Protest over Assange at Wandsworth, Attacks on Wikileaks, as New Revelations Emerge

Journalist John Pilger has written a letter to the UK Guardian, signed by a number of others as well, protesting the arrest, incarceration and international campaign of suppression against Julian Assange and Wikileaks. This comes as Mr. Assange remains imprisoned at London's Wandsworth prison, held without bail under dubious sexual assault charges from Sweden.

Meanwhile, new leaks from the State Department cache of cables continue to be released and analyzed. Most amazing recently: how Shell Oil has "inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to politicians' every move in the oil-rich Niger Delta." This is an incredible example of how modern imperialism operates. On the other hand, information from the cables have to be analyzed carefully. Andy Worthingon is looking at how the cables reflect upon the case Aafia Siddiqui, and explains that diplomatic communications are not always as straight-forward as one would think.

As comic-terror relief from all this, we have U.S. politicians, like Dianne Feinstein, calling for Assange to be charged with violations of the Espionage Act, a crazy law born out of fear of Reds and Anarchists right after the Russian Revolution (and with the U.S. entering the senseless slaughter of World War I). Unfortunately, Feinstein and others aren't joking. This kind of demagoguery is a serious attack on press freedoms, endangering us all. We are living in very dangerous times.

Kevin Zeese of Voters for Peace writes:

As attorney and writer Scott Horton wrote in “WikiLeaks: The National-Security State Strikes Back,” a highly classified Army Counterintelligence Center 32-page memorandum said that the threat presented by WikiLeaks can only be eliminated by striking WikiLeaks not only in cyber attacks, but against the individuals, particularly Julian Assange, who were critical to the operation of WikiLeaks.

A prosecution of Assange, if the U.S. terror war courts allow the case to come to trial, could be the John Peter Zenger case of the digital age. It will define government transparency and free speech for the initial decades of the 21st Century and therefore is of great import to all Americans and, in particular, to the media.

Mr. Pilger's letter:

We protest at the attacks on Wikileaks and, in particular, on Julian Assange (Report, 9 December) The leaks have assisted democracy in revealing the real views of our governments over a range of issues which have been kept secret and are now irreversibly in the public domain. All we knew about the mass killing, torture and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan has been confirmed. The world's leaders can no longer hide the truth by simply lying to the public. The lies have been exposed. The actions of major corporations such as Amazon, the Swiss banks and the credit card companies in hindering Wikileaks, are shameful, bowing to US government pressure. The US government and its allies, and their friends in the media, have built up a campaign against Assange which now sees him in prison facing extradition on dubious charges, with the presumed eventual aim of ensuring his extradition to the US. We demand his immediate release, the dropping of all charges, and an end to the censorship of Wikileaks.

John Pilger, Lindsey German Stop the War Coalition, Salma Yaqoob, Craig Murray, Alexei Sayle, Mark Thomas, Caryl Churchill, AL Kennedy, Celia Mitchell, Ben Griffin (former soldier), Terry Jones, Sami Ramadani, Roger Lloyd Pack, David Gentleman, Miriam Margolyes, Andy Delatour, Katharine Hamnett, Iain Banks

Federal Judge Rules Against Obama's Ban on Habeas at Bagram

Charlie Savage at The New York Times is reporting that a federal judge at the D.C. Federal District Court has ruled that some prisoners at Bagram prison in Afghanistan "have a right to challenge their imprisonment, dealing a blow to government efforts to detain terrorism suspects for extended periods without court oversight." (H/T Moon of Alabama)

The ruling only applies to prisoners captured outside Afghanistan, but it deals a blow to the Obama administration's intent to keep Bagram as a site for detention for "terrorism suspects" caught outside Iraq or Afghanistan. As befits a regular gulag-style prison, Obama's administration, like his predecessor, refuses to give an account of who among the presumed many hundreds is imprisoned there. They claim that the ruling will only affect about a dozen prisoners, but how can they be believed?

As the NYT puts it (link added):

The administration had sought to preserve Bagram as a haven where it could detain terrorism suspects beyond the reach of American courts, telling Judge Bates in February that it agreed with the Bush administration’s view that courts had no jurisdiction over detainees there.

