Latest Torture in the United States Stories

A Utah salesman vows to continue pursuing a lawsuit alleging his former employer "waterboarded" during a company training session. Chad Hudgens' attorney told the Salt Lake Tribune Wednesday he would appeal last month's dismissal of the lawsuit by a 4th District judge who claimed there was no evidence that Hudgens' two supervisors deliberately tried to injure him in the May incident. The Salt Lake Tribune said the suit stems from a 2007 training session along the Provo River where Hudgens...

By MICHAEL GRAHAM During my days as a stand-up comic, I faced some pretty tough crowds. In Nashville, I was escorted off stage by security to keep a bachelor party from beating me to a pulp. In Michigan, a large, leather-clad patron with a knife followed me into the men's room to suggest I rework some of my "biker" material. But at least I never had to work in Weymouth, where one bad joke cost the police chief his gun and badge and, maybe, his job. Chief James Thomas has been a cop for 34...

By Leonard Doyle THE FIRST US war crimes trial since the Second World War opened in a small room at Guantanamo Bay yesterday. Salim Hamdan, the former driver and alleged bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, entered a plea of not guilty to charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism as proceedings began in the room near a runway at the Cuban base. "You must impartially hear the evidence," Judge Keith Allred, a Navy captain, told the officers on the jury. "He must be presumed to be innocent." The...

Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft told a congressional committee Thursday that he does not believe waterboarding is torture. Ashcroft testified before the House Judiciary Committee, CNN reported. The committee is holding hearings on whether the Bush administration permitted torture to be used on suspected terrorists. I believe a report of waterboarding would be serious, but I do not believe it would define torture, Ashcroft said. Ashcroft said that as far as he knows U.S. agents...

WASHINGTON _ Ken Robinson, a former Army Special Forces intelligence officer turned Hollywood producer, was working on a short-lived Pentagon drama for CBS aptly titled "E-Ring" when two of the show's writers stopped by his office to discuss the details of torture and other harsh interrogation methods. The writers, Matthew Federman and Steve Scaia, seemed intent on accurately portraying torture on an episode of the television show in which a Special Forces operator was captured by Lebanese...

By Aamer Madhani, Chicago Tribune Jul. 12--WASHINGTON -- Ken Robinson, an Army Special Forces intelligence officer turned Hollywood producer, was working on a short-lived Pentagon drama aptly titled "E-Ring" for a network when two of the show's writers stopped by his office to discuss the details of torture and other harsh interrogation methods. The writers, Matthew Federman and Steve Scaia, seemed intent on accurately portraying torture on an episode of the television show in which a...

By Carol Rosenberg, The Miami Herald Jul. 1--The Pentagon filed death-penalty charges against a Saudi man at Guantanamo on Monday, alleging he engineered the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Aden, Yemen. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed and 47 other people were wounded in the al Qaeda attack that crippled the $1 billion destroyer four years after it was commissioned at Port Everglades. The 11-page charge sheet sworn out by a Marine major accused Abd al Rahim al Nashiri,...

The U.S. government says it has officially charged a man from Saudi Arabia in the attack on the Navy destroyer USS Cole about eight years ago. Seventeen sailors were killed and 47 others wounded when the ship was bombed in Yemen. The vessel was seriously damaged, as well. The government is seeking the death penalty against Abdel al Rahim al-Nashiri, who was charged with the deaths after being held at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba since 2006. Conducting fair,...

WASHINGTON _ The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account. The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel...

A human rights group accused the U.S. government of committing war crimes in a report alleging torture on several terrorist suspects in U.S. custody. Physicians for Human Rights announced its findings Wednesday after evaluating 11 detainees -- held but never charged -- at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan, CNN reported. We found clear physical and psychological evidence of torture and abuse often causing lasting suffering, said Dr. Allen Keller, a medical...