Last Straws gone III: U.S. admits torture for the first time

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US acknowledges torture at Guantanamo and Iraq, Afghanistan: UN source

Fri Jun 24, 3:50 PM ET

Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.

The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity.

The US mission to the UN institutions in Geneva was unavailable for comment on the report late Friday..

"They are no longer trying to duck this, and have respected their obligation to inform the UN," the Committee member told AFP, adding that the US described the incidents as "isolated acts" carried out by low-ranking members of the military who were being punished.

"They will have to explain themselves" to the committee, the member said. "Nothing should be kept in the dark."

UN sources said it was the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.

The Committee, which monitors respect for the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, is gathering information from the US ahead of hearings in May 2006.

Signatories of the convention are expected to submit to scrutiny of their implementation of the 1984 convention and to provide information to the Committee.

The document from Washington will not be formally made public until the hearings.

"They haven't avoided anything in their answers, whether concerning prisoners in Iraq, in Afghanistan or Guantanamo, and other accusations of mistreatment and of torture," the Committee member said.

"They said it was a question of isolated cases, that there was nothing systematic and that the guilty were in the process of being punished."

The US report said that those involved were low-ranking members of the military and that their acts were not approved by their superiors, the member added.

The US has faced criticism from UN human rights experts and international groups for mistreatment of detainees -- some of whom died in custody -- in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly during last year's prisoner abuse scandal surrounding the Abu Ghraib facility there.

Scores of US military personnel have been investigated, and several tried and convicted, for abuse of people detained during the US-led campaign against Islamic terrorist groups.

At the Guantanamo Bay naval base, a US toehold in Cuba where around 520 suspects of some 40 nationalities are held, allegations of torture have combined with other claims of human rights breaches.

The US has faced widespread criticism for keeping the Guantanamo detainees in a "legal black hole," notably for its refusal to grant them prisoner of war status and allegedly sluggish moves to charge or try them.

Washington's report to the Committee reaffirms the US position that the Guantanamo detainees are classed as "enemy combatants," and therefore do not benefit from the POW status set out in the Geneva Conventions, the Committee member said.

Four UN human rights experts on Thursday slammed the United States for stalling on a request to allow visits to terrorism suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, and said they planned to carry out an indirect probe of conditions there.

 

Its also remarkable that there are no apologists anymore who are trying to turn torture practice of the US into piddly abuses of rare occurance.

And no, I am not too gleeful here. This must be a bitter lesson for those who made their nation's deeds out as something better than what many others saw in it. One wonders who they were kidding though.

I guess the US will now hand out bits of what happens in their prisons one at a time to stay ahead of organisations such as AI. After all thats preferable to looking like someone who wants to keep things under the blanket.
What a sickening affair. Almost admireable for its corrupt plotting.

 

Yeah, we'll be, drip by drip, provided with fresh material till 'Last Straws ... XXIV' by the Bush administration, that much for shure.

What I find almost worse is that they still instist in that bogus 'enemy combattant' bull, and basically say: "Yes we did torture, that was sorta silly, but hey: These guys had no rights anyway!"

 

I for one am glad to see this turn of events.I supported the war on the basis of weapons of mass destruction and have been bitterly dissapointed about how the US has handled just about everything since.
Things like this just feed more fuel to the people that would work against us and I hope the whole truth will come out,but I think it will be a long road.
At least there is some hope that we are finaly saying yes we have done some things wrong and are trying to correct them.
I will be curiouse to see how the Rush Limbaughs and other consertive talking heads try to spin this on monday though.
Maybe there is some small hope that we can get back on track and clean up this mess we have made.

 

I thoought that by Isolated Incidents, theyu meant the cases where the soldiers were not bright enough to keep their damned mouths shut and were exposed. The widespread bit is the stuff they successfully keep under wraps.

 

So much for the liberal media myth.Not so much as one news report on any of the Sunday news shows I watch,nothing on TV today and no mention of this anywhere that I could find.
They did however show a bunch of reporters going to Quantanimo Bay and reporting what good conditions the worst of the worst had at the prison.Go Figure?

 

I'm always amused whenever someone mentions a liberal media in the US... Aside from a few blogs, I can't say the US media with which i have contact over the Web or cable are remarkably liberal whenever their government and its exploits are concerned.

That aside, it is insulting to remember how AI was denigrated only several days ago.