Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
The Syrian government has been accused of torturing the relatives of Syrians protesting overseas in an attempt to silence international criticism of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
The charges are made in a report from Amnesty International – The Long Reach of the Mukhabaraat (the name of the Syrian secret police) – which details more than 30 cases of direct and indirect intimidation of activists in Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the UK and US.
One dissident, now living in Germany, told Amnesty that his brother had been arrested, held for a month and tortured by Syrian military intelligence because of his sibling's anti-regime stance. In Sweden, another pro-reform activist said her activities on the internet and the streets of Stockholm had attracted the attention of the Syrian authorities.
At the end of May, she received a letter in Arabic using her maiden name, which warned her: "Keep quiet or neither you, nor your family inSyria is safe." Not long after, her brother was arrested in Damascus, had both his hands broken and was forced to promise that the family would disown his sister.
Anti-regime activists in several countries have reported being harassed, intimidated and even assaulted. » | Sam Jones | Monday, October 03, 2011
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Al Jazeera has obtained footage of the disfigured body of a 15-year old Syrian boy.
Thamer al Sahri was arrested in April for participating in an anti-government protest. His body was released on Wednesday.
The video comes from a reliable source, but we are unable to independently verify it due to restrictions on journalists in the country.
Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker reports, with a warning that viewers may find some of the images in the report disturbing.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Syria has been accused of torturing activists to force them to reveal their passwords to Facebook websites that have sustained the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
Protest organisers have set up the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page and have promised that "demonstrations will continue every day".
However, amateur video footage showing the violent suppression of protests has dwindled to a trickle amid signs that the regime could be gaining the upper hand after more than seven weeks of anti-government protests.
"The lines of communication have almost been completely severed," one activist said.
"Some of our people who have been taken have been broken under the most severe torture, and they have revealed passwords and names."
Activists admitted that many of the once-secure networks they used on sites such as Facebook and Twitter had been compromised following a campaign of mass detentions in which more than 8,000 protesters have been arrested. » | Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent | Monday, May 09, 2011
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
TIME: On March 17, Ibrahim Shareef, the head of the anti-government activist movement Waad, was snatched from his home at gunpoint by what his family describes as Bahraini security forces. Thrown into a waiting sport utility vehicle, he was driven off into the night. Today he's still missing, whereabouts unknown.As the island kingdom's Sunni regime continues to crack down on anti-government activists and prominent Shi'ites, Shareef and more than 460 others are believed to be in government custody. New arrests happen daily in the country, which is home base of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. Bahrain was designated an official Non-NATO ally in October 2001, after the 9/11 attacks on America.
While there have been wild rumors of the whereabouts of the arrested dissidents, the likely truth is dire enough. Nearly all may be held in prisons around Bahrain, with an unknown number undergoing questioning and torture. On Wednesday, opposition party al-Wefaq claimed that at least four detainees had been killed since April 2, from injuries sustained from police-inflicted torture. Human Rights Watch says another three died in March, including one man who arrived in custody with knees blown out by ammunition fired at close range. » | Karen Leigh | Thursday, April 14, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Obama professor among 250 experts who have signed letter condemning humiliation of alleged WikiLeaks source
More than 250 of America's most eminent legal scholars have signed a letter protesting against the treatment in military prison of the alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, contesting that his "degrading and inhumane conditions" are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture.
The list of signatories includes Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America's foremost liberal authority on constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign.
Tribe joined the Obama administration last year as a legal adviser in the justice department, a post he held until three months ago.
He told the Guardian he signed the letter because Manning appeared to have been treated in a way that "is not only shameful but unconstitutional" as he awaits court martial in Quantico marine base in Virginia.
The US soldier has been held in the military brig since last July, charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking of thousands of embassy cables and other secret documents to the WikiLeaks website.
Under the terms of his detention, he is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, checked every five minutes under a so-called "prevention of injury order" and stripped naked at night apart from a smock. » | Ed Pilkington in New York | Sunday, April 10, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Journalists subjected to mock execution in ordeal which represents most serious incident against international mediaTwo journalists working for the BBC in Libya have been arrested, tortured and subjected to a mock execution by security forces of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
The shocking account of their experiences, including being held in a cage in a militia barracks while others were tortured around them, was made available to media colleagues in Tripoli after the men had been released and left the country.
At one point during their captivity the men say they had shots fired past their heads as they were led into a barracks.
One of the men was attacked repeatedly with fists, boots, rifle butts, a stick and piece of pipe. He also described trying to help other victims of torture whom they saw, some of whom had had their ribs broken during beatings.
The ordeal represents the most serious incident yet involving the targeting of the international media and may offer an insight into the fate of many of those opposition supporters who have been rounded up during the regime's crackdown on its opponents.
It also offers the first real eyewitness depiction of conditions endured by those arrested by the regime, including those whose only crime has been to talk to foreign journalists. >>> Peter Beaumont in Tripoli | Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Saturday, March 05, 2011
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE: Des "dizaines" de manifestants soudanais réclamant plus de libertés politiques au Soudan ont été torturés ces dernières semaines, a affirmé vendredi l’organisation américaine de défense des droits de l’homme Human Rights Watch (HRW), qui cite aussi des cas de viol.Des "dizaines" de manifestants soudanais réclamant plus de libertés politiques au Soudan ont été torturés ces dernières semaines, a affirmé vendredi l’organisation américaine de défense des droits de l’homme Human Rights Watch (HRW), qui cite aussi des cas de viol.
