Torture
When a government places its own interests over those of its people, it can transform into a Leviathan and institutionalize torture. The latter serves three functions: obtain information, plant false confessions and act as a deterrent.
The United Nations established a set of international instruments to put an end to these practices, including: the “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 1984“ and the Committee Against Torture which monitors its implementation.
Nevertheless, during the Cold War the United States introduced the widespread use of these practices in the Third World, going so far as to create two torture schools, one in Panama (the School of the Americas) and one in Taiwan (Political Warfare Cadres Academy). However, this practice remained illegal and was large outsourced to militias or allied States. By declaring a “Global War on Terrorism,” the Bush administration reinstated the use of torture, first by making it public outside U.S. borders and by legalizing it inside the United States itself.
Applying the North Korean techniques adapted by Professor Albert D. Biderman, the torture practiced at Guantanamo, Bagram and in many other secret CIA and Navy prisons aimed to transform the innocent into guilty by instilling a false confession. That is how the Bush administration manufactured the “evidence” to justify its narrative of the September 11 attacks and its “war on terror.”
The Obama administration has officially prohibited torture. But, in reality, nothing has changed since the number of CIA and Navy prisons outside the United States has doubled.


In 2009, in the Russian Press, Thierry Meyssan accused Professor Martin Seligman of having designed torture techniques which he tested at Guantánamo in his rôle as ex-President of the American Psychological Association . Mr. Seligman then united a cabinet of lawyers to put pressure on Mr. Meyssan and obtain a public retraction, which Mr. Meyssan refused to provide.
Finally, in November 2014, at the end of a long controversy - including the distribution of the English version of the (...)

The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture practices 2001 to the end of 2009 continues to stir up reactions.
Glenn Greenwald (The Intercept) was able to identify the CIA agent, head of the Bin Laden Issue Station (a.k.a. Alec Station), who ran the CIA program . Her name is Alfreda Frances Bikowsky. She is considered both to be the top al-Qaeda expert and to have made mistake after mistake in her crusade against the Islamist organization. Question: How can one be both (...)

The European Court of Human Rights, in a non-final ruling, condemned Poland for failing to fulfill its obligations by allowing the CIA to open a secret prison (code name "Quartz") on its territory.
The Court received the cases of the Palestinian Abu Zubaydah and the Saudi national Al-Nashiri who provided proof of their detention in Poland in 2002 and 2003, and of having been tortured. The proof was based in particular on Senator Dick Marty’s report to the Council of Europe .
The Polish (...)

The Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, on 29 January 2014, of CIA director John Brennan led to heated exchanges with Democratic senators.
The latter called for the Committee to declassify the 6 300-word report from 2012 on the use of torture during the Bush Jr. administration . Voltaire Network has already informed it’s readers about the most shocking aspects highlighted in the report: the use of torture to condition individuals, the generalisation of the practice to over 80 000 (...)

Mr. James Connell, the lawyer of 36-year old Ammar al Baluchi who is detained in Guantanamo, stated that his client has been tortured for years.
Mr. Connell has based this statement on two unclassified medical documents that show signs of apparent torture. However, according to prosecutor Clay Trivett, everything that concerns interrogations is classified as ’’sources and methods’’ of the CIA. Discretion also applies to interrogatios carried out in secret off-shore prisons, located on Navy (...)

The Mecca pilgrimage authorities have signed a contract with Almajal G4S, a subsidiary of the international security giant G4S, in order to ensure the safety of Palestinian pilgrim.
The British-Danish owned subsidiary also supplies material and personnel to Israeli prisons, in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. It is in G4S-managed structures that Palestinian detainees are tortured by the Israeli authorities.
The BDS campaign (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) has asked the Saudi (...)

President Obama gave the order to abduct Abu Anas al-Libi (whose real name is Nazih Abd al-Hamid al-Ruqhay), on October 6th 2013 in Libya. A Delta Force force succeeded without making any victims.
Even supposing that al-Libi were a legitimate target for the US, as claimed by Secretary of State John Kerry, this kidnapping constitutes a violation of international law and of Libyan sovereignty.
In 1995, this jihadist, who had joined Osama Bin Laden in the Sudan, participated in a failed (...)

The Interior Minister of Georgia, Irakli Garibashvili [photo], announced on 17 June 2013, that a weapons cache was discovered in the region of Samegrelo. It also contained drugs, in addition to written documents and videos. Nine people were arrested, including a Ministry of Defence official and two police officers.
On 20 June, the Minister of the Interior organized a private screening of the captured videos for the press. Shot two years ago, they show the police raping and torturing (...)

The U.S. authorities have published the list of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison as part of a lawsuit filed by the Miami Herald.
The list includes 166 names, including 46 life prisoners.
Under their own legislation, passed after the attacks of September 11 (Authorization for Use of Military Force Act), the United States claim the right to to detain indefinitely, without charge or trial, any individual they consider an "enemy combatant." In addition, they have legalized the use of (...)

Mr. President, tell us who your C.I.A. Director is and we will tell you who you are! No remark could be more appropriate in view of Barack Obama’s decision to place an apologist for torture and drone assassinations at the helm of the top U.S. intelligence agency. Analyst Nil Nikandrov fills out John O. Brennan’s profile, a man who enjoys the President’s "implicit trust."

Still imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Zoubeida is the main source of Western intelligence on Al Qaeda. He gave under torture the names of other leaders of the terrorist organization, who were arrested in turn and provided the information now in the hands of the U.S. authorities. In short, he is the main source of what the latter supposedly know about al-Qaida. Problem: it is now recognized that Abu Zoubeida was never a member of al-Qaeda and that his confessions under torture were made to end his suffering. Most of what the U.S. intelligence claims to know about Al-Qaida is a pure figment of Zoubeida’s fertile imagination. And all of it is wrong.

According to Fox News, on October 26, David Petraeus’ mistress may have leaked classified information relating to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Paula Broadwell revealed that the Consulate annex was the most important CIA base in North Africa and it served as a secret prison. [14]
The neoconservative channel establishes a link between the leak and the forced resignation of the Director General of the CIA, due to this extra-marital affair.
This interpretation of the facts is (...)

A Syrian 22 years confessed on national television to working with armed terrorist groups in Douma, a town in the province of Damascus, and being an accomplice to the abduction, torture during interrogation and murder of women.
In confessions broadcast by the Syrian TV, 22 year-old Sabah Othman said that she is originally from Douma and that she was married at the age of 14 and abandoned by her husband three years later.
She met a man named Ala’a Mahfoud from Harasta on the pretext that (...)

In the race to the primary elections, the seven candidates vying for the Republican nomination have engaged in a neoconservative bidding war on foreign policy issues.
Mitt Romney, second in the polls and considered one of the more moderate candidates, called for "covert actions within Syriam, to get regime change there."
Rick Santorum, former senator from Pennsylvania, considered that Washington was behind the recent explosion of an Iranian missiles deposit and pledged to continue along (...)
