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Undated: Human Rights Watch--The prohibition against torture is a bedrock principle of international law. Torture, as well as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, is banned at all times, in all places, including in times of war. No national emergency, however dire, ever justifies its use. No one may ever be returned to a place where they would face torture. Many countries and armed groups nonetheless have engaged in torture. Human Rights Watch documents the use of torture all over the world. We are committed to pressing government authorities to act to prevent torture, as well as bringing those who engage in torture to justice. We also work to ensure that victims of torture obtain redress, including an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation, and full rehabilitation.
https://www.hrw.org/topic/torture?ea.client.id=1908&ea.campaign.id=36677&ea.tracking.id=ED2018EVSCgg&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2qC918LT3wIVjIlpCh2Z8wmNEAMYASAAEgIBr_D_BwE#
-- 2016 --
May 5: Donald Trump: We need to change law to allow torture
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/donald-trump-we-need-to-change-law-to-allow-torture-waterboarding/
-- 2017 --
January 25: Donald Trump: 'Waterboarding absolutely works'
In Donald Trump's first broadcast interview as US president, he defended his call to resume using waterboarding - a torture technique - to interrogate terror suspects.
"When Isis [so-called Islamic State] is doing things that nobody has ever heard of since medieval times, would I feel strongly about waterboarding? As far as I'm concerned, we have to fight fire with fire," he told ABC News.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-38751516/donald-trump-waterboarding-absolutely-works
March: Does torture work? Donald Trump and the CIA
President Trump says that ‘torture works’1,2 His office has released a draft order3 stating an intention to make ‘modifications and additions’ to the policies the US employs for the ‘... safe, lawful, and effective interrogation of enemy combatants captured in the fight against radical Islamism’.
This not only worries human rights groups, but it also suggests that he has taken no account of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Study of the CIA‘s detention and interrogation activity from 2001–2009,4 on which he must surely have been briefed. This report concluded (as did the CIA) that torturing prisoners was not an effective means of obtaining intelligence or cooperation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5325643/
November 1: President Donald Trump called for "quick" and "strong" justice for terror suspects in the wake of the deadly New York City attack, saying that it is not surprising terror attacks happen because the way the United States punishes terrorists is "a laughing stock."
Trump's comments, made during a White House Cabinet meeting Wednesday, malign the justice system for a lack of toughness. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the head of the so-called 'laughing stock' justice system, was in the room for this comment -- sitting across from Trump.
Trump's call to get tougher on terrorism fall in line with the same rhetoric he used during the campaign trail, where he called the Geneva Convention -- a 1949 agreement that dictates international rules on torture and humanitarian treatment of prisoners -- a problem that the United States had to move past.
"Torture works," he said bluntly.
Trump also pledged to "load up" the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during the campaign, slamming Democrats and then-President Barack Obama for sustained efforts to cut the number of detainees from the controversial prison.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/01/politics/trump-justice-laughing-stock/index.html
-- 2018 --
March 1: Trump and the Law on Torture
Given President Trump’s enthusiasm, as a presidential candidate, for enhanced interrogation, waterboarding, torture, and “worse,” as well as his eagerness to contrast himself at every opportunity with President Obama, one might have expected to see the use of such methods reinstated after he became President. At the one year mark, however, the issue seems conspicuously absent.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/trump-and-law-torture
March 13: Trump pick for new CIA director Gina Haspel oversaw torture
Gina Haspel ran CIA's first 'black site' in Thailand and was described as one of 'President Bush's torturers-in-chief'.
Haspel became the US spy agency's second-in-command in February 2017. She is a career intelligence officer who joined the CIA in 1985.
Her former posts at the intelligence agency include deputy director of the national clandestine service for foreign intelligence and covert action.
"Gina Haspel was one of President Bush’s torturers-in-chief and she is simply not fit to hold an office that requires, at its very heart, a commitment to uphold the values of the Constitution," Maya Foa, director of international human rights organisation Reprieve, said in a statement delivered to Al Jazeera.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/trump-pick-cia-director-gina-haspel-oversaw-torture-180313145500866.html
March 13: [Gina Haspel] ... Former colleagues told NBC News she had a conventional, hardline view of Russia as a dangerous adversary.
A focal point of her career is her involvement in the CIA's controversial interrogation program, where enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation, were used. Trump has publicly supported using harsh techniques. "I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding," he said at a GOP presidential primary debate in 2016.
From 2003 to 2005, Haspel oversaw the top-secret CIA program where dozens of suspected terrorists were deprived of sleep, stuffed into coffins and had water forced down their throats, according to The New Yorker.
While overseas, she also ran a CIA "black site" — or secret prison — in Thailand where suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002, NBC News confirmed.
Haspel was also one of the CIA officials present at the interrogation of Zubaydah, an Al-Qaida terrorist suspect who was waterboarded 83 times in one month and harshly interrogated in other ways until it was discovered he had no useful information. A senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News that the CIA denies Haspel was present during Zubaydah's interrogation.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/who-gina-haspel-trump-s-new-cia-head-spymaster-torture-n856171
April 6: Trump Isn’t Merely Tolerating Torture — He’s Celebrating It
In a fateful decision, President Obama decided to give complete legal immunity for war crimes committed by agents of the CIA.
But to actually reward someone [Gina Haspel] who has committed war crimes with promotion, and then to elevate her to the highest position in Western intelligence, is a whole new level of depravity.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/trump-isnt-merely-tolerating-torture-hes-celebrating-it.html?gtm=top>m=top
May 7: Trump says CIA pick Haspel 'under fire because she was too tough on terror'
Donald Trump has expressed support for his nominee to lead the CIA, who offered to withdraw amid concerns that a debate over the past use of interrogation techniques now classified as torture would tarnish her reputation and that of the agency.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/06/trump-cia-nominee-gina-haspel-withdraw-torture-washington-post
May 8: With (or without) Gina Haspel at CIA, could Trump revive the torture program?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/05/09/under-gina-haspel-could-trump-revive-the-torture-program/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9d4acf217b60
June 22: Trump policy of detaining children 'may amount to torture', UN says – as it happened
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2018/jun/22/trump-family-separation-crisis-immigration-border
July 13: The Shadow of Torture Behind Trump’s Britain Visit
https://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights/human-rights-and-national-security/shadow-torture-behind-trumps-britain-visit
October 12: Turkey has 'shocking' audio and visual evidence of Saudi journalist's killing
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/12/middleeast/khashoggi-saudi-turkey-recordings-intl/index.html
October 12: Trump administration sticks with Saudis as business leaders back away
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/12/politics/mnuchin-imf-meeting-saudi-trip/index.html
October 15: Saudis preparing to admit Jamal Khashoggi died during interrogation, sources say
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/middleeast/saudi-khashoggi-death-turkey/index.html
November 13: North Korean defector on Kim Jong Un’s “lies,” surviving torture, and supporting Trump policy
https://www.foxnews.com/world/north-korean-defector-on-kim-jong-uns-lies-surviving-torture-and-double-amputation-without-anesthesia-and-how-president-trump-changed-his-life
December 6: Trump, the CIA and the future of torture
Investigating claims of impeding justice, seventeen years after the worst attack on the US and ongoing rampant claims of prisoner abuse and torture.
Five men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks face death penalty trials in "military commissions" proceedings at a secret multimillion-dollar legal complex at Guantanamo, set up to try captives in the US "war on terror".
But seventeen years after the worst attack on US soil these cases have yet to be heard.
https://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/americas/2018/11/trump-cia-future-torture-181126115516181.html
-- 2019 --
-- 2020 --
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