E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

US Interrogates Detainees in Yemen Prisons Rife with Torture
Note the carefully wording of the headline, dear Reader, then as you read these key bits from a much longer article, ponder the purpose of releasing it now.
[AnNahar] Hundreds of men swept up in the hunt for al-Qaeda gunnies have disappeared into a secret network of prisons in southern Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
where abuse is routine and torture extreme -- including the "grill," in which the victim is tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire, an News Agency that Dare Not be Named investigation has found.

Senior American defense officials acknowledged Wednesday that U.S. forces have been involved in interrogations of detainees in Yemen but denied any participation in or knowledge of human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
 abuses. Interrogating detainees who have been abused could violate international law, which prohibits complicity in torture.

The AP documented at least 18 clandestine lockups across southern Yemen run by the United Arab Emirates or by Yemeni forces created and trained by the Gulf nation, drawing on accounts from former detainees, families of prisoners, civil rights lawyers and Yemeni military officials. All are either hidden or off limits to Yemen's government, which has been getting Emirati help in its civil war with rebels over the last two years.

The secret prisons are inside military bases, ports, an airport, private villas and even a nightclub. Some detainees have been flown to an Emirati base across the Red Sea in Eritrea
...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age...
, according to Yemen Interior Minister Hussein Arab and others.

Several U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
...unidentified officials speaking anonymously are all the rage in journalistic writing these days. Sometimes they even really exist...
to discuss the topic, told AP that American forces do participate in interrogations of detainees at locations in Yemen, provide questions for others to ask, and receive transcripts of interrogations from Emirati allies. They said U.S. senior military leaders were aware of allegations of torture at the prisons in Yemen, looked into them, but were satisfied that there had not been any abuse when U.S. forces were present.
This can't have been done recently. Since January 20th American senior military leaders have been busy.
"We always adhere to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct," said chief Defense Department spokeswoman Dana White when presented with AP's findings. "We would not turn a blind eye, because we are obligated to report any violations of human rights."

Inside war-torn Yemen, however, lawyers and families say nearly 2,000 men have disappeared into the clandestine prisons, a number so high that it has triggered near-weekly protests among families seeking information about missing sons, brothers and fathers.

None of the dozens of people interviewed by AP contended that American interrogators were involved in the actual abuses. Nevertheless, obtaining intelligence that may have been extracted by torture inflicted by another party would violate the International Convention Against Torture and could qualify as war crimes, said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who served as special counsel to the Defense Department until last year.
So he worked for the Obama administration, then probably found a more congenial environment after that unexpected election.

Posted by: trailing wife 2017-06-23
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=490912