“The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source.
Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier’s arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture.
“The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence,” Mendez writes.
The findings of cruel and inhuman treatment are published as an addendum to the special rapporteur’s report to the UN general assembly on the promotion and protection of human rights. They are likely to reignite criticism of the US government’s harsh treatment of Manning ahead of his court martial later this year.
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Shocking new video surfaced Tuesday which suggests Syria’s desperate dictator has turned military hospitals into torture chambers — and turned the doctors into torturers.
The ghastly images obtained by a British TV station were secretly filmed by a hospital worker in the embattled city of Homs who said the abuse visited on the rebels and others who wind up there are medieval in their cruelty.
“I have seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons, and by breaking their legs,” the unidentified worker told “Mani,” a French photojournalist who smuggled the footage out of Syria.
“They twist the feet until the leg breaks,” he said. “They perform operations without anaesthetics. I saw them slamming detainees’ heads against walls.”
And that’s just a warm up for other tortures too cruel to be described on the genitals of wounded patients, who appeared to be shackled to their beds in the stark footage.
Ever since the Syrians rose up against Assad and his gangster regime nearly a year ago, there have been rumors the hated Mukhabarat secret police was torturing civilians in military hospitals.
“The torture is being carried out by officially recognised military and security entities as well as by a multitude of armed militias operating outside any legal framework…after all the promises to get detention centres under control, it is horrifying to find that there has been no progress to stop the use of torture.”
Several people have died after being tortured by militias in Libyan detention centres, humanitarian group Amnesty International has said. It claimed to have seen patients in Tripoli, Misrata and Gheryan with open wounds to their head, limbs and back. (via newsflick)
It’s gotten so bad that Medecins Sans Frontieres is pulling out of Misrata altogether.
(via inothernews)
