Op-Ed: Canada Puts US and Israel on Torture Watchlist

where he claims to have been tortured

Good catch Mike ....

@ Helena Handbasket
Good catch Mike ....

Agreed.

Thankee :)

At least they are fixing their mistake.

Yup.

Interesting, I was under the impression that the US now allows torture and that it was well documented.

@ uninvitedwriter
Interesting, I was under the impression that the US now allows torture and that it was well documented.

The incident arose after a copy of the document had been forwarded to Amnesty International by lawyers who are working on a case involving allegations of torture of Afghan detainees by Afghan authorities after Canadian troops had delivered them into Afghan custody.

.... looks like the Afghan authorities allow torture as well. I suspect it isn't well documented.

Its no mistake the usa is on the list and it was leaked

How is it a mistake when both nations torture their captives, many of which are minors, and held w/o charge nor trial for indefinite periods of time?

Stephen Harper should be embarrassed that the world saw him cowering before his masters and not that the list was released. This retraction is a step back for Canada and for international human rights.

@ Bocephalus
How is it a mistake when both nations torture their captives, many of which are minors...

Cite your sources.

@ Mr Garibaldi
Cite your sources.

Get a life.

Was there no torture in Abu Ghraib?

Israel doesn't torture? Who are you trying to fool?

Israeli government report admits systematic torture of Palestinians
Israel and the Middle East: special report
Julian Borger
Friday February 11, 2000
The Guardian

The Israeli internal security service, Shin Bet, used systematic torture against Palestinians and regularly lied about it, according to an Israeli government report which has been released five years after it was written.

The report covers the period 1988-1992, when Palestinian youths were mounting a sustained street revolt known as the Intifada. In response, Shin Bet ignored government interrogation guidelines allowing "moderate physical pressure" and went much further, with the worst abuses committed in prisons along the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, estimates that thousands of Palestinian detainees - some 85% - were subjected to torture. B'Tselem said that since the beginning of the Intifada, 10 Palestinians have died and hundreds have been maimed as a result of Shin Bet torture.

The Israeli state comptroller, Miriam Ben-Porat, conducted a study of Shin Bet practices and produced her report in 1995, blaming the chain of command under its director, Yaakov Peri.

"The irregularities were not, for the most part, the result of not knowing the line between the permissible and the forbidden, but rather were committed knowingly," the report says. "Veteran and even senior interrogators in the facility in Gaza committed severe and systematic deviations [from the regulations]."

But Mr Peri rejected the report's criticisms, saying that any violations of Shin Bet guidelines were dealt with and corrected at the time.

Gideon Ezra, a member of Likud, the rightwing opposition party, said: "The state comptroller had no way of knowing the impossible task facing the Shin Bet during that period."

The Ben-Porat report was presented in 1995 to a parliamentary sub-committee, which kept it secret until Wednesday, when a supreme court recommendation led to the publication of a brief summary. No Shin Bet officers were ever prosecuted for the abuses committed during the Intifada.

"It's better late than never," Bassam Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist, said of the report. "I really appreciate the Israeli state comptroller for researching it and bringing out. It proves what the human rights organisations were talking about - torture was systemic during the Intifada."

The published summary of the Ben-Porat report does not go into details about Shin Bet torture methods. But according to B'Tselem, which has interviewed hundreds of ex-detainees, the most common techniques were violent shaking, tying up prisoners in painful positions, subjecting them to extreme heat or cold, beating and kicking.

B'Tselem blames the widespread abuses on the government's 1987 Landau commission report, which allowed the use of "moderate physical pressure", including shaking of detainees, if investigators believed that the interrogation would uncover terrorist plots.

Yael Stein, a B'Tselem researcher, said yesterday: "We claimed for years that the minute you allow a little amount of physical pressure you can't limit that amount. Very quickly interrogators are going to use interrogation that is very much more severe."

