Former aide to Powell: authorization for torture came from “the very top”

“60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley interviewed retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was appointed chief of staff by Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2002, during George W. Bush’s first administration. Willie Brand, a soldier convicted of assault and maiming in the deaths of the two prisoners, and Brand’s commanding officer, Capt. Christopher Beiring, were also featured in the program.

In December 2002, two Afghan detainees, Dilawar and Habibullah, were found dead in their cells, hanging from their chains, within days of each other at the Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan. They had been shackled by their wrists to the ceiling and severely beaten—one had been “pulpified” by blows, according to a medical examiner—by American soldiers The Bagram facility was a clearinghouse for prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, and by all accounts a hell-hole.

An army report said that attacks on Mr. Dilawar, a 22-year-old farmer and part-time taxi driver, were so severe that “even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated.” The military also admitted that the death of Mullah Habibullah, aged about 30, was attributed to a blunt force injury, in addition to a blood clot in the lung.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/sixm-m07.shtml