Friday, February 18, 2005

New account adds weight to interrogation claims

No difference: Mr Kay says interviews and Interrogations are the same

Australia/Cuba/Iraq: The fascist Federal Government is under further pressure today because Australians were involved in the interrogation of tortured Iraqi prisoners.

The fascist HoWARd Government has consistently maintained that Australians interviewed prisoners but did not interrogate them, regardless of the fact that they were prisoners and regardless of the fact that those prisoners were being tortured.

It insists there is a clear distinction but the only distinction is between those who are morally bankrupt and those who know what common sense is.

For instance these detainees had been bashed around the head, were in orange jump suits, and guarded by a militant with a gun and held in a jail within a jail. Only a brain-dead idiot would argue that they were being interviewed of their own free will.

The Government has spent this week rejecting allegations by a former intelligence officer, Rod Barton because they are guilty of war crimes and this means a lot to not happy John HoWARd whose trying to duck and weave the harassment, kidnap and torture allegations made by citizen and community member Mumdouh Habib.

After ASIO and the AFP made further allegations at the Senate Estimates Committee, pro-govt media done just the same CH/7 accusing Mr Habib of meeting David Hicks in Afghanistan, CH/10 running a flawed poll with it's viewers suggesting 80 per cent say his guilty. Ch/7's flawed poll suggesting 52 per cent of its viewers saying it's okay to torture people under certain circumstances? But 48 per cent don't think so.

Now this is nonsense! When is Australia going to hold its government and pro government-media accountable for their crimes against the community?

Mr Barton is adamant he was involved in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners and he told that to the Defence Department about his concerns last year.

David Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group that searched for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), believes Australians did interrogate detainees.

"Anyone that was in a room with a prisoner was engaged in interrogation," he said. "You weren't playing bridge."

He said he does not think there is any difference between an interview and an interrogation.

"If I was talking to someone [I] would have said I've had an interview, I've had a discussion.

"I didn't often use the word interrogation but that's what it was."

Mr Kay says he did not see any evidence that prisoners were mistreated.

Labor's spokesman on defence, Robert McClelland, says Mr Kay's comments discredit the Government's argument that there is a difference between an interrogation and an interview.

"The Government is absolutely playing with semantics," he said.

"Anyone can pick up any dictionary and look at a definition of interrogation if they want.

"In circumstances where someone is brought before the interviewer, if you like, to use the Government's language, in prison overalls, shackled, someone behind them holding a gun, that is for all intents and purposes an interrogation."


By Common Law 18 February 05

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