| August 10, 18:00 PM
, 2020 | - Chuckie Taylor, Boston-born son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, was convicted in a Miami court of torture and conspiracy--the first instance of a conviction under a 1994 law that allows for the prosecution of American citizens accused of committing torture overseas.
| Source:
bbc
|
| December 16, 2012 | - The Florida Department of Law Enforcement began investigating allegations that children sent to the Florida School for Boys 50 years ago were abused and possibly killed after a group of men, now in their 60s, told investigators they believe the bodies of classmates are buried on the school's premises. One of the men, Dick Colon, remembered wanting to save a black teenager whom he found inside a running clothes dryer. “I said, 'Do it! Do it! Do it!' And then I thought to myself, 'If you do it, they're gonna put you in there. You're gonna be next.' And I walked away,” he said. “A chicken shit, I was.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| April 16, 2009 | - The Department of Justice released four Office of Legal Counsel memos, issued in 2002 and 2005, to address CIA concerns that interrogation methods used on some high-level Al Qaeda members in custody were torture. Besides waterboarding, stress positions, slapping, and face-grabbing, the memos permitted “walling,” or repeatedly slamming prisoners into fake, flexible walls specially designed to make a loud noise when people are slammed into them; keeping a prisoner awake and shackled upright for more than a week, if “diapers are checked and changed as needed”; and putting a prisoner who is scared of insects in a box with a harmless insect and telling him that the insect had a stinger. President Barack Obama said that those “who acted reasonably and relied upon legal advice from the Department of Justice” would not be prosecuted.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Washington Post
Source 4:
Guardian
Source 5:
Miami Herald
Source 6:
AP via Yahoo
Source 7:
DoJ
|
| January 23, 2009 | - Upon taking office, Obama ordered all secret U.S. prisons closed immediately, and the detention center at Guantanamo Bay closed within a year; he stopped the torture of American prisoners; granted access to all U.S. detainees to the International Red Cross; ended the practice by which detainees could be sent to countries where they might be tortured; froze the salaries of all White House officials making more than $100,000; ordered all government agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure” regarding Freedom of Information Act requests; ordered all administration appointees to take an ethics pledge; ended a government ban on funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad; and revoked Executive Order 13233, which placed limits on public access to the records of former presidents.
| Source:
Whitehouse.gov and NY Times
|
| December 3, 2008 | - It was reported that Barack Obama's grandfather was imprisoned and tortured by the British in 1949 during the Mau Mau uprising. “They would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods,” said Sarah Onyango, 87, called “Granny Sarah” by the president-elect. “That was the time we realized that the British were actually not friends.”
| Source:
The Times
|
| August 21, 2008 | - Someone was torturing feral cats in the Bronx.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 14, 2008 | - The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that detainees held as “enemy combatants” by the United States in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, have a constitutional right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus petitions in federal courts. “Liberty and security can be reconciled...within the framework of the law,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in the court's decision. “The Framers decided that habeas corpus...must be...a part of that law.” Dissenting, Chief Justice John Roberts asked, “So who has won? Not the detainees. The Court's analysis leaves them with only the prospect of further litigation.” Defense lawyers for the detainees moved to establish that their clients have the right to other constitutional protections and sought to halt ongoing military-commission trials, which permit hearsay and evidence gained from torture.
John McCain called the ruling “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” Barack Obama said, “I think the Supreme Court was right.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
cnn
|
| May 6, 2008 | - The Humane Society of Mercer County, Pennsylvania, increased to $1,500 its reward for information about the torture and murder of a ten-year-old blind pony named Kahlua.
| Source:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
|
| April 28, 2008 | - A 42-year-old Austrian woman, Elizabeth Fritzl, emerged from the basement cell where her father had, since 1984, allegedly imprisoned her and three of the seven children she then bore him. According to authorities, 73-year-old electrical engineer Josef concealed his daughter and their offspring from his wife Rosemarie by forging letters from Elizabeth saying that she was running away from home, then that she was leaving three of her children at their doorstep to be raised by them.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 20, 2008 | - Francisco Duque III, the Philippine Secretary of Health, encouraged Roman Catholic worshippers who planned on flaying the skin off their backs or crucifying themselves on Easter to get a tetanus shot first and to use clean whips and nails.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| February 5, 2008 | - In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that agency interrogators tortured three detainees, waterboarding each man sometime between 2002 and 2003. When asked during a House Judiciary Committee hearing whether, based on Hayden's disclosures, the Justice Department would now begin a criminal investigation, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said no, because “that would put in question not only that opinion, but also any other opinion from the Justice Department.” Mukasey also reversed a ban instituted by John Ashcroft that prevented DOJ Pride, a gay advocacy group, from using email, bulletin boards, and meeting rooms at the Justice Department.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Talking Points Memo
Source 3:
Washington Post
|
| December 11, 2007 | - John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer who participated in the interrogation of an Al Qaeda
terrorist suspect who was waterboarded, conceded that waterboarding was torture but asserted that its use “probably saved lives.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 19, 2007 | - Michael Mukasey, President George W. Bush's nominee for attorney general, received a warm reception on his first day before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he decried torture and promised a nonpartisan Justice Department. On his second day, however, he hedged on whether waterboarding is torture and argued that the president could disregard laws passed by Congress. “I don't know,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, “whether you received some criticism from anybody in the administration last night after your testimony, but I [sense] a difference.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| October 19, 2007 | - Michael Mukasey, President George W. Bush's nominee for attorney general, received a warm reception on his first day before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he decried torture and promised a nonpartisan Justice Department. On his second day, however, he hedged on whether waterboarding is torture and argued that the president could disregard laws passed by Congress. “I don't know,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, “whether you received some criticism from anybody in the administration last night after your testimony, but I [sense] a difference.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| October 8, 2007 | - A Nepalese eighth-grader who felt pity for policemen facing street demonstrations invented a crowd-controlling robot that can “charge at the mob with baton, use water canon, lob tear gas, and even shoot.”
| Source:
Nepal News
|
| October 4, 2007 | - It was reported that the U.S. Justice Department, despite calling torture “abhorrent” in 2004, had secretly endorsed brutal interrogation techniques on terror suspects.
| Source:
NYT
|
| September 22, 2007 | - A University of Florida student was Tasered after his question for Senator John Kerry went on too long. An Ocala, Florida, man accused police of Tasering him after he refused to drop his Koran; police in Tustin, California, Tasered a 15-year-old autistic boy; and a Taser dart fired at a Vancouver, Washington, man ignited the cigarette lighter in his pocket, setting his pants on fire. Sales at Taser International were expected to reach $90 million this year.
| Source 1:
The Boston Globe
Source 2:
WRAL.com
Source 3:
OC Register
Source 4:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Source 5:
Times Online
|
| September 17, 2007 | -
Raytheon unveiled Silent Guardian, a device that radiates unbearable pain. “You don't have time to think about it,” said an executive. “You just run.” The ray gun, Raytheon promised, will not be sold to countries with questionable human rights records, although it will be used by the United States in Iraq.
| Source:
Daily Mail
|
| August 13, 2007 | - Anonymous sources told a reporter that purported Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was told by his American captors, “We're not going to kill you. But we're going to take you to the very brink of your death and back.” Sources also said Mohammed was kept naked in his cell, hung by his arms from the ceiling, and flung against the walls by a leash around his neck. Daniel Pearl's widow and father expressed doubts about the egomaniacal detainee's claim that he beheaded the Wall Street Journal reporter.
| Source:
New Yorker
|
| August 10, 2007 | - Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of Muammar Qaddafi, affirmed that recently released Bulgarian and Palestinian medical workers accused of spreading HIV to Libyan babies were tortured while in custody. “Yes,” he said, “they were tortured by electricity, and they were threatened that their family members would be targeted.”
| Source:
Chicago Tribune
|
| August 2, 2007 | - An online video game that allows players to torture and kill corrupt officials and their children proved so popular in China that the game's website crashed.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| July 21, 2007 | -
Bush issued an order requiring the CIA to stop torturing its prisoners and to comply with the Geneva Conventions as the president interprets them, and also made clear that he would, by invoking executive privilege, refuse to allow the Justice Department to pursue any contempt charges that Congress might bring against his aides. “The next step,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman (D., Calif.), “would be just disbanding the Justice Department.”
| Source 1:
Voice of America
Source 2:
The Washington Post
Source 3:
The Boston Globe
|
| July 6, 2007 | - A Miami man was charged with elder abuse after his mother, who was found in a trailer covered in red ants with newspapers shoved into her anus, died.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| June 7, 2007 | - A security assessment found that just one third of Baghdad's neighborhoods were under U.S. control, police recruits shot a “suspicious woman,” a Catholic priest was kidnapped along with five boys, and 27 corpses, each shot in the head and showing signs of torture, were recovered.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
BBC News
Source 3:
Washington Post
|
| May 24, 2007 | - The Defense Department released a how-to guide recovered from an “Al Qaeda
torture chamber” near Baghdad. The manual illustrates interrogation techniques such as “eye removal,” “drilling hands,” and “blowtorch to the skin,” and was found along with whips, wire cutters, pliers, handcuffs, hammers, electric drills, screwdrivers, meat cleavers, and a person suspended from the safe-house ceiling.
| Source 1:
FOX News
Source 2:
The Smoking Gun
|
| May 16, 2007 | - A Galveston, Texas, man microwaved his daughter.
| Source:
Click2Houston.com
|
| April 5, 2007 | -
Gaytanamo: Hardcore, a film set in the “sexiest secret military prison ever,” was being sold at a discount on the Internet.
| Source:
Dark Alley.com via nerve.com
|
| March 30, 2007 | - President Robert Mugabe admitted responsibility for the recent torture of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who, Mugabe said, “asked for it.”
| Source:
iol.co.za
|
| March 5, 2007 | -
Vladimir Putin installed Ramzan Kadyrov, a 30-year-old reputed warlord and torturer, as president of Chechnya.
| Source:
Moscow Times
|
| February 15, 2007 | - A couple in Ohio were sentenced to two years in prison for forcing their adopted, special-needs children to sleep in cages.
| Source:
AP via Chicago Sun-Times
|
| January 31, 2007 | - A German court issued an arrest warrant for 13 CIA operatives involved in the abduction and torture of a German citizen.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 28, 2006 | - Vice President Dick Cheney denied that “waterboarding,” a banned interrogation method, was the same thing as giving a terrorist detainee a “dunk in water.” He also said his term as “Vice President for Torture” was over.
| Source:
VOA News
|
| October 24, 2006 | - A United Nations official claimed that the United States has become a role model for prisoner-abusing governments around the world.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 11, 2006 | - In Israel, four doctors were arrested for carrying out illegal, non-consensual medical experiments on their patients.
| Source:
Haaretz
|
| September 20, 2006 | - The United States Justice Department claimed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales “had his timeline mixed up” when he denied the United States had deported a Canadian citizen to Syria, where he was tortured.
| Source:
New York times
|
| September 17, 2006 | - Twenty-three people were killed in bombings in Kirkuk, Iraq, and 180 bodies, some showing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad,.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 15, 2006 | - President George W. Bush complained that Part I, Article 3 of the Geneva Convention was too vague. “What does that mean, ‘outrages upon human dignity’?” he asked at a news conference. “That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| September 10, 2006 | - The Abu Ghraib prison was placed under Iraqi control. “I heard shouting,” said a recent visitor, “like someone had a hot iron on their body.”
| Source:
Telegraph.co.uk
|
| September 6, 2006 | - The U.S. Army promised to stop intimidating prisoners by placing hoods over their heads, or by simulating their drowning, or by threatening them with dogs.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 6, 2006 | -
President Bush emphasized the fine line between “alternative” interrogation methods and torture.
| Source:
CNN
|
| September 1, 2006 | - The Pentagon announced that civilian casualties in Iraq had increased recently by more than fifty percent, and death squads were said to be torturing and killing as many as 1,800 people per month.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 29, 2006 | - In the Indian state of Bihar, high-caste landowners were raping and gouging out the eyes of low-caste residents.
| Source 1:
India eNews
Source 2:
Hindustan Times
|
| July 30, 2006 | - At least 34 gunshot bodies were found in Baghdad, all showing signs of torture.
| Source 1:
local6.com
Source 2:
Reuters
|
| July 23, 2006 | -
Saddam Hussein was being force-fed through a tube.
| Source 1:
NY Times
Source 2:
BBC
|
| July 11, 2006 | - The Pentagon issued a memo acknowledging that all prisoners in U.S. military custody were entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.
| Source:
The Financial Times
|
| July 11, 2006 | - In Mauritania, where local custom favors obese women and where girls are sometimes fattened up by being force-fed sweetened milk and millet porridge via a funnel, large numbers of women were attempting to lose weight for health reasons.
| Source:
The Christian Science Monitor
|
| June 29, 2006 | - The bodies of seven men were discovered in the Tigris River south of Baghdad, and the bodies of two men were found in the Euphrates river south of Baghdad. All the bodies showed signs of torture.
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
Reuters
Source 3:
icasualties.org
Source 4:
Reuters
|
| June 29, 2006 | - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President George W. Bush had overstepped his authority in establishing military tribunals for Guantánamo Bay detainees. “I'd like to close Guantánamo,” said Bush, “But . . . we're holding some people that are darn dangerous.”
| Source 1:
Yahoo! News
Source 2:
Breitbart.com
|
| June 20, 2006 | - The Iraqi military recovered the bodies of two kidnapped U.S. soldiers; a spokesman said they had been “tortured in a barbaric fashion.”
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| June 3, 2006 | - Police found 22 bodies with bullet wounds and signs of torture in Baghdad.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 2, 2006 | - A U.S. soldier was sentenced to 90 days' hard labor for threatening a prisoner at Abu Ghraib with a dog in 2003. “You can . . . end up losing the whole dang war,” said the prosecuting attorney, “basically for boneheaded decisions and misjudgments.”
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| May 19, 2006 | - While acknowledging that Khaled al-Masri "deserves a remedy" for allegedly being tortured by the CIA, a federal judge dismissed al-Masri's case because allowing it to proceed would expose government secrets.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| May 13, 2006 | - The Red Cross criticized the United States for refusing access to prisoners in secret detention. "We know that some people, we don't know how many and we don't know where," said a Red Cross spokeswoman, "are held in places where we don't have access."
| Source:
ABC News Online
|
| May 12, 2006 | - In Virginia a federal judge was considering whether the case brought by Khaled el-Masri against former CIA director George Tenet could proceed; el-Masri says he was abducted and beaten by the CIA, while the United States claims that allowing the case to move forward would expose state secrets and endanger the war on terrorism.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| April 25, 2006 | - A wheelchair-bound woman in Florida, who refused to put down a knife and a hammer, died after being tasered by policemen.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| April 21, 2006 | - The CIA fired Mary McCarthy, a senior analyst, for leaking information about the CIA's network of secret prisons in Eastern Europe to a reporter from the Washington Post.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| April 17, 2006 | - In Purcell, Oklahoma, a man named Kevin Ray Underwood was arrested for killing a 10-year-old girl named Jamie Rose Bolin. “I chopped her up,” he told police. “Regarding a potential motive,” said a police chief, “this appears to have been part of a plan to kidnap a person, rape them, torture them, kill them, cut off their head, drain the body of blood, rape the corpse, eat the corpse, then dispose of the organs and bones.” The police also announced that they had removed skewers and a meat tenderizer from Underwood's apartment.
| Source:
Winston-Salem Journal
|
| March 26, 2006 | - Thirty beheaded corpses were found in Baquba, Iraq, and 10 more bodies were found in Baghdad, where the homicide rate had reached 33 per day. Shiites were abducting Sunnis in bright daylight on crowded streets. "If the Americans leave," said one Sunni man (whose brother had recently been executed after being tortured with power tools), "we are finished. We may be finished already."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| March 21, 2006 | -
U.S. Sergeant Michael J. Smith was found guilty of using a dog to terrorize prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. He was also found guilty of indecency for directing his dog to lick peanut butter from the genitals of a fellow male soldier and from the breasts of a fellow female soldier.
| Source:
The Kansas City Star
|
| March 19, 2006 | - It was revealed that in 2004 a U.S. Special Operations unit imprisoned Iraqis in Hussein-era torture chambers, then used them as targets in paintball games. "The reality is," said a Pentagon official, "there were no rules there." Posters around the detention area read NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 8, 2006 | - The U.S. State Department issued a report criticizing human rights abuses in China, North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. It also criticized the rights records of Jordan and Egypt, two countries where the United States has sent detainees to be interrogated. The report noted that the United States' "own journey towards liberty and justice for all has been long and difficult," and is "far from complete."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The Independent
|
| February 18, 2006 | - An Illinois man was suing his ex-wife to keep her from having their 8-year-old son circumcised.
| Source:
The Chicago Tribune
|
| February 16, 2006 | - New photos of the torture at Abu Ghraib
prison were released.
| Source:
ABC News Online
|
| February 16, 2006 | - The United Nations issued a report calling on the United States to either try the approximately 500 inmates at the Guantánamo Bay
prison for their crimes or release them.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 16, 2006 | - A man in Texas was sentenced to 30 years in prison for raping his former girlfriend, then branding her.
| Source:
Chron.com
|
| February 12, 2006 | - Robert Grenier, director of the CIA counter-terrorism center, was fired for opposing "excessive" interrogation techniques like waterboarding. Grenier, said an intelligence official, was "not quite as aggressive as he might have been."
| Source:
Times Online
|
| February 3, 2006 | -
Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech to the National Press Club and said that "counter-surveillance" of U.S. civilians is a "perfectly understandable thing." "In short," he explained, "it's no big deal." During the speech, Rumsfeld was heckled by activist Heather Hurwitz. "You are torturing people," yelled Hurwitz. "You are a war criminal." "Well," said Rumsfeld, "we'll count her as undecided."
| Source 1:
News.com.au
Source 2:
Democracy Now
|
| January 1, 2006 | -
Hunters in Spain were killing 50,000 hunting greyhounds each year by drowning, poisoning, and hanging them; those greyhounds that “humiliate” their owners by failing to win races or catch hares are often hanged in such a way that their paws barely touch the ground, and as they struggle against the noose, the dogs' nails make a clacking noise. This is known as “the typewriting death.”
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| December 22, 2005 | - The United States denied Saddam Hussein's claim that he had been tortured while imprisoned. "I have been beaten on every place of my body," said Hussein, "and the signs are all over my body."
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 19, 2005 | -
British scientists discovered that little girls like to torture their Barbie dolls by scalping, decapitating, burning, breaking, and microwaving them. “Girls,” explained a researcher, “feel violence and hatred towards their Barbie.”
| Source:
Times Online
|
| December 16, 2005 | -
President Bush was forced to approve the McCain Amendment, which will ban “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of terrorism detainees.”
| Source:
AP
|
| December 5, 2005 | - Facing criticism over the United States' network of secret prisons in Europe, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pointed out that intelligence gathered from terrorism suspects has helped prevent attacks in not only the United States but Europe as well. Rice also asserted that the United States does not transport detainees from one country to another for the purpose of torture.
| Source:
AP
|
| November 25, 2005 | - It was revealed that the United States imprisoned terrorism suspects in Kosovo, at a prison described by the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner as “a smaller version of Guantánamo.”
| Source:
Forbes/AFX
|
| November 24, 2005 | - The Netherlands threatened to withdraw its support for U.S. military missions if the United States continued to refuse to acknowledge its network of secret Eastern European prisons. “The U.S. should stop hiding,” said Netherlands Foreign Minister Ben Bot. “It will all come out sooner or later.”
| Source:
Al Jazeera
|
| November 20, 2005 | - In Basra two British-trained policemen had tortured at least two civilians to death with electric drills.
| Source:
The Statesman
|
| November 16, 2005 | - 173 malnourished Sunni Arab prisoners, many of whom had been severely tortured, were found in the basement of an Iraqi Interior Ministry compound. “You know what happens in prison,” explained the Interior Ministry's undersecretary for security. “Their skins,” said one witness, “got stuck to the floor.”
| Source 1:
Democracy Now!
Source 2:
Common Dreams
|
| November 9, 2005 | - The C.I.A. asked the Justice Department to open an investigation to find out who leaked information about a network of secret U.S.-run torture centers (known as “black sites”) to the Washington Post. When asked about the prisons, President George W. Bush said, “We do not torture.” U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley later clarified Bush's statement, suggesting that there were some cases in which torture is appropriate.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
AP
Source 3:
News24.com
|
| November 7, 2005 | - The U.S. government announced a new weapon, the Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response rifle; unlike previously tested laser weapons that blind their targets, the PHaSR does not produce a “permanently damaging effect.”
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| November 2, 2005 | - It was reported that the CIA had set up a secret system of prisons, called “black sites,” around the world. Originally intended solely for Al Qaeda leaders, the prisons now detain a number of people whose link to terrorism is less certain. “It's just a horrible burden,” said an intelligence official.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| October 31, 2005 | - Two U.S. soldiers were charged with assaulting two Afghan prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| October 12, 2005 | - A Wisconsin man was arrested for putting an electric dog collar on his eight-year-old stepdaughter and zapping her for not eating fast enough.
| Source:
WorldNetDaily.com
|
| October 6, 2005 | - The U.S. Senate passed a $440 billion defense-spending bill; the bill includes an amendment that places limits on the torture of military prisoners. President George W. Bush promised to veto the bill if it was passed containing the amendment.
| Source:
USNews.com
|
| September 30, 2005 | - A New York judge ruled that several suppressed photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq must be released.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 23, 2005 | - Members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division admitted that while in Iraq their battalion regularly tortured prisoners. "Some days," said a sergeant, "we would just get bored, so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib, but just like it. We did it for amusement." Another sergeant said that he had seen a soldier beat detainees with an open chemical light. "That made them glow in the dark, which was real funny," he said, "but it burned their eyes, and their skin was irritated real bad."
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| July 23, 2005 | - The Pentagon was stalling to avoid the release of more photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison. The videos are said to show young boys shrieking as they are anally
raped.
| Source:
Editor & Publisher
|
| July 19, 2005 | - A British court, acting under the legal principle of “universal jurisdiction,” convicted a man named Faryadi Zardad on torture charges for events that took place while Zardad lived in Afghanistan, where he would often unleash a “human dog”--a crazed man he kept in a hole--on captives he was holding for ransom. In London, where he has lived since 1998, Zardad ran a pizza parlor.
| Source:
GlobeAndMail.com
|
| July 13, 2005 | - The twelfth major U.S. investigation into Guantánamo Bay found that forcing an inmate to behave like a dog was not inhumane.
| Source:
Bloomberg News
|
| June 29, 2005 | -
Iran sentenced a man to have his eyes surgically removed.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| May 20, 2005 | - In Chile, Augusto Pinochet's doctors claimed that Pinochet had suffered a stroke; human-rights lawyers said he was just being wily.
| Source:
ABC.net.au
|
| May 1, 2005 | - The United States was sending prisoners to Uzbekistan so that they could be tortured more fully. In Uzbekistan the most common torture techniques are beating and asphyxiation with a gas mask; however, victims can also have their genitals shocked, their toenails plucked out, and they can be boiled to death.
| Source:
The Seattle Times
|
| April 30, 2005 | -
Lynndie England's lawyer said that England would plead guilty to charges against her in the Abu Ghraib case.
| Source:
ABC News Online
|
| April 25, 2005 | - It was revealed that Condoleezza Rice ordered a German citizen released from an American-supervised prison in Afghanistan after it was determined that the man had been wrongly detained and tortured.
| Source:
SMH.com.au
|
| April 8, 2005 | - A Georgia man died after police shot him with nonlethal beanbags.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| April 7, 2005 | - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that most of the allegations of abuse by detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay do not meet his definition of torture.
| Source:
MYSA.com/AP
|
| March 30, 2005 | - A federal judge refused to let the Bush Administration, which opposes torture, send prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to other prisons abroad without granting the prisoners access to the courts.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 2, 2005 | - Four Iraqis and four Afghans sued Donald Rumsfeld for torture.
| Source:
Chicago Tribune
|
| March 2, 2005 | - U.S. scientists were working on a device that shoots pain rays up to two kilometers.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| March 1, 2005 | - The U.S. State Department released a report criticizing other countries for using torture techniques often used by the United States.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 28, 2005 | - A Maryland woman died after being locked in her bedroom for six years.
| Source:
The WBAL Channel
|
| February 27, 2005 | -
PrinceCharles complained that the British had “tortured” him over his relationship with Parker Bowles.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| February 18, 2005 | - It was revealed that the Army, seeking to avoid scandal, destroyed photos of U.S. soldiers holding mock executions of hooded Afghan detainees.
| Source:
AP
|
| February 8, 2005 | - Secret documents showed that Cambridge University, among other institutions, has neglected and tortured monkeys in its laboratories. The monkeys screamed in fear and anger and tried to escape from their boxes.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| February 5, 2005 | - A man and woman were arrested for beating, chaining, starving, and pulling out the fingernails of five children.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 3, 2005 | -
Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as attorney general, and Senator Arlen Specter described him as a man who had made it "up from the bootstraps without even boots." Another senator dismissed accusations of Gonzales's condoning torture as "exaggerated."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 1, 2005 | - Sgt. Javal Davis, a former Abu Ghraib prison guard, pled guilty to charges of battery and dereliction of duty.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 24, 2005 | - The military confirmed that 23 Guantánamo Bay prisoners attempted mass suicide in August 2003 to protest their detention.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| January 20, 2005 | - Three British soldiers were court-martialed for mistreating
Iraqis who were detained for stealing food and powdered milk, and photos emerged showing naked prisoners forced to feign sex acts and soldiers simulating beatings; one captive was wrapped in netting and suspended from a forklift, and one was forced to lie on the street as a soldier stood on him, pretending to surf. The images were discovered by a British photo lab technician after a soldier dropped off the film for processing.
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 19, 2005 | -
Rice, the presumptive secretary of state, began her Senate confirmation hearings, during which she refused to say whether such acts as "water boarding," in which an interrogation subject is made to believe he will drown, can be defined as torture.
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 14, 2005 | - Army Spc. Charles Graner Jr. was sentenced to ten years in military prison for his role in torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| January 12, 2005 | - During the trial of Army Spc. Charles Graner Jr., it was revealed that he threatened to rape prisoners and made them eat pork, and made one prisoner eat from a toilet.
| Source:
New York Timesimes
|
| January 10, 2005 | - More reports surfaced detailing torture in Iraq, this time with Navy SEALs and the CIA as the instigators.
| Source:
Sacramento Bee
|
| January 6, 2005 | - and Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales said he did not approve of torture.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 30, 2004 | - and awarded the Hero of Russia medal to Ramzan Kadyrov, a Chechen leader widely accused of kidnapping and torture.
| Source:
New York Ties
|
| December 20, 2004 | - The ACLU circulated memos, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that suggest President George W. Bush directly authorized torture against detainees in Iraq.
| Source:
ACLU
|
| December 15, 2004 | - Fourteen U.S. Marines were convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners, including one soldier who used an electronic device to make a detainee "dance."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 4, 2004 | - More photos documenting the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq were acquired by American news sources. The pictures, many taken in the aftermath of raids, show Navy Seals abusing hooded and handcuffed men by sitting on them, holding guns to their heads, and stepping on their chests. A woman whose husband had served in Iraq had posted the pictures on a photo-sharing website, and an AP reporter found them through a Google search.
| Source:
AP
|
| November 26, 2004 | - The Bush Administration reversed itself and declared that non-Iraqis captured fighting in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva Conventions; such prisoners, it was reported, have already been transferred out of Iraq in recent months and could be taken to Egypt or Saudi Arabia where torture is more common than it is in the United States.
| Source:
Scotsman
|
| November 20, 2004 | - A team from the Red Cross that spent much of last June at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, accused the U.S. military of physically and psychologically torturing its detainees there.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 20, 2004 | - It appeared that Margaret Hassan, an aid worker held hostage in Iraq, had been executed. Another hostage, Teresa Borcz Khalifa, was released after being held for three weeks.
| Source:
BBC
|
| November 10, 2004 | -
Gonzales is a critic of the Geneva convention and long-time Bush loyalist.
| Source:
AP
|
| November 6, 2004 | - Police in Las Vegas were told to stop using Tasers on handcuffed prisoners.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 28, 2004 | - Four British citizens who were held without charges in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, filed suit against Donald Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, and claimed that they were tortured while in custody. The Pentagon responded that the men were "enemy combatants" and thus had no right to sue.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 26, 2004 | - A newly released document revealed that F.B.I. agents witnessed Iraqi prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib but failed to report it because they saw nothing unusual about the abuse. One agent said that what he saw at Abu Ghraib was similar to what goes on in prisons in the United States.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 17, 2004 | - United States military personnel who worked at Camp Delta, the largest prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, revealed that many prisoners there were tortured by being forced to endure strobe lights and cold temperatures and extremely loud recordings of Limp Bizkit.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 19, 2004 | - The Pentagon announced that it will issue microwave pain guns to its forces in Iraq.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| August 26, 2004 | - Two government reports, one civilian and one military, were issued on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The Army reported that military intelligence officers and civilian contractors were deeply involved in the abuse; the civilian report went to great lengths to avoid the logical conclusion that the Bush White House had created the conditions (legal, operational, and military) that directly led to the Abu Ghraib horrors. Both reports found that many of the techniques employed at Abu Ghraib originated in CIA torture chambers in Afghanistan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 24, 2004 | -
Army investigators discovered that military police dogs were used to terrify teenage Iraqi prisoners as part of a game. The object of the game was to make the youths urinate on themselves. "It had nothing to do with interrogation," said an unnamed Army officer. "It was just them on their own being weird."
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| August 20, 2004 | - A bioethicist writing in The Lancet called for an investigation into the role of doctors and nurses in the torture program that was exposed at Abu Ghraib; he cited evidence that doctors or medics covered up the abuse by falsifying death certificates and actively participated by reviving unconscious prisoners.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 23, 2004 | - The White House disavowed a Justice Department memorandum that argues that it's okay to torture terrorism suspects.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 12, 2004 | - It was reported that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez personally approved the torture of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and that he ordered guards to hide at least one prisoner from the Red Cross.
| Source:
Washington Post, US News
|
| June 10, 2004 | - Evidence continued to emerge that high-level officials in the Bush Administration approved the torture of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere; although
| Source:
The Hill
|
| June 10, 2004 | - "Look, I'm going to say it one more time," said President Bush when asked at the G-8 Summit whether torture is ever justified; "The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 9, 2004 | - Attorney General John Ashcroft denied that the president authorized the use of torture on suspected terrorists, he refused to give Congress several memorandums by Justice Department lawyers laying out ways that interrogators could evade anti-torture laws.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 7, 2004 | - Administration lawyers argued last year in a classified report that President Bush is not bound by laws and treaties that ban torture; the report concluded that "in order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority." The report further argued that the president has the "inherent" authority to set aside laws and that consequently his subordinates could not be prosecuted for violating anti-torture laws.
| Source:
Wall Street Journal
|
| June 1, 2004 | - The Pentagon denied that a new "non-lethal" ray gun that fires millimeter-wave electromagnetic energy, which penetrates the skin and instantly heats water molecules to 130 degrees, might be used as a torture device. No one has been able to stand the pain caused by the weapon, known as the "Active Denial System," for more than 3 seconds.
| Source:
Sacramento Bee
|
| May 29, 2004 | - It was reported that interrogators from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, went to Iraq last fall and trained military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 25, 2004 | - President Bush unveiled his new "five-point plan" for Iraq during a speech at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and offered to destroy the Abu Ghraib prison if Iraqis want him to; the president also promised to give Iraq a modern prison system.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 23, 2004 | - A military lawyer testified that he was told that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez was present at some of the torture sessions at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| May 22, 2004 | - Evidence continued to emerge that the United States has systematically used torture on prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in its secret detention centers around the world.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 22, 2004 | - A former Iraqi prisoner described being sodomized with a nightstick; another said he saw a prison interpreter raping an Iraqi boy as a female soldier took pictures.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 15, 2004 | - It was reported that the Abu Ghraib torture fiasco was a product of a covert Pentagon operation — a so-called special-access program, authorized by Donald Rumsfeld and run by his undersecretary Stephen Cambone — that applied unconventional interrogation techniques developed for use in Afghanistan to the situation in Iraq.
| Source:
New Yorker
|
| May 13, 2004 | - Members of Congress were given a private viewing of unreleased photographs and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; some showed Pfc. Lynndie England having sex with other soldiers in front of prisoners; other images showed prisoners cowering before attack dogs, Iraqi women being forced to expose their breasts, naked prisoners tied up together, prisoners being forced to masturbate, and a prisoner repeatedly smashing his head against a wall. "It was pretty disgusting, not what you'd expect from Americans," said Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. "There was lots of sexual stuff — not of the Iraqis, but of our troops."
| Source:
New York Post, New York Times
|
| May 13, 2004 | - One photograph that was shown to U.S. Congressmen showed an Iraqi
sodomizing himself with a banana. "My conclusion is that was probably coerced somehow," said Representative Trent Franks, a Republican from Arizona.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 9, 2004 | - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the torture of Iraqi prisoners and said that there are "many more photographs and indeed some videos" of American soldiers engaging in "blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman" behavior; Rumsfeld took "full responsibility" for the abuse but still refused to resign. "It's going to get a good deal more terrible, I'm afraid." Specialist Sabrina Harman, who faces court martial because of her role in the torture, said in an email that she never even saw a copy of the Geneva Conventions until recently. "I read the entire thing," she said, "highlighting everything the prison is in violation of. There's a lot." Harman said her job was to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| May 9, 2004 | - President Bush, who authorized his staff to leak the fact that he had privately rebuked Donald Rumsfeld for failing to tell him about the torture photographs, apologized on Arab television; British Prime Minister Tony Blair also apologized, though there were questions about the authenticity of the British images.
| Source:
New York Times, Agence France-Presse
|
| April 30, 2004 | - Six American soldiers, including a general, were facing court martial over the torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, which was famous for its torture chambers under Saddam Hussein. Photographs of the abuse were broadcast on U.S. television; one image depicted a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his genitals.
| Source:
BBC
|
| March 12, 2004 | - One of the Britons released from Guantánamo Bay charged that he was tortured physically and psychologically. "After a while, we stopped asking for human rights," he said. "We wanted animal rights."
| Source:
BBC
|
| December 19, 2003 | - Federal investigators found videotapes of guards at a detention center in Brooklyn beating and mistreating foreigners who were rounded up after September 11.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| December 18, 2003 | - The Department of Justice filed suit against Mississippi for abusing juvenile prisoners. "We found evidence of systematic abuses including hog-tying and pole-shackling," said Alex Acosta, an assistant attorney general for civil rights. "It was even reported that girls, overcome by the heat during drills, were forced to eat their own vomit."
| Source:
CNN
|
| December 18, 2003 | - American officials said that the CIA might not be able to use its usual interrogation techniques on Saddam Hussein, because Hussein, unlike many Al Qaeda operatives, will probably stand trial for his crimes.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 19, 2003 | - The U.S. Marines pressed charges against eight reservists in the death of an Iraqi prisoner, who was apparently tortured.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | -
Chinese
police were told that they can no longer torture
crime suspects.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| September 7, 2003 | - Interrogators at Camp Delta, the American penal colony in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were said to be using Twinkies and McDonald's Happy Meals to make the prisoners talk.
| Source:
Baltimore Sun
|
| August 26, 2003 | - Two Iranian intelligence officers were charged with "semi-intentionally" causing the death of a Canadian photojournalist.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 26, 2003 | - Four American soldiers were formally charged with abusing their Iraqi prisoners.
| Source:
AP
|
| November 27, 2001 | - The United Nations Committee Against Torture warned Israel to stop torturing Palestinians.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | - Yaakov Levy, an Israeli delegate, told the committee that a “close reading” of the 1987 Convention Against Torture, which Israel signed, “clearly suggests that pain and suffering, in themselves, do not necessarily constitute torture.” An Israeli death squad killed a Hamas leader in the West Bank who was suspected of planning suicide attacks.
| |
| November 20, 2001 | - They don't deserve the same guarantees and safeguards that would be used for an American citizen going through the normal judicial process.” Forty-five percent of Americans, according to a new poll, would not object to the use of torture to obtain information about terrorism.
| |
| November 20, 2001 | - Three human rights groups charged that Israel has resumed the systematic torture of Palestinian detainees in violation of an order by the Israeli supreme court.
| |
| August 14, 2001 | -
Albanian guerrillas released several Macedonian Slavs who were kidnapped, tortured, and forced to perform oral sex on one another.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - One man was tortured with electricity in an attempt to make him talk; he was a deaf mute, as it turned out.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - Abner Louima won $8.75 million to compensate him for being tortured by New York City policemen, who shoved a broken plunger up his rectum.
| |
| July 3, 2001 | - Vladimiro Montesinos, formerly Peru's answer to Rasputin, was arrested in Venezuela, having become a liability to Hugo Chávez, and was sent home in shackles to face a life sentence for arms trafficking, money laundering, death-squad activities, torture, arms kickbacks, and bribery.
| |
| June 26, 2001 | - Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the ten-year-old English boys who kidnapped, tortured, and murdered two-year-old James Bulger eight years ago, were released on parole with new identities to protect them from the public.
| |
| April 10, 2001 | - Human-rights groups said that 51 bodies had been exhumed from a mass grave in Chechnya; many had been tortured; 12 were Chechens last seen in Russian custody.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | - President Vicente Fox of Mexico said that he would “eradicate torture forever,” even though it has been a standard part of Mexican justice for centuries, most recently with equipment purchased from the United States.
| |
| March 13, 2001 | - The new Israeli government of national unity under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was preparing to introduce legislation that would legalize the torture of Palestinian prisoners; such torture was legal in Israel until 1984, and until 1999, Shin Bet, the domestic security service, was allowed to use “moderate physical pressure” during interrogations.
| |
| 0, 2000 | - A new, less-redacted version of a 2004 CIA report on interrogation methods was released. “I'm very proud of what we did,” said Dick Cheney of the torture program, which involved guns, shackles, mock executions, and drills. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., against the supposed wishes of the White House, appointed a prosecutor to investigate the CIA's practices.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| December 0, 2000 | - Attorney General Eric Holder was considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate CIA
torture (shackling, punching, beating, waterboarding with extra water, and violating the U.N. Convention Against Torture) under the Bush Administration, despite the resistance of the White House, which believes that its legislative agenda would be hindered by a probe of the crimes of the last administration.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| October 31, 2000 | - Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan, was busy repressing Muslims; torture was said to be systematic.
| |
| October 24, 2000 | -
Amnesty International said that torture was increasingly popular worldwide.
| |
| October 3, 2000 | - A New York jury ordered Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb war criminal, to pay $4.5 million in damages for presiding over a policy of rape, torture, and genocide in Bosnia.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - Kurds, who still suffer harassment, torture, and political killings in Turkey, were unable to respond officially in their own language.
| |
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