CIA torture report: Tragedy for America

The United States released the report on horrible, inhuman tortures of prisoners in secret CIA jails. "Interrogation techniques such as slaps and "wallings" (slamming detainees against a wall) were used in combination, frequently concurrent with sleep deprivation and nudity. Waterboarding techniques causing physical harm were used. Detainees were sleep deprived for over 180 hours," the report says.

Political analyst and Americanist Areg Galstyan told Pravda.Ru why this information was released now of all times.

"The Senate released only the first 500 pages, and the entire report is 6,000 pages. So far the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence obtained approval for release of only 500 pages. This report must have been released way sooner, its release was blocked several times when there were elections," Areg Galstyan said.

He pointed out that the first 100 pages of the report were to be released as early as in March 2013, but since the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, despite being comprised of the majority of democrats headed by the Chairman, also had hard-line democrats. "In other words, democrats have their own hawks. They also blocked the report to be released," the expert added.

According to him, it was simply implemented de facto, but it must be clear that the whole report is almost entirely classified, only a small part was released. "Human rights defenders are always in shock, everything seems to be a certain news for them."

But there were many preliminary reports, and what would be written there could be expected. The release may completely endanger many US residents and Americans working abroad. It will just suffice to mention the assault on and killing of the American Ambassador to Libya in Benghazi.

Americans are wary of the situation, they will not play with fire, but at the same time they cannot close this case completely, that's why they release bits of information. It all fits in the framework of the domestic policy sector of the President's Administration and the Democratic Party in general," Areg Galstyan said in an interview to Pravda.Ru.

But to the question what repercussions would follow this exposure and would this report affect anything, the expert answered that there would hardly be any substantial changes, especially now.

"Any attempts for further investigation in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence are doomed to failure. Because today a veto of the Chairman of the Republican's Committee on Intelligence is enough to slow everything down. But even if there is nothing less than a miracle and the process goes on and there is another release of information, then the majority leader has an absolute right not to bring it to a public vote for it to be approved.

But even if he decides to do it, Speaker John Boehner will definitely block it on the level of the Lower House. Therefore, I don't know what miracle must occur for this issue to expand further," Areg Galstyan said.

In his turn, all that remains for Obama, according to himself, is to come out and say - we did all we could, everything we were able to. "Obama has to clearly understand that today there are very serious threats, especially threats of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, in particular the Islamic State, and he understands that without cooperation with the intelligence his policy cannot be effective."

Obama is unable to do much in terms of law to make some fundamental changes, to make somebody answer for something, or initiate some serious proceedings on the level of courts, congress hearings, to do so he needs to revise the main provisions of the USA Patriot Act. They need to go back to methods of the Clinton's administration. In other words, this is the process for decades to come.

Member of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation Yana Lantropova told Pravda.Ru why these tortures could to be used and if you could trust information received with their help.

"Tortures must not be used under any circumstances. Naturally, I would not trust information obtained as a result of torture without participants, witnesses," she said.

Yana Lantropova told Pravda.Ru about her trip to the south-east of Ukraine. "Over there I talked with those who has been tortured and being held hostage by the Ukrainian National Guard. They were talking about absolute horrors, how they were tormented and beaten, how plastic bags were put onto their heads, and it is horrible," the expert said having pointed out that such methods were unacceptable.

"It is important for the international community to pay attention to this situation because for some reason when some odd things happen with violation of human rights in any other country, for example, Russia or Ukraine, the United States pay attention to it. And when it happens in their own country, they are just ignoring it. It would be important for international human rights defenders from different countries to gather together and talk about all this chaos happening at the moment," Yana Lantropova noted.

Answering the question, what repercussions would follow this exposure and would this report affect anything, she said that the United States would probably do everything so that this story was soon forgotten. But, Yana Lantropova pointed out, everything depends on the response of human rights defenders.

"Because at one of the meetings of human rights defenders V.V. Putin said a very right thing that in Donbass churches are being completely destroyed, priests are being killed, they are persecuted for some religious beliefs, their heads are being cut, and he said why international human rights defenders would keep silence about it.

In other words, when there is some high-profile matter which is beneficial for them, for other countries, all human rights defenders are raising a ruckus, and start talking about it, call authorities for something. But when there is a mass violation of rights in Ukraine, when there is a humanitarian disaster there, for some reason no one is responding to that," the expert told Pravda.Ru.

She added that all this showed that there was no democracy, and "all action being made violate human rights".

According to her, some Americans, in particular from non-profit organizations, can influence the situation. "If people will take to the streets demanding their rights, then it is possible. One or ten people will do nothing. If we look at the number of people in the United States who are discontent and support Russia, we can see rather interesting figures shown on the Web. It is important to pay attention to the response of ordinary citizens," the expert believes.

Pravda.Ru 

Translation provided by TNC Freelancer Group