Three Teenagers and a Journalist Attempt to Prosecute Bush for Torture
Bush is in British Columbia today, giving a $100,000 speech.
Three men first captured when they were teenagers–Hassan bin Attash (Walid’s brother, who was captured when was 16 and remains in Gitmo), Muhammed Khan Tumani (who was captured when he was 17), and German-born Murat Kurnaz (who was 19 when he was captured)–and the Al Jazeera journalist, Sami al-Hajj, are using the opportunity to try to get Bush prosecuted for torture.
There are several interesting details from the filing. For example, they show that Americans used techniques at the Dark Prison (the Salt Pit)–spraying Attash with water–that were not permitted under the Bybee Memo and that were reportedly implicated in Gul Rahman’s death not long after. Attash was also physically beaten in Jordan during the period we were drumming up intelligence for the Iraq War because he did not provide the answers on WMD his interrogators wanted.
Nonsensically, the interrogators asked the youth question after question about weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, biological, and chemical. They also asked him about his brother, Walid bin Attash. When Hassan did not give the answers the interrogators wanted, they would beat him. Americans were present during these interrogation and beating sessions.
And, anticipating Abu Ghraib’s tortures, Attash was threatened with electrocution.