8/9/2019 Danner Blacksites: US Torture: Voices from the Black
Sites: New York Review of Books: Disbar Torture Lawyers
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For Immediate Release: March 16, 2008Press Contact: Jenie
Hederman(212) 293-1641 / [email protected]
US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites
The April 9, 2009, issue of The New York Review offers first
view of American torture inside secretprisons. The United States
tortured prisoners, according to a secret report on The Black Sites
by theInternational Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC], excerpted in
great detail in the new issue of The NewYork Review of Books . The
report, whose findings are made public here for the first time,
details inspecific and explicit terms the various methods and
enhanced techniques the CIA used to interrogateprisoners in a
secret global internment system set up at the direction of
President George W. Bush lessthan a week after the attacks of
September 11, 2001. The report issummarized and analyzed in a
lengthy and definitive article, USTorture: Voices from the Black
Sites, by Mark Danner, a longtime
contributor to The New York Review and author of Torture and
Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror .
This alternative set of procedures, as President
Bushcharacterized them in a White House speech, including
extendedsleep deprivation, prolonged forced nudity, bombarding
detaineeswith noise and light, repeated immersion in cold water,
prolongedstanding, sometimes for many days, beatings of various
kinds, andwaterboardingor, as the reports authors phrase it,
suffocationby water. These interrogations are described in chilling
first-personaccounts gathered confidentially by ICRC investigators
and madepublic here for the first time.
According to the authors of the ICRC report, in many cases,
the
ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the
CIAprogram...constituted torture. The ICRC, which is the
appointedlegal guardian of the Geneva Conventions and the body
appointedto supervise the treatment of prisoners of war, speaks in
this matter with the force of law. The reportcontinues: In
addition, many other elements of the illtreatment, either singly or
in combination,constituted cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
Both torture and cruel, inhuman and degradingtreatment are
forbidden by many treaties to which the United States is signatory,
including theConvention Against Torture and the Geneva
Conventions.
The accounts of the detainees themselves, including the most
prominent captured in the War on Terror,describe their detention
from the time they were secretly brought to the black sitessecret
prisonsaround the world, including in Thailand, Afghanistan, and
Poland, through the interrogations usingwaterboarding. beatings,
and other techniques. Fourteen high-value detainees were
interviewed over
many days for the report, including Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Shaik
Mohammed, and Walid bin Attash. Thefourteen remain imprisoned in
Guantnamo.
These personal accounts are excerpted in great and disturbing
detail in US Torture: Voices from theBlack Sites. They describe
daily life in the secret prisons for the first time in a publicly
availableaccount. Danner, who has covered the torture story in The
New York Review since 2004, reportingextensively on Abu Ghraib and
the Iraq War, analyzes the current debate over torture, the harm it
hasdone and continues to do to the country, and the possibility of
meaningful Congressional investigations,bipartisan truth
commissions, and perhaps prosecution of those who have
tortured.
Online : US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites is available on
nybooks.comA podcast with Mark Danner discussing the article is
available on nybooks.com
