12 May 2010

The horror continues

Via Digby, I learn that the International Committe of the Red Cross confirms that the US is operating the torture prison at Bagram which the US military has been denying. Jeff Kaye has horrifying details.

Prisoners held at Tor, according to investigations by BBC, are tossed into cold concrete cells, where the light is kept on 24 hours. Noise machines fill their cells with constant sound, and prisoners are sleep deprived as a matter of policy, with each cell monitored by a camera, so the authorities will know when someone is falling asleep and come to wake them.

Prisoners are beaten and abused. According to BBC’s article last month, one prisoner was “made to dance to music by American soldiers every time he wanted to use the toilet.”

As Auschwitz was a murder factory, that's an insanity factory. Even the US military admits that most of the people held there are not terrorists. And do I even need to tell you that no one there has stood trial?

We need to let those people free, make apologies and recompense to them and their loved ones, raze the prison to the ground, salt the earth where it once stood, and send everyone involved to the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity, up to and including the President of the United States if he knew this was happening.

President Obama, I'm looking at you. I voted for you, and reason #1 was that I trusted you to do the right thing about this. I've been trying to believe that you've been slow to correct Guantánamo because institutional inertia has been stopping you. Fool me twice, and I won't get fooled again.

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