Les mauvais traitements ont eu lieu à la suite d’arrestations massives fin janvier à Khartoum et dans la ville voisine d’Omdurman, d’après les témoignages recueillis par l’ONG. >>> AFP | Vendredi 04 Mars 2011
* Organisation Non-Gouvernamentale
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Military accused by human rights campaigners of targeting hundreds of anti-government protestersThe Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.
The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart. But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.
The Guardian has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organised campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army. >>> Chris McGreal in Cairo | Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Shahram Amiri, who claimed he was abducted by CIA, has not been seen since return from US last year
An Iranian nuclear scientist who claimed to have been abducted by the CIA and who returned to a hero's welcome in Tehran last July, has since been imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of giving away state secrets, according to an opposition website.
Iranbriefing.net - run by a US-based group which normally reports on political prisoners and the activities of Iran's revolutionary guard - said the scientist, Shahram Amiri, had been interrogated intensively for three months in Tehran and then spent two months in solitary confinement, where his treatment had left him hospitalised for a week.
The Tehran authorities would not confirm or deny the account.
Amiri has not been seen in public in the six months since his much-publicised homecoming from America, where he claimed to have been held against his will. State media portrayed him at the time as a daring patriot who had escaped from his alleged CIA captors with critical information about US covert operations against Iran.
US officials, surprised by Amiri's unexpected return to Iran, insisted he had gone to the US willingly. There was concern in US intelligence circles however that his original "defection" in Saudi Arabia in 2009 could have been a trap to embarrass the CIA and trick its officials into revealing how much the US knows about the Iranian nuclear programme. >>> Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan | Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Related >>>
Thursday, November 11, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: David Cameron has flatly contradicted George W Bush and said he does not believe that waterboarding, the controversial interrogation technique, saves lives.
The British prime minister, speaking at the G20 summit in South Korea, repeated the official British line that torture was wrong, and he went further, attacking policies pursued by the Bush administration on the detention and treatment of prisoners which he said had helped to radicalise people and made the West "less safe".
Mr Bush memoirs, which were published this week, asserted strongly that the waterboarding of prisoners had averted huge terrorist attacks on key London targets. The former US president also said that he did not believe that waterboarding constituted torture. >>> Andrew Porter in Seoul | Thursday, November 11, 2010
* This man is turning out to be a naïve fool! – Mark
Monday, January 11, 2010
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: LONDON: A group of British Muslims who were detained and allegedly tortured last month while travelling in Yemen say their interrogators demanded detailed information about mosques in London and their associates in Britain.
The three young men and a teenage boy were held for almost five weeks after being dragged off a bus outside the capital, Sana'a, where they had enrolled in an Arabic language institute a few days earlier.
They say that while being held at a prison run by one of the Yemeni Government's intelligence agencies they were beaten, deprived of sleep and forced to watch others being tortured. They allege that they were then ordered to write a list of mosques they attended in London, told to describe those mosques and some of the people who pray there, and instructed to hand over the names and telephone numbers of some of their associates in Britain.
They were released without charge. The men are angry that the British Foreign Office has made no complaint about their alleged mistreatment to Yemeni authorities, although they reported it to Scotland Yard and Foreign Office officials.
They are also angry that the Foreign Office denies any of them had visible injuries when they were visited by a British consular official shortly before their release. >>> Ian Cobain | Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: An Emirati court on Sunday today cleared the president’s brother of charges of torturing an Afghan despite video footage of the incident.
The court in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) acquitted Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahayan "after establishing he was not responsible" for the torture of the Afghan merchant in 2004, lawyer Habib al-Mulla said.
Five co-defendants, including two Americans, were found guilty, his lawyer said.
“The court accepted our defence that the sheikh was under the influence of drugs (medicine) that left him unaware of his actions,” he said.
Allegations against the sheikh emerged after US network ABC aired the video in April that appears to show him beating a man with whips, electric cattle prods and a wooden plank with protruding nails.
Assisted by others, Sheikh Issa is seen to pour salt in the man’s wounds and run over him with a sports utility vehicle.
The victim needed months of hospital care following the incident. He was reportedly an Afghan trader who lost a consignment of grain worth $5,000.
The lawyer told the court that one of the sheikh’s co-defendants was responsible for Sheikh Issa’s medications and had drugged him, then videotaped the incident and tried to blackmail him.
The court in the oasis city of Al-Ain ordered two co-defendants to pay a interim compensation of 10,000 dirhams ($2,724) to the victim, who can file a new lawsuit to claim full compensation.
The two US defendants of Lebanese origin, brothers Ghassan and Bassam Nabulsi, were sentenced to five years in jail each in absentia for having drugged the sheikh. >>> Times Online | Sunday, January 10, 2010
Related:
UAE Detains ‘Torture Tape’ Sheikh >>> | Monday, May 18, 2009
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