If you think Guantanamo is bad...

February 13, 12:00 PMProgressive Politics ExaminerJay McDonough

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Progressive Politics Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

...it's got nothing on Bagram. 

Unredacted Defense Department documents just released under the Freedom of Information Act call interrogations at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan "clearly abusive, and clearly not in keeping with any approved interrogation policy or guidance."

This documents release follows the release of three documents from leading human rights groups revealing the Pentagon managed secret prisons at Bagram and in Iraq and that it cooperated with the CIA's "ghost detention" program.

"In both cases, for example, [prisoners] were handcuffed to fixed objects above their heads in order to keep them awake," reads the document. "Additionally, interrogations in both incidents involved the use of physical violence, including kicking, beating, and the use of "compliance blows" which involved striking the [prisoners] legs with the [interrogators] knees. In both cases, blunt force trauma to the legs was implicated in the deaths. In one case, a pulmonary embolism developed as a consequence of the blunt force trauma, and in the other case pre-existing coronary artery disease was complicated by the blunt force trauma."  (Link)

Other released documents detail an investigation into the murder of detainee Dilar Dababa by U.S. forces in 2003 in Iraq, another memo on the investigation into abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, and a memo that found probable cause that U.S. forces committed homicide in the 2003 death of detainee Abed Mowhoush.

In June 2008, Larry Wilkerson (former chief of staff to Colin Powell) testified before Congress that over 100 detainees had died in U.S. custody and that up to 27 of the deaths had been declared homicides. 

Yesterday I wrote a post regarding new Gallup polling indicating the majority of Americans now want investigations into the Bush Administration abuses of power.  I would imagine as more and more information becomes available the support for such investigations will only grow.