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March 16, 2009

Red Cross Report: US Committed Torture at CIA Black Sites
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The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret
report two years ago that the Bush administration’s treatment of
prisoners “constituted torture” in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
The findings were based on interviews with prisoners once held in the
CIA’s secret black sites. The Red Cross said the fourteen prisoners held
in the CIA prisons gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that
included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some
cases, waterboarding. The author Mark Danner published parts of the
secret Red Cross report in the New York Review of Books. Danner said the
Red Cross’s use of the word "torture” has important legal implications.
Danner said, “It could not be more important that the ICRC explicitly
uses the words ‘torture’ and ‘cruel and degrading.’ The ICRC is the
guardian of the Geneva Conventions, and when it uses those words, they
have the force of law.”



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