Latest Torture in the United States Stories
TUCSON, Ariz., Oct. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --In "L'immortalite: Madame Lalaurie and the Voodoo Queen" (ISBN 0615634710), author T. R. Heinan shows the lengths people will go to in the quest for immortality. The historical fiction/horror novel combines horror, history and humor to tell the story of New Orleans' "most haunted" house. Set in a 1830s Creole community in New Orleans, "L'immortalite" takes readers on a journey with Philippe Bertrand, a reclusive lay sacristan who...
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Last week The Pen, writer and director of "The Last War Crime" movie, appealed for a mobilization to protest YouTube's censorship of the preview waterboarding scene from this soon to be officially released feature film. YouTube's purported excuse for banning the video was they claimed it contained "nudity, pornography, or other sexually provocative content." Pen now reports that in response to more than 7,000 personal protest messages YouTube...
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Though still not even in official release, the writer and director of "The Last War Crime" says that YouTube is already trying to suppress the movie, which is a new full-length feature film about indicting Dick Cheney for torture. The movie's writer and director, who goes by the name of The Pen, asks, "And isn't that something billions of people want to see?" But, says The Pen, YouTube does not want their visitors to see the preview clip of...
Medical involvement with torture is prohibited by international law and professional associations, and yet sometimes it is the right thing for doctors to do, argue two bioethicists. Their timely paper in the Hastings Center Report comes as news of the trail leading to the death of Osama Bin Laden points to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who were subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques," which many believe amounted to torture.Despite its prohibition, torture remains widespread in...
WASHINGTON, April 12, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Torture. The United Nations defines it as the "infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering." But how severe is severe? That judgment determines whether or not the law classifies an interrogation practice as torture. Now, a study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, condemns this method of classification as essentially flawed. The reason: the people...
WASHINGTON, July 30 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of 72 Iraqi citizens who allege they were tortured while imprisoned at detention facilities across Iraq can continue with their lawsuit against military contractor L-3 Services, Inc. and a former employee, a federal judge in Maryland ruled Thursday. In a 92-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Peter J. Messitte denied the defendants' motions to dismiss the Iraqis' federal and state court claims. He wrote, "On the facts alleged, Defendants'...
WASHINGTON, June 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has received hundreds of pages of declassified "Top Secret" Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) memoranda detailing Congressional notifications and briefings concerning enhanced interrogation techniques and detention operations. The records were produced to Judicial Watch pursuant to a court order, as a result of its Freedom of...
U.S. intelligence director Dennis Blair said Wednesday that an elite U.S. interrogation unit will conduct "scientific research" to find better ways of questioning top suspected terrorists. "It is going to do scientific research on that long-neglected area," Blair told the House Intelligence Committee, without elaborating on the nature of the techniques being tested.Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for Blair, declined to give detail to "specific research projects" but...
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Justice Through Music ("JTM"), a national non-profit that works with famous bands to get people involved with important social causes, released a new music video this week to focus attention on the horrors of torture by the United States government. JTM collaborated with the band Op-Critical, filming one of the band members getting waterboarded, hooded, hung from bars, dragged and confined in an abandoned prison. In just a few days, the video...
DAYTON, Ohio, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The former Army senior psychologist who was deployed to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay to improve the operations involving interrogation of detainees said the newest decision by the Obama administration to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA techniques may not be helpful to the intelligence community. "To reopen cases that were adjudicated as legal may be harmful to the mission and morale of the intelligence community," said Col. (Ret.) Larry...