Judge Bates, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001, was not persuaded. He said transferring captured terrorism suspects to the prison inside Afghanistan and claiming they were beyond the jurisdiction of American courts “resurrects the same specter of limitless executive power the Supreme Court sought to guard against” in its 2008 ruling that Guantánamo prisoners have a right to habeas corpus.

The three prisoners, who, pending the probable government appeal of the decision, won their right to petition a civilian court for their release via the right of habeas corpus, have been locked up in the "spartan" Bagram prison for over six years without a trial. All were captured or apprehended outside Afghanistan and then rendered to Bagram, from which reports of torture and prisoner deaths have emanated for years now.

Bagram prison was also identified as the site where ghost prisoner Aafia Siddiqui was held.

Judge Bates, applying the six-part test the Supreme Court described in its Boumediene ruling last year, called his ruling "narrow." A former Bush administration associate counsel said the decision "gravely undermined" the U.S. in its ability to detain "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror."

But I think the defendants' attorneys said it best:

Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network, which is representing the four Bagram detainees, praised Judge Bates’s decision as “a very good day for the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Ms. Foster said that the Bagram ruling meant that changes to the Bush detention policies would go beyond merely closing Guantánamo and extend “to any place where the United States seeks to hold individuals in a legal black hole.”

No Prosecutions, No Accountability: Another Day in Torture USA

Sometimes I am truly overwhelmed with both gratitude and awe at the amount of important work being done on the ongoing torture scandal by journalists, bloggers, attorneys, psychologists, doctors, and just plain decent people.

I wanted to highlight a few that seem specially extraordinary, or of current interest. At the close, we'll look more closely at where the fight for prosecutions stands today. In this posting, we'll look at a number of articles, including one that highlights the role of psychologists in planning torture, and one that compares the role of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons with the practice at Guanatanamo.

Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse is a Daily Kos regular blogger, who just finished a second installment of the DK Sunday Torture News Roundup (first installment is here). PDNC highlighted the ongoing case of Aafia Siddiqui. Siddiqui was likely a U.S. "ghost prisoner" of the CIA, and is now being held in a Texas prison, where her sanity and competency to stand trial is being determined. You must read the entire piece, for its cumulative impact, which is powerful.

Psychologists and the Use of Torture

Psychologist and activist Stephen Soldz has been on fire of late. He has published a book chapter, Closing Eyes to Atrocities: U.S. Psychologists, Detainee Interrogations, and the Response of the American Psychological Association, which is part of a new book published by Harvard University Press: Interrogations, Forced Feedings, and the Role of Health Professionals: New Perspectives on International Human Rights, Humanitarian Law, and Ethics (Harvard Law School Human Rights Program Practice Series) edited by Ryan Goodman and Mindy Jane Roseman.

Soldz has also covered the recent revelations in the Washington Post regarding the torture interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. From Stephen's article:

Though the Post doesn’t say this, similar claims were reported in July 2007 by Vanity Fair reporter Katherine Eban in her account of the role psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen played in designing, conducting, and training for the CIA’s torture program. Eban added the detail that the pre-torture information was obtained primarily by FBI [rather than CIA] agents....

It appears that these psychologists based their torture program on the "learned helplessness" theories of former American Psychological Association President Martin Seligman. Seligman lectured to a 2002 CIA-organized meeting at which Mitchell and Jessen were present. [See Valtin on this conference] While Seligman claims to be ignorant of any connection between the meeting and CIA torture policy, afterwards Mitchell and Jessen were citing Seligman's ideas as inspiration for their work. Mayer has pointed out that Seligman must have known Mitchell and Jessen as he has recently admitted that they were in the audience for this talk.

We might also add, as the Defense Department Inspector General and the Senate Armed Services Committee reported, that it was largely psychologists that designed the abusive interrogation techniques for the military that were implemented at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After the Zubaida fiasco, the CIA turned to help from the American Psychological Association [APA]. As I recently reported, they organized in July 2003 a joint APA-CIA-Rand conference on the Science of Deception, to which CIA torture psychologists Mitchell and Jessen were invited. At this conference they discussed, among other things:

What pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?.... What are sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors? How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?

