Edward Horgan, a well-known Irish activist and former Irish Defense Force officer, has had his 10-year, multiple-entry U.S. visa revoked without explanation. Horgan and others believe it is because of his principled stand against the U.S. use of renditions, and in particular, the use of Shannon Airport in western Ireland as a stopover for U.S. rendition flights. The Obama administration should be ashamed for its behavior in keeping Mr. Horgan from entering this country.

The recent decision of the UK High Court to release a seven paragraph summary of the torture perpetrated by U.S. agents upon Binyam Mohammed in April and early May 2002 is welcome news. The summary, written by a British court, was derived from 42 classified CIA documents delivered to the British legal authorities as part of an investigation into the actions of MI5 in the torture and interrogation of Binyam Mohamed and other prisoners held by Pakistan. These documents purportedly describe the torture of Mohamed, and indicate the collusion of U.S., British, and Pakistani authorities in the torture.

One of the reasons I have always argued for a full investigation of the treatment of prisoners by the U.S. government is that the truth is going to come out sooner rather than later. For those who want to hide from accountability under the law later is always the better goal. The longer it takes for the abuses of the Bush Administration torture program to come to light the less likely there is to be an outcry and the more likely those who ordered and carried out torture are to elderly or dead.

The set-up of Abu Zubaydah as an Al Qaeda bigwig may have been meant, among other things, for use in intimidation and torture of other prisoners. Andy Worthington recounts how a prisoner captured with Zubaydah, Omar Gharmesh, reported to another prisoner in Syria’s infamous Palestine Branch prison, where they were sent via “extraordinary rendition,” that [...]

The fight in a United Kingdom courtroom over secret documents related to the torture of former Guantanamo prisoner and rendition victim Binyam Mohamed has resulted in a striking new revelation, as reported by Mohamed’s attorney Clive Stafford Smith and British journalist Andy Worthington. Newly unredacted material from a previously censored portion of an earlier ruling by a UK court significantly expands the timeline and scope of the introduction of SERE-style “enhanced” interrogation techniques.”