Obama's grandfather was tortured in the British version of Guantanamo

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1315648,CST...

British tortured Obama's grandfather

KENYA | Paternal grandfather abused by colonial troops during uprising after WWII, stepgrandmother tells paper

December 5, 2008

BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter/[e-mail]
President-elect Barack Obama's grandfather endured horrific torture by the British during the Kenyan uprising against colonial rule more than 50 years ago, Obama's stepgrandmother has told the Times of London.

That violent strand of Obama's complicated family history has left some in Britain wondering how it might affect relations between America and, traditionally, one of its closest allies.

Hussein Onyango Obama -- whom the future president never met -- spent two years in a high-security prison in Kenya while the British tried to get him to spill what he knew about the insurgency, said Sarah Onyango, Obama's stepgrandmother and his grandfather's third wife.

"He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods," Sarah Onyango said in Wednesday's edition of the Times. "They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down."

[madokie]

1. For all of the crimes of the bush years torture is the one that should land his and the rest of them

asses in jail.

[malaise]

2. British colonial history was unbelievably cruel

It's amusing to hear Brits pretend to be the bastions of civilization.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Fair comment

especially given that we effectively started the use of concentration camps during the Boer War.

[rug]

5. U.S reservations predated that.

[dipsydoodle]

6. Indeed they did.

[NNN0LHI]

4. I am not sure how easy I could get over this if I were Barack?

I might forgive? I definitely wouldn't forget.

Don

[dipsydoodle]

7. The British and the Mau Mau

were probably as bad as each other : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising

[NNN0LHI]

8. Torture. The gift that keeps on giving

You can bet there will still be people who want revenge for the torture Bush's goons did to them 50 years from now.

Don

[enid602]

9. techniques

I read that our current Guantanamo and Iraqi prison torture techniques were passed down by the British, who used them on the IRA.

[dipsydoodle]

10. I doubt that.

The subject would have been through our courts by now and that has not happened.

[enid602]

11. link

from: from http://www.counterpunch.org/stanton05152004.html



For over 30 years Israel and the US have used time-tested torture practices devised by the British. The British Army pioneered these methods way back in 1971, using them against the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Irish people. According to one of the world's most respected, and underrated, human rights groups B'Tselem (btselem.org), in 1971 British security forces in Northern Ireland used coercive interrogation methods against fourteen IRA suspects. These methods were known as the five techniques and surfaced in a legal proceeding known as Ireland versus the United Kingdom. The five pillars of torture include the following:  Wall-Standing: Forcing the detainees to remain for periods of some hours in a "stress position," described by those who underwent it as being "spread-eagled against the wall, with their fingers put high above the head against the wall, the legs spread apart and the feet back, causing them to stand on their toes with the weight of the body mainly on the fingers.  Hooding: Putting a black or navy colored bag over the detainees' heads and, at least initially, keeping it there all the time except during interrogation.  Subjection to Noise: Pending their interrogations, holding the detainees in a room where there was a continuous loud and hissing noise.  Deprivation of Sleep: Pending their interrogations, depriving the detainees of sleep.  Deprivation of Food and Drink: Subjecting the detainees to a reduced diet during their stay at the center and pending interrogation.¨

I can´t vouch for this source, but it´s not unlikely that two allies at war would share such techniques with each other.