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A Kenyan Muslim held up a sign during a protest against terrorism-related extraordinary renditions, Nairobi, Kenya, in 2007. Credit Khalil Senosi/Associated Press

MundoAmérica,

In his tweet announcing her selection for promotion to director of the Central Intelligence Agency, President Trump boasted that Gina Haspel was the “first woman so chosen”.

As an Egyptian feminist, I am not celebrating.

Ms. Haspel played a direct role in the C.I.A.’s global kidnap, detention and torture operation known as “extraordinary rendition”. Under the program, which was adopted after the 9/11 attacks, suspected militants who were captured in Afghanistan were sent to other countries, which held them in secret detention and allowed C.I.A. personnel to torture them. The first secret prison was in Thailand, where, as an undercover officer in 2002, Ms.…  Seguir leyendo »

Una pareja en una manifestación en California en 2015 Credit David McNew/Getty Images

MundoAméricaReflexionesSocial, ,

A principios de la década de los 2000, cuando estudiaba la secundaria en Florida, me sometieron a un trauma que tenía como propósito borrar mi existencia como bisexual recién salido del clóset. Mis padres eran misioneros bautistas sureños que creyeron que la práctica peligrosa y desacreditada de la terapia de conversión podría curar mi sexualidad.

Me senté en un diván durante dos años y aguanté sesiones emocionalmente dolorosas con un orientador. Me dijeron que mi congregación rechazaba mi sexualidad, que yo era la abominación de la que habíamos escuchado hablar en la escuela dominical, que yo era la única persona homosexual en el mundo, que era inevitable que contrajera VIH y tuviera sida.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

El Derecho Internacional y los órdenes jurídicos de la mayoría de los Estados condenan hoy la tortura como un grave crimen contra los derechos humanos. Hay una larga historia detrás de ese logro “jurídico” y político. Los espíritus nobles (Bartolomé de Las Casas, Voltaire, Becaria ...) siempre condenaron la tortura como manifestación de extrema barbarie y una de las violaciones más graves de la dignidad de las víctimas, incluso (precisaríamos hoy) si se tratara de prisioneros o de criminales perseguidos de otro modo incluso por Estados democráticos o por instituciones penales creadas ad hoc por estos.

Respecto a la vigencia de la obligación internacional absoluta de Estados Unidos de respetar la prohibición universal de la tortura, no cabe la menor duda.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Lingering Stench of Torture

MundoAmérica,

After President-elect Donald J. Trump insisted during the campaign that “torture works” and promised to bring back waterboarding and “a hell of a lot worse,” it was just a matter of time before the former C.I.A. official Jose Rodriguez and the former Air Force psychologist and C.I.A. contractor James Mitchell resurfaced to defend the indefensible.

Starting in the 1980s, Mr. Mitchell helped run a training program designed to give service members a taste of the harsh treatment they could expect as prisoners of war, including a form of simulated drowning used by the Chinese on American airmen during the Korean War.…  Seguir leyendo »

CIA director John Brennan Photo illustration: DonkeyHotey / Flickr via Creative Commons

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , , ,

Successful intelligence gathering through interrogation and other forms of human interaction by conventional means can be – and more often than not are – very successful. But, even though interrogation by less conventional methods might get glorified in popular culture – in television dramas like Law and Order: Criminal Intent, 24 and The Closer and movies like Zero Dark Thirty – torture and the mistreatment of detainees in the custody of intelligence personnel is, was and shall continue to be unethical and morally wrong. Under US law, torture and mistreatment of detainees is also very illegal.

Even the most junior level intelligence officials know that this is, and has been, the case for decades.…  Seguir leyendo »

Did the Torture Report Give the C.I.A. a Bum Rap

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

In December, when the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its long-awaited report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program, it seemed to confirm what I and many human-rights advocates had argued for a decade: The C.I.A. had started and run a fundamentally abusive and counterproductive torture program. What’s more, the report found that the C.I.A. had lied repeatedly about the program’s efficacy, and that it had neither disrupted terror plots nor saved lives.