The APA leadership has never come clean regarding their participation in this conference and why the CIA’s top torture consultants were invited. They have never revealed what these torture planners told the conference or what information they were provided by the assembled psychologists. Rather, the APA, when asked about these torture psychologists, simply repeats, as if a mantra, that they are not APA members and are not subject to APA ethics sanctions, as if that clears the APA. Until the APA makes all records of the conference publicly and speaks in depth of what went on there, we can only continue to suspect that they have much to hide.

I should note that the American Psychological Association passed a resolution, initiated by a member referendum, to ban psychologist participation at national security sites that practice torture. However, as impressive as that sounds, the APA's new policy is advisory only, and it's unclear how exactly it will be determined what sites don't fit APA's policy. Meanwhile, so far as we know, psychologists still staff the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and various undisclosed Special Forces sites.

The APA is also still studying, five years after it was asked to do so, a possible revision of its Ethics Code, which still allows any psychologist the "right" to disregard their own ethical code and follow orders of the organization to which they belong (Standard 1.02). The code, revised in 2002, after 9/11, has been criticized by a number of professionals and other ethicists, who liken it to the Nazi plea that one was "only following orders."

If psychologists' ethical responsibilities conflict with law, regulations, or other governing legal authority, psychologists make known their commitment to the Ethics Code and take steps to resolve the conflict. If the conflict is unresolvable via such means, psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law, regulations, or other governing legal authority.

When public comment was solicited, military psychologists were quick to jump to the defense of 1.02. One psychologist, known to be a former member of a BSCT team, wrote:

Thanks for the opportunity to comment on Standard 1.02 and to review the abundant materials accompanying the request for comment.... I am not in favor of changing the current standard. I base my opinion on a careful review of these materials, my own experience as a practicing psychologist for almost 30 years (in private, public, and military settings), and my service on a state psychological association ethics committee. I see no evidence that the current situation meets the substantive criteria established by the Ethics Committee (1995, 1997) to warrant change to the Ethics Code outside the standard revision process.... the proposed change would create an impermissibly vague ethical standard that would require psychologists in certain circumstances to violate law, and that an ambiguous standard would have negative consequences for individual psychologists, the association, and the general public.

Torture, Here and Abroad

Meanwhile, over at FDL, bmaz has a great discussion going about Cheney Lies, Obstruction Of Justice & Torture Tape Destruction, taking off on the same Washington Post article that Stephen Soldz was commenting on above:

It has been my belief from the outset that the reason the "torture tapes" were destroyed was not simply because they depicted the brutal torture of detainee subjects but, just as importantly, if not more so, they demonstrated there was no credible/usable information produced as a result of that torture. Warrick and Finn confirm this. Even worse, they confirm what little good information the Bushies did extract from abu-Zubaydah was obtained through traditional interrogation prior to the onset of the torture program....

The Bushies made the conscious and criminal decision to go full tilt torture having direct reason to know both that abu-Zubaydah was cooperating through traditional interrogation and he was of very marginal use as an information source to start with.

I'd also like to point out a very interesting article in the recent New Yorker. Enitled "Hellhole" and written by Atul Gawande, the article discusses the decades long controversy over the use of solitary confinement in U.S. supermax prisons. It describes the terrible psychological consequences of being placed in isolation, without contact with other human beings, for months or even years on end.

EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement. In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury....

Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, received rare permission to study a hundred randomly selected inmates at California’s Pelican Bay supermax, and noted a number of phenomena. First, after months or years of complete isolation, many prisoners “begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind—to organize their own lives around activity and purpose,” he writes. “Chronic apathy, lethargy, depression, and despair often result. . . . In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving,” becoming essentially catatonic.

Second, almost ninety per cent of these prisoners had difficulties with “irrational anger,” compared with just three per cent of prisoners in the general population. Haney attributed this to the extreme restriction, the totality of control, and the extended absence of any opportunity for happiness or joy.

Gawande discussed some of the early research on the effects of isolation by former American Psychological Association president Harry Harlow.

[Harlow] happened upon the findings in the mid-fifties, when he decided to save money for his primate-research laboratory by breeding his own lab monkeys instead of importing them from India. Because he didn’t know how to raise infant monkeys, he cared for them the way hospitals of the era cared for human infants—in nurseries, with plenty of food, warm blankets, some toys, and in isolation from other infants to prevent the spread of infection. The monkeys grew up sturdy, disease-free, and larger than those from the wild. Yet they were also profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves.

