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. Author and journalist Mark Danner broke the story when he published extensive excerpts of the report in the New York Review of Books. 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 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 revelation was made this weekend when the author and journalist Mark Danner published extensive excerpts of the Red Cross report in the New York Review of Books. In the article, Danner quotes from a speech President Bush delivered from the White House on September 6th, 2006. Danner writes the speech is "perhaps the only historic speech [Bush] ever gave." In it, Bush admitted the US was using what he called "an alternative set of procedures" to interrogate terrorism suspects.
Yesterday I spoke with Mark Danner about the secret Red Cross report he obtained and what it reveals about the Bush administration"s treatment of prisoners. Danner is a contributor to The New York Review of Books and is a Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of "Torture and Truth."
Mark Danner, contributor to the New York Review of Books. He is a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and a professor of human rights and journalism at Bard College. He is the author of Torture and Truth.
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