The report continues to reverberate. Human-rights groups are calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Bush-era officials who authorized torture. The first C.I.A. officer to publicly discuss the practice of waterboarding, who was later imprisoned for leaking classified information, was recently released and says he was the victim of a politicized prosecution.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

President Barack Obama has made it clear since taking office that no one will be punished for torture.

As I have repeatedly written before, that’s reprehensible. But what about compensating torture victims?

According to the recent report issued by the U.S. Senate Intelligence committee, torture under the Bush administration was more brutal and widespread than previously understood.

According to CIA torturers themselves, many of the victims were as innocent as innocence gets. For example, mistranslations of Arabic names led to the torture of people wrongly identified as anti-American militants.

A former State Department official under George W. Bush, Lawrence Wilkerson, admitted that the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention base was never filled with evil America-haters: “It became apparent to me as early as August 2002, and probably earlier to other State Department personnel who were focused on these issues, that many of the prisoners detained at Guantanamo had been taken into custody without regard to whether they were truly enemy combatants, or in fact whether many of them were enemies at all.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

The Senate Intelligence Committee's "torture report" has reignited national debate on "enhanced" interrogation techniques. At the heart of this debate is the question: Do these methods work to prevent terrorist attacks?

Much of the American public seems to believe they do. Since the time the CIA's program was in force, and even now, national surveys have indicated that a majority of Americans say the use of torture is justified when it is used against suspected terrorists who may know details about future attacks. But is belief in the effectiveness of severe interrogation methods really what motivates support for those methods? Or is there a darker psychological motive?…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , ,

Estados Unidos, hoy, tiene más de dos millones de reclusos. Entre ellos no se contabilizan los 137 que quedan en la prisión de Guantánamo, como ninguno de los que les antecedieron en la misma. Seguramente aquellos presos oficiales no sufrirán las técnicas de tortura que han padecido los denominados enemigos encerrados en una isla de impunidad bajo el Programa de Rendición, Detención e Interrogatorio, creado por George W. Bush, el 17 de septiembre del 2001 y que permitió a la CIA desarrollar métodos como el waterboarding (ahogamiento simulado), walling (golpear contra el muro), humillaciones y violencia sexual, golpes, amenazas de muerte, privación de sueño, “hidratación y alimentación rectal”, entre otras, en forma sistemática, hasta el cierre de ese siniestro programa en el 2009 por orden del presidente Obama, quien, sin embargo, no exigió al fiscal general que abriera ninguna investigación pero sí pidió “comprensión” para los torturadores.…  Seguir leyendo »

No excuse for tolerating torture

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

I am tolerant. I have Republican friends. When racists speak in my presence, I don’t smash them in the jaw. I try to change their minds. Many of my close friends and relatives believe in God, which is wrong and therefore stupid, yet I don’t consider them stupid — just mistaken. America, I believe, must create and maintain the space where a multitude of points of view can thrive.

But there are limits. Not every opinion should be tolerated. If you think torture is OK — under any circumstance, for any reason — you are dangerous. If you believe that “they” had torture coming because “they” attacked “us” on 9/11, or because “they” chop off “our” heads, you are psychotic and sociopathic and should not be free to walk the streets, much less sit on juries or vote or drive a car or hold a job that a perfectly sane unemployed person needs.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaMundoOriente Próximo, , ,

Secretary of state John Kerry tried to suppress publication of the CIA torture report, citing fears of a blowback against US targets in the Middle East. But the truth is that the region barely flinched in response to the publication of the 528-page document.

Almost all state-run media in the region ignored the report entirely, keen to play down their complicity in rendition programmes and their own rampant use of torture in domestic prisons. And the public in Arab countries took the revelations simply as confirmation of facts that they had long believed to be true. That the report has prompted such uproar in the US is comic to a region that expects dastardly behaviour from the US.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

The primary international treaty against torture, the Convention against Torture, which the United States ratified in 1994, contains two key requirements. First, it bans torture, without exception, as well as other inhumane treatment. Second, it requires that torturers be prosecuted.

President Obama has been firm in stopping torture. On his second day in office, he ordered an end to the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” — a euphemism for torture — and the closure of the secret CIA detention centers where torture was carried out.

But Obama has utterly failed in the second requirement. He has flatly refused to investigate the torture, let alone prosecute those responsible.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

While others will sharply disagree, I believe John Brennan deserves a national salute for his press conference yesterday about the CIA.