An associate had brought the Gawande article to my attention, and thought it deserved a letter to the editor by myself, and I agreed. What follows is the text of my letter to the New Yorker. I can't know if it will be published. I hope it will be.

Dear Editor,

As someone who only two years ago presented a paper on sensory deprivation to the yearly convention of the American Psychological Association, I was both interested in and touched by Atul Gawande's article (March 30, 2009) on the effects of isolation and solitary confinement on adult human beings. While in many ways a splendid article, Mr. Gawande's sources are incorrect in finding Harry Harlow's monkey isolation experiments to have been the serendipitous result of unintended consequences.

In fact, Harlow's research was connected to earlier work done by Rene Spitz, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingame, and John Bowlby, on the effects of separation and isolation upon children. He was also doing government research on the effects of isolation, as it related to "brainwashing". With his colleagues, psychologist I.E. Farber, and psychiatrist Louis J. West, Harlow published "Brainwashing, Conditioning, and DDD (Debility, Dependency, and Dread)" in the December 1957 issue of Sociometry. The article was singled out in the CIA's KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual in the early 1960s as providing a blueprint for a modern type of coercive interrogation, i.e., torture.

The use of isolation at Guantanamo, as pointed out by Mr. Gawande, is an integral part of the detention process there. Its existence is in part derivative from the widespread (and immoral) use of isolation at U.S. Supermax prisons. But it is also connected to the DDD/KUBARK model of intensive interrogation. The Guantanamo Standard Operating Procedures called for initial isolation of prisoners for 30 days or more. The same instruction found its way into the 2006 (and latest) version of the Army Field Manual for interrogations, which has an appendix that also allows for use of sleep deprivation, and modified forms of sensory deprivation. The AFM also calls for manipulation of old fears, and creation of "new" ones, as well as allowing for use of drugs in interrogations. Most recently, Susan Crawford, President Bush's choice for Convening Authority at Guantanamo, told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post that the use of these techniques, and some others, on the prisoner Mohammad Al-Qahtani amounted to "torture." Following this revelation, the Center for Constitutional Rights called for President Obama to reject the offending portions of the Army Field Manual.

Harry Harlow's work on isolation and sensory deprivation (the two are closely related) is a key instance of the uneasy alliance between the military and intelligence agencies with the academic world of the behavioral and medical sciences. As Mary Shelley foresaw two hundred years ago, the scientific understanding of human nature could lead to both great benefits and horrific evils. Harlow's association with work on torture interrogations was, sadly, one of the bleakest chapters in American psychology.

Another of my colleagues reminds me that the Gottfried bill, now in the New York State legislature targets isolation abuse and domestic prison abuses as well as prohibiting all NY State health care professionals from involvement in interrogations, domestic or military. See also this article on the bill by Stephen Soldz.

Whither Prosecutions?

Finally, to end on a somber note (if being more somber is even possible at this point), journalist Jason Leopold is reporting today that Congressional calls for prosecution of Bush administration officials for torture are basically dead on arrival (emphases added):

Last June, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and 55 other congressional Democrats signed a letter to then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey demanding a special prosecutor to investigate the growing body of evidence that Bush administration officials had sanctioned torture, which had been documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Not unexpectedly, Mukasey – a staunch defender of Bush’s theories about expansive presidential powers – ignored the letter. Now, however, despite even more evidence of torture and a Democratic administration in place, the calls for a special prosecutor have grown muted.

Aides to several Democratic lawmakers who signed the June 2008 letter told me that the focus has shifted to the economy and that pressure for a special prosecutor to bring criminal charges over the Bush administration’s past actions could become a distraction to that focus.

They added that the most that now can be expected is either a “blue ribbon” investigative panel such as Conyers proposed earlier this year or a similar “truth and reconciliation commission” as advocated by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. Not a single signer of last year’s letter has stepped forward to renew the demand for a special prosecutor to the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder.

