On Jan. 26, the day the International Court of Justice ordered: “Israel must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Hours later, Israel made its charges that UNRWA staff participated in the Oct. 7 attack. The US government and other donors then halted funding to the critical aid agency.
Since then, there had been reports that some of Israel’s alleged “evidence” against UNRWA staff was in fact from false confessions that Israel tortured out of people.
As the article below documents, this is a systemic problem. When Colin Powell argued before the UN Security Council for the US invading Iraq 21 years ago, part of the "evidence" for his claim that Iraq was linked to al Qaeda was tortured out of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.
Al-Libi, a Libyan national, was captured by the US after its invasion of Afghanistan. The FBI interrogated him and he told them all he knew. He was then turned over to the CIA. They turned him over to the Egyptian government, who, apparently at US behest, tortured him into falsely saying Iraq was helping Al-Qaeda get WMDs.
This was reported in 2006 by The Guardian as “Al-Qaida 'planted information to encourage US invasion',” as if al-Libi was out to dupe the US instead of being a victim of the US government’s hunger for war. Eventually al-Libi would be transferred back to his native Libya where — when the US and Gaddafi were somewhat chummy — he would be “suicided”.
The systemic problem of the US outsourcing torture was alluded to by Stuart Seldowitz, a former Obama administration official, when he told a food vender in New York City last year: “The Mukhabarat [secret police] in Egypt will get your parents. Does your father like his fingernails? They'll take them out one by one.” Grin. Seldowitz got a cushy plea in January.
Interestingly, Aaron Maté reports that Stuart Seldowitz was an advisory board member of ZAKA, “the scam Israeli ‘rescue’ group that's spread fake Oct. 7th claims including beheaded babies, ‘mass rape’, and a fetus cut from its mother”.
The al-Libi and UNRWA cases apparently show that — contrary to the liberal mantra, torture does in fact work very well. It produces false but useful disinformation. In fact, the liberal mantra that “torture doesn’t work” itself is useful for obscuring the actual functionality of torture.
See my piece below from last year for more, including: Some have made an issue of some video of torture being destroyed, particularly when Gina Haspel was nominated to be CIA head. But it's been widely assumed that they were destroyed simply because of the potentially graphic nature of the abuse. But there's another distinct possibility: They were destroyed because of the questions they document being asked. Do the torturers ask: "Is there another terrorist attack?" Or do they more compel: "Tell us that Iraq and al-Qaeda are working together."?
