Mark Danner, The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means. The New York Review of Books, 30 April 2009. “Working through the forty-three pages of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s report [of February 2007], one finds a strikingly detailed account of horrors inflicted on fourteen ‘high-value detainees’ over a period of weeks and months—horrors that Red Cross officials conclude, quite unequivocally, ‘constituted torture.'”
Archives for April 2009
April 17, 2009
For their own good: a St. Petersburg Times special report on child abuse at the Florida School for Boys
Ben Montgomery and Waveney Ann Moore, For their own good: a St. Petersburg Times special report on child abuse at the Florida School for Boys, Part 1. Tampa Bay Times, 17 April 2009. “The men remember the same things: blood on the walls, bits of lip or tongue on the pillow, the smell of urine and whiskey, the way the bed springs sang with each blow. The way they cried out for Jesus or mama. The grinding of the old fan that muffled their cries. The one-armed man who swung the strap. They remember walking into the dark little building on the campus of the Florida School for Boys, in bare feet and white pajamas, afraid they’d never walk out…. This story is based on more than 100 hours of interviews with 27 men who were sent to the Florida School for Boys in the 1950s and ’60s, and with current and former officials with the state, the school and the Department of Juvenile Justice. The interviews were supplemented with newspaper clippings, congressional and court testimony, archival photographs and other documents. Over five months, the reporters traveled to Marianna four times. Since launching its investigation, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has sealed access to the school, now called the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.” Part 2: Ben Montgomery and Waveney Ann Moore, “For Their Own Good. Florida juvenile justice: 100 years of hell at the Dozier School for Boys.” Tampa Bay Times, 9 October 2009.
April 9, 2009
US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites
Mark Danner, US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites. The New York Review of Books. 9 April 2009. “The [ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody by the International Committee of the Red Cross, February 2007] is based on extensive interviews, carried out in October and December 2006, with fourteen so-called “high-value detainees,” who had been imprisoned and interrogated for extended periods at the “black sites,” a series of secret prisons operated by the CIA in a number of countries around the world, including, at various times, Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Morocco.” From footnote #2 in Mark Danner’s The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means. (The sequel to US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites.) The New York Review of Books, 30 April 2009.