{"id":65218,"date":"2015-10-19T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=65218"},"modified":"2015-10-18T13:55:11","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T12:55:11","slug":"lawsuit-charges-us-psychologists-involved-in-cia-torture-program-with-war-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/10\/lawsuit-charges-us-psychologists-involved-in-cia-torture-program-with-war-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit Charges US Psychologists Involved in CIA Torture Program with War Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

15 Oct 2015 – <\/em>A lawsuit filed on Tuesday in federal court alleges that American psychologists James Mitchell and John \u201cBruce\u201d Jessen collaborated with the CIA in devising \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d that were later used by US personnel in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and unlisted US black sites. The charges were filed by victims of the US torture program and the ACLU, and declare that the two doctors engaged in a \u201cjoint criminal enterprise\u201d with the US government, constituting \u201ctorture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; non-consensual human experimentation; and war crimes, all of which violate well-established norms of customary international law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"mohamed-ben-soud-drawing2<\/a><\/p>\n

The lawsuit was filed by Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, Tanzanian and Libyan nationals who were subjected to CIA torture methods, as well as by Obaid Ullah, a representative of the family of Gul Rahman, who was killed while under interrogation in 2002. The lawsuit alleges that Mitchell and Jessen \u201cdesigned, implemented, and personally administered an experimental torture program for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency\u201d while working with the agency.<\/p>\n

Mitchell and Jessen were tapped by representatives of the Bush administration in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to devise interrogation methods intended to break the willful resistance of Al Qaeda suspects in US custody. According to the lawsuit, the two CIA collaborators \u201cproposed a pseudoscientific theory of countering resistance\u201d based on 1960s experiments in which doctors subjected animals to \u201cuncontrollable pain\u201d in an effort to instill a state of \u201clearned helplessness\u201d in their victims, the latter eventually submitting passively to the will of their captors. These methods were first carried out on Abu Zabaydah, a suspected Al Qaeda militant captured in March of 2002.<\/p>\n

Victims of the program were subjected to \u201csolitary confinement; extreme darkness, cold, and noise; repeated beatings; starvation; excruciatingly painful stress positions; prolonged sleep deprivation; confinement in coffin-like boxes; and water torture\u201d in CIA black sites under the supervision of Mitchell and Jessen, which resulted in \u201clasting psychological and physical damage,\u201d the lawsuit alleges. The family of Rahman, the latter having died of such abuse, was never notified of his death or given his body so they could perform a burial, the lawsuit notes.<\/p>\n

Although the CIA has officially admitted to having waterboarded only three individuals\u2014Abdul al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed\u2014the charges detail torture methods and abuse which can essentially be described as the same thing. Ben Soud, held by the CIA in a number of US prison black sites in Afghanistan and Libya from 2003 to 2011, was repeatedly \u201cstrapped to a wooden board that could spin around 360 degrees\u2026 with a hood over his head covering his nose and mouth. While strapped to the board with his head lower than his feet, his interrogators poured buckets of cold water [over] him\u201d while threatening to drown him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t sleep, you can\u2019t eat, you can\u2019t smell,\u201d says Salim of his ordeal, in a video interview published<\/a> on the ACLU website, adding, \u201cFlashbacks come anytime, so much they make you crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jessen and Mitchell\u2019s methods first became public knowledge with the exposure of photographs depicting torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004, controlled by the US military in the wake of the invasion of that country in 2003. At the time, the scandal forced the US government to place a moratorium on the practices, only later continuing them when the American Psychological Association, in consultation with the Bush administration, stepped in to provide the program a veneer of legality so that it could continue unhindered.<\/p>\n

During 2005, the two formed Mitchell and Jessen Associates, a company providing \u201coperational psychologists, debriefers, and security personnel at CIA detention sites,\u201d allowing them to draw $81 million from the federal government throughout the life of their contract. While President Barack Obama officially ended the program upon coming to office in 2008, the US government continued to pay millions of dollars in legal fees for Mitchell and Jessen until 2012.<\/p>\n

Despite the severity of the charges brought forth, the lawsuit only demands payment for legal costs, punitive and exemplary damages of an amount \u201cto be proven\u201d and compensation payments totaling $75,000 each.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case is about ensuring that the people behind the torture program are held accountable so history doesn\u2019t repeat itself,\u201d said ACLU attorney Steven Watt of the lawsuit, adding, \u201cImpunity for torture sends the dangerous message to US and foreign officials that there will be no consequences for future abuses.\u201d Such language implies that acting and former members of the Bush and Obama administrations could be held liable for similar charges in the future.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit is based largely on findings of the US Senate Select Intelligence Committee\u2019s report on the CIA torture program, released in late 2014, and represents the first and thus far only lawsuit to be brought against collaborators in the US torture program based upon documented government evidence. While initially reacting with outrage to the highly redacted revelations of US criminality, the US political establishment has halted any public discussion of the highly explosive content of the Senate report. Less than a year after its release, no one, including members of the Senate committee itself, is seeking to revisit the subject.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

The author also recommends:<\/em><\/p>\n

The CIA torture report and the crisis of legitimacy in the United States <\/a>[08 December 2014]<\/em><\/p>\n

What is in the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on CIA torture <\/a>[16 December 2014]<\/em><\/p>\n

American Psychological Association played critical role in CIA torture program <\/a>[01 May 2015]<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wsws.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The charges were filed by victims of the US torture program and the ACLU, and declare that the two doctors engaged in a \u201cjoint criminal enterprise\u201d with the US government, constituting \u201ctorture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; non-consensual human experimentation; and war crimes, all of which violate well-established norms of customary international law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}