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Raw Story » Bush memos parallel claim 9/11 mastermind’s children were tortured with insects

Bush memos parallel claim 9/11 mastermind’s children were tortured with insects


By John Byrne

Published: April 17, 2009


Bush Administration memos released by the White House on Thursday provide new insight into claims that American agents used insects to torture the young children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalize on detainees’ fears.
The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
While an additional memo released Thursday claims that the torture with insects technique was never utilized by the CIA, the allegations regarding the children would have transpired when the method was authorized by the Bush Administration.
At a military tribunal in 2007, the father of a Guantanamo detainee alleged that Pakistani guards had confessed that American interrogators used ants to coerce the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into revealing their father’s whereabouts.
The statement was made by Ali Khan, the father of detainee Majid Khan, who gave a detailed account of his son’s interrogation at the hands of American guards in Pakistan. In his statement, Khan asserted that one of his sons was held at the same place as the young children of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs and were denied food and water by other guards,” the statement read. “They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.” (A pdf transcript is available here)
Khan’s statement is second-hand. But the picture he paints of his son’s interrogation at the hands of American interrogators is strikingly similar to the accounts given by numerous other detainees to the International Red Cross. The timing of the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s son — then aged seven and nine — also meshes with a report by Human Rights Watch, which says that the children were captured in September 2002 and held for four months at the hands of American guards.
“According to eyewitnesses, the two were held in an adult detention center for at least four months while U.S. agents questioned the children about their father’s whereabouts,” the report said.
The use of insects isn’t mentioned in a recently leaked International Red Cross report, in which Red Cross officials questioned detainees about their treatment at the hands of US forces and ultimately judged them to have been tortured. A second memo released Thursday, dated May 10, 2005, says the CIA told the White House insects were never actually used in interrogations.
“We understand that — for reasons unrelated to any concerns that it might violate the [criminal] statute — the CIA never used the technique and has removed it from the list of authorized interrogation techniques,” Steven Bradbury, a principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a footnote.
It’s worth noting, however, that the Red Cross was denied access to individuals held at CIA black sites. Khan’s son, Majid, was among those President Bush moved from the CIA’s secret prison network to Guantanamo Bay.
The techniques Khan says were employed against his son also match those approved in the Bybee memo.
“What I can tell you is that Majid was kidnapped from my son Mohammed’s [not related Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] house in Karachi, along with Mohammed, his wife, and my infant granddaughter,” Khan said in his military tribunal statement. “They were captured by Pakistani police and soldiers and taken to a detention center fifteen minutes from Mohammed’s house. The center had walls that seemed to be eighty feet high. My sons were hooded, handcuffed, and interrogated. After eight days of interrogation by US and Pakistani agents, including FBI agents, Mohammed was allowed to see Majid.
“Majhid looked terrible and very, very tired,” Khan continued. “According to Mohammed, Majid said that the Americans tortured him for eight hours at a time, tying him tightly in stressful positions in a small chair until his hands, feet and mind went numb. They re-tied him in the chair every hour, tightening the bonds on his hands and feet each time so that it was more painful. He was often hooded and had difficulty breathing. They also beat him repeatedly, slapping him in the face, and deprived him of sleep. When he was not being interrogated, the Americans put Majid in a small cell that was totally dark and too small for him to lie down in or sit in with his legs stretched out. He had to crouch. The room was also infested with mosquitoes. The torture only stopped when Majid agreed to sign a statement that he was not even allowed to read.”
Later in his statement, Khan alleges that the Pakistani guards revealed other abuses by American agents.
“The Americans also once stripped and beat two Arab boys, ages fourteen and sixteen, who were turned over by the Pakistani guards at the detention center,” he said. “These guards told my son that they were very upset at this and said the boys were thrown like garbage onto a plane to Guantanamo. Women prisoners were also held there, apart from their husbands, and some were pregnant and forced to give birth in their cells. According to Mohammed, one woman also died in her cell because the guards could not get her to a hospital quickly enough. This was most upsetting to the Pakistani guards.”
One blogger notes, “The first indications the children may have been tortured were reported in Ron Suskind’s 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine.”
“When KSM was being held at a secret CIA facility in Thailand, apparently the revamped Vietnam War-era base at Udorn, according to Suskind, a message was passed to interrogators: ‘do whatever’s necessary,’” Kevin Fenton writes at History Commons. “The interrogators then told KSM ‘his children would be hurt if he didn’t cooperate. However, his response was, ’so, fine, they’ll join Allah in a better place.’”
Fenton has two questions: “Did the Khans invent the allegations or garble them in some way and then ‘get lucky’ two years later, when it was revealed the CIA was, at least, contemplating the techniques they alleged it used at the time in question?” and “Given that nobody heard of the CIA using insects for another two years, why would they invent these specific allegations, which sounded bizarre when they were made?”

blackgang

Jesus Christ,, another one, couldn't believe them when torture was used but by God you can believe them now..