The Landau commission rules were overturned last September by the Israeli supreme court. But some Israeli MPs are backing a new bill to reinstate the use of "moderate pressure" to help the security forces combat terrorism. The prime minister, Ehud Barak, has also expressed support for such a law.

B'Tselem has issued a policy paper opposing the reintroduction of physical interrogation techniques. It argues: "The supervisory mechanisms will not stop the slide down the slippery slope, which turns democracies into abhorrent regimes where security forces are above the law and immune from punishment whenever acts against Palestinian interrogees are involved."

Ms Stein said that since last year's supreme court ruling, they have not confirmed cases of Shin Bet use of torture. But B'Tselem is investigating claims that some interrogation is being "contracted out" to Palestinian collaborators not bound by Israeli law.

Mr Eid said he was investigating reports of torture of three Palestinian men from Bethlehem by Shin Bet officers. He said it was too early to judge whether the overturning of the Landau rules had led to the complete cessation of the Israeli use of torture.

Meanwhile, the use of torture by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is alleged to have become common in recent years

U.S acknowledges torture at Guantanamo; in Iraq, Afghanistan - UN
GENEVA (AFX) - Washington has, for the first time, acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.

The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity.

'They are no longer trying to duck this and have respected their obligation to inform the UN,' the Committee member said.

'They they will have to explain themselves (to the Committee). Nothing should be kept in the dark,' he said.

UN sources said this is the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.

The Committee, which monitors respect for the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, is gathering information from the US ahead of hearings in May 2006.

Signatories of the convention are expected to submit to scrutiny of their implementation of the 1984 convention and to provide information to the Committee.

The document from Washington will not be formally made public until the hearings.

You need to get your facts straight before you post an article Mike, both governments publicly admit torture and yet you contradict them!

You need to slap on an op-ed and remove this paragraph as it is completely inaccurate:

"Officially, the United States and Israel prohibit the use of torture as a means of gathering information from enemy combatants. Rumors and innuendos of torture of captive Islamic terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay have been debunked Yet and still, the Canadian Foreign Ministry had distributed literature to it's diplomats listing both the US and Israel on a torture awareness training manual as part of a torture watch list."

You cite one report from 2000 that STATES in the article that Shin Bet LIED about torture to the Israeli government, and another from sometime PRIOR to May of 2006.

I never said WHEN they prohibited the use of torture in my article, it is the policy NOW, and I neither condoned nor condemned the use thereof.

Maybe it's YOU that needs to get a life, instead of trying to put something into what I've said that isn't there.

@ Mr Garibaldi
You cite one report from 2000 that STATES in the article that Shin Bet LIED about torture to the Israeli government, and another from sometime PRIOR to May of 2006.

I never said WHEN they prohibited the use of torture in my article, it is the policy NOW, and I neither condoned nor condemned the use thereof.

Maybe it's YOU that needs to get a life, instead of trying to put something into what I've said that isn't there.

Clutching at straws Mike.

I disproved you, you wanted links, I provided. Typically, when confronted with facts, you refuse to face them, then get upset.

Why can't you admit you were wrong, they torture Mike face it, the U.S and Israel torture people. The whole point of your post was to attempt to exhibit outrage that Canada would make such accusations and then to gloat about it being removed.

Now you are proven wrong, face up and be an adult.

I'm still waiting for that paragraph to be removed .

You cite one report from 2000 that STATES in the article that Shin Bet LIED about torture to the Israeli government, and another from sometime PRIOR to May of 2006.

I never said WHEN they prohibited the use of torture in my article, it is the policy NOW, and I neither condoned nor condemned the use thereof.

Maybe it's YOU that needs to get a life, instead of trying to put something into what I've said that isn't there.

@ Bocephalus
Clutching at straws Mike.

I disproved you, you wanted links, I provided. Typically, when confronted with facts, you refuse to face them, then get upset.

Why can't you admit you were wrong, they torture Mike face it, the U.S and Israel torture people. The whole point of your post was to attempt to exhibit outrage that Canada would make such accusations and then to gloat about it being removed.