When one sees the tremendous bulk of evidence surrounding the use of torture by the United States, and the fantastic amount of ongoing work on the issue by so many outstanding individuals and groups, it's hard to believe that even months after the departure of the unlamented Bush and Cheney, the issue remains alive and yet under the radar for most Americans. Meanwhile, a Spanish judge "has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials…over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay." The potential defendants include Bush-Cheney attorneys John Yoo and David Addington, and former Department of Defense General Counsel, William Haynes.

But there are no charges in Spain as yet. Meanwhile, despite assertions to the contrary, torture remains SOP in Obama's America, whether it be in Supermax prisons, or practiced by "legal" means abroad, courtesy of the Army's own official field manual, or hidden still by the ongoing existence of the extraordinary rendition program that the Obama administration was reluctant to terminate, or hidden effectively by lack of recourse to review by hundreds, if not thousands of U.S. prisoners from Iraq to Afghanistan.

So one continues to educate, cajole, and stimulate the populace to take action against these crimes against humanity, another frustrating day in Torture USA. One can still sign a petition to Holder and Obama calling for prosecutions, just click here.

A Woman Buried Alive: Update on the Siddiqui Case

More details are emerging on the news that purported Al Qaeda prisoner in U.S. custody, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial. Arrested last summer, and wounded after supposedly grabbing for a U.S. soldier's rifle, Siddiqui was given a Forensic Evaluation Report at FMC Carsville Texas Hospital, where she is currently held. This former neuroscientist is now said to be unable to understand the nature of the proceedings before her, and to be openly delusional.

The assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting Siddiqui's case denied in court NGO claims that the former MIT and Brandeis alumna was tortured or abducted by U.S. forces. He maintains there's not "a shred of evidence" Dr. Siddiqui was abused in any way.

He said it was more likely that Siddiqui disappeared in 2003 because she went into hiding after marrying an al-Qaida operative who helped facilitate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and because she knew 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

[Prosecutor David] Raskin spoke at a hearing Wednesday to discuss a psychologist's conclusion that Siddiqui, 36, is mentally unfit for trial. She is being held at a Texas facility after she was brought to the United States in August to face attempted murder and assault charges.

Raskin also denied the U.S. had anything to do with the disappearance of Siddiqui's three children. He claimed a 12-year-old found with Aafia at the time of her arrest in Afghanistan was her oldest son. While this boy is said to be now with his grandmother, the U.S. attorney was vague about the others, saying only the government denied they had been abducted.

We don't know what really happened to Dr. Siddiqui's children. They are missing, thousands of miles away, or dead. Yet according to her attorney, Aafia is under the delusion that two of her children are with her, that she lives with them.

According to the AP report (linked above), Dr. Siddiqui's attorney, Elizabeth Fink, says her client's oldest son is "heavily medicated because he is seriously disturbed and under the care of a psychiatrist." The second oldest is believed dead, and the fate of the youngest child is unknown. (Siddique's attorney, Fink, is a well-known civil liberties lawyer, a protege of William Kunstler. Most recently, she "persuaded a judge to spare Lynne Stewart, the radical attorney convicted of conspiracy for passing messages for [an accused] terrorist client, of a lengthy prison term.")

Meanwhile, Associated Press of Pakistan has reported that the Pakistan embassy in Washington has asked the United States to repatriate Dr. Siddiqui to Pakistan for health and rehabilitation purposes. According to another paper out of Islamabad, the request is considered a long-shot. It's not clear that Siddiqui would be treated well in Pakistani custody either, given the accusations of connection, or even her relation by marriage to Khalid Sheik Mohammad.

That family connection between Siddiqui and KSM raises large question marks concerning her treatment by U.S. forces and the legal system. In the mind-boggling mistreatment of this devoutly religious woman, the U.S. (and perhaps their Pakistani allies) may wish to make a statement to the jihadists that not only will they be hunted down, but any sympathetic family members will be as well. And if innocent children get in the way... well, who knows? Who knows, for instance, what happened to the children of KSM himself, taken from his house when he was arrested and disappeared under CIA/Pakistani custody? Who in America, obsessed otherwise with missing children and Amber Alerts, really cares what happened to these children?

A Ghost Prisoner?

