detainee abuse

The New York Times’ lead editorial today is a powerful indictment of the Obama administration’s continuation of Bush-era efforts to conceal the facts of U.S.-sponsored torture.
Running through the list of situations that we’ve been reporting on in which the Obama administration continues to conceal evidence of torture — from the efforts of British resident Binyam [...]

Although court-watchers were predicting that the Supreme Court would decide yesterday whether to hear the appeal from a group of Chinese Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay claiming the right to be released into the United States, the high court apparently decided not to decide, at least for now. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog writes that the [...]

I’m already hearing speculative groans that the CIA planted this story with Walter Pincus at The Washington Post today about how a military commander in 2003 did things just as bad as the things the CIA interrogators discussed in the recently-released CIA inspector general report did, so Attorney General Eric Holder’s investigation into CIA actions [...]

Daphne Eviatar is guest-blogging for Glenn Greenwald today. The following is cross-posted at Salon.
If, as the latest reports indicate, Attorney General Eric Holder is serious about prosecuting the worst torture and abuse of “war on terror” prisoners that occurred during the Bush administration, then there’s some key evidence he’s going to want to take a [...]

Andrew Sullivan calls the reported impending torture probe by Attorney General Eric Holder “the worst of both worlds,” arguing that investigating only those who exceeded the overly-broad bounds set by the Bush administration “risks essentially legitimizing the torture it does not prosecute.”
On one hand, Sullivan’s right that prosecuting only the individual interrogators who went beyond [...]

Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) on Thursday responded to a growing number of reports about the poor conditions of immigration detention centers that violate the Department of Homeland Security’s own rules. On Thursday they introduced the the “Protect Citizens from Unlawful Detention Act” and “Prevent Detainee Deaths and Abuse [...]

The Weekly Standard and Greg Sargent are both reporting that the House Democratic leadership is boldly (my characterization, not the Standard’s) standing up to the White House and the Senate, which last week passed an amendment to the appropriations bill that would allow Obama to keep those much-discussed detainee abuse photos secret.
The Lieberman-Graham Amendment, also [...]

Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote to President Obama yesterday urging him to block the impending release of photographs showing detainees abused by U.S. military personnel, reports Secrecy News, the blog of the Federation of American Scientists.
The photos are supposed to be released on May 28 in response to a Freedom of [...]

Without using the word “prosecutor”, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) appears to be calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate the criminal culpability of former Bush officials.
In an op-ed in the Holland [Mich.] Sentinel posted last night, Levin recaps the evidence detailed in the Senate Armed Services Committee Report released [...]

Jason Leopold at The Public Record writes about an email that turned up in the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealing that, contrary to Bush administration claims in the past, an executive order signed by President Bush specifically authorized hooding, sleep deprivation, the use of attack dogs, loud music and other “aggressive” techniques to [...]