Two developments concerning torture/enhanced interrogation Posted on December 13th, 2012 by

WaPo: A U.S. Senate committee concludes its 6,000 page report on enhanced interrogation, finding its harsh methods ineffective (link is here) while the European Court of Human Rights condemns a the U.S. abduction and torture of an innocent individual (the link is here).

Regarding the senate report:

“It could be months, if not years, before the public gets even a partial glimpse of the report or its 20 findings and conclusions. Feinstein said the committee would turn the voluminous document over to the Obama administration and the CIA to provide a chance for them to comment. When that is completed, the committee would need to vote again on whether to release even a portion of the report, a move that would likely face opposition from the CIA, which has fought to keep details of the interrogation program classified. Even if it is released, the report would likely have little impact beyond providing new ammunition for a largely dormant interrogation debate. The agency abandoned its harshest interrogation methods years before President Obama was elected, and the Justice Department began backing away from memos it had issued that had served as the legal basis for the program.”

Regarding the rendition decision:

“The European Court of Human Rights ruled that a German car salesman was an innocent victim of torture and abuse, in a long-awaited victory for a man who had failed for years to get courts in the U.S. and Europe to acknowledge what happened to him. Khaled El-Masri says he was kidnapped from Macedonia in 2003, mistaken for a terrorism suspect, then held for four months and brutally interrogated at an Afghan prison known as the “Salt Pit” run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. He says that once U.S. authorities realized he was not a threat, they illegally sent him to Albania and left him on a mountainside.”

 

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