G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Outsourcing Torture
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071015_outsourcing_torture/
Posted on Oct 15, 2007
By Chris Hedges
The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma,
a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt's dictator,
Gen. Hosni Mubarak , unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in
over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the
incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror
with some of the world's most venal dictatorships.
Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 26 years and is grooming his son, Gamal, to
succeed him, can torture and "disappear" dissidents-such as the Egyptian
journalist Reda Hilal, who vanished four years ago-without American censure
because he does the dirty work for us on those we "disappear." The
extraordinary-rendition program, which sees the United States kidnap and
detain terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world, fits neatly
with the Egyptian regime's contempt for due process. Those rounded up by
American or Egyptian security agents are never granted legal rights. The
abductors are often hooded or masked. If the captors are American the
suspects are spirited onto a Gulfstream V jet registered to a series of
dummy American corporations, such as Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland,
Ore., and whisked to Egypt or perhaps Morocco or Jordan. When these
suspects arrive in Cairo they vanish into black holes as swiftly as
dissident Egyptians. It is the same dirty and seamless process.
We have nothing to say to Mubarak. He is us. The general intelligence
directorate in Lazoughli and in Mulhaq al-Mazra prison in Cairo allegedly
holds many of our own detained and "disappeared." The more savage the
torture techniques of the Mubarak regime the faster the prisoners we smuggle
into Egypt from Afghanistan and Iraq are broken down. The screams of
Egyptians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans mingle in these prison cells to
condemn us all.
We know little about what goes on in the black holes the CIA has set up in
Egypt. But snapshots leak out. Ibn-al Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by
U.S. forces in late 2001, was an al-Qaida camp commander. He was taken to a
prison in Cairo where he was repeatedly tortured by Egyptian officials. The
Egyptian interrogators told the CIA that he had confirmed a relationship
between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The tidbit, used by then U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell in his United Nations speech, turned out to
be false. Victims usually will say anything to make severe torture stop.
Al-Libi was eventually returned to Afghanistan, although he has again
disappeared.
Mamduh Habib, an Egyptian-born citizen of Australia, was apprehended in
October 2001 in Pakistan, where, his family says, he was touring religious
schools. A Pentagon spokesman claimed that Habib spent most of his time in
Afghanistan and was "either supporting hostile forces or on the battlefield
fighting illegally against the U.S."
Habib was released a few days after The Washington Post published an article
on his case. He said he was first interrogated and brutalized for three
weeks in Islamabad. His interrogators spoke English with American accents.
He was then bustled into a jumpsuit, his eyes were covered with opaque
goggles and he was flown on a small jet to Egypt. There he was held and
interrogated for six months, according to Joseph Margulies, a lawyer
affiliated with the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago
Law School, which is representing Habib,.
Habib claims he was beaten frequently with blunt instruments, including an
object that he likened to an "electric prod." He was told that if he did not
confess to belonging to al-Qaida he would be anally raped by specially
trained dogs. Habib said he was returned to U.S. custody after his stint in
an Egyptian prison and flown to Bagram air base, in Afghanistan, and then to
Guantanamo Bay, where he was kept until his release.
Al-Libi and Habib are but two cases. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands
more. These accounts of American-sponsored torture in Egyptian prisons are
not new. They hardly make news. But the close cooperation between Egyptian
and American security officials represents a frightening melding of
despotisms, an international cabal of state-sponsored brutality and abuse.
It does away with the concept of law and human rights. It mocks
international protocols and treaties. It permits the despotic states we
support, such as Egypt, to veer away from democratic structures and
propagate, with our assistance, a more ruthless tyranny and brutality. It
enrages and finally empowers those who oppose us to engage in the same
behavior. It is dividing the world into competing spheres of intolerance.
In this new world order there is nothing left to appeal to other than the
mercy of someone standing over you with an electric prod.
Mubarak has in the past few weeks decided to shut down the last remnants of
opposition. He has sent in riot police to arrest dozens of striking labor
leaders, rounded up more than a thousand members of the Muslim Brotherhood,
the largest opposition group, and tossed seven journalists into prison. The
charges against the journalists range from misquoting Egypt's justice
minister to spreading rumors about the health of Mubarak to defaming his
designated heir, Gamal. The detainees, as usual, complain of torture and
beatings. And persistent rumors of death squads, bolstered by the
"disappearance" of some of the regime's most outspoken critics, have turned
Egypt into a state that has mastered the art of internal and external
extraordinary rendition.
