It looks like you'll have to be happy with the extralegal justice already dealt to Ramzi bin al-Shibh, suspected of involvement in 9/11: the CIA reportedly tortured him, his mental health is severely compromised, and a military judge found that he's not fit for trial. — Read the rest

Lufti al-Arabi, a Tunisian man who was arrested in Pakistan while studying at university, spent 13 years in the CIA's notorious "Salt Pit" prison (AKA "Detention Site COBALT") in Afghanistan, enduring incredible, crippling torture, before finally being released without charge, comment, or compensation in 2015; in his first interview since his release, he tells Human Rights Watch about the inhumane tortures of the Salt Pit, including some tortures that were apparently omitted from the CIA's suppressed torture report to the US Senate.

The Senate's 6,700 page, $40M report on the CIA's participation in torture has apparently never been read by a single member of the Executive Branch of the US Government, because the Department of Justice has ordered them all to stay away from it.

James Mitchell and John "Bruce" Jessen are psychologists who took in almost $85 million in CIA contracts to design and oversee torture programs used on CIA prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and around the world. The contracts ran from from 2001 to 2010. — Read the rest

Despite a hard-fought battle to publish the CIA Torture Report, very few people have read it, including some of the report's starring villains.

He exposed the Bush-era war-on-terror torture program, and for that act of bravery became the only American to serve time in connection with it.

The Bureau, which is partnering with the Rendition Project and long-time torture and secret prisons researchers Crofton Black and Steve Kostas, will be using the Senate’s report as a launching-off point to investigate many of the questions left unanswered due to heavy-handed censorship by the CIA and White House.

Information about her role was revealed in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report released last week

An anonymous editor at 156.33.241.11 — registered to the US Senate — has repeatedly attempted to scrub the word "torture" from the Wikipedia entry from Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.

Dr Atul Gawande (whose Reith lecture on systems thinking I featured last week) took to Twitter to express his shock and disgust at the medical professionals who participated in the crimes documented in the CIA torture report.

Mark Kersten explores the question at Justice in Conflict blog.

"Daddy, what did you do when you were in the CIA?"

"I raped detainees and stuffed food into their anuses, son."

"I hope I don't grow up to be a CIA officer like you, Daddy."

A summary of the long-awaited report into CIA torture has been released. CNN: "In its most graphic details, an executive summary of the report finds that conditions for detainees at top secret interrogation sites were much harsher than the CIA has previously admitted. — Read the rest

Colorado Republican Cory Gardner has ousted longtime privacy advocate Mark Udall in a Senate win. The outgoing Senator and champion of civil liberties has one last chance to read the truth about American atrocities out loud for the world to see," writes Freedom of the Press Foundation's Trevor Timm in the Guardian, "Before it's too late."

"I have a question for all the well-meaning people who praise President Obama for 'banning' torture," asks Barry Eisler. "Would you also find it helpful for the president to ban kidnapping? Child abuse? Mail fraud? Maybe you would. After all, no one likes kidnapping, child abuse, or mail fraud. — Read the rest

The Obama administration is said to have deleted a bunch of fake names from "the public version of a long-awaited report" on the CIA's use of torture on war-on-terror detainees, McClatchy reports. — Read the rest

The Foreign Office said it couldn't provide its files on secret CIA rendition of terrorism suspects for torture, because those files (and only those files) were "water-damaged."

It's now been over a month since the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to force the Obama administration to declassify parts of the Committee's landmark report on CIA torture, and the public still has not seen a word of the 6,000 page investigation. — Read the rest

Journalist Jason Leopold tells us,

Recently, I conducted a wide-ranging, two hour interview with retired Air Force psychologist James Mitchell, who is credited with being the architect of the CIA's torture program. Mitchell and his partner, Dr. Bruce Jessen, are featured prominently in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program.

One year ago today

Widespread, illegal debtors' prisons in Ohio: A new ACLU report called The Outskirts of Hope documents the rise of illegal debtors prisons in Ohio. A majority of municipal and mayors' courts surveyed by the ACLU routinely imprison people for their inability to pay fines, a practice banned in both the US and state constitution. — Read the rest