How come Milky & RC can have 2 nics and we can't?

TSR2

Its a very difficult call when under attack by enemies using non traditional immoral?? warfare, to maintain moral high standards in order to defeat that enemy. You may occupy the moral high ground only to have the physical ground blown from under you, I am not condoning torture

BugginOut

Happens all the time and no one seems to care. Here's a documentary from the BBC about the daily occurrence of torture in the US:
Torture Right Here in America's Prisons Video by LadiHawkz - MySpace Video

Milkman

Oh, well. Daddy was a meanie so his kiddies got punished.

BobR

When will the USA indict and prosecute Bush and company?

Milkman

^ Never.

dirtydog

Bloody third world uneducated wnkers, middle east aint much better either

Milkman

^ Hey. I like Europe.

blackgang

God damn good,, if you do not like it then obey the laws and you will not end up in prison,, What you think? prison supposed to be summer camp or a place to punish offenders and seperate them from the public?
Jesus Christ what a liberal no brainer.

HorseDoctor

Yeah, screw that US Constitution! Cruel and unusual punishment for everyone, no matter the crime.

ItsRobsLife

Put them in a cell with Blackgang.

They'd wish they were back in Gitmo.

baldrick

yep - their first words would be

"I'm not shagging that ! what is it you want to know?"

ItsRobsLife

Blackgang: "You wanna play mummies an' daddies"?
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; "No, no thankyou"
Blackgang: "I'll make it easy for you, you wanna be mummy or daddy"?
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "Er.. I'll be daddy then"
Blackgang: "Ok, come over here and suck mummies cock, you dirty homo sand nigger"

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blackgang

BushCo Tortured Children in Iraq

Shit that ain't all.
Do you know as a young teen Bush also used to jack himself off 3 times a day, bet ya didnt know that HUH.

Jet Gorgon

Aww. I'm going back to file a complaint against a beach bar on Samui -- forced to drink wine while red biting ants swarmed me and made to sit in a deck chair under coconut trees. I'm sure I could make up something else.
I hope Gitmo detainees and all the captured Somalian pirates are sent to this US jail:

(CNN) -- The tent city looks like a military camp in the desert, with thick canvas sleeping quarters spreading out in a remote area of Arizona. The inhabitants, however, are not soldiers, but residents of an unusual, some say brutal, prison run by legendary lawman Joe Arpaio, called the toughest sheriff in the West.
For the Maricopa County sheriff, who opened the nation's largest tent prison in 1993, saving taxpayer pennies matters more than comforting convicted felons.
"We took away coffee, that saved $150,000 a year. Why do you need coffee in jail?" says Arpaio, patrolling the dusty, barren grounds. "Switched to bologna sandwiches, that saved half a million dollars a year."
Arpaio makes inmates pay for their meals, which some say are worse than those for the guard dogs. Canines eat $1.10 worth of food a day, the inmate 90 cents, the sheriff says. "I'm very proud of that too."
CNN - Arizona criminals find jail too in-'tents' - July 27, 1999

Milkman

After reading the OP article and posts, I don't know if I care about these people - as long as they are not innocent.

tuktukdriver

How many of you believe everything you read on the internet?

beano

That's quite a good point ttd, unfortunately the quality of the information on most websites leaves a lot to be desired.
People can now search the WEB until they find a site that tells them what they want to read then serve it up as gospel because "it's a source".
There are no innocents in this, the left offend as regularly as the right.

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HorseDoctor

So your logic suggests that nothing on the internet is of value? Or some things, Of ourse it is as always, some things are lies, or presented with a spin.
The difference is now we get exposed to a lot of info we would never had before..Yes it's imporatant to source the claims- but let's face it, CNN and BBC and major newspapers put their corporate oriented spin on every bit of info.. War is BIG business for US and EU

A lot of the info is coming out now because e the Obama White House has released Bush Administration internal papers on the subject and it's coming to light that some of the formerly unsubstantiated claims by " Detainess" may actually be true .

US has became a bully nation and has used and may have even allowed if not outright enouraged terrorism to happen to facilitate this bullying.

I was tortured in a county jail once, not life threatening or extreme but it left bruises, was cruel in every sense of the word and my complaint was scoffed at.. I've never forgotten it and to this day I think the majority of cops are PIGS and only in the job so they can bully others.

Times this by thousands and thousands and you begin to see that vast problems this is going to cause us all down the road.
Torture is wrong !!