ZGram - 5/16/2004 - "Torture Western Style is nothing new"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

May 16, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

So far, I have pretty much stayed away from commenting on the torture 
revelations, partly because I have my own battle front to attend to - 
which is, to focus on getting Ernst out of the claws of his Talmud 
driven enemies - and partly because it is extremely painful for me, 
not only to see these revelations become common knowledge, but also 
because they are treated as something "new" and atypical of 
democracies.  I have known all my life that what is happening today 
is merely a replay of the 1930s in Soviet Russia and after 1945 in 
Allied-occupied Europe.   I know plenty of stories like that. 

To bring the topic home to my own situation, what haunts me is the 
first story of U.S. government initiated abuse I heard after Ernst 
was arrested and kept in the Blount County Jail.  The only time when 
I was able to visit him and talk to him behind glass, he told me what 
had happened the preceding weekend.  He later wrote it up. I put it 
last September in my Open Letter full page ad in the Washington 
Times, addressed to Senate and Congress of the United States of 
America - to which not one of our elected officials reacted:

[Start]

"Come Sunday, I heard dogs barking.  We were all ordered into our 
cells while black-uniformed SWAT teams with dogs went systematically 
from cell to cell, threw us on the floor face down, hand-cuffed, arms 
twisted behind our backs. They dragged us outside the cells like 
sacks of potatoes while helmeted, visored, New World Order-type cops 
hollered commands at us.  They searched our pockets, beds and plastic 
bins. The dogs dripping saliva from their snapping jaws were mainly 
Dobermans and German Shepherds and were kept on chain leashes two 
feet away from our bodies and faces.  Young, pretty women in 
skin-tight uniforms and tightly-fitting flak jackets, all black in 
color, kept climbing over the men who were curled up, face down, 
shaking, frightened out of their wits. Some had tears streaming down 
their faces.  The women filmed these hapless prisoners with 
mini-camcorders close up, laughing and joking, having themselves a 
ball.  Why were those videos taken?

"I was there on two weekends, and this terrorizing of the prisoners 
happened on both weekends."

[END]

It bears repeating:  Why were those videos taken?  As training videos 
on what is happening in Abu Ghraib and other New World Order prisons?

Even in the weeks before the arrest, Ernst repeatedly told me that 
secret New World Order arrests were likely taking place all of the 
United States because the Powers That Be were "neutralizing" leaders 
or people perceived to be threats to the coming global dictatorship. 
I always dismissed his prediction - I could not imagine that people 
could just "disappear" without  media notice and a general public 
outcry.  I knew it had happened in Argentina, for instance, but that 
was South America, pre-Internet!  We lived in a democracy, right?

Just the other day, when I pressured Ernst to tell me the extent of 
the abuse he suffers even now - we talked about the fact that he is 
being systematically starved  not only by inadequate portions of food 
but by the extremely low quality of food - I pried a rare admissions 
out of him:  "You don't know the half of itŠ"  He wouldn't tell me 
more than that.

I now predict that the article below is only the tip of the iceberg:

[START]

Secret US Jails Hold 10,000

By Andrew Buncombe and Kim Sengupta
The Independent - UK 5-16-4

WASHINGTON -- Almost 10,000 prisoners from President George W. Bush's 
so-called war on terror are being held around the world in secretive 
American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious 
Abu Ghraib Prison.

Some of these detention centres are so sensitive that even the most 
senior members of the United States Congress have no idea where they 
are.

From Iraq to Afghanistan to Cuba, this American gulag is driven by 
the pressure to obtain "actionable" intelligence from prisoners 
captured by US forces.

The systematic practice of holding prisoners without access to 
lawyers or their families, together with a willingness to use 
"coercive interrogation" techniques, suggests the abuse of prisoners 
at Abu Ghraib now shocking the world could be widespread.

Iraq has become a holding pen for America's prisoners from 21 
countries, according to a report from the international campaign 
group Human Rights Watch.

The US military is keeping prisoners at 10 centres, most of which 
were used by Saddam Hussein's regime. The total in January was 8968, 
and is thought to have increased.

Prisoners are being held from, among other countries, Algeria, Egypt, 
India, Iran, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, 
Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Sweden, 
Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Yemen.

A report in the Washington Post has revealed that up to 8000 Iraqi 
prisoners are being held at Abu Ghraib, the jail west of Baghdad also 
known as the Baghdad Central Correctional Facility or BCCF, and nine 
other facilities inside Iraq.

It is impossible to know for sure because the Pentagon refuses to 
provide complete information.

Officials say prisoners range from those accused of petty crimes to 
detainees believed to be involved in attacks on US forces, though it 
is increasingly clear that many hundreds are simply Iraqi civilians 
swept up in raids by US and British soldiers.

Military and diplomatic sources say a number of detainees were taken 
to Iraq from Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, the US military still holds 300 or more prisoners at 
Bagram, north of Kabul, and at facilities in Kandahar, Jalalabad and 
Asadabad.

The CIA, meanwhile, runs an interrogation centre in Kabul that is 
known by special forces and others simply as "The Pit".

At Guantanamo Bay, more than 600 prisoners remain incarcerated more 
than two years after they were captured in the aftermath of the US 
operation against the Taleban.

Last week the US admitted that two guards at the camp had been 
disciplined for using "excessive force" against prisoners.

Michael Ratner, vice-president of the New York-based Centre for 
Constitutional Rights, which has represented many of the Guantanamo 
prisoners, said yesterday it was clear that a pattern was emerging.

"To me it means they are breaching international law as well as 
domestic law. The treatment is obviously illegal," he said.

"It puts what is happening in Iraq into perspective. The idea that 
just a few soldiers came up with this is inconceivable. It has come 
from very high up in the Administration."

From interviews with relatives and lawyers for the seven US soldiers 
facing courts-martial for the Abu Ghraib abuse, there is growing 
evidence that their actions were encouraged and even ordered by 
Military Intelligence and privately contracted interrogators to 
"soften up" the prisoners. Major General Geoffrey Miller, formerly 
the warden at Guantanamo Bay, took control of Abu Ghraib last year 
with a plan to turn it into a hub of interrogation.

He placed the military police under the tactical control of the 205th 
Military Intelligence Brigade.

The lawyers representing Lynddie England, the 21-year-old woman from 
the 372nd Military Police Company who was caught in photographs 
sexually humiliating hooded Iraqi prisoners and leading one by a 
lead, insisted she was following orders.

The pictures were a deliberate part of the humiliation, they said.

"People told Pfc England, 'Hold that leash' ... told her to smile, so 
they can show the photos to subsequent prisoners," said lawyer Carl 
McGuire. Another member of her legal team, Rose Mary Zapor, said: 
"They picked her to get the smallest, youngest, lowest-rank woman 
they could find and that would increase the humiliation for an Iraqi 
man."

This claim is supported by two members the 205th Military 
Intelligence Brigade, assigned to Abu Ghraib, who on their arrival 
immediately realised what was taking place was illegal.

The soldiers said beatings were meted out with the full knowledge of 
intelligence interrogators, who let military police know which 
prisoners were co-operating with them and which were not.

A leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the 
only outside body permitted to visit the prison, also confirmed 
widespread ill-treatment and abuse that the authorities failed to 
stop.

It estimated that up to 90 per cent of the prisoners had been 
"arrested by mistake".

[END]


(source:  
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3566058&msg=emaillink 
)