Horrible People Despicably Treated

Waterboarding, also called water torture, simulated drowning, interrupted drowning, and controlled drowning, method of torture in which water is poured into the nose and mouth of a victim who lies on his back on an inclined platform, with his feet above his head. As the victim’s sinus cavities and mouth fill with water, his gag reflex causes him to expel air from his lungs, leaving him unable to exhale and unable to inhale without aspirating water. Although water usually enters the lungs, it does not immediately fill them, owing to their elevated position with respect to the head and neck. In this way the victim can be made to drown for short periods without suffering asphyxiation.                          Encyclopedia Britannica

Incarceration for almost two decades without a trial. Purposely and continued exposed to loud noises with the intent to prevent sleep.  Beatings. Forced enemas (“rectal rehydration”). Purposefully exposed to cold. Sexual exposure with an intention to humiliate. Forced to stand (sometimes restrained) for hours and hours. Repeated waterboarding. Each of the foregoing is considered torture by almost every nation on earth, and now even the United States (officially affirmed during the Obama administration) under the:

“The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (commonly known as the United Nations Convention against Torture (UNCAT)) is an international human rights treaty, under the review of the United Nations, that aims to prevent torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment around the world… The Convention requires states to take effective measures to prevent torture in any territory under their jurisdiction, and forbids states to transport people to any country where there is reason to believe they will be tortured.

“The text of the Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1984 and, following ratification by the 20th state party, it came into force on 26 June 1987… As of October 2019, the Convention has 169 state parties.” Wikipedia. The United States signed in 1994, but as of 2002, it withdrew from the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, which establishes an international inspection system for places of detention. The United States of America utilized all of the above acts of torture to extract “confessions” from prisoners at our Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) detention facility in Cuba.

Thwarted by Congress in bringing trials of those Gitmo prisoners into federal court in New York City, the Obama administration set about setting a trial before a military commissioner at the Cuban base. The federal government had previously used national security as a reason to prevent the disclosure of “enhanced interrogation methods” (a DOJ administration attempt during the GW Bush to describe the above torture as legal) in the proceedings against those held at Gitmo or to use the use of such techniques to challenged the credibility of forced confessions. That was simply not an option for defense attorneys seeking to defend their clients. Until now.

Although the US government is preparing to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of serious attacks against the United States, before a military tribunal, for the first time, the issue of the impact of torture is now a subject that can be explored and presented at that trial.  Make no mistake, many of these prisoners perpetrated heinous crimes, blowing up buildings and murdering US citizens on US soil and elsewhere. While I have no desire to excuse, justify or exonerate these criminal actions or to elevate the perpetrators as mere disciples of religious fervor, likewise I believe that the United States must adhere to its own highest principles of due process and humane treatment of those it arrests and detains. And its own treaty commitments.

The psychologists who designed these torturous “enhanced interrogation” techniques have now been called before that military commission. One such psychologist, James Mitchell, who personally waterboarded Mohammed at a ‘black site,’ a secret prison, in Poland told the commission at a pre-trial hearing: “Let me tell you just so you know… If it were today, I would do it again.”

“For their work, Mitchell and another psychologist, John ‘Bruce’ Jessen, received up to $1,800 a day. They later formed a company that was paid about $81 million to help operate the interrogation program over several years. In 2017, the psychologists settled a civil lawsuit brought against them by two former detainees and a third who had died in custody. The American Psychological Assn. condemned the two psychologists for ‘violating the ethics of their profession and leaving a stain on the discipline of psychology.’

“As Mitchell testified, the men he had interrogated — Mohammed among them — showed no visible emotion… Mitchell’s testimony marked a dramatic opening to pretrial proceedings that were already noteworthy for putting the torture issue front and center. Mitchell defended his decisions, recalling the fear that gripped America after terrorists slammed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.

“Back in 2002, when the interrogation program was devised, the Central Intelligence Agency had only one high-value detainee in custody, a suspected Al Qaeda functionary named Abu Zubaydah. After some early success in interrogations, mainly by FBI agents, Zubaydah had clammed up.

“The CIA had decided some sort of coercive interrogation techniques were required, and Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., head of the agency’s counter-terrorism center, put Mitchell in charge of the program, he testified… Mitchell said he sat alone in a hotel room late into the night thinking that if he didn’t do it, the agency would probably go ahead anyway — but with a less effective, potentially harsher program…

“Human rights organizations around the world have condemned the interrogation program… Julia Hall, a lawyer for Amnesty International who attended the hearing here on Tuesday [1/21], said she was appalled that Mitchell said that he had come to testify on behalf of the Sept. 11 victims. The families would have seen justice long ago, she said, but for the role torture has played in delaying the trial of the men… ‘It took my breath away,’ she said. ‘He’s a cause for all those delays. Torture ruined everything.’

“Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of international law at Yale who was the State Department’s top lawyer under President Obama, said, ‘What on Earth did he accomplish by it — other than staining our country, degrading our values and complicating the trial?’” Los Angeles Times, January 22^nd. Even as torture stopped, prisoners continued to make admissions. Their defense lawyers stressed that these inmates were now broken, no longer able to resist complying with their captors’ wishes.

We’re better than that. Despite statements to the contrary by President Trump, may we never again condone, support or apply torture to those we detain, arrest or incarcerate. Ever. We have repeatedly learned that those who are tortured will say what they think their captors want to hear… just to stop the pain and suffering.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and in addition to the moral ignominy of torture, information so extracted routinely has been found to be completely unreliable.