Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The torture files  (The Independent)

 L'inventario dei metodi e' alla fine.
Am.
The torture files
 CIA agents have broken ranks to reveal the 'cruel and inhuman' 
interrogation techniques they are ordered to use at secret prisons 
around the world, including freezing and near-drowning. By Raymond 
Whitaker
 Published: 04 December 2005
 Amid a growing row in the US over torture, a list of "enhanced 
interrogation techniques" used by CIA agents in secret prisons - 
including near-drowning, freezing, sleep deprivation, shaking and 
slapping - has been leaked. In at least one case, a prisoner has died.
 The techniques have been authorised for use at CIA "black sites" 
abroad, at which top terror suspects are held. Last week the US-based 
organisation Human Rights Watch said "ghost detainees" were held at two 
military bases, in Poland and Romania. Similar sites in half a dozen 
other countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand and the Indian Ocean 
base of Diego Garcia, leased from Britain, are now said to have been 
closed.
The existence of these detention facilities, and what happens inside 
them, are the most secret aspect of America's "war on terror". In 
contrast to military-run camps and prisons such as Guantanamo Bay in 
Cuba or Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where it was impossible to shield all CIA 
activity from outside scrutiny, the location of the "black sites" and 
the identities of those held there are made known only to a handful of 
senior officials in the US. In the host countries, only the president 
and top intelligence officials are aware of them.
Details of the secret prisons and the methods used in them have emerged 
mainly from CIA officers themselves, who said the public needed to know 
"the direction their agency has chosen". They broke ranks amid a furore 
in Washington over an amendment to the White House military spending 
package going through Congress. Senator John McCain (Republican), a 
former US navy pilot who was captured and tortured in Vietnam, wants an 
unequivocal ban on all "cruel and inhuman" treatment of prisoners in US 
custody, including those held by the CIA.
Eighty-nine of Mr McCain's fellow senators voted for his amendment, 
rejecting attempts by the CIA and Vice-President Dick Cheney - who said 
after 9/11 that "we have to work ... the dark side" - to exclude 
prisoners held at the "black sites". For the first time President 
George Bush has threatened to exercise his veto on any defence bill 
that has the amendment attached.
The CIA prisons contain only the 30 or so most senior al-Qa'ida 
captives. They include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 
the September 2001 attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh, another prime 9/11 
suspect, and the Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, 
accused of masterminding the Bali nightclub bombings in October 2002. 
Only the merest hints have emerged about their treatment, but according 
to the most graphic account, given to ABC News in the US, Khalid Sheik 
Mohammed won the admiration of his interrogators by enduring 
"waterboarding" for up to two and a half minutes before begging to 
confess. CIA officers who subjected themselves to the same technique 
lasted an average of 14 seconds.
ABC's sources said that just over a dozen CIA interrogators were 
trained and authorised to use the "enhanced interrogation" techniques. 
At least three had declined involvement. The use of each technique on 
each prisoner had to be approved, stage by stage, up to the use of the 
"water board". About a dozen "high-value" al-Qa'ida targets had been 
interrogated in this way, and, as one put it: "All of these have 
confessed, none of them has died, and all of them remain incarcerated."
At least one death has been reported elsewhere, however. In a CIA 
facility in Kabul known as the "Salt Pit", an officer, described as 
young and inexperienced, used the "cold treatment" on a detainee, who 
was left outdoors, naked, throughout a freezing Afghan night. He died 
of hypothermia. The case is being investigated, along with several 
others in Afghanistan and Iraq where interrogators - CIA officers, 
civilian contractors or members of the special forces - went well 
beyond the guidelines and suspects died as a result.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was 
US Secretary of State, said last week that he knew of more than 70 
"questionable deaths" of detainees under US supervision up to the end 
of 2002, when he left office. That figure, he added, was now around 90.
These incidents are in addition to the increasingly well-documented 
practice of "rendition": flying suspects to Middle Eastern countries 
where torture and deaths in custody are routine. "If you want a good 
interrogation, you send them to Jordan. If you want them dead, you send 
them to Egypt or Syria," one former CIA agent is reported as saying. 
The McCain amendment, however, will have no impact on foreign 
torturers. It is mainly aimed at halting the abuses exposed at Abu 
Ghraib, where routine humiliations degenerated into sadism.
Yet only the low-ranking military police caught on camera in Abu Ghraib 
have been prosecuted. America's covert forces are operating in a 
climate of impunity, described by Cofer Black, then CIA 
counter-terrorism chief, who told a congressional committee in 2002: 
"After 9/11, the gloves were off." At one point, according to Newsweek, 
the Bush administration formally told the CIA it could not be 
prosecuted for any technique short of inflicting the kind of pain that 
accompanies organ failure or death.
The normal justification is that such methods could help avert a terror 
attack in which thousands might be killed. But are there any cases to 
prove it? Claims that the "waterboarding" of Khalid Sheik Mohammed 
produced details of planned attacks on the US were sceptically received 
by one CIA official, who said: "What we got was probably not truthful. 
And there's no way of knowing whether what good information they got 
could not have been obtained by more traditional means."
THE CIA'S SIX 'ENHANCED' TECHNIQUES
CIA interrogators say they are allowed to use six "enhanced 
interrogation techniques", each progressively tougher, on top al-Qa'ida 
detainees. Their superiors have to give separate approval for every 
prisoner and every method, all claimed to be legal.
THE ATTENTION GRAB: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front 
of the prisoner and shakes him. Israel, the only democracy to have 
openly debated coercion of prisoners, declared this legal in 1987, but 
the Supreme Court ruled it out in 1999
THE ATTENTION SLAP: Interrogators may deliver "an open-handed slap", 
which is "aimed at causing pain and triggering fear"
THE BELLY SLAP: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to 
cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors advised against using a 
punch, which could cause lasting internal damage
STANDING FOR HOURS: This technique is described as among the most 
effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their 
feet shackled to a ring bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. 
Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are claimed to be effective in 
yielding confessions
COLD TREATMENT: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept at 
around 10C, and constantly doused with cold water. Misapplication of 
this technique is blamed for the death of a detainee in Kabul
WATERBOARDING: The prisoner is bound to a board, head slightly below 
the feet. Plastic is wrapped over his face and water is poured over 
him, or his head is lowered into a bath. The gag reflex is automatic; 
few can endure more than a matter of seconds
 

  L'inventario dei metodi e' alla fine.
Ma i documenti che dimostrino l'esistenza di questi metodi non si sono
ancora visti :)
*LOL*
-Stefano

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Ma quali documenti? Un giornale ha tutto il diritto di tenere segrete le 
sue fonti, e di fare campagna perche' un abuso venga punito.
A chiedere i documenti puo' essere solo un procuratore durante il 
processo.
Hint: Watergate.
Poi un giornale si puo sempre prendere la diffamazione. Vedremo se 
succedera'. Io dico di no.
Am.

Poi un giornale si puo sempre prendere la diffamazione.
Le persone serie non perdono del gran tempo a querelare giornali per
diffamazione, a meno che la cosa non sia plateale.
-Stefano