Torture in the United States

Both manuals reiterated that "no person in the custody or under the control of DOD, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, in accordance with and as defined in U.S.

"[16] Specific techniques prohibited in the intelligence collection manual include: Torture in all forms is banned by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which the United States participated in drafting.

A form of mob violence and social control, usually involving (but by no means restricted to) the illegal hanging and burning of suspected criminals, lynch law cast its pall over the Southern United States from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries.

[21] The use of "third degree interrogation" techniques in order to compel confession, ranging from "psychological duress such as prolonged confinement to extreme violence and torture", was widespread and considered acceptable in early American policing.

The publication of the Wickersham Commission's "Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement" in 1931 highlighted the widespread use of covert third degree torture by the police to force confessions, and led to a subsequent decline in its use over the 1930s and 1940s.

From 1967 to at least 1972, the Central Intelligence Agency coordinated the Phoenix Program, which targeted the infrastructure of the Communist National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam ("Viet Cong").

[31] One author, Jennifer Harbury, focussing on Central America, concluded that "A review of the materials leads relentlessly to just one conclusion: that the CIA and related U.S. intelligence agencies have since their inception engaged in the widespread practice of torture, either directly or through well-paid proxies.

Eventually the CIA's psychological methods were spread worldwide through the U.S. Agency for International Development's Public Safety program and U.S. Army Mobile Training Teams.

The manuals were also distributed by Special Forces Mobile Training teams to military personnel and intelligence schools in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru.

In the 1970s and 1980s the Chicago Police Department's Area 2 unit under Commander Jon Burge repeatedly used electroshock, near-suffocation by plastic bags and excessive beating on suspects.

[45][46] In September 1997, two former officers from the Adelanto Police Department, San Bernardino County, California, were jailed for two years on federal charges, after pleading guilty to beating a suspect during questioning and forcing another man to lick blood off the floor in 1994.

[50][51] A prisoner executed in 2004, Dominique Green, told that two of his row mates were beaten up; the guards then flooded the room, destroying every object owned by one of them: his letters, photos, legal documents, the book he was writing, his typewriter.

[54][page needed] From the year 2000 onwards, the Supermax facility at the Maine State Prison was the scene of video-taped forcible extractions that Lance Tapley in the Portland Phoenix wrote "look[ed] like torture.

"[56] Detained immigrants, including refugees seeking asylum, at the Esmor Inc. facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, rebelled after practices of verbal and physical abuse, humiliation and corporal punishment.

On arrival at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, the detainees were slammed face first into a wall against a shirt with an American flag; the bloodstain left behind was described by one officer as the print of bloody noses and a mouth.

Once inside they were threatened with detention for the rest of their lives, verbally abused, exposed to cold, deprived of sleep, and had their hands, cuffed arms, and fingers severely twisted.

[58] In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court deferred to state secrets privilege when they refused to hear the case of Khalid el-Masri, who was kidnapped and tortured by the CIA under the Bush administration on December 21, 2003.

[64] Similar methods employed against suspected Irish Republic Army members were rule by the ECHR in Ireland v. United Kingdom to be inhuman and degrading treatment, but not torture.

These sources state that CIA and military personnel beat up uncooperative suspects, confine them in cramped quarters, duct tape them to stretchers, and use other restraints that maintain the subject in an awkward and painful position for long periods of time.

[citation needed] Some techniques within the "stress and duress" category, such as water boarding, have long been considered as torture, by both the United States government and human rights groups.

It also cites a number of warnings against torture, including statements by President Bush[69] and a then-new Supreme Court ruling "...which raises possible concerns about future U.S. judicial review of the [interrogation] Program."

"[65] Based on the Justice Department analyses, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later approved in 2003 the use of 24 classified interrogation techniques for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which after use on one prisoner were withdrawn.

However, the Bush administration explicitly endorsed the use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding in memos to the CIA,[74] and one Pentagon official has publicly admitted that torture was conducted at Guantanamo Bay.

Overseas detention facilities are known to be or to have been maintained at least in Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Cyprus, Cuba, Diego Garcia, and unspecified South Pacific island nation(s).

In addition, individuals are suspected to be or to have been held in temporary or permanent U.S. controlled facilities in Indonesia, El Salvador, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Israel, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Germany, and Scotland.

The protesters wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods, were arrested, and charged with "failure to obey a lawful order" when they refused to leave the White House sidewalk.

However, the State Department report (relied upon by all parties) confirmed that the Haitian government used this policy as a warning and a deterrent, to try to prevent deportees from committing crimes in Haiti.

[citation needed] Thus, Haiti's detention policy in itself appears to be a lawful enforcement sanction ... to protect the populace from criminal acts by Haitians who are forced to return to the country after having been convicted of crimes abroad.

... this policy is a lawful sanction and, therefore, does not constitute torture.... [Also] there is no evidence that Haitian authorities are detaining criminal deportees with the specific intent to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.

For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.