A Professor at University College London, Philippe Sands, has revealed that top echelons in the Bush administration put pressure on officials at Guantanamo Bay detention camp to devise new torture techniques. These actions flouted the Geneva conventions protecting prisoners’ human rights. This information is revealed in a new book ‘Torture Team‘ published by Allen Lane.

(UCL) Through candid interviews with, among others, the head of interrogation and the staff judge advocate at Guantanamo, Professor Sands reveals the true circumstances in which US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved new and aggressive interrogation techniques in December 2002 that reneged on principles for the conduct of interrogation laid down by Abraham Lincoln almost 150 years previously. The decision involved the administration’s most senior lawyers.

The move was designed to extract information from a single detainee, suspected of being the 20th hijacker involved in the September 2001 attacks on the United States, who had been held in isolation for four months. However, it has led governments around the world to justify increasingly cruel methods in an effort to acquire information ?” methods that have proved no more effective than standard interrogation approaches, according to Professor Sands’s research. Professor Sands found that the popularity of the fictional television drama ’24’ among the top level of the US government, which featured successful use of cruel techniques to gather intelligence, was a factor in the decision.

In an interview with the ‘Guardian’, Professor Sands said: “Since 1863, the US military had forborne the use of cruelty in relation to any person at any time. It’s a historic and marked change of direction. [… ] In relation to Guantanamo, decision-making went to the highest levels of the administration: the vice-president’s lawyer and the president’s lawyer were directly involved. [… ] Popular culture astonishingly played into individual decision-making on the ground at Guantanamo. The fact that the US has moved to these techniques is deeply disturbing; it has vitally undermined American moral authority and has made it much more difficult to promote the rule of law and human rights internationally.”

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Amnesty International has made a fresh call on the United States government to make known the whereabouts of people subjected to its secret detention operation in the ‘war on terror’.

The call came as Amnesty International released a detailed 48-page report on the case of a Yemeni man held in total isolation by his US captors, including information on how he was allegedly severely tortured – with a battery of physical and psychological methods – and how he was moved from prison to prison in three different countries (including to a secret ‘black site’ detention facility) over a period of nearly three years.

The report also includes an account of how British ‘Special Forces’ personnel in Iraq were involved in investigating the detained man (though not in his interrogation or torture) and how these apparently did nothing to raise the alarm about the his torture at the hands of American interrogators.

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In late February, Ben Griffin, former member of the SAS, released a statement on the attempts by the UK government to suppress his testimony on British involvement in rendition and torture during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“As of 1940hrs 29/02/08 I have been placed under an injunction preventing me from speaking publicly and publishing material gained as a result of my service in UKSF (SAS).

I will be continuing to collect evidence and opinion on British Involvement in extraordinary rendition, torture, secret detentions, extra judicial detention, use of evidence gained through torture, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, breaches of International Law and failure to abide by our obligations as per UN Convention Against Torture. I am carrying on regardless “

Meanwhile, the non-debate, being held in the US on the definitions of torture and ill treatment were placed in context by an ex-prisioner of the Japanese during world war II , Eric Lomax (The Railway Man). Having survived waterboarding he is left in no doubt as to what this means and its legal status.

The American Civil Liberties Union comment on the moves by George Bush to retain torture for legal use by the US:

In a brazen move signaling a callous disregard for human rights, President Bush today vetoed the 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act largely due to a provision that would have applied the Army Field Manual (AFM) on Interrogations to all government agencies, including the CIA.

From Amnesty International

Further inquiries into allegations of rendition flights announced by the UK government should not be a substitute for a full, independent investigation into any other UK involvement in renditions, Amnesty international said following the admission by the US and UK governments that two rendition flights had landed in Diego Garcia in 2002.

“As recognized by the UK government, the revelation that US planes, involved in the transfers of detainees, landed in Diego Garcia directly contradicts its own repeated assurances and public denials to the contrary. It highlights the need for full investigations into the USA’s detention and rendition practices and any involvement or complicity of European countries,” Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International said today.

“European governments must now recognize that reliance on US assurances about renditions has been an inadequate response to an unlawful practice. The Diego Garcia admission must spur into action all European countries by initiating thorough, independent investigations. Governments must heed the calls by the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe and the European Parliament. They must also take immediate steps to ensure that the practice of rendition is not allowed to happen again.”

From BBC Online

US national intelligence chief Mike McConnell has said the interrogation technique of water-boarding “would be torture” if he were subjected to it. Mr McConnell said it would also be torture if water-boarding, which involves simulated drowning, resulted in water entering a detainee’s lungs.

He told the New Yorker there would be a “huge penalty” for anyone using it if it was ever determined to be torture.

However…

The US attorney-general has declined to rule on whether the method is torture.

And…

In July 2007, President Bush signed a controversial executive order on the treatment of suspects detained by the CIA which did not outlaw the agency’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as water-boarding.