The few lonely Egyptian voices and institutions that dared to speak out
against the mounting repression have been silenced, including the
Association for Human Rights and Legal Aid, which was shut down by the
government last month. The government also recently arrested two political
activists-Mohammed al-Dereini and Ahmed Mohammed Sobh, both members of
Egypt's
tiny Shiite minority-after the men publicized testimonies from prisoners
detailing torture in the Egyptian prison system. Egypt's most prominent
dissident, the sociologist Saad Edin Ibrahim, is in exile, too frightened to
go home and repeat his own brutal experience in an Egyptian prison.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights has confirmed more than 500 cases
of police abuse since 1993, including 167 deaths-three of which took place
this year-that the group "strongly suspects were the result of torture and
mistreatment." There are now 80,000 political prisoners held in Egyptian
prisons. The annual budget for internal security was $1.5 billion in 2006,
more than the entire national budget for health care, and the security
police forces comprise 1.4 million members, nearly four times the number of
the Egyptian army.
The United States has subsidized Egypt's armed forces with over $38 billion
in aid. Egypt receives about $2 billion annually-$1.3 billion in foreign
military financing and about $815 million in economic and support fund
assistance-making it the second largest regular recipient of conventional
U.S. military and economic aid, after Israel.
We have nothing left to say to the Mubarak regime. The torture practiced in
Egypt is the torture we employ for our own ends. The cries that rise up
from these fetid cells in Egypt condemn not only the Mubarak dictatorship
but the moral rot that has beset the American state.
We are losing the war in Iraq. We are an isolated and reviled nation. We
are pitiless to others weaker than ourselves. We have lost sight of our
democratic ideals. Thucydides wrote of Athens' expanding empire and how this
empire led it to become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. The
tyranny Athens imposed on others, it finally imposed on itself. If we do
not confront our hubris and the lies we tell to justify the killing and mask
the destruction carried out in our name in Iraq, if we do not grasp the
moral corrosiveness of empire and occupation, if we continue to allow force
and violence to be our primary form of communication, if we do not remove
from power our flag-waving, cross-bearing versions of the Taliban, the
despotism we empower abroad will become the despotism we soon experience at
home.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071015_outsourcing_torture/
Posted on Oct 15, 2007
By Chris Hedges
The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma,
a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt's dictator,
Gen. Hosni Mubarak , unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in
over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the
incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror
with some of the world's most venal dictatorships.
Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 26 years and is grooming his son, Gamal, to
succeed him, can torture and "disappear" dissidents-such as the Egyptian
journalist Reda Hilal, who vanished four years ago-without American censure
because he does the dirty work for us on those we "disappear." The
extraordinary-rendition program, which sees the United States kidnap and
detain terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world, fits neatly
with the Egyptian regime's contempt for due process. Those rounded up by
American or Egyptian security agents are never granted legal rights. The
abductors are often hooded or masked. If the captors are American the
suspects are spirited onto a Gulfstream V jet registered to a series of
dummy American corporations, such as Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland,
Ore., and whisked to Egypt or perhaps Morocco or Jordan. When these
suspects arrive in Cairo they vanish into black holes as swiftly as
dissident Egyptians. It is the same dirty and seamless process.
We have nothing to say to Mubarak. He is us. The general intelligence
directorate in Lazoughli and in Mulhaq al-Mazra prison in Cairo allegedly
holds many of our own detained and "disappeared." The more savage the
torture techniques of the Mubarak regime the faster the prisoners we smuggle
into Egypt from Afghanistan and Iraq are broken down. The screams of
Egyptians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans mingle in these prison cells to
condemn us all.
We know little about what goes on in the black holes the CIA has set up in
Egypt. But snapshots leak out. Ibn-al Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by
U.S. forces in late 2001, was an al-Qaida camp commander. He was taken to a
prison in Cairo where he was repeatedly tortured by Egyptian officials. The
Egyptian interrogators told the CIA that he had confirmed a relationship
between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The tidbit, used by then U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell in his United Nations speech, turned out to
be false. Victims usually will say anything to make severe torture stop.
Al-Libi was eventually returned to Afghanistan, although he has again
disappeared.
Mamduh Habib, an Egyptian-born citizen of Australia, was apprehended in
October 2001 in Pakistan, where, his family says, he was touring religious
schools. A Pentagon spokesman claimed that Habib spent most of his time in
Afghanistan and was "either supporting hostile forces or on the battlefield
fighting illegally against the U.S."
