News from new hearings

A man held in US custody for five years – in secret CIA prisons but now in Guantanamo Bay – has told a military hearing he was tortured into confessing a role in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

“I just said those things to make the people happy,” the transcript read.

“They were very happy when I told them those things.”

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 41, said he had faced years of torture after his arrest in 2002, a Pentagon transcript from the closed-door hearing reveals.

“It happened during interviews. One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way.”

at the BBC


Background Update:
:: Out2Lunch :: Into the Lake of Fire ::: “Atlantic City by the cold grey sea | I hear a voice crying, ‘Daddy,’ I always think it’s for me, | But it’s only the silence in the buttermilk hills that call. | Every new messenger brings evil report | ‘Bout armies on the march and time that is short | And famines and earthquakes and hatred written upon walls.

“The first thing that strikes the lay student of military commissions is the enormous power vested in the US deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, who is the commissions’ ‘appointing authority’. The judges – seven in a capital case – are appointed by Wolfowitz.

“Any judge can be substituted up to the moment of verdict, by Wolfowitz, US Deputy Secretary of Defence.”