Alan K. Henderson's Weblog

Given its nature, this prize concerns only one of the vast array of interrelated philosophies under the umbrella of Christianity: the formal philosophy professing that God values all humans and values them equally - or, as worded in the Declaration of Independence, "all Men are created equal."

"It [the Abu Ghraib scandal] deserves the apology that you have given today, and has been given by others in high positions in our government and our military," Lieberman told Rumsfeld.

"I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized," he said, and that four Americans in Fallujah who were "murdered and burned and humiliated ... never received an apology from anybody."

Ahmad Batebi said in the open letter that soldiers bound his hands and secured them to plumbing pipes. They beat his head and abdominal area with soldiers’ shoes. They insisted that he sign a confession of the accusations made against him. The next day, he was thrown onto the floor, they stood on his neck and cut off all his hair and parts of his scalp causing it to bleed. They beat him so severely with their heavy shoes that he lost consciousness, and when he regained consciousness, they started their actions again, ordering him to write and sign a "confession". When he refused, they took him to another room, blindfolded him and secured his bound hands to the window bars.

During his interrogations, they threatened several times to execute Ahmad Batebi and to torture and rape his family members as well as imprison them for long terms. The investigators ordered him to confess to false allegations and under extreme duress, he signed a "confession" fearing that they would carry out their threats to him and his family.

Then they took me to another room, still naked, blindfolded and shivering. I felt them kneeling and attaching something to my toes, then to my fingers. Then, without any warning, I felt being electrocuted, yes uncle, electrocuted and I started crying again, not knowing what else to do. I was electrocuted twice while there for seven days. And each time, I cried like a baby, oh uncle, like a baby.

...

They returned me to the room and took away the blindfold. I realized then all the people in that room were naked like me, naked, naked, and all crying and in pain. There were those with broken ribs; I could tell because when you bump into them, their scream is the loudest and it lifts them off the ground. Then, there were those whose blood has turned black and their bruises covered more areas of their body than their normal flesh. Some had salt sprinkled on their opened wounds and we were whispering to each other the pain they felt. One cried that they electrocuted him through his penis and testicles. He felt ashamed and could not stop crying. All young like me, oh uncle, all young like me.

Some had their finger nails removed. Another said that he was beaten with cables aimed at his penis as if it were a target. There was a young man, oh uncle, who stood all the time because he could not sit down or rest against the wall. We took turns, during these seven days, holding his head in our arms and body so that he could get some sleep.

In 2002, Amnesty International has observed an increasing use throughout the country of more sophisticated torture methods that do not leave visible marks. However, people who are believed to have little access to legal and medical aid continue to be exposed to torture methods such as electric shocks, hanging by the arms and falaka (beating of the soles of the feet). Detainees are routinely blindfolded during interrogation. Other methods of torture and ill-treatment regularly reported include severe beating, spraying with cold pressurized water, being stripped naked, sexual abuse, death and rape threats, other psychological torture, and restriction of sleep, food, drink and use of the toilet. Women and girls taken into custody are reportedly regularly sexually abused and threatened with rape.

I had many friends in prison. One of them, Roberto López Chávez, was just a kid. He went on a hunger strike to protest the abuses. The guards denied him water, Roberto lay on the floor of his punishment cell, agonizing, deliriously asking for water. water? The soldiers came in and asked him: "Do you want water?"? The they took out their members and urinated in his mouth, on his face? He died the following day. We were cellmates; when he died I felt something wither inside me.

I recall when they kept me in a punishment cell, naked, with several fractures on one leg which never received medical care; today, those bones remain jammed up together and displaced. One of the regular drills among the guards was to stand on the steel mesh ceiling and throw at my face buckets full of urine and excrement.

A number of foreign officers, identified by their captives as Cubans due to their appearance and repeated references to the island, tortured the already suffering American prisoners relentlessly. One, nicknamed "Fidel" by the prisoners, "took to kicking the prisoners with his paratrooper boots, introduced the fan belt to the repertoire ... [and] used the water torture, gagging their mouths and pouring water into their nostrils." According to one POW, Air Force Maj. Jack Bomar, Fidel "inflicted unbelievable pain and damage to us. ... In a torture session of unspeakable horror, [Air Force Captain Earl Cobeil] was trussed in ropes overnight and mauled for 24 hours straight for declining to bow. ... A couple of days later, [POWs] Daughtrey and Bomar overheard the sickening sounds of a terrible beating nearby. An enraged Fidel emerged from the commotion, spotted the POWs, and shouted 'We've got a [expletive deleted] who's faking! ... I'm gonna break this guy in a million pieces." Cobeil was led back to his cell, "bleeding everywhere, terribly swollen, and a dirty, yellowish black from head to toe." This kind of treatment was often inflicted on top of keeping a number of prisoners locked in leg irons, an unbearable action considering the heat sores and boils suffered by so many of the prisoners at the Zoo.

In a detailed, often harrowing first-hand description of conditions inside Kaechon camp and other detention centres run by the communist regime, Soon Ok Lee told the inquiry of apparent biological and chemical weapons experiments on prisoners.

She said she had witnessed numerous other atrocities, including the murder of newborn babies by guards and doctors.

"While I was there, three women delivered babies on the cement floor without blankets," Ms Soon told a Senate judiciary subcommittee chaired by Democrat Edward Kennedy.

"It was horrible to watch the prison doctor kicking the pregnant women with his boots. When a baby was born, the doctor shouted, 'Kill it quickly. How can a criminal expect to have a baby? Kill it.'

Torture techniques include: the "iron road", rolling an iron up and down the shins until the skin peels off; "the helicopter", being suspended from the ceiling and spun around while being beaten;"Taik Peik", spending weeks or months in tiny brick cells with little air or light; "ponsan", being forced to maintain difficult positions for prolonged periods.