Complains of Terrorists

Recently, a report was published, made by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) about the usage of brutal methods of interrogation by investigators from the Central Intelligence Agency. The report, printed under the signature stamp “strictly secret”, appeared last Monday on the site of the journal ” The New York Review of Books”. Designed for the representatives of the U.S. authorities, the document was published by the journalist Mark Danner, that earlier in March, made the main points of the report available for public.

The 43-page report was prepared by members of the ICRC, to whom the American authorities gave access to 14 “especially valuable prisoners” that went through the scandalously known foreign prisons of the CIA, and then were placed in the camp on Guantanamo. In accordance with the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC representatives have the right to visit the war prisoners and check if the warring sides are following their obligations. The respondents of the Red Cross were natives of Palestine, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Somalia, Tanzania, and Libya. Among them is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that has named himself the “main organizer” of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

The prisoners that are suspected for involvement with “Al-Kaeda” shared their impressions from what the American authorities during the “was against terror” preferred to call “strengthened interrogation techniques”. The Red Cross was once again told about waterboarding, during which the prisoner is partially choked. Another “strengthened technique” is to chain the hands of the prisoner above his head, and let him stand (or rather, hang) in such uncomfortable positions for a couple of days. Other procedures (beating the prisoner against a wall) were mentioned, as well as threats: 9 of the 14 respondents, as they said, were threatened by “torture with water, electric shock, HIV infection, sodomy, arrest and rape of family members”, and other horrors.

By the result of the research, the ICRC established that the described by the prisoners procedures of interrogation are inhumane, “tantamount to torture”, and are a violation of the international obligations of the U.S. Because of that, the Red Cross expressed concern to the administration of George Bush, asked for access to other prisoners, and gave a list of recommendations, all of which can reduced to one: stop the practice of “strengthened interrogations”. When the results of the report were first published by Danner in March, the CIA refrained from commenting , but one of the representatives of the authorities said: “don’t forget that the report contains statements made by the terrorists themselves”. The Red Cross that follows neutrality in conflicts, because of that didn’t publish the scandalous report. Its representatives deplored that the document was “flushed”. How the “flush” occurred, and how the copy of the report came in the hands of Danner still remains unknown.