A Cambridge-based human rights organization said it has found medical evidence supporting the claims of 11 former detainees who were allegedly tortured while in American custody between 2001 and 2004, in what a former top US military investigator said amounts to evidence of war crimes.
The 130-page report is being released as Congress convenes hearings on the Bush administration’s use of controversial interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects. The hearings have examined allegations that some techniques amounted to torture and violated international law, and the Physicians for Human Rights study offers medical evidence to support those allegations. The report Broken Laws, Broken Lives - Full Report can be downloaded here.
Medical evaluations of the former inmates found injuries consistent with the alleged abuse, including the psychological effects of sensory deprivation and forced nudity as well as signs of “severe physical and sexual assault,” Physicians for Human Rights said in a report scheduled for release today.
In a new interview with the Washington Post, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said that he will be giving the House Judiciary Committee 30 days to act on his 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush, otherwise he will go back to the House floor with double as many:
“The minute the leadership said ‘this is dead on arrival’ I said that I hope they believe in life after death; because I’m coming back with it,” Kucinich vowed in an interview with the Sleuth this week. “It’s not gonna die. Because I’ll come back with more articles. Not 35, but perhaps 60 articles.“Watch the full interview with Kucinich here.
Former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith was scheduled to testify today about his role in vigorously pushing to eliminate the standards of the Geneva Conventions and making the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay a “Geneva-free zone.”
In another report, the Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.
The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes.
“The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.Read also Cheney linked to torture tactics reported by Washington Times.
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