Seven Paragraphs - Released Binyan Mohamed Abuse Evidence

Released Binyan Mohamed Abuse Evidence Poses
Problems for Both British and US Governments

By Stephen Soldz Z Net


Thursday, February 11, 2010

In a major development in the struggle to curb
the abuses committed as part of the War on
Terror, the British government today released
under court order previously redacted information
on the abuse of Binyan Mohamed by US
interrogators. Here are the
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-torture-evidence-paragraphs

seven paragraphs that were released which summarizes
intelligence information which both the British
and US governments fought hard to suppress:

"It was reported that a new series of interviews
was conducted by the United States authorities
prior to 17 May 2002 as part of a new strategy
designed by an expert interviewer.

"v) It was reported that at some stage during
that further interview process by the United
States authorities, BM had been intentionally
subjected to continuous sleep deprivation. The
effects of the sleep deprivation were carefully observed.
"vi) It was reported that combined with the sleep
deprivation, threats and inducements were made to
him. His fears of being removed from United
States custody and "disappearing" were played upon.
"vii) It was reported that the stress brought
about by these deliberate tactics was increased
by him being shackled in his interviews
"viii) It was clear not only from the reports of
the content of the interviews but also from the
report that he was being kept under self-harm
observation, that the interviews were having a
marked effect upon him and causing him significant mental stress and suffering.
"ix) We regret to have to conclude that the
reports provide to the SyS [security services]
made clear to anyone reading them that BM was
being subjected to the treatment that we have
described and the effect upon him of that intentional treatment.
"x) The treatment reported, if had been
administered on behalf of the United Kingdom,
would clearly have been in breach of the
undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972.
Although it is not necessary for us to categorise
the treatment reported, it could readily be
contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman
and degrading treatment by the United States authorities."

This case has aroused tremendous attention in
Britain, as it clearly revealed British
intelligence agents', and the British
Government's, complicity in abuse of a British
citizen. The British public, unlike much of the
American, finds complicity in torture by its
intelligence agents to be deeply disturbing.

The court decision ordering the release of this
material is causing additional outrage because it
violated
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/libertycentral/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-legal-principle-representationshundreds

of years of legal precedent in allowing only one
side, the British government, to suggest changes
in the decision. These changes were made without
an opportunity of the defense to object. The
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-torture-annotated-letter>letter

to the court from the government lawyers
requesting the changes was released, however.
That letter gives a sense of what was excluded:

"The Master of the Rolls's observations… will be
read as statements by the Court (i) that the
Security Service does not in fact operate a
culture that respects human rights or abjures
participation in coercive interrogation
techniques; (ii) that this was in particular true
of Witness B whose conduct was in this respect
characteristic of the service as a whole ('it
appears likely that there were others'); (iii)
that officials of the Service deliberately misled
the Intelligence and Security Committee on this
point; (iv) that this reflects a culture of
suppression in its dealings with the Committee,
the Foreign Secretary and indirectly the Court,
which penetrates the service to such a degree as
to undermine any UK government assurances based
on the Service's information and advice; and (v)
that the Service has an interest in suppressing
information which is shared, not by the Foreign
Secretary himself (whose good faith is accepted),
but by the Foreign Office for which he is responsible."

Thus, the British government is afraid that the
lies they perpetrated in the Binyan Mohamed case
will disincline future courts from believing
claims that the British government can be trusted
when it asserts that they are opposed to torture
or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In
other words, the court might correctly understand
that the British government, like the US and many
other governments, is a serial liar when it
comes to abuses committed by its agents.

What may be less clear to US citizens is the
potential enormous impact of the released
information to the anti-torture struggle in the
US.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/02/10/cruel-inhuman-and-degrading-treatment-by-the-united-states-authorities-before-the-bybee-memo/Marcy

Wheeler [emptywheel] has pointed out the major
significance of the apparent timing of Binyan
Mohamed's abuse. It is reported to have occurred
before a visit by an MI5 officer on May 17, 2002.
The significance of the date is that it is before
the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/olc_memos.htmlmemos
providing a legal cover for torture were issued
in august, 2002.Thus, Binyan Mohamed's abuse,
unlike later abuses, cannot be justified as being
conducted in good faith under an authoritative legal opinion from the OLC.

Thus, this information just might provide an
opportunity for prosecuting some of the torture
perpetrators. And if the perpetrators are
culpable, so may be those officials, however high
they may be, who authorized the abuse.

Wheeler also points out that it is likely that
the "expert interviewer" who designed the "new
strategy" used on Binyan Mohamed was likely one
of the CIA's chief torture psychologists,
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707?printable=true&currentPage=allJames

Mitchell or
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer?printable=true>Bruce

Jessen, or at least an
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=204358associate
of theirs. Thus, these architects of the CIA's
torture techniques may sweat a bit more after the
release of these seven paragraphs.

The material released today also has several
phrases that suggest that Binyan Mohamed was
being experimented upon. As the material staes,
tThe interrogations were "part of a new strategy
designed by an expert interviewer." And "The
effects of the sleep deprivation were carefully
observed." Why were these effects being
"carefully observed" unless to determine their
effectiveness in order to see whether they should
be inflicted used upon others? That is, the
observations were designed to generate knowledge
that could be generalized to other prisoners.
The seeking of "generalizable knowledge" is the
official definition of "research," raising the
question of whether the CIA conducted illegal research upon Binyan Mohamed.

Last summer Physicians for Human Rights
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/documents/reports/aiding-torture.pdfsuggested

that materials in the then released CIA
http://www.aclu.org/oigreportInspector
General's report on the "enhanced interrogation"
program suggested that the CIA had an systematic
program of research. Such research is patently
illegal and violates the rules that have governed
human research since the Nuremberg Trials
convicted German doctors for illegal research.
This CIA research also violates rules of the US
government regulating all research on people.

Similarly, bioethicist Steven Miles argued in an
appendix to the second edition of his classic
http://www.amazon.com/Oath-Betrayed-Americas-Torture-Doctors/dp/0520259688/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265838242&sr=8-2Oath

Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors that the
detailed
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Guantnamo_bay_detainee_63_Mohamed_Mani_Ahmad_al-Kahtani_interrogation_log_2002interrogation

log of Mohammed al-Qahtan only made sense as the
notes for a research protocol.

This new evidence on the torture of Binyan
Mohamed adds to the considerable evidence that,
as part of its torture program, the CIA also had
a program to systematically study the
effectiveness of torture techniques. Last summer,
Physicians for Human Rights called for an
independent investigation of this potential CIA
research. The new evidence suggesting that Binyan
Mohamed may have been an unwitting research
subject only adds to the urgency of an investigation.

In addition to the usual human rights advocates,
all those who conduct research on people --
psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and
biomedical researchers among others -- should
join the call for an investigation. For torture
effectiveness research violates all the
principles that guide our work, that our efforts
should improve human welfare rather than degrade
and destroy. We cannot allow the possibility that
our society will remain one where inhumane
research can be conducted with total impunity.

mailto:ssoldz@bgsp.eduStephen Soldz is a
psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health
researcher, and faculty member at the
http://www.bgsp.edu/Boston Graduate School of
Psychoanalysis. He edits the
http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/Psyche,
Science, and Society blog. He is a founder of the
Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the
organizations working to change American
Psychological Association policy on participation
in abusive interrogations. He is President-Elect
of http://psysr.org/Psychologists for Social Responsibility [PsySR].




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