Habib was released a few days after The Washington Post published an article
on his case. He said he was first interrogated and brutalized for three
weeks in Islamabad. His interrogators spoke English with American accents.
He was then bustled into a jumpsuit, his eyes were covered with opaque
goggles and he was flown on a small jet to Egypt. There he was held and
interrogated for six months, according to Joseph Margulies, a lawyer
affiliated with the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago
Law School, which is representing Habib,.
Habib claims he was beaten frequently with blunt instruments, including an
object that he likened to an "electric prod." He was told that if he did not
confess to belonging to al-Qaida he would be anally raped by specially
trained dogs. Habib said he was returned to U.S. custody after his stint in
an Egyptian prison and flown to Bagram air base, in Afghanistan, and then to
Guantanamo Bay, where he was kept until his release.
Al-Libi and Habib are but two cases. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands
more. These accounts of American-sponsored torture in Egyptian prisons are
not new. They hardly make news. But the close cooperation between Egyptian
and American security officials represents a frightening melding of
despotisms, an international cabal of state-sponsored brutality and abuse.
It does away with the concept of law and human rights. It mocks
international protocols and treaties. It permits the despotic states we
support, such as Egypt, to veer away from democratic structures and
propagate, with our assistance, a more ruthless tyranny and brutality. It
enrages and finally empowers those who oppose us to engage in the same
behavior. It is dividing the world into competing spheres of intolerance.
In this new world order there is nothing left to appeal to other than the
mercy of someone standing over you with an electric prod.
Mubarak has in the past few weeks decided to shut down the last remnants of
opposition. He has sent in riot police to arrest dozens of striking labor
leaders, rounded up more than a thousand members of the Muslim Brotherhood,
the largest opposition group, and tossed seven journalists into prison. The
charges against the journalists range from misquoting Egypt's justice
minister to spreading rumors about the health of Mubarak to defaming his
designated heir, Gamal. The detainees, as usual, complain of torture and
beatings. And persistent rumors of death squads, bolstered by the
"disappearance" of some of the regime's most outspoken critics, have turned
Egypt into a state that has mastered the art of internal and external
extraordinary rendition.
The few lonely Egyptian voices and institutions that dared to speak out
against the mounting repression have been silenced, including the
Association for Human Rights and Legal Aid, which was shut down by the
government last month. The government also recently arrested two political
activists-Mohammed al-Dereini and Ahmed Mohammed Sobh, both members of
Egypt's
tiny Shiite minority-after the men publicized testimonies from prisoners
detailing torture in the Egyptian prison system. Egypt's most prominent
dissident, the sociologist Saad Edin Ibrahim, is in exile, too frightened to
go home and repeat his own brutal experience in an Egyptian prison.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights has confirmed more than 500 cases
of police abuse since 1993, including 167 deaths-three of which took place
this year-that the group "strongly suspects were the result of torture and
mistreatment." There are now 80,000 political prisoners held in Egyptian
prisons. The annual budget for internal security was $1.5 billion in 2006,
more than the entire national budget for health care, and the security
police forces comprise 1.4 million members, nearly four times the number of
the Egyptian army.
The United States has subsidized Egypt's armed forces with over $38 billion
in aid. Egypt receives about $2 billion annually-$1.3 billion in foreign
military financing and about $815 million in economic and support fund
assistance-making it the second largest regular recipient of conventional
U.S. military and economic aid, after Israel.
We have nothing left to say to the Mubarak regime. The torture practiced in
Egypt is the torture we employ for our own ends. The cries that rise up
from these fetid cells in Egypt condemn not only the Mubarak dictatorship
but the moral rot that has beset the American state.
We are losing the war in Iraq. We are an isolated and reviled nation. We
are pitiless to others weaker than ourselves. We have lost sight of our
democratic ideals. Thucydides wrote of Athens' expanding empire and how this
empire led it to become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. The
tyranny Athens imposed on others, it finally imposed on itself. If we do
not confront our hubris and the lies we tell to justify the killing and mask
the destruction carried out in our name in Iraq, if we do not grasp the
moral corrosiveness of empire and occupation, if we continue to allow force
and violence to be our primary form of communication, if we do not remove
from power our flag-waving, cross-bearing versions of the Taliban, the
despotism we empower abroad will become the despotism we soon experience at
home.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson