CNN: U.S admits to Baghdad secret interrogation site

As hundreds of detainees were released from Abu Ghraib jail outside Baghdad, a senior U.S. official confirmed the existence of a previously undisclosed U.S. military interrogation facility near Baghdad International Airport. He said it was run in line with the Geneva Conventions but added: "That's not to say somebody didn't get their head dunked in the water."

The Geneva Convention requires all prisoners to be treated humanely.

Article 5:
Where, in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State.

Where in occupied territory an individual protected person is detained as a spy or saboteur, or as a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power, such person shall, in those cases where absolute military security so requires, be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention.

In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity, and in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be.

I bet it is illegal so this statement is false right on its face.

I don't think the Geneva Convention addresses almost drowning a prisoner in so many words, but:

"In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity"

would make that illegal.

is one of their torture techniques. The americans strap the individual to a board and then place their head under water such as to cause the individual to (literally) think that thay are going to drown.

oops typo

That gives me the creeps. If anyone tries to tell me that that's not inhumane, I'll be pissed.

Something else, it is rather interesting to note that for the American torture perpetrator Staff Sgt Chip Frederick his attorney was on the television yesterday evening explaining that one of the torture photographs in which client appears, where his client was sitting on a detainee sandwiched between two stretchers, the attorney was stating this was not torture but was an attempt to restrain a mentally unfit person (and in such an environment of hell like this) when in actuality what this is, the stretchers, is a crude form of suffocation. A crude form of what the soviets used to do to dissident prisoners in their ‘psychiatric’ hospitals. They would take a dissident, completely wrap the nude dissident in clothe (I don’t recall the exact material), as tightly as possible, the material would already be wet such that as it slowly dried it would begin to suffocate the dissident. The soviets would usually have medical personnel on hand so as to maximise the torture, the pain and suffering, without causing actual death. So much for this man’s explanation via his lawyer, He better hire a new lawyer.

It's just a few bad apples!

already there have been various reports of deaths and techniques of suffocation amongst so many of their other macabre displays of savagery.


to follow-up these reports come from various locations within the Gulag system other than the Abu Ghraib.

Sorry that I do not have links to post here but I have seen links provided in various DU posts.

Because the military is about liberating the Iraqis, and spreading freedom and love and peace to everyone in the world, regardless of race, religion, location, etc.

and I do not think that I can think about it any more for the moment. The patterns are there, the methodology, the policy --its all there.

I wonder if they are trying to down play this story?