the former heir apparent to Khomeini, put it: "This regime is neither Islamic nor a republic."

Today, many are speculating about the death of the Green movement. Following a brutal crackdown, the massive protests seen in June tapered off, before being definitively suppressed on the Islamic Republic's 31st anniversary in February. Yet while the streets may now be emptier, the Green movement is far from finished. As the Iranian saying goes, "There is fire under the ash."

Read rest of article....

Iran Feature: Music and Resistance (Fathi)

Nazila Fathi reports in The New York Times:

Parisa remembers the precise moment she heard her first song by Shahin Najafi, an Iranian rapper living in exile in Germany, on her illegal satellite television in the small city of Karadj, west of Tehran.

“His words cut through me like a knife,” she said.

Parisa, a 24-year-old university student, stayed up long after midnight one night, when the Internet connection was faster, and spent six hours downloading Mr. Najafi’s songs to share with her friends.



Since Iranian authorities have cracked down on the demonstrations that rocked the country after a disputed election a year ago this month, a flood of protest music has rushed in to comfort and inspire the opposition. If anything, as the street protests have been silenced, the music has grown louder and angrier.

The government has tried all manner of methods to mute what has become known as “resistance music.” They have blocked Web sites used to download songs and shut down social networking sites, which were also used by the opposition to organize protests and distribute videos of government and paramilitary violence.

In April, a shadowy pro-government group that calls itself “the cyber army” shut downMr. Najafi’s Web site. The group, which hacked Iranian Twitter in December, left a message saying the site had been “conquered by anonymous soldiers of Imam Zaman,” a reference to the Shiite messiah.

In late December, the authorities detained Shahram Nazeri, a prominent Persian classical musician who had recorded the song “We Are Not Dirt or Dust,” a tart response to the words President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used to characterize the antigovernment protesters. The government briefly took his passport, detained him and intimidated him; he has not released anything since.

But clamping down on music in the digital age is like squeezing a wet sponge.

Protest songs are downloaded on the Internet, sold in the black market or shared via Bluetooth, a wireless technology Iranians have adapted to share files on cellphones, bypassing the Internet altogether. Fans have also made dozens of homemade videos, setting montages of protest images to music and posting them online.

Read rest of article....

The Latest from Iran (6 June): The Fallout from Friday

2150 GMT: More on That Rumour. We've checked with correspondents, who assess that the claim that Seyed Hassan Khomeini hit Minister of Interior, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, should be treated as "flimsy". They can find no corroborating evidence for the story from Javan.

(We should have noted in the post below that Javan is connected to the Revolutionary Guard, and it could be in its interest to portray the opposition --- and Hassan Khomeini --- as violent and irrational. My apologies for the omission, and my thanks to readers for pointing this out.)

1955 GMT: And Now The Rumour of the Day. Javan reports that the Interior Minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, is currently in hospital after being hit by Seyed Hassan Khomeini, the  grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, during Friday's ceremony.

According to "multiple sources", Hassan was upset that in a TV interview last week, Najjar referred to him as "Seyed Hassan Mostafavi" --- a "secondary" surname of the Khomeini clan --- to minimise his ties with his grandfather. (Javan also refers to Hassan as "Hassan Mostafavi".)

Najjar already had stitches on his face when he arrived at the Khomeini shrine on Friday, due to surgery for sinusitis. His face was bloody again after being hit by Hassan.

NEW Iran Document: Mehdi Karroubi on Khomeini, the Rule of Law, and Protest in 2010 (4 June)
NEW Iran Document: The Supreme Leader’s Speech (4 June)
Iran Special: The Regime Disappoints, So It’s Over to the Opposition
Iran Document: Detained Filmmaker Nourizad Writes the Supreme Leader
The Latest from Iran (5 June): Is That All There Is?

1625 GMT: Friday Fall-Out. Mehdi Karroubi has written Seyed Hassan Khomeini, “You know very well that the account of these few trained and organized individuals [who shouted down Khomeini during his Friday speech] is separate from the account of the massive number of the devotees of Imam [Khomeini], his children and relatives, and especially you.”


1545 GMT: Reports are coming in that high-profile member of Parliament Ali Motahari has been summoned by his "principlist" party for his criticism of President Ahmadinejad over Friday's events.

1540 GMT: More Fall-Out. Ayatollah Sane'i has phoned Seyed Hassan Khomeini to express his regret over Friday's incident, directing his criticism at authorities: "If they were not politically insane, they would have not prevented the freedom of speech and people’s right to hear the speech in front of hundreds of national and international reporters and while this event was broadcast live. This act is a sign of their weakness and is the sign that the will and desire of God is that their plans would be ruined.”

Sane'i added: “Those how plan these incidents be it those who order it or who execute it or who provoke it are incapable of solving country’s social, economic, political and foreign problems and therefore commit such acts to divert the public mind".

1305 GMT: Friday Fall-Out. Ayatollah Mousavi Ardebili has added his voice to the chorus condemning the sabotage of Seyed Hassan Khomeini's speech at the commemoration ceremony for the death of his grandfather.

