For nearly a decade, the CIA kidnapped people from over 20 countries, held them without trial or counsel, and viciously tortured them, sometimes to death — but the only person to serve jail time for the program is the man who blew the whistle on it, and that’s thanks in part to Obama’s insistence that “Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”
The survivors of CIA torture and the families of the people the CIA murdered have been stymied in their attempts to get justice in the US courts, because the CIA cites national secrecy and shuts down any attempt to make them account for their crimes.
Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines has interviewed some of the survivors of CIA torture, and the family and friends of one of the CIA’s murder victims. Their harrowing stories may never be heard in a US court, but if you live in the USA, these crimes were committed in your name, by people whose salaries you pay, and you have a duty to learn what was done to these people, especially as the Republican presidential candidate has signalled his enthusiastic support for reviving and broadening this program if he wins.
We’ve heard about a smaller room where prisoners were occasionally taken.Did you see it?
It was a cell. Or rather, it was a grave.
There was a rod that hung from the highest ceiling. It was all covered in blood. They would hang the prisoner’s hands from the ceiling, with this rod. So the prisoner’s toes would barely touch the floor.
I was hung from this place for a day and a half, and my leg was broken. The blood went down to my leg so it got swollen. It was frightening. For a day and a half, I did not drink water or use the bathroom or pray. I was naked.
The entire time we were in this place, the most dangerous thing I was thinking of was that they had no red lines.They could do anything – hit, kill, they could do anything. Because there were no human rights, no humanity, no principles, no ethics.
This is what was scary about this place. There were no limits, there were no standards as far as how these people would act. No one was holding them accountable or supervising them.
The dark prisoners: Inside the CIA’s torture programme
[Fault Lines/Al Jazeera]
(via Naked Capitalism)