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Recently declassified documents on the Bush administration interrogation program describe several techniques used on detainees in US custody, some of which may have violated the United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory.
Included in the large cache of documents is one which describes (pdf) stress positions to be used as interrogation techniques, as well as the use of an abdominal slap as a punishment tool.
The “purpose” of the abdominal slap is defined in the documents as being “to instill fear and despair, to punish selective behavior and to instill humiliation or cause insult.”
The documents were requested by the American Civil Liberties Union via a Freedom of Information Act request in 2004 and were made public on Oct. 30, 2009.
While there is no information on when the stress-position document was written or which government agency authored it, the entire cache of documents was in the possession of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, according to ACLU attorney, Alex Abdo. "We don't know who wrote it," Abdo said in a Monday interview. "It may have been written by the OLC, the CIA, or the DOD."
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Abdominal Slap
The “purpose” of the abdominal slap technique is far more defined than the purpose of the stress position technique and it is this portion that raises serious questions of legality, as defined by several treaties to which the United States is a signatory.
The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, for example, was adopted by the United Nations in 1984 and ratified by the United States in 1994. It defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person."
The abdominal slap is outlined in the released document as being used “to instill fear and despair” and “instill humiliation.”
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Read the whole thing here.