According to a 2007 Human Rights Watch report on "Ghost Prisoners" of the CIA:

The Pakistani authorities have made no secret of the fact that they have handed over several hundred terrorism suspects to the United States, boasting of the arrests and transfers as proof of Pakistan’s cooperation in US counterterrorism efforts. While the majority of these detainees were transferred into US military custody in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo,49 or were transported to third countries via the CIA’s rendition program,50 some substantial number of them disappeared into CIA custody.

Was Siddiqui tortured unto insanity in at Baghram or at a CIA black site prison? Here's an account from earlier this year, prior to Siddiqui's "recapture" (emphasis is added):

Dr. Afia Siddiqui left her mother’s house in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, Sindh province, along with her three children, in a Metro-cab on March 30, 2003 to catch a flight for Rawalpindi, Punjab province, but never reached the airport. The press reports claimed that Dr. Afia had been picked-up by Pakistani intelligence agencies while on her way to the airport and initial reports suggested that she was handed over to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the time of her arrest she was 30 years and the mother of three sons the oldest of which was four and the youngest only one month.

A few days later an American news channel, NBC, reported that Afia had been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of facilitating money transfers for terror networks of Osama Bin Laden. The mother of the victim, Mrs. Ismat (who has since passed away) termed the NBC report absurd. She went on to say that Dr. Afia is a neurological scientist and has been living with her husband, Amjad, in the USA for several years.

On April 1, 2003, a small news item was published in an Urdu daily with reference to a press conference of the then Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat. When questioned with regard to Dr. Afia’s arrest he denied that she had been arrested. This was followed by another Urdu daily article on April 2 regarding another press conference in which the same minister said Dr. Afia was connected to Al Qaeda and that she had not been arrested as she was absconding....

Whilst Dr. Afia’s whereabouts remain unknown, there are reports of a woman called ‘Prisoner 650′ is being detained in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison and that she has been tortured to the point where she has lost her mind. Britain’s Lord Nazeer Ahmed, (of the House of Lords), asked questions in the House about the condition of Prisoner 650 who, according to him is physically tortured and continuously raped by the officers at prison. Lord Nazeer has also submitted that Prisoner 650 has no separate toilet facilities and has to attend to her bathing and movements in full view of the other prisoners.

Also, on July 6, 2008 a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley [link added], called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years. “I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continues to haunt those who heard her,” Ms Ridley said at a press conference.

Is it any coincidence that we hear "Prisoner 650" had "lost her mind" and the fact that a U.S. state forensic examiner has found Dr. Siddiqui unfit mentally to stand trial? Those who know the judicial system know that is very rare to receive that diagnosis and escape, or be denied, trial. You have to be very, very mentally impaired for that to happen. How did this brilliant woman become a hallucinating ghost of a human being? What tortures did she endure? Was she Prisoner 650, raped repeatedly in a CIA prison? Recent events surely strengthen that hypothesis.

It sickens the heart and chills the soul to think that such things can happen, and that the country I live in helped perpetrate such crimes, and that the millions of citizens who inhabit this country would stand by and let this and equally horrific crimes go unanswered in court of justice or in the halls of its representative Congress.

"Murder will out," Shakespeare famously said. The tell-tale heart we read about in Edgar Allen Poe's famous story beats in us all, and the shards of a broken conscience are scattered across the landscape of our society's recovery. There will be no "change," they cry out, not until we have rendered justice and restored law, and taken our victims out of the torture pit, and tried to restore them to life.

"The Curious Case Against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui" (Updated)

I've been meaning to write my own essay on this important story for some time. Being strapped for time these days, I'm thankful to Alexa at Never In Our Names for doing a great job in her rendition of The Curious Case Against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

According to a Wikipedia entry, Dr. Siddiqui was "a MIT and Brandeis alumna, originally from Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. In 2004, she was accused by the United States Government of being "associated with al-Qaeda". In March 2003, Siddiqui went missing along with her three children." Siddiqui essentially disappeared, along with her children -- probably "ghost prisoners" of the CIA -- and then surprisingly turned up under arrest in Ghazni, Afghanistan, although the circumstances of her appearance and arrest are a subject of much dispute.

I continue, quoting from Alexa's story (which should be read in its entirety):

Five years after she vanished from her parents' home in Karachi along with her three children, Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui appeared in a New York court in August, accused of trying to kill U.S. officers in Afghanistan.