Now you are proven wrong, face up and be an adult.

I'm still waiting for that paragraph to be removed .

You've disproved nothing. When I am wrong, I readily admit it. The official policy, as I stated, is as I said it was. I will not discuss UNOFFICIAL policies because they are always open to rumor and speculation, if and when they do exist. Nor will I be drawn into an argument over what unofficial policies may be out there. I don't care to discuss the conspiracy theories of others, or my own, if I have them, in this forum and format.

You and I have nothing further to say to each other on the matter.

The U.S. has tortured it's detainees. It's public fact, not rumour. They just do it behind closed doors and tell other countries that torture is bad. I have to side with Bo on this one.

There's the difference, moments, I haven't sided one way or another, only have stated what the official policy is of the US and Israel.

Now that I'm not being baited into an argument:

We all know that both sides in any conflict do things that they aren't supposed to do. It is what it is. I'm still not condoning any forms of torture that the US or Israel has done on any of it's detainees or prisoners. However, given the fact that the Jihadists are so ready and willing to lop off the heads of westerners that they capture, I'm not so sure that I'm willing to condemn it, either.

My own personal jury is still out on the issue, as it were.

Personally, I don't see that torture produces any real and valid results. A man under the gun will tell an interrogator whatever he thinks they want to hear if he thinks it will stop the activity. It's been proven over and over again. On the other hand, I do not and will not agree with giving illegal enemy combatants the rights of either the Constitution of the United States, as they are not citizens of our country, nor the benefits of the Geneva Conventions, as those very conventions have decreed that combatants such AS Jihadists are not subject to them.

What to do about them? I'm not going to offer my solution for what to do with terrorists captured in the act here...

@ Bocephalus
Israeli government report admits systematic torture of Palestinians
Israel and the Middle East: special report
Julian Borger
Friday February 11, 2000
The Guardian

The Israeli internal security service, Shin Bet, used systematic torture against Palestinians and regularly lied about it, according to an Israeli government report which has been released five years after it was written.

The report covers the period 1988-1992, when Palestinian youths were mounting a sustained street revolt known as the Intifada. In response, Shin Bet ignored government interrogation guidelines allowing "moderate physical pressure" and went much further, with the worst abuses committed in prisons along the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, estimates that thousands of Palestinian detainees - some 85% - were subjected to torture. B'Tselem said that since the beginning of the Intifada, 10 Palestinians have died and hundreds have been maimed as a result of Shin Bet torture.

The Israeli state comptroller, Miriam Ben-Porat, conducted a study of Shin Bet practices and produced her report in 1995, blaming the chain of command under its director, Yaakov Peri.

"The irregularities were not, for the most part, the result of not knowing the line between the permissible and the forbidden, but rather were committed knowingly," the report says. "Veteran and even senior interrogators in the facility in Gaza committed severe and systematic deviations [from the regulations]."

But Mr Peri rejected the report's criticisms, saying that any violations of Shin Bet guidelines were dealt with and corrected at the time.

Gideon Ezra, a member of Likud, the rightwing opposition party, said: "The state comptroller had no way of knowing the impossible task facing the Shin Bet during that period."

The Ben-Porat report was presented in 1995 to a parliamentary sub-committee, which kept it secret until Wednesday, when a supreme court recommendation led to the publication of a brief summary. No Shin Bet officers were ever prosecuted for the abuses committed during the Intifada.

"It's better late than never," Bassam Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist, said of the report. "I really appreciate the Israeli state comptroller for researching it and bringing out. It proves what the human rights organisations were talking about - torture was systemic during the Intifada."

The published summary of the Ben-Porat report does not go into details about Shin Bet torture methods. But according to B'Tselem, which has interviewed hundreds of ex-detainees, the most common techniques were violent shaking, tying up prisoners in painful positions, subjecting them to extreme heat or cold, beating and kicking.