At a time when we are tearing ourselves apart over one controversy after another, he provided a model of a calm, adult leader trying to put the country first.

No doubt there will be counterattacks trying to blow holes in his story. Maybe there are some. But we sorely needed someone to come forth with views that are more balanced and impartial than a tragically one-sided report released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

There were half a dozen aspects of the Brennan press conference that were welcome:

For starters, he placed the interrogation program into a context that too many are forgetting.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

I spent this semester teaching creative writing at Lehigh University. I’ve been a soldier, a police officer and an interrogator. So hearing students call me “Professor” and assigning homework was a significant change of pace.

But the course’s title, Writing War, kept me from straying too far from the memories that have haunted me over the last decade. I am grateful to Lehigh for the opportunity to teach the course. The school’s willingness to put a veteran in the classroom is the very thing this country needs to be doing in order to collectively process what the last 13 years of war have wrought.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

Before President George W. Bush left office, a group of conservatives lobbied the White House to grant pardons to the officials who had planned and authorized the United States torture program. My organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, found the proposal repugnant. Along with eight other human rights groups, we sent a letter to Mr. Bush arguing that granting pardons would undermine the rule of law and prevent Americans from learning what had been done in their names.

But with the impending release of the report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I have come to think that President Obama should issue pardons, after all — because it may be the only way to establish, once and for all, that torture is illegal.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

As the world awaited the US Senate report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme under the George W Bush administration, there was very little introspection in Europe. As if European countries had nothing to do with what went on in the hunt for al-Qaida in the years after 9/11. In fact, many of America’s European allies were deeply involved in the CIA programme. And they have managed to stay very quiet about it. Could this change now?

Under President Bush the CIA used a web of European airports and bases for its extraordinary rendition flights, secretly transferring terror suspects across borders for interrogation.…  Seguir leyendo »

Barbed wire fence surrounding a military area is pictured in the forest near Stare Kiejkuty village, close to Szczytno in northeastern Poland, Jan 24, 2014. The facility was allegedly used as a “black site” by the CIA. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

The publication of the long-awaited summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s torture provides a useful moment to consider the lessons learned from this sorry chapter in American history and the steps that might be taken to avoid its recurrence. With the truth now told about this blatantly illegal policy, President Barack Obama has a chance to reverse his misguided refusal to prosecute the officials who authorized the torture, ending the impunity that sets a horrible precedent for future United States presidents and governments worldwide.

There will undoubtedly be much debate about its finding that torture did not “work” — that it produced little if any intelligence of value that was not or could not have been obtained by lawful means.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

After a multi-year odyssey marked by almost nonstop partisan bickering, CIA employees hacking into Senate Intelligence Committee computers, and former Bush administration officials launching a pre-emptive public counterattack against the committee's report, we finally have a summary of the CIA's use of torture.

So what have we learned?

The committee report confirms that six days after the 9/11 attacks, "President George W. Bush signed a covert action Memorandum of Notification (MON) to authorize the director of central intelligence (DCI) to 'undertake operations designed to capture and detain persons who pose a continuing, serious threat of violence or death to U.S. persons and interest or who are planning terrorist activities.'"…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

There has been a suggestion in recent days that now is not a good time to release a review prepared by the Senate Intelligence Committee of the CIA's detention and interrogation program. But is there ever a good time to admit our country tortured people?

In the wake of 9/11, we were desperate to bring those responsible for the brutal attacks to justice. But even that urgency did not justify torture. The United States must be held to a higher standard than our enemies, yet some of our actions did not clear that bar. It is time to publicly examine how that happened.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , ,

The Senate Intelligence Committee will soon release key sections of its report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects after 9/11. In remarks on Friday anticipating the report’s release, which he has publicly supported, President Obama acknowledged that “we tortured some folks.”

In fact, from leaks to the press and the statements of those familiar with the report, we know the committee has determined that C.I.A. torture was more widespread and brutal than Americans were led to believe. The committee reportedly has also found that the C.I.A. misled Bush administration officials and Congress about the extent and nature of the torture, and that torture was ineffective for intelligence gathering.…  Seguir leyendo »