Seif al-Islam el-Gadhafi, the son of the former dictator and the most recognizable living face of the old Libyan regime, was captured by Libyan militia fighters today in the southwestern desert, where he was apparently attempting to cross the border.

A Major Crimes Task Force (MCTF) assisted by the FBI and other US investigators interviewed 77 adult and juvenile detainees. They reported their jailers: forced them to confess to crimes they did not commit, beat them with wooden sticks or subjected them to electric shocks and raped them or sodomized them with objects. Juveniles reported being raped “multiple times by the same person or persons.”

A US State Embassy cable marked “confidential” and published by WikiLeaks reveals details on the detention of juveniles held in “Site 4″ in a Iraq Interior Ministry (MOI) detention complex. The juveniles allege sexual abuse by Iraqi interrogators, specifically that rapes were being used in the prison to induce confessions. The discovery of widespread abuse and torture, according to the diplomat who wrote the cable, is the worst since the infamous Jadriyah “Bunker” facility was discovered in 2005.

We never really got a clean sense of the rebels who NATO helped to bring to power in Libya. That picture is becoming slightly clearer.

I suppose I’ll take what I can get here from McCain, especially as it’s not like there’s anyone in Washington who’s moving on prosecutions. What’s more, this really debilitates the revival of torture from the Bush Administration rejects. McCain is the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. He’s going to lead the questioning of Leon Panetta when he has a confirmation hearing for Defense Secretary. The lack of consensus from Republicans at the highest levels will make it very hard for them to make an issue out of it in the hearings.

As soon as we started talking about torture on the level of efficacy, i.e. whether torture “worked,” it was inevitable that we’d have a day like this.

Barack Obama will not be the President who closes Guantanamo. The plan is to hold new trials there, so obviously the prison will not be cleaned out. It’s been over two years since the President signed an executive order to close Guantanamo.

Showing at least a model of what accountability can look like, the British government will pay reparations to victims of torture at Guantanamo Bay, to absolve British intelligence services of their role.

In this interview Jay Bybee admits that the CIA had no authorization for the techniques that contributed to Gul Rahman’s death. Hello, special prosecutor John Durham?