Above Photo: Top – The torture of left-wing activist Alexander Matjuschenko on March 3 in Dnipro, recorded by Azov members. Bottom – President Volodymyr Zelensky poses during a media engagement. “One Less Traitor” While Claiming To Defend Democracy, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky Has Outlawed His Opposition, Ordered His Rivals’ Arrest, And Presided Over The Disappearance And Assassination Of Dissidents Across The Country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has framed his country’s war against Russia as a battle for democracy itself. In a carefully choreographed address to US Congress on March 16, Zelensky stated, “Right now, the destiny of our country is being decided. The […]
torture
20 posts
Above Photo: “Abu Zubaydah Redacted.” (Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t). The CIA agent who captured top al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah traces the Guantanamo prisoner’s 20 years of torture, ending with the government’s failure to put him and four others on trial. The Guardian reported last week that a recently-declassified CIA Inspector General’s report from 2008 found that CIA officers at a covert detention site in Afghanistan used a prisoner, Ammar al-Baluch, as a “training prop,” taking turns smashing his head against a plywood wall and leaving him with permanent brain damage. Baluch is currently one of five […]
Above Photo: Military personnel escort detainees to a U.S. interrogation center at Kandahar airport, Afghanistan. (The Guardian). UK Government Shamefully Cooperated With U.S. In Torture Of Al-Qaeda Suspects. We Americans have had a painful and difficult national debate over the past 20 years relative to torture. Torture was official U.S. government policy from 2002 until at least 2005, and that iteration was not formally outlawed until passage of the McCain-Feinstein Amendment in 2015. (The torture program was a highly-classified secret from 2002 until I revealed it in a nationally-televised interview in December 2007.) In truth, torture has been illegal in the U.S. since […]
Above Photo: This Photo Screened By US Military Officials On September 7, 2021 Shows A Sign For Camp Justice In Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. Paul Handley/AFP Via Getty Images) I traveled to the Guantanamo Bay prison late last week to watch the long-awaited military commission sentencing hearing in United States v. Khan. What unfolded over those two days was extraordinary. There were historic moments; all-too-familiar, but no less outrageous, prosecutorial transgressions; and a military commission judge who reached his wits end with the government. From a broader policy perspective, the hearing affirmed that plea agreements are the only realistic path to […]
Above Photo: Military officers serving as jurors in the case of Guantanamo Bay detainee Majid Khan are urging clemency. Charles Dharapak/The Associated Press. Guantanamo Bay prisoner Majid Khan last week detailed torture at CIA black sites in unprecedented testimony. Seven United States military officers have written a letter urging clemency for Guantanamo Bay detainee Majid Khan, calling his account of torture at so-called CIA black sites a “stain on the moral fiber of America”. The seven officers were part of an eight-member military jury that on Friday issued a sentence of 26 years in prison to Khan for his support of al-Qaeda in […]
Above Photo: President Joe Biden takes the stage before delivering remarks on the September jobs numbers in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on October 8, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images. When Abu Zubaydah was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002, the George W. Bush administration falsely characterized him as chief of operations for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s number three man. For the next four years, the CIA sent Zubaydah to its “black sites” in Thailand and Poland where he was viciously tortured. In 2006, Zubaydah was taken to Guantánamo, where he remains […]
Above photo: 2015 DC Rally And March To Protest The 14th Year Of Guantanamo Torture And Indefinite Detention. Stephen Melkisethian/Flickr. Those who invented America’s torture program were promoted and protected by presidents of both parties. Only the whistleblower, John Kiriakou, was prosecuted. This is his story. Once upon a time, a keystone of American exceptionalism was the claim of a moral high ground when it came to how our forces operated abroad, in war or peace, especially when it came to the use of torture, that hallmark of enemies we stamped as evil, primitive and sadistic. The ends were not supposed to […]
The Nebraska couple accused of fatally strangling 24-year-old Sydney Loofe after wooing her on Tinder last year allegedly discussed selling homemade murder and torture videos. Anastasia Golyakova, who testified in Dawson County Court on Thursday about her months-long relationship with Bailey Boswell and Aubrey Trail, revealed the couple told her they believed they could make upwards of “one million dollars” from these sinister videos. “I paid three psychologists to forget this,” Golyakova said, according to the Omaha World-Herald. Boswell, 26, is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and improper disposal of human remains for her alleged role in the […]
Russian authorities have opened a child torture criminal case against the Sredneuralsk Convent, an Orthodox Christian community run by the controversial excommunicated monk Sergius. The clergyman already has a murder conviction. According to Russia’s Investigative Committee, seven children were systematically beaten and subjected to other violent acts in the monastery, near Yekaterinburg, between 2004 and 2009. The accused have not been named, and Investigators believe the acts were entirely deliberate, “based on a false understanding of the process of raising minors.” The authorities also allege that the child victims lived permanently in the religious institution due to failings of the country’s systems that are […]
Bailey Boswell, the woman accused of helping her boyfriend strangle a 24-year-old wooed through Tinder, “got off sexually” from talking about killing and torture, prosecutors alleged on Friday, as the bombshell trial involving claims of a vampire sex cult began. Boswell, 26, is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and improper disposal of human remains for her role in the 2017 slaying and dismemberment of Sydney Loofe, a cashier at a Lincoln home-improvements store. Prosecutors allege Boswell conspired for weeks with her boyfriend, Aubrey Trail, 52, to lure Loofe to her death. Loofe was missing for 19 days after […]
Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y. Mary Altaffer/AP hide caption toggle caption Mary Altaffer/AP Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y. Mary Altaffer/AP Back in early April as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged New York, John J. Lennon was sure he would contract the coronavirus. As a prisoner at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y., social distancing was impossible, he says. Making calls on prison phones, Lennon says, meant being “chest to shoulders” with nearly two dozen inmates. “It was a death-trap situation to use the phone,” he says. Not long after he made his prediction, Lennon started to feel […]
The proposed bill has drawn criticism from human rights groups, the Labour party and even MPs from the ruling Conservative party. Opponents of the bill say it would breach human rights laws and allow the British authorities to block an investigation if troops committed serious violations. The government of Boris Johnson has been urged to rethink its plans to introduce a bill that critics say would “dicriminalise torture” by British servicemen. The proposed bill would create a statutory presumption against the prosecution of troops and veterans for alleged offences that were committed more than five years ago. The legislation also proposes […]
As his political support withers away along with his prospects for re-election, Donald Trump is declaring his intention to try governing as a dictator. Trump, who bashed Obama for relying on executive orders and boasted that he’d get legislative deals done, long ago gave up on getting bills through Congress. Now, relying on advice from the lawyer who told George W. Bush that torture is legal, the president contends that he’s free to govern by issuing plainly illegal executive orders. That helps explain why Trump—who is denying the United States Postal Service the resources required to deliver many mail-in ballots —bizarrely […]
Witness Against Torture Prison Hunger Strike By Witness Against Torture. August 15, 2020 Witness Against Torture Prison Hunger Strike2020-08-152020-08-14https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/08/wat-e1597451967424.jpg200px200px Above photo: Fast for Justice – Day 10: The Reverend Billy Talen marched with us to the White House and helped us hold banners during the vigil. Photograph by Justin Norman. Keep Up the Pressure. NC Prison Activist Joseph “Shine White” Stewart’s Hunger Strike is Working! Shine’s hunger strike is now in its second week and the next few days of pressure are critical! So WAT family: Contact Shane Tharrington and demand Shine’s (Joseph Stewart #0802041) release from solitary even if you’re not fasting in […]
Cary Jay Smith Convicted sex offender Cary Jay Smith was recently released from a California psychiatric facility after being forcefully hospitalized for more than 20 years. Smith repeatedly testified to having fantasies about raping and killing young boys and said he likes to be referred to as “RTK” which stands for “rape, torture, kill.” He also claimed he has killed three boys and molested more than 200 others. In 1985, Smith was convicted of a misdemeanor sexual offense involving a child and had to register as a sex offender, however that requirement expired and he was removed from the sex offender […]
The police raid targeted the men after cracking encrypted text messages in EncroChat and discovering they had been formulating a detailed plan to take their fellow criminals hostage. At least six men suspected of kidnapping and assault have been arrested in the Netherlands after police had found torture chambers and cells inside seven sea containers, according to the authorities. The operation was conducted and filmed at Wouwse Plantage on the Dutch-Belgian border on 22 June. Images, shared online, show a dentist’s chair, various tools, including pliers, scalpels, and handcuffs attached to the ceiling and floor implying the criminals were going to fix someone. Police […]
Two hundred and sixteen medical professionals signed an article published in The Lancet medical journal demanding an end to the “ongoing torture and medical neglect” of award-wining WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who remains incarcerated in Britain’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison. Clinical psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson, who co-authored the letter, explained to Sputnik why she and her colleagues felt it necessary to draft this latest version despite having already published a letter in February. Sputnik: Why did you co-author this letter in The Lancet demanding an “end to the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange”? Dr Lissa Johnson: We wrote this letter […]
In late 2019, Conservative MP David Davis and Labour’s Dan Jarvis joined Reprieve, a UK-based human rights non-profit, in seeking a public judicial inquiry into torture and rendition allegations involving Britain’s intelligence services after it was revealed that agents had taken part in such actions on at least 15 occasions since 9/11. UK Judges Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Farbey have thrown out an appeal by a pair of lawmakers and a charity to hold a publish inquiry into British intelligence agents’ involvement in torture and rendition on Tuesday, ruling that the inquiry will instead be heard in secret, The Guardian […]
When I was 19 years old, my family moved to Cali, Colombia, for my father’s job. His name was Tom Hargrove, and he was an agricultural journalist working in rural communities to fight hunger and famine. Driving to work on Sept. 23, 1994, he was waved off the road, pulled from his car at gunpoint, thrown into the back of a pickup truck and driven deep into the Andes Mountains. My family soon learned he had been kidnapped by FARC, a communist terrorist group and the largest guerrilla army in the Western Hemisphere at the time. My mom, Susan, observed that […]
Discovering that the cruelty visited on Julian Assange by Western democracies had been premeditated has heightened the fear of learning more about how those democracies operate, the UN’s rapporteur on torture has admitted. For years Nils Melzer has been researching on behalf of the UN just how vile and degrading the mistreatment of prisoners can become. But learning that states that are supposed to be champions of human rights can be as brutal as any other with people who cross them was quite a shock. The case that made Melzer reassess his beliefs is that of Julian Assange, who, he says, had […]