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A ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of foreign terrorism suspects is likely to be included mostly, if not entirely, in a final defense bill, a key House Republican said Tuesday. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, who is leading negotiations to iron out differences between the House and Senate versions of the measure, said if the ban or another provision limiting interrogation techniques U.S. troops can use are changed, they won't be drastically watered down. The White House opposes the provisions and has threatened to veto any bill containing them. But President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, has...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Prisoners on hunger strike at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay say troops force-fed them with dirty feeding tubes that have been violently inserted and withdrawn as punishment, according to declassified notes released Wednesday by defense attorneys. The repeated removal and insertion of the tubes has caused striking prisoners to vomit blood and to experience intense pain that they have equated with torture, the lawyers reported to a federal judge after visiting their clients at the U.S. base in eastern Cuba. Prisoners said they were taunted by troops who said the treatment was intended to...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account. A draft manuscript obtained by The Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon (news - web sites) review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk. It's the most revealing account...

LONDON (AP) - The American general formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib prison says there are signs Israelis were involved in interrogating Iraqi detainees at another facility. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was suspended in May over allegations of prisoner abuse, said she met a man who told her he was Israeli during a visit to a Baghdad intelligence center with a senior coalition general. "I saw an individual there that I hadn't had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there, was he an interpreter - he was clearly from the Middle East,"...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Two Yemeni men say they were held in solitary confinement in secret, underground U.S. detention facilities in an unknown country and interrogated by masked men for more than 18 months without being charged or allowed any contact with the outside world, Amnesty International charged Wednesday. Amnesty and human rights lawyers argued that the report added to long-standing claims that the United States has held "secret detainees" in its war on terror. "We fear that what we have heard from these two men is just one small part of the much broader picture of U.S....

DENVER (AP) - A National Guardsman testifying at a hearing for U.S. soldiers accused of killing an Iraq general said he saw classified U.S. personnel beat prisoners with a sledgehammer handle and mock the general's death, according to a transcript. The transcript, obtained by The Denver Post, includes an exchange during the hearing that suggests the CIA was involved. Sgt. 1st Class Gerold Pratt of the Utah National Guard said he saw unidentified U.S. personnel use the 15-inch wooden handle to hit prisoners. "They'd ask you a question, and if they didn't like it, they'd hit you," he said, according...

Home Project Activities Writing & Interviews Press Coverage Links Contact Contribute For Immediate ReleaseSeptember 22, 2004 11 FORMER AND CURRENT US AND UK GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES ISSUE LETTERSUPPORTING DANISH WHISTLEBLOWER FRANK GREVIL Frank Grevil’s press contact is: Tom Clark tclark@tiscali.dkhome (+45) 4444 1343work (+45) 4452 6447mobile (+45) 4095 0574 or (+45) 6062 1763 OPEN LETTER TO THE DANISH GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC: We, the undersigned citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom, have recently come to learn of the criminal proceedings against our Danish fellow truth-teller, Mr. Frank Grevil. As his case has been presented to us, Mr. Grevil...

US faces prison ship allegations The United Nations says it has learned of serious allegations that the US is secretly detaining terrorism suspects, notably on American military ships. The special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak said the accusations were rumours at this stage, but urged the US to co-operate in an investigation. He said the UN wants lists of the places of detention and those held. The comments come five days after the UN accused the US of stalling on their requests to visit Guantanamo Bay. Investigators have been asking to visit the jail in Cuba to carry out checks...

The UN has learned of "very, very serious" allegations that the United States is secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships, the UN's special rapporteur on terrorism said. While the accusations were rumours, rapporteur Manfred Nowak said the situation was sufficiently serious to merit an official inquiry. "There are very, very serious accusations that the United States is maintaining secret camps, notably on ships," the Austrian UN official told AFP, adding that the vessels were believed to be in the Indian Ocean region. "They are only rumours, but they appear sufficiently well-based to...

An editorial in Saturday's NYT denounces as "cynical" Karl Rove's observation that (in the NYT's paraphrase): "conservatives and liberals had different reactions to 9/11." It continues: "Let's be clear: Americans of every political stripe were united in their outrage and grief, united in their determination to punish those who plotted the mass murder and united behind the war in Afghanistan, which was an assault on terrorists." Oh if only that were true. But the NYT itself is daily crammed with evidence that Rove is right and that the NYT editorialists are wrong. Take for example this story, which appeared on...