Accounts of her arrest and the shooting incident differ.

The Official Story is that Siddiqui, 36, was arrested outside the governor's office in Afghanistan's Ghazni province on July 17 after police searched her handbag and found documents on making explosives, excerpts from the book "Anarchist's Arsenal" and descriptions of New York City landmarks, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The next day when U.S. soldiers and FBI agents went to question the U.S.-trained neuroscientist, she attacked them, the (PDF) Justice Department said in a statement. She fired two shots using the rifle of one of the U.S.. army officers but nobody was hit. The officer then fired back at her, using his service pistol and at least one shot hit her, the Justice Department said.

Afghan police in Ghazni however, told a different story, according to a report filed by Reuters. Afghan police said officers searched Siddiqui after reports of her suspicious behaviour and found maps of Ghazni, including one of the governor's house, and arrested her along with a teenage boy.

U.S. troops requested the woman be handed over to them, but the police refused, a senior Ghazni police officer said.

U.S. soldiers then proceeded to disarm the Afghan police at which point Siddiqui approached the Americans complaining of mistreatment by the police. The U.S. troops, the officer said, "thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and and took her". The boy remained in police custody.

Whatever the circumstance, Siddiqui was then flown to New York where she appeared in a wheelchair, looking frail and, according to her lawyers, in urgent need of medical attention.

The case bears recounting, not just because Siddiqui is a MIT educated mother of three, but because it has roused strong passions, especially in Pakistan.

Since the time of her disappearance in 2003, human rights groups have alleged Siddiqui had been taken into secret custody, one of thousands of Pakistanis who had disappeared in the U.S.-led war on al Qaeda and Taliban. They said they believed she was in Bagram, the U.S. air base in Afghanistan.

U.S. authorities strongly denied Siddiqui was in custody, and according to the New York Times, military and intelligence officials believed her to be in Pakistan until her arrest in Afghanistan in July.

Protests have taken place in Karachi, Lahore and even outside the court in Manhattan where Siddiqui appeared. The anger is directed as much, if not more, at the Pakistani government and its agencies who are accused of handing over Siddiqui to the United States as at Washington itself.

There are online petitions seeking Siddiqui's release and others warning this is only the tip of the iceberg and that there are many others at risk. Comments on blogs reflect anger, shame and helplessness to undo what many see as a terrible wrong done to her.

Count me in on that. Aafia went to MIT and Brandeis, married a Brigham and Women's physician, made her home in Boston, cared for her children, and raised money for charities. Aafia Siddiqui was a normal woman living a normal American life. Until the FBI called her a terrorist.

Everything about the Siddiqui case smells. Alexa quotes defense attorney Elaine Whitfield Sharp, courtesy of Cage Prisoners:

"We do know she was at Bagram for a long time. It was a long time. According to my client she was there for years and she was held in American custody; her treatment was horrendous."

The story continues:

On September 3, Siddiqi, 36, was produced before a federal grand jury in New York, which indicted her for possession of handwritten notes referring to a 'mass casualty attack' at various prominent locations in the US, such as Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge.

However, activists and her family believe that she is being targeted. "An ordinary Pakistani [has been] wrongfully taken to a foreign country without established judicial processes," said Dr Fouzia Siddiqui, Aafia's elder sister. Even the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has insisted that she was picked up by a Pakistani intelligence agency and handed over to the US authorities.

The picture that was released when she was brought to the court in New York showed a woman who seemed to have experienced years of torture - a broken and badly fixed nose, made up teeth, and crumbled lips. The HRCP described her as a person "almost as if on the deathbed". Gaunt, wounded, she was unable to even walk by herself....

... Aafia has been suffering and in pain in US prison for more than three months now. There are fears that she is now being brainwashed in order to render her incapable of giving evidence against any atrocities that might have been committed against her....

Two children of the victim are still missing. If they are still alive then it is possible that they are being used as hostages to pressure her. Allegations of her illegal detention, rape, etc, and the abduction of her children, are going unaddressed. Can she get justice from the US legal system?

That question will arise only after a case is brought up to seek justice for her.