B'Tselem blames the widespread abuses on the government's 1987 Landau commission report, which allowed the use of "moderate physical pressure", including shaking of detainees, if investigators believed that the interrogation would uncover terrorist plots.

Yael Stein, a B'Tselem researcher, said yesterday: "We claimed for years that the minute you allow a little amount of physical pressure you can't limit that amount. Very quickly interrogators are going to use interrogation that is very much more severe."

The Landau commission rules were overturned last September by the Israeli supreme court. But some Israeli MPs are backing a new bill to reinstate the use of "moderate pressure" to help the security forces combat terrorism. The prime minister, Ehud Barak, has also expressed support for such a law.

B'Tselem has issued a policy paper opposing the reintroduction of physical interrogation techniques. It argues: "The supervisory mechanisms will not stop the slide down the slippery slope, which turns democracies into abhorrent regimes where security forces are above the law and immune from punishment whenever acts against Palestinian interrogees are involved."

Ms Stein said that since last year's supreme court ruling, they have not confirmed cases of Shin Bet use of torture. But B'Tselem is investigating claims that some interrogation is being "contracted out" to Palestinian collaborators not bound by Israeli law.

Mr Eid said he was investigating reports of torture of three Palestinian men from Bethlehem by Shin Bet officers. He said it was too early to judge whether the overturning of the Landau rules had led to the complete cessation of the Israeli use of torture.

Meanwhile, the use of torture by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is alleged to have become common in recent years

The Leftist Guardian is hardly a reliable source by any stretch of the imagination. Torture? What torture?

ROFLMAO!!

@ KJ (momentsintime)
The U.S. has tortured it's detainees. It's public fact, not rumour. They just do it behind closed doors and tell other countries that torture is bad. I have to side with Bo on this one.

Subjection pure and simple.

Methods used?

Crickets.

You have no regard for facts whatsoever.
Not only are you not removing your the paragraph which has been dis-proven nor adding an op-ed, but your are posting more falsehoods in your commentary.

The Geneva conventions has not "decreed that combatants such AS Jihadists are not subject to them." as you claim in box 19. That is incorrect!

The term 'enemy combatant' appears nowhere in the Geneva conventions nor international law. It makes it clear that those that don't fall under the category of Third Geneva convention will necessarily fall under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Ina war zone, you are either a soldier or a civilian and nothing in between. The International legal community has rejected the American interpretation used to justify its policy of indefinite detention and torture of suspects including minors.

As far as Israel, your own link has this article which says that Israel CONTINUES to use torture on Palestinian civilians held without trial.

The question is," why is Canada backpeddling on this issue?" Has "someone" been tortured to do so?

@ 666divine
The question is," why is Canada backpeddling on this issue?" Has "someone" been tortured to do so?

I do love your comments Divine!

@ KJ (momentsintime)
I do love your comments Divine!

Thanks. I couldn't resist.

I stand corrected, Bo, though your approach is still baiting for an argument that I'm not going to give you. As I said, if I'm wrong, I'll own up to it.

The correct documentation regarding unlawful enemy combatants was the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

As to any other comments you and I have to make to each other, you can drop the attitude or you will be disregarded as wishing only to argue, not to discuss.

@ Randyscandy
Its no mistake the usa is on the list and it was leaked

Perhaps it is no mistake that they are now being taken OFF the list also, which is what the cited article made clear had you followed the links.

The original source also states very clearly :

"The manual is neither a policy document nor a statement of policy. As such, it does not convey the government's views or positions."

So it was never Canada's official position to begin with.

Great find Mike.

The point is that there is a list some one found it relevent to put the usa on it

@ 666divine
The question is," why is Canada backpeddling on this issue?" Has "someone" been tortured to do so?

One never does know for sure now does one?

@ Randyscandy
The point is that there is a list some one found it relevent to put the usa on it

There is ALWAYS a list someplace of one thing or another.

And?

Its our country--right or wrong!
Say something negative about it and we'll get you...