WikiLeaks: Egyptian torturers trained by FBI

10 02 2011

From the Telegraph today:

The US provided officers from the Egyptian secret police with training at the FBI, despite allegations that they routinely tortured detainees and suppressed political opposition.

By Steven Swinford

According to leaked diplomatic cables, the head of the Egyptian state security and investigative service (SSIS) thanked the US for “training opportunities” at the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia. The SSIS has been repeatedly accused of using violence and brutality to help prop up the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. In April, 2009, the US ambassador in Cairo stated that “Egypt’s police and domestic security services continue to be dogged by persistent, credible allegations of abuse of detainees.

“The Interior Ministry uses SSIS to monitor and sometimes infiltrate the political opposition and civil society. SSIS suppresses political opposition through arrests, harassment and intimidation.”

In October, 2009, “credible” human rights lawyers representing alleged Hizbollah detainees provided details of the techniques employed by the SSIS. The cable states: “The lawyers told us in mid-October that they have compiled accounts from several defendants of GOE [Government of Egypt] torture by electric shocks, sleep deprivation, and stripping them naked for extended periods. . . (more)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8314475/WikiLeaks-Egyptian-torturers-trained-by-FBI.html


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WikiLeaks: 2007 cable from USA touts cozy relationship with Egypt secret police

3 02 2011

Read the Cairo embassy cable for yourself …..  [and check out paragraph 4 about Gaza and anyone who gets freight there is a terrorist] ….

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/28/2027

TAGS: PTER PREL PHUM KJUS

SUBJECT: SCENESETTER FOR FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR JOHN PISTOLE

Classified By: Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone,

for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

¶1. (S) The Egyptians, and I, will warmly welcome you to Cairo. Despite strains in the relationship over the past several months, our partnership in law enforcement and mutual security affairs remains solid. Your visit provides the opportunity to review and reinforce our law enforcement cooperation with the State Security Investigative Service (SSIS), which is under the auspices of Minister of Interior Habib Al Adly (you have separate meetings with Adly and SSIS Director Hasan Abdul Rahman). We recommend you raise with both of them the proposal that Egypt share with us fingerprint records of suspected terrorists, to enter into the FBI’s global fingerprint database. This would greatly advance our practical law enforcement cooperation… (more)

http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2007/10/07CAIRO3155.html

 

Note: GWOT means Global War on Terror, embassy speak for ‘have at it, Boys’.


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WikiLeaks: Horrors by Mubarak Assisted by USA

30 01 2011

from WSWS.org

WikiLeaks exposes US complicity in murder, torture, by Egyptian government

” . . . . The documents, diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Cairo from 2009 and 2010, make clear that the Obama administration was well aware that the Mubarak regime held onto power by terrorizing the population. But Washington tacitly supported the dictatorship and its crimes because Egypt is considered the most important component to US strategy for a wide region encompassing the Middle East, the Maghreb, and the Horn of Africa.

Perhaps the most damning cable is from Ambassador Margaret Scobey, dated January 15, 2009. The letter calls police brutality “routine and pervasive” and states that “police using force to extract confessions from criminals [is] a daily event.” Embassy informants “estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone. . . .” (more)

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/wiki-j29.shtml

UPDATE –        [ Feb. 1]

The cable quoted in the above article is here –

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/187359

More Egypt/USA embassy cables can be found by sorting near the date Jan. 30, 2011 at this compilation page from the Guardian – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/us-embassy-cables-the-documents

PHOTOS of the uprising.


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WikiLeaks: Julian Assange ‘faces execution or Guantánamo detention’

11 01 2011

From The Guardian (UK)

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, could be at “real risk” of the death penalty or detention in Guantánamo Bay if he is extradited to Sweden on accusations of rape and sexual assault, his lawyers claim.

In a skeleton summary of their defence against attempts by the Swedish director of public prosecutions to extradite him, released today, Assange’s legal team argue that there is a similar likelihood that the US would subsequently seek his extradition “and/or illegal rendition”, “where there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantánamo Bay or elsewhere”. . . (more)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/11/julian-assange-wikileaks-execution-gantanamo

 


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WikiLeak’s Bradley Manning kidnap & torture story and how WIRED mag helped

5 01 2011

The whole dirty story is on Salon –

Wired’s refusal to release or comment on the Manning chat logs

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/29/wired_1/index.html

Bradley Manning is still held without access to an attorney, without charges, in solitary confinement of undisclosed conditions.  His extreme confinement is generally construed as mental torture by international standards.  His story is most noteworthy.


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WikiLeaks: Bangladeshi ‘death squad’ trained by UK

29 12 2010

The commercial press wants to ignore the daily bombshells from WikiLeaks. Today for example the (UK) Guardian has this –

Bangladeshi ‘death squad’ trained by UK government

Rapid Action Battalion, accused of hundreds of extra-judicial killings, received training from UK officers, cables reveal

The British government has been training a Bangladeshi paramilitary force condemned by human rights organisations as a “government death squad”, leaked US embassy cables have revealed.

Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), which has been held responsible for hundreds of extra-judicial killings in recent years and is said to routinely use torture, have received British training in “investigative interviewing techniques” and “rules of engagement”. . . . (more)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/21/wikileaks-cables-british-police-bangladesh-death-squad


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WikiLeaks: US Behind Trumped Up Sex Charge

18 12 2010

Pepe Escobar says in Asia Times that the whole stink about Assange was put up by the US in order to hold him without bail while the US scurried around to think of a way to charge the journalist with some big crime.  Since the US has no authority over the world wide web there is no crime behind WikiLeaks.

“…Now everyone knows, thanks to legal blogger Carl Gardner, that it was actually UK crown prosecutors – and not Sweden – that were against the Westminster court’s granting of bail to Assange this past Tuesday (technically in line with Article 12 of European Arrest Warrant legislation – the Swedish prosecution has at any rate also pointed out that the door remains open to an Assange extradition to other European Union countries).

This only served to fuel worldwide suspicion that the United Kingdom was using the broken condom/”sex by surprise” Swedish drama as an excuse to hold Assange in solitary confinement, without his computer, 23 hours and 30 minutes a day, under non-stop infrared surveillance, until the “special relationship” US master could come up with some brand-new charge and go for an extradition order…. (more) “

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LL18Ak01.html

Exposing crime is good journalism.

Escobar points out torturing a whistleblower is  a goon squad tactic beneath a legitimate legal system.


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