#torture program

New Post has been published on http://conspiracytalk.info/cia-psychologists-can-sued-creating-torture-program-judge-says/981424/

CIA PSYCHOLOGISTS CAN BE SUED FOR CREATING TORTURE PROGRAM, JUDGE SAYS

SOURCE: SPUTNIK

Two CIA psychologists who devised a program of enhanced interrogation that included waterboarding and rectal feeding in secret prisons are getting sued for the first time in the US.

A civil lawsuit alleges that two CIA contract psychologists devised torture methods against three former detainees at secret prisons in the early 2000s. The alleged victims are now claiming damages.In a ruling from the bench at federal district court in Spokane, Washington, Senior Judge Justin L. Quackenbush said he would deny a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

Both men are accused of creating programs that executed waterboarding, sleep deprivation, confinement in small boxes, rectal feeding and beatings against detainees, according to a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee Report.

The plaintiffs include Mohammed Ahmed Ben Soud, a Libyan who was arrested in Pakistan in April 2013. He allegedly was held in a “secret” Afghan prison where he was tortured. He “continues to suffer deep psychological harm,” the suit reads.

Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a Tanzanian, was allegedly sodomized and chained to a wall for 14 months in solitary confinement at a secret Afghan prison called the “salt pit.” He now lives in Zanzibar, Tanzania.

The other plaintiffs are the family of Gul Rahman, an Afghan farmer who died of hypothermia, beatings and other abuse after two weeks in CIA custody in November 2002. The CIA later admitted it was a case of mistaken identity.Lawyers for all three plaintiffs want Mitchell and Jessen to pay compensatory damages of more than $75,000, punitive damages and attorneys’ fees.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Dror Ladin, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who argued the plaintiffs’ case in court Friday. “No CIA torture victim has ever taken this step toward accountability. Every previous lawsuit has been shut down before this stage.”

Lawyers for the defendants argue they were not part of the alleged torture.

“They did not make decisions about Plaintiffs’ capture, treatment, confinement conditions, and interrogations; and they did not perform, supervise or control Plaintiffs’ interrogations,” defense attorney Christopher Tompkins wrote in court documents.

Both parties have 30 days to submit documents and gather evidence.

A report by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) marks a significant escalation in the constitutional crisis over the systematic cover-up of the CIA’s widespread torture programs.

According to the Inspector General David Buckley, five CIA officials surreptitiously gained access to the computers used by Senate staff investigators while compiling a still-classified 6,300-page report on CIA torture. Two CIA attorneys and three CIA information technology employees created fake accounts in order to follow the movements of Senate staff as they worked.

The OIG weakly asserts that the employees were “acting in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding” brokered between the CIA and the Senate.

What is involved is not a breach of a “common understanding,” but a breach of laws and the Constitution. Not only did the spying violate the Fourth Amendment’s proscription of unreasonable searches and seizures and laws that prohibit domestic spying by the CIA, it also violated the basic constitutional principle of separation of powers—in this case, a clear intrusion by the executive branch on the investigatory powers of the legislature.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit today under the Freedom of Information Act to compel the CIA to release two reports about its post-9/11 program of rendition, secret detention, and torture of detainees. This illegal program was devised and authorized by officials at the highest levels of government, and five years after it officially ended, the American public still doesn’t have the full story about some of the most devastating rights violations committed in its name.

The first report, by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (“SSCI”), is the most comprehensive review of the CIA’s torture program to date. Led by SSCI Chair Senator Dianne Feinstein, the committee reviewed more than six million pages of CIA documents and other records over the course of three years. At the end of 2012, the SSCI approved its Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, which spans over 6,000 pages and includes approximately 35,000 footnotes. Senator Feinstein, who deserves major credit for initiating and overseeing such a thorough investigation, stated that the report “uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight … [T]he creation of long-term, clandestine ‘black sites’ and the use of so-called ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’ were terrible mistakes.” According to Senator John McCain, the report confirms that the “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners” is “a stain on our country’s conscience.”

In addition to detailing the CIA’s illegal practices, the report reveals that the CIA misled the White House, the Department of Justice, and Congress about the “effectiveness” of waterboarding, wall-slamming, shackling in painful positions, and other methods of torture and abuse. As Senator Ron Wyden has noted, these CIA misstatements were eventually communicated to the public — but the agency has failed to set the record straight. 

The second report, the CIA’s response to the SSCI, presents the agency’s shameless defense of its torture regime and challenges the SSCI’s investigative methods and findings.

Both reports are critical to a full and fair public conversation about the CIA’s torture program, which is why we and other rights groups have urged President Obama to release the SSCI report, and why we’re bringing suit to enforce our FOIA requests. The public deserves to hear the truth: Torture doesn’t work, and more importantly, it’s never acceptable.