Torture Victims

I am in full agreement with "Don't Railroad Asylum," by Cheri Ho (Commentary, July 12). As a law student in New York City in 1995, I interned with Catholic Charities' legal clinic. It was an incredible experience to be entrusted with the applications and appeals of people who had been tortured, beaten and imprisoned. One of my clients was a 15-year-old boy. All of my clients needed many sessions to fully detail their experience, and all of their stories, told through interpreters, were incredible.

In July 1947, the greatest play ever to have its premiere in Los Angeles opened at the Coronet Theatre on La Cienega Boulevard: Bertolt Brecht's " Galileo." The play, with Charles Laughton in the title role, dramatized the great scientist's running battle with the Roman Catholic Church over his telescopic discovery that the Earth orbited the sun rather than the other way around. At the climax of the play, Galileo — threatened with torture by his inquisitors, who fear that the church's cosmology and authority will be destroyed by Galileo's revelations — recants.

The acrid smell of disinfectant, sweat and fear filled Carlos Mauricio's nostrils. Blindfolded, he heard the moaning of other political prisoners inside the headquarters of El Salvador's national police. There were screams and shouted questions, the hollow thump of blows, and the sizzling zap of an electrical prod, followed by guttural protests and involuntary thrashing. "I realized I was in a chamber of torture," he said. "At that moment, I accepted my death."

Barre Yousuf, a Somali businessman living in the state of Georgia, spent much of the 1980s in a small, dark and windowless cell in Somalia. "I was tortured with an electric shock and waterboarded," he said. At other times, military police subjected him to what the Somali regime called the "Mig." He was forced to lie on his stomach with his arms and legs tied behind him, while a heavy rock was placed on his back. In this painful position, the victim's body was said to resemble the swept-back wings of a Mig fighter jet. Yousuf recounted his ordeal Wednesday outside the Supreme Court, where the justices for the first time considered whether victims of torture or state-sponsored murder can sue the responsible officials under a 1991 law designed to give victims and family members a chance to get recompense for their suffering.

Re "U.S. Allies Criticized for Rights Abuses," March 1: As you report, the State Department's criticism of torture and prisoner abuse in Egypt and Syria has raised concern among lawmakers over the U.S. practice of shipping prisoners to those countries for interrogation. Though it's true that a bill has been introduced to ban this practice, it's also unfortunately true that the House GOP leadership, under Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, has already announced the intention to block any such legislation.

In July 1947, the greatest play ever to have its premiere in Los Angeles opened at the Coronet Theatre on La Cienega Boulevard: Bertolt Brecht's " Galileo." The play, with Charles Laughton in the title role, dramatized the great scientist's running battle with the Roman Catholic Church over his telescopic discovery that the Earth orbited the sun rather than the other way around. At the climax of the play, Galileo — threatened with torture by his inquisitors, who fear that the church's cosmology and authority will be destroyed by Galileo's revelations — recants.

RE: "The Fear Factor" [Jan. 29]. Yes, sadly, as the article points out, torture scenes proliferate on television and the big screen but fail to acknowledge the true ramifications of extreme pain. At the Program for Torture Victims, where we treat hundreds of survivors each year, we've seen firsthand the long-term consequences to physical and mental health. What the story fails to address is that in pop culture, torture "works." When Jack Bauer of "24" needs information to save the world, torturing the suspect produces the necessary intelligence.

Re "Blame Hits Right Target," editorial, May 28: Justice may finally be served with the precedent of indicting government leaders for heinous acts which they either approved or had knowledge of and ignored. The U.S. contributed $5 billion to the government of El Salvador, in addition to training some of the torturers at the School of the Americas in their methods of counterinsurgency, including torture. The crimes of those tortured and killed were that they wanted a democratic form of government and they wanted to organize their work forces.

His memory is as blurry and golden as a dreamscape. He is a boy of 9 in his house on the river in Africa, playing hide-and-seek. His mother hums on the sun-warmed veranda. Christopher de Victorino has clung to this warm memory ever since paramilitary men came to take his life away. It wrestles for his attention with other recollections that are the stuff of nightmares: The sight of his father, bound and bloodied. The sound of his mother being raped on the bathroom floor.

"Celebration of Liberty"? I can only assume that the photographer who aimed the camera and The Times editor who chose the pictures to accompany the July 5 article on the Statue of Liberty "Armada" were ignorant of the terrible irony produced by the juxtaposition of the Chilean Tall Ship Esmerelda with the American symbol of freedom and justice for all. What else could account for the 8 x 13 photograph at the top of Page 9? According to Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, the Esmerelda was used to torture victims in the course of the violent overthrow of the duly elