ceedee's posterous

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- ­ A patchwork of blood red scabs and purple bruises cover Ramy Essam's back, from his neck down to his thighs. His scars are evidence, he said, that violent groups linked to ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's regime are trying to subvert the revolution.

"There are still some people from the corrupt old regime trying to crush the revolution," Essam said, lying face down on his bed, where he's spent days waiting for his wounds to heal. "With God's will, the revolution will continue."

The 23-year-old student and musician said thugs attacked him and hundreds of others at a peaceful sit-in at Tahrir Square on March 9. Egyptian soldiers were on guard but they didn't come to his rescue. Instead, Essam said, they detained him and scores of others and hauled him to the nearby Egyptian museum where uniformed soldiers tortured him for four hours and cut off his shoulder-length hair.

"It was pain I never imagined I would feel in my life," Essam said.

"They took off my clothes. They used sticks, metal rods, wires, whips. I was also electrocuted," he said referring to the electric shocks he received. "There was a soldier who would jump in the air and land on my face with his legs."

Essam is convinced he and others were marked men and women at Tahrir Square that day. For weeks Essam had sung and played his guitar for large crowds celebrating the end of the Mubarak regime. Moments before he was detained, several men in plain clothes pointed him out to soldiers, he said.

Essam was released, but human rights groups have said more than 100 innocent activists -- ­ all detained on March 9 -- are still in custody awaiting military trials without access to lawyers. Their stories are almost identical to ­ protesters who claim they did nothing wrong but were illegally detained and often beaten by thugs and soldiers.

"It's disgusting. It's inhumane," said Cairo based human rights lawyer Ragia Omran. "Basically there were plainclothes thugs or informers who were pointing out to the military the people who come to Tahrir Square, and that's how people got picked up."

In a joint statement released this week, nine Egyptian human rights groups said, "The crime is still going on and the perpetrators deserve a harsher punishment. The junta owes the Egyptian people an apology as they are ruling for the moment."

It's impossible to verify who is behind the violence on March 9. Many suspect leftovers from the Mubarak regime with links to rogue factions within the Egyptian military. The events of March 9th, and other accounts of violence involving soldiers, are fueling doubts about the Egyptian armed forces, the same institution promising a peaceful changeover to democracy.

Presidential candidate Amr Moussa has said shadowy elements have also fueled recent violence between Egyptian Christians and Muslims. The army has denied the allegations of torture and abuse, and it said anyone in custody is either suspected or accused of breaking the law.

Despite the torture he claimed he suffered at the hands of soldiers, Essam said he still has faith in the army's promise of democracy, but his scars are a reminder that the fight for lasting change in Egypt is not over.

Journalists Dina Amer and Mohamed Fadel Fahmy contributed to this report.

In the midst of a spirited defense of the Bush administration's intentions in developing interrogation techniques, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) dropped a phrase that liberals may seize upon.

The Bush administration did not commit any crimes, Graham said, but "they saw the law as a nicety we could not afford." That's a view that squares pretty well with liberals' view that the Bush administration circumvented the law to reach conclusions it desired.

Graham, who said he disagreed with the Bush administration's legal rationale for waterboarding, nevertheless accused Democrats of politicizing the interrogation debate and attempting to criminalize their policy differences with Bush officials.

"The difference between the nobility of the law and a political stunt may be soon evident one way or another," Graham said. "And I don't know if this [hearing] is actually pursuing the nobility of the law."

Great comment from "A Hermit" below the article:

Of course this is political; and it should be. When you have political leaders whose policies depend on viewing the law as a mere "nicety" to be ignored when inconvenient then they need to be held accountable, not just legally but politically as well. Those who, out of cowardice or a lust for power or both, ignored the law and the people who supported them in their lawbreaking should be exposed as publicly as possible so future politicians will think twice before following their disgusting example.

RickB managed to capture the feed from Parliament TV and uploaded it to YouTube.

The entire appearance by Craig Murray before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights is available on youtube in 7 parts here

The UK government is helping create a "market for torture" by accepting intelligence gained by the practice, a former diplomat has told MPs and peers.

Former ambassador Craig Murray said he was told in 2003 the then foreign secretary Jack Straw had authorised acceptance of such intelligence.

He said it was "schizophrenic" to condemn torture but use its "fruits".

The government says it abhors torture but has said intelligence of threats to life cannot be completely ignored.

Giving evidence to the joint committee on human rights, Mr Murray, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan said he believed the government did "everything possible to disguise its position" on torture.

He said responses to concerns were always met with the the reply "we condemn torture unreservedly" but added: "The government doesn't come forward and volunteer the fact that it very happily accepts ... hundreds of pieces a year of intelligence that has come from hundreds of people suffering the most vicious torture."

Mr Murray told the committee he had been surprised to learn that the policy on accepting intelligence gained by torture had changed.

No reply

He said during a previous job before the first Gulf War he had been given "clear direction" from the then PM Margaret Thatcher "that we were not to use any intelligence which may have come from torture".

So when he raised concerns in two telegrams, at the end of 2002 and beginning of 2003, that Britain might be acting illegally he said he believed the Foreign Office did not know it was using information gained by torture.

I was told directly: This is the policy, you are a civil servant. You must follow it Craig Murray Former ambassador

He said he never received a written reply refuting his allegations but was called to London for a meeting with officials including Sir Michael Wood - then legal adviser to the Foreign Office.

"I was told: These things are best not put in writing," Mr Murray told the committee.

"I was told directly: This is the policy, you are a civil servant. You must follow it and we will accept intelligence that has come from torture as long as we don't do the torture ourselves," he said.

'Market for torture'

No British agents were directly involved with torture and he had thought no CIA agents were involved either - but they used information gained by the Uzbek security services, who routinely used the "most horrible forms of torture" against political dissidents in Uzbekistan, the committee was told.

He added that 95% of intelligence gathered was to do with internal Uzbek politics and much of it was inaccurate.

The British government, including the intelligence and security agencies, never uses torture for any purpose, including obtaining information Foreign Office spokesman

He said the legal position outlined to him was that receiving information was not in breach of the UN Convention on Human Rights - as long as Britain was not carrying out torture.

"I would argue that what you are doing is creating a market for torture," he said.

"We are talking about people screaming in agony in cells and our government's willingness to accept the fruits of that."

He accused the government of a "schizophrenic" policy on torture, on one hand saying they "unreservedly" condemn it but on the other hand being prepared to receive its products.

Interrupted

And he said it was difficult to criticise the policy at the time - in the build up to the war in Iraq - because there had been a "vogue for false intelligence".

He said he believed the policy had changed after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US - possibly when the UK became aware that the US was using "water boarding" techniques.

The session was briefly interrupted by someone in the audience who shouted demands for a general election before being escorted away.

The Foreign Office removed Mr Murray from his post in Uzbekistan in 2004. He made similar allegations against Jack Straw in a book, and stood unsuccessfully against him in his Blackburn constituency in 2005.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The UK unreservedly condemns the use of torture. The UK abides by its commitments under international law and expects all countries to comply with their international legal obligations.

"The British government, including the intelligence and security agencies, never uses torture for any purpose, including obtaining information. Nor would we instigate others to do so."

Reproduced in full because it's so fucking important!