(The following article is from the March 1-15, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Special to PV

New revelations about torture techniques and policies in U.S. and British jails continue to expose the true nature of the so-called "war on terror".

     On Feb. 18, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released previously classified excerpts of a US government report on interrogation techniques used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, detailing repeated use of torture and even prisoner deaths. The documents contain a report on Defence Department interrogations, by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church.

     Church specifically calls interrogations at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan as "clearly abusive, and clearly not in keeping with any approved interrogation policy or guidance."

     On the same day, Freedom of Information documents released by three other human rights groups revealed that the Pentagon ran secret prisons in Bagram and Iraq, and that it cooperated with the CIA's "ghost detention" program.

     "[Prisoners] were handcuffed to fixed objects above their heads in order to keep them awake," reads one document relating to two particular cases. "Additionally, interrogations in both incidents involved the use of physical violence, including kicking, beating, and the use of `compliance blows' which involved striking the [prisoners] legs with the [interrogators] knees. In both cases, blunt force trauma to the legs was implicated in the deaths. In one case, a pulmonary embolism developed as a consequence of the blunt force trauma, and in the other case pre-existing coronary artery disease was complicated by the blunt force trauma."

     Other documents concerned "the homicide or involuntary manslaughter" of detainee Dilar Dababa by US forces in 2003 in Iraq. The prisoner was subjected to torture at "The Disco", located at Mosul Airfield in Iraq. "The abuse consisted of filling his jumpsuit with ice, then hosing him down and making him stand for long periods of time, sometimes in front of an air conditioner; forcing him to lay down and drink water until he gagged, vomited or choked, having his head banged against a hot steel plate while hooded and interrogated; being forced to do leg lifts with bags of ice placed on his ankles, and being kicked when he could not do more."

     Meanwhile, the UK Guardian newspaper reported on Feb. 16 that "a policy governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects in Pakistan that led to British citizens and residents being tortured was devised by MI5 lawyers and figures in government."

     A number of British terrorism suspects detained without trial in Pakistan say they were tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by MI5. In some cases their accusations are supported by medical evidence.

     The existence of an official interrogation policy emerged during cross-examination in the high court in London of an MI5 officer who had questioned one of the detainees, Binyam Mohamed, a British resident currently held in Guantanamo Bay. Mohamed is expected to return to Britain soon after ending a five-week hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay, where he was being force-fed.

     Mohamed told his lawyers that before being questioned by MI5 he had been hung from leather straps, beaten and threatened with a firearm by Pakistani intelligence officers. After the meeting with MI5 he was "rendered" to Morocco where he endured 18 months of even more brutal torture, including having his genitals slashed with a scalpel. Some of the questions put to him under torture in Morocco were based on information passed by MI5 to the US.

     The Guardian reported that the interrogation policy was directed at a high level within Whitehall (British foreign office headquarters).

     A number of British terrorism suspects have been questioned by British intelligence officials, including MI5 officers, after periods of alleged torture by Pakistani interrogators. Last year Manchester crown court heard that MI5 and Greater Manchester police passed questions to Pakistani interrogators for Rangzieb Ahmed, 35, from Rochdale. By the time Ahmed was deported to the UK 13 months later, three of his fingernails had disappeared from his left hand. He says they were removed with pliers while he was being questioned about his associates in Pakistan, the July 2005 terrorist attacks in London, and an alleged plot against the United States.