The case of Aafia Siddiqui is especially heart-rending and infuriating. Nothing speaks to the inherent racism of the U.S. treatment of people from the Middle East and East Asia than the brutal indifference accompanying the disappearance of this mother's children, lost in U.S. custody, and likely held hostage. Where is the outrage in the U.S. press, who cried crocodile tears not so long ago about the way Michael Jackson held his child out a window to an admiring throng? Whose T.V. sets are filled with stories about dangers to "our" children, with "Amber Alerts", and fake concern about children and drugs? Siddiqui and her children are invisible to the Americans.

I thank Alexa at Never In Our Names for keeping hope for Dr. Siddiqui alive, and shining a bright light of anger and indignation into the darkest shadows of the U.S. "war on terror."

UPDATE: Not long after posting this article, ABC News reported that a mental health examination of Dr. Siddiqui in conjunction with her trial in New York federal court found the doctor to be mentally unfit to stand trial.

According to a Nov. 6, 2008, confidential forensic examination from a federal medical center in Carswell, Texas, mental health professionals have concluded, "Ms. Siddiqui is not currently competent to proceed as a result of her mental disease, which renders her unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against her or to assist properly in her defense."

An excerpt of the evaluation was mentioned in the judge's order calling for a Wednesday hearing to address her mental health to stand trial.

My god, what has happened to this woman? How have they destroyed her?

Americans should demand an immediate investigation into the handling of the investigation, arrest, treatment under custody, and judicial hearings around Dr. Siddiqui.

U.S. Citizen Found Guilty of Torture in Liberia

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, aka "Chuckie" Taylor Jr., son of infamous former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, and former head of that his father's Anti-Terrorism Unit, nicknamed the "Demon Forces," was convicted last Thursday by a Miami court in a first test of a 1994 U.S. law "that makes it a crime for US citizens to commit torture overseas." As the Guardian put it:

It was considered a test case of the principle that human rights abusers are accountable for crimes regardless of where they are brought to book....

During the trial, witnesses said Emmanuel, known as Chuckie in Liberia, stood by and laughed as soldiers forced prisoners to play "stone football", kicking large stones until their bare feet were bruised and bleeding. One witness described having flaming plastic melted onto his skin; another said soldiers cut his genitals.

According to the Times Online, the FBI and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement traveled around the world gathering evidence and witnesses to prosecute Emmanuel, hoping the case "would serve as a model for future prosecutors involving foreign torture allegations."

Model for future prosecutions? The case is said to demonstrate that no American can go abroad and commit atrocities. "Chuckie" was born in Boston, and was a U.S. citizen. He grew up in Orlando, Florida and moved to Monrovia, Liberia to be with his father in 1997, beginning his infamous career as his father's henchman. The senior Taylor is now being tried at The Hague, "charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly overseeing the murder, rape and mutilation of thousands of people during Sierra Leone's bloody 10-year civil war."

The election of African-American Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama as President of the United States is raising hopes -- rightly or wrongly -- that the U.S. will change its policies abroad, and not least on the issue of torture. A separate story out of Pakistan earlier today has British journalist Marium Evon Raidley expressing hope that the U.S. will change its torture policies, beginning with the closure of Guantanamo:

“I do not believe that the American people approve of the policies of the Bush administration,” she said, adding that the illegal custody of 36-year old Dr Aafia Siddiqui, an American-educated neuroscientist, is a blatant violation of international law. She said that Dr Siddiqui is a Pakistani national and if there are any charges against her, she should have been tried in Afghanistan.

Ms Ridley revealed that at least 150 children were dumped into orphanages in Afghanistan. These were the children of those detained in torture cells in Afghanistan. She added that many women languishing in US torture cells in Afghanistan are regularly abused, both physically and sexually.

“No civilised and law-abiding nation can approve of such actions,” Ridley stated....

Dr Siddiqui’s whereabouts have been a source of much speculation since 2003. According to Amnesty International, Dr Siddiqui and her three children were apprehended in Karachi in March 2003, after the FBI issued an alert requesting information on her location earlier that month.

There are plenty of guilty U.S. officials who could follow "Chuckie" onto the dock of justice. Will Obama and the Democrats have the "stuff" to pursue such prosecutions, or will it be business as usual, dressed up with liberal prattling? It won't be long before we know.