1300 GMT: Karroubi Watch. The US magazine Newsweek has published the text of an interview by e-mail with Mehdi Karroubi, which follows the line of the discussion with Masih Alinejad that we posted on EA on 27 May: "My family and myself, we are all ready to pay any price for our struggle for the people of Iran."

1243 GMT: The Executed. The families of Farzad Kamangar,Farhad Vakili, and Ali Heydarian,,three of five Iranians executed on 9 May, have met with the Governor of Kurdestan Province to ask for help in getting the return of their bodies.

The Governor told the families that their children were buried at a place that cannot be disclosed for "security reasons".

1239 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Labor activist Alireza Akhavan has been arrested by security forces. Farhad Fathi, the director of the Reformist Organization of Qazvin's International University, has also been detained.

Human Rights Activists News Agency claims Reza Malek, former deputy of Research and Investigation in the Intelligence Ministry, has been severely beaten by prison guards.

1228 GMT: Economy Watch. Iran is 94th out of 104 countries on the 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index, between Cambodia and Kenya.

1224 GMT: We Don't Need No Women's Studies. Hossein Naderi-Manesh, the Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education, has allegedly said that it is "no problem to eliminate women's studies from universities as the Quran is full of subjects about them".

1220 GMT: Mousavi Challenges Regime on "Foreign Threat". In a statement on Kalemeh, Mir Hossein Mousavi has thrown the allegation of subversion by foreigners and "terrorists" back at the Iranian regime: "It should be asked who has presented a golden opportunity to the US, Israel, the hypocrites, and the monarchists with all these destructive, non-transparent and misleading policies. Is it those who seek freedom and justice or dubious cults which have devastated the lives of laborers, teachers and farmers?"

1119 GMT: Friday Follow-Up. The denunciations of the treatment of Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson, Seyed Hassan Khomeini, are piling up. The reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, joining politicians from Mir Hossein Mousavi to conservative MP Ali Motahari, has written an open letter to clerics in Qom declaring that Friday's hecklers are against an independent clergy.

1115 GMT: 22 Khordaad. Daneshjoo News carries a call by Green Movement students for demonstrations across Iran on 12 June, the anniversary of the Presidential election.

1045 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. There is still uncertainty over the supposed 81 pardons handed out by the Supreme Leader. Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi said that "a series of prisoners" have already been released, with repentance as a requirement for amnesty. Still, there are no names of those who have supposedly been freed.

0620 GMT: We are in Warwick this morning, so the latest news from Iran will be posted around midday British time.

0610 GMT: Some inside and outside Iran are pondering what they claim is a relatively low turnout for the regime's ceremonies and speeches.

Could one possible reason be a lack of faith in Government? Fazel Mousavi, a member of Parliament's Article 90 Commission, has declared, "In our country, no party in the real meaning of the world, is active."

Reformist Mohammad Reza Khabbaz adds that, in the last year, 122 Government declarations contravened Majlis legislation, "a new record".

0555 GMT: Friday's Controversies. The political thunder rumbles on over the speeches at the ceremony for Ayatollah Khomeini's death. Rah-e-Sabz claims that, by citing Imam Ali, the Supreme Leader has compared himself to Shia's first Imam.

Regime supporter Hojatoleslam Hossein Sobhani-Nia has given indirect approval of the shout-down of the Imam's grandson, Khomeini: "People are alert, when someone deviates from Imam's path."

Meanwhile, some Iranian sites are taking aim at former President Mohammad Khatami, claiming he went to the Caspian Sea for "fun and vacation" while millions were mourning for Ayatollah Khomeini.

0525 GMT: We have posted two documents: there is a key extract from the Supreme Leader's speech on Friday and Mehdi Karroubi's lengthy consideration of "Khomeini, the Rule of Law, and Protest".

Gaza Flotilla: Israel "Passengers Linked to Hamas, Al Qa'eda, Terrorist Organisations"

The Israel Defense Forces have just issued their latest press release. We are posting it without comment and without endorsement of the allegations:

The following passengers on board the Mavi Marmara are known to be involved in terrorist activity. The Mavi Marmara attempted to break the maritime closure on the Gaza Strip on Monday, May 31st 2010, and was boarded by Israel Navy forces.

Gaza Flotilla LiveBlog (6 June): Israel Blames “Islamist Mercenaries”

Fatimah Mahmadi (born 1979), is a United States resident of Iranian origin, and an active member of the organization “Viva Palestine”, she attempted to smuggle forbidden electronic components into the Gaza Strip.


Ken O’Keefe (Born 1969), an American and British citizen, is a radical anti-Israel activist and operative of the Hamas Terror organization. He attempted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a commando unit for the Palestinian terror organization.

Hassan Iynasi (born 1982), a Turkish citizen and activist in a Turkish charity organization, is known of providing financial support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Terror organization.

Hussein Urosh, a Turkish citizen and activist in the IHH organization, was on his way to the Gaza Strip in order to assist in smuggling Al-Qaeda operatives via Turkey into the Strip.

Ahmad Umimon (born 1959), is a French citizen of Moroccan origin, and an operative of the Hamas Terrorist organization.