SHOCKFACTS: US torturers

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal, exposing the brutal treatment of Iraqi prisoners by US army personnel, was not an isolated incident:

• Interrogators in US prisons in Afghanistan frequently use torture to acquire confessions and have caused many deaths.

• On November 26, Iraqi Lieutenant General Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti was forced into a sleeping bag and tortured during an interrogation, which led to his death.

• The US has around 20 detention centres worldwide holding "terrorist suspects". Many of these prisons are clandestine and operate outside any legal constraints.

• An executive jet, used by US intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to other countries in a bid to use torture and evade US laws, has conducted more than 300 flights to 49 destinations, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. Suspects are frequently bound, gagged and sedated.

• Thousands of captives have been secretly shifted overseas by the US in the past three years, most of whom were not indicted officially.

From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.

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From GLW issue 629