U.S. Can Use Evidence Gained by Torture

[MIKE BURN]

Quote:

---

(Yahoo News) Fri, Dec 03, 2004



By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer



WASHINGTON - Evidence gained by torture can be used by the U.S. military in deciding whether to imprison a foreigner indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an enemy combatant, the government concedes.



Statements produced under torture have been inadmissible in U.S. courts for about 70 years. But the U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of 550 foreigners as enemy combatants at the U.S. naval base in Cuba are allowed to use such evidence, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle acknowledged at a U.S. District Court hearing Thursday.



Some of the prisoners have filed lawsuits challenging their detention without charges for up to three years so far. At the hearing, Boyle urged District Judge Richard J. Leon to throw their cases out.



Attorneys for the prisoners argued that some were held solely on evidence gained by torture, which they said violated fundamental fairness and U.S. due process standards. But Boyle argued in a similar hearing Wednesday that the detainees "have no constitutional rights enforceable in this court."



Leon asked whether a detention based solely on evidence gathered by torture would be illegal, because "torture is illegal. We all know that."



Boyle replied that if the military's combatant status review tribunals "determine that evidence of questionable provenance were reliable, nothing in the due process clause (of the Constitution) prohibits them from relying on it."



Leon asked whether there were any restrictions on using torture-induced evidence.



Boyle replied that the United States never would adopt a policy that would have barred it from acting on evidence that could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks even if the data came from questionable practices like torture by a foreign power.



Several arguments underlie the U.S. court ban on products of torture.



"About 70 years ago, the Supreme Court stopped the use of evidence produced by third-degree tactics largely on the theory that it was totally unreliable," Harvard Law Professor Philip B. Heymann, a former deputy U.S. attorney general, said in an interview. Subsequent high court rulings were based on revulsion at "the unfairness and brutality of it and later on the idea that confessions ought to be free and uncompelled."

---

[DreamTone7]

Some casual observations:



1 - Since these people are considered combatants, Military Law is what applies here...not Civil. Totally different set of rules.



2 - Nowhere did I see a definition or description of said "torture". The writer is obviously playing on our imaginations as to what that might mean...since most of us have observed some extreme forms of torture in movies at one time or another, it is quite an effective tactic to convince the average person just how "BAAAAD" America is.





America is at war...just not with a specific country. Just something to keep in mind when you read these kinds of articles.

Melody and Instruments for the soul...

Edited by: DreamTone7  at: 12/3/04 22:08

[MIKE BURN]

Torture is the work of evildoers.



The history of my country, the midage in Europe and the history of Inquisition taught me that.



War or no war... Torture is evil and puts every country/government, society or army which is endorsing it as "valid", especially when being excused with the term "we're at war", into the corner of evildoers and terrorists.



That's my observation.



Man, you're really caught up in this "war... hooray" tantrum.

[DreamTone7]

If somebody tied me to a chair and forced me to watch "Pippi Longstocking" on infinite loop, I might be inclined to call it torture. Torture is a very subjective term, Mr. Burns...and can therefore be used pretty much as anybody wishes, because the definition is up to the user. This is why I would like to see what it is exactly that the author of the article is referring to as "torture". He could be using this term quite liberally to refer to the food that the prisoners are being fed...seriously.



Chalk one (Mr. Burns) up for the authors tactics as I described in #2 of my post above.



Too bad we won't get an answer as to what the author defines as "torture" for the purposes of his article...because without it, there is really nothing further to discuss.

[Seismic Anamoly]

"Torture is the work of evildoers."



Do tell. Do tell.

[Galmin]

Quote:

---

Too bad we won't get an answer as to what the author defines as "torture" for the purposes of his article...because without it, there is really nothing further to discuss.

---

Check with the IRC and they will provide the missing clues.



You don't change horse in the mid-torture.

[DreamTone7]

We don't even know which horse the author of Mikes article is on, Galmin...the IRC horse, or another one. If we did, we MIGHT have something further to discuss...depending on what one would choose to call "torture".



Note that I do not consider random acts perpetrated by a few soldiers who were not following orders to be torture for purposes of this increasingly hypothetical discussion.

Edited by: DreamTone7  at: 12/4/04 20:31

[Rev9Volts]

Tantamount to distortion?







This page does not condone the use of torture for extracting information. A new report by the International Committee of the Red Cross alleging that detainees in Guantanamo Bay have been abused has a number of flaws. The Pentagon has refuted the report's claims of abuse.

According to a detailed memorandum on the ICRC report obtained by the New York Times, apparently from a U.S. government source, the ICRC has alleged that psychological and sometimes physical coercion used at Guantanamo was "tantamount to torture." That report was made after a Red Cross inspection team spent most of last June at the facility. The report said that coercion consisted of "humiliating acts, solitary confinements, temperature extremes, use of forced positions."















For starters, just what does tantamount to torture mean? While those practices do sound like they could elicit both physical and mental discomfort and duress, they do not appear to rise to the level of torture, or something tantamount to it.

Also, the ICRC's bases for its allegations of abuse are the reports of the detainees themselves, not any first-hand observation of the alleged abuse, said a Pentagon official. That fact calls into question the findings, for obvious reasons. The official maintains that claims of ongoing conflict between the Pentagon and ICRC are also false. "It actually is a pretty good relationship we have with the ICRC," he said. "They continue to make valuable comments and suggestions."

The ICRC, which is based in Geneva and is separate from the American Red Cross, defines itself as "an impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of war and internal violence and to provide them with assistance." Also, it endeavors "to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles." Given that mission, the ICRC's credibility in alleging acts of torture, or anything related to torture, is critical. It must be careful to ensure the practices it complains about rise to that level.

It is difficult to believe, though, that some stress on detainees doesn't need to be exerted in order to produce intelligence.

The White House has repeatedly said it is upholding international law in its treatment of Guantanamo detainees. Without more concrete and substantiated evidence to the contrary, there seems little reason to pay the ICRC report much heed.

[Galmin]

Quote:

---

This page does not condone the use of torture for extracting information

---

Give us a link, Rev. We can't have you copy and paste random lunacies trying to discredit the International Committee of the Red Cross without knowing were it's from.

[MIKE BURN]

Quote:

---

FBI reports Guantanamo 'abuse'



Alleged incidents include physical abuse, 'intense isolation'



Wednesday, December 8, 2004 Posted: 4:52 AM EST (0952 GMT)



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A memo from a senior FBI counterterrorism official has outlined three alleged cases of abuse in 2002 that FBI agents had become aware of while serving at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base prison.



The complaints included allegations of a female interrogator grabbing a detainee's genitals and bending back his thumbs and a prisoner being gagged with duct tape.



Another complaint talked of a dog being used to intimidate a prisoner and jailers subjecting the same prisoner to what the FBI official called "intense isolation" in a "cell that was always flooded with light."



The memo was written in July 2004 by Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Thomas Harrington, and was directed to Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command.



In the first incident outlined by Harrington, an FBI agent was present in an observation room while an interrogation of a detainee was under way. A "Sgt. Lacey" (the memo says her first name is unknown) entered the room and ordered a Marine to duct tape a curtain over the observation window, thereby blocking the view of the interrogation.



On a monitor showing the view of a surveillance camera, the FBI agent saw the sergeant "apparently whispering in the detainee's ear, and caressing and applying lotion to his arms.... On more than one occasion the detainee appeared to be grimacing in pain, and Sgt. Lacey's hands appeared to be making some contact with the detainee," the memo states.



Later it says the Marine who had been in the room came out, and the FBI agent asked what had happened.



"The Marine said Sgt. Lacey had grabbed the detainee's thumbs and bent them backwards and indicated that she also grabbed his genitals. The Marine also implied that her treatment of that detainee was less harsh than her treatment of others by indicating that he had seen her treatment of other detainees result in detainees curling into a fetal position on the floor and crying in pain," the memo states.



The memo included another incident from October 2002 that involved a detainee being "gagged with duct tape that covered much of his head," according to an FBI agent's account. A contractor observing the detainee's interrogation told the FBI agent the detainee "had been chanting the Koran and would not stop."



The final case involves FBI agents allegedly observing a dog being used in an "aggressive manner to intimidate a detainee," who was subject to what the FBI official called "intense isolation" in a "cell that was always flooded with light."



The FBI memo says at least the two first incidents were known to some Pentagon officials as far back as January 2003, when a U.S. Air Force captain referenced them in a timeline concerning the reported use of interrogation techniques.



Interestingly, the memo discusses a debate between FBI and Defense Department officials regarding the treatment of detainees.



The author, Harrington, said he wrote the July 2004 document because he said he had no record that the FBI's "specific concerns regarding these three incidents were communicated to DOD for appropriate action."



An FBI official confirmed the memo was authentic but refused any further comment.

---

[DreamTone7]

DreamTone7 - "Note that I do not consider random acts perpetrated by a few soldiers who were not following orders to be torture for purposes of this increasingly hypothetical discussion."



Thank you, Mike...but no cigar.

Melody and Instruments for the soul...

[Galmin]

[Rev9Volts]

i'' try to post the link next time. It was a columist/editorial in washingtontimes.com...

[Rev9Volts]

Well, they could make things easy on themselves by answering question the interogators ask...

[Galmin]

...the link, Rev?