Germany's federal prosecutors have been asked to launch investigative proceedings against members of the U.S. cabinet. A U.S. human rights group filed war crime charges against U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials and military officers early this week, saying they were responsible for the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Even though both the plaintiffs and the suspects are American, the complaint was filed on Tuesday with federal prosecutors at the Bundesgerichtshof in Karlsruhe. The human rights organization, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), led by its president Michael Ratter, said...

The Man Behind the Attack on Guantanamo By Rocco DiPippo FrontPageMagazine.com | June 16, 2005 The general leading the force to free the captive enemy from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, and inflict a humiliating defeat on the United States is so-called “civil rights” and “Constitutional” attorney Michael Ratner. It was Ratner who led the way in recruiting elite lawyers to defend the enemy combatants being interrogated at Gitmo. But Ratner is a long-time leader of two pro-Communist and anti-American organizations who have for decades have lent aid and comfort to America's enemies in the Cold War and...

AN AUSTRALIAN engineer rescued from militant kidnappers in Baghdad had to listen as his captors murdered two Iraqi hostages next to him, he said yesterday.Douglas Wood, 64, said his kidnappers also killed two of his Iraqi assistants and dumped their bodies at a Baghdad garbage tip. "I feel absolutely rotten," Mr Wood said. "I was the ultimate cause of it." He said he planned to send money to the families of the dead men. Mr Wood was freed earlier this month after 47 days in captivity in a joint operation involving Iraqi and US troops in a dangerous Sunni neighbourhood...

Italy probes possible CIA role in abduction By John Crewdson (Chicago) Tribune senior correspondent An Italian prosecutor investigating the apparent kidnapping of a suspected Islamic militant in the streets of Milan served military authorities this week with a demand for records of flights into and out of a joint U.S.-Italian air base in northern Italy. Italian newspapers have reported that the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, is investigating the possible role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the disappearance of Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, better known as Abu Omar, a popular figure in Milan's Islamic community who vanished Feb. 17, 2003....

Military doctors at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have aided interrogators in conducting and refining coercive interrogations of detainees, including providing advice on how to increase stress levels and exploit fears, according to new, detailed accounts given by former interrogators. The accounts, in interviews with The New York Times, come as mental health professionals are debating whether the doctors - psychiatrists and psychologists at the prison camp - have violated professional ethics codes. The Pentagon and mental health professionals have been examining the ethical issues involved. The former interrogators said the military doctors' role was to advise them and their fellow interrogators...

WITNESSES have reportedly told an Australian journalist how new Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi shot and killed up to six prisoners just days before his government took control of the country. A newspaper report today said the two witnesses saw Dr Allawi pull a pistol and execute suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station. Dr Allawi's office has denied the claims and branded them "outrageous". The witnesses said the handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners were lined up against a wall in a courtyard next to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre. They say...

THE editor of Melbourne's The Age newspaper has defended Australia's Journalist of the Year, Paul McGeough, in the wake of revelations that he may have erred in two significant reports he filed from Iraq. McGeough claimed in an article published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that former Iraqi interim leader Iyad Allawi shot dead as many as six prisoners in June last year. But the story was discredited by a report yesterday that Iraqi officials and US special forces bodyguards assigned to Allawi had passed lie detector tests in denying the murder allegations. "My view is that...

KARABILA, Iraq (CNN) -- The joint U.S.-Iraqi Operation Spear continued Saturday as Marines, sailors and Iraqi security forces fought insurgents in Karabila, near the Syrian border. The most intense fighting was concentrated in the center of town, where enemy fighters were holed up in a bunker complex. Marines also found four people who appeared to have been taken captive and beaten. Jane Arraf, CNN's senior Baghdad correspondent, is embedded with U.S. troops taking part in the mission. She spoke with CNN anchor Betty Nguyen by phone during the pitched battle. ARRAF: What I see in front of me is absolutely...

Seymour M. Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter now writing for The New Yorker magazine, was asked Tuesday at the University of Michigan why Sen. John Kerry isn't easily leading the presidential race over George W. Bush when the war in Iraq is going so badly. "I think one thing you have to face up to is the fact there are roughly 70 million people in America who do not believe in evolution - and those are Bush supporters," said Hersh, who is up front about his support for Kerry. Hersh's observations about the presidential campaign, the war in Iraq...

Inquiry finds Koran 'mishandling' More than 500 detainees are held at Guantanamo The US military says it has identified five incidents in which the Koran was mishandled by American personnel at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.But the jail commander said they had found no credible evidence that the book had been flushed down a toilet. The denial follows similar allegations against US guards in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday, in which an FBI agent quoted an inmate. Newsweek also made the claim, which the magazine was forced to retract. The Newsweek report sparked protests across the Muslim...