Salon: Torture Report’s Big Bombshell – How a Glaring Double Standard Was Exposed
GAP National Security & Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack highlights the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s newly released Torture Report on the CIA’s program to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects after 9/11. The report shows that the agency’s practices were more brutal and less effective than the CIA acknowledged to the administration or the public. Radack calls out the government’s prosecution of truth-tellers like GAP client John Kiriakou, who revealed that torture was official U.S. policy, while “perpetrators of torture are enjoying their freedom.”
Key Quote: This information, four years in the making and two years in the withholding, would have been nice for Mr. Kiriakou and the other Espionage Act defendants to use to defend themselves on the basis of selective and vindictive prosecution. Unfortunately, forced with facing decades away from his family and young children, Mr. Kiriakou agreed to a plea bargain and is still in prison serving a 30-month sentence for confirming the identity of a torturer working in the euphemistic “Rendition and Interrogation Program.” All the Espionage Act charges against him were dropped, but not before the CIA got its pound of flesh.
The Executive Summary is a welcome glimmer of transparency, but until we have accountability for torture, we will always be in danger of history repeating itself.
New York Times: Abusing Chickens We Eat
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an exposé on the disclosures of contract poultry farmer Craig Watts, who blew the whistle on Perdue’s misleading animal welfare labels that “couldn’t get any further from the truth.” GAP announced it will be representing Watts to ensure his concerns are heard without corporate retaliation.
France 24: Whistleblower Calls for Inquiry into UN’s ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ Over Darfur Killings
Here’s video news coverage of GAP client Aichi Elbasri’s allegations that the United Nations covered up crimes in Darfur, and her call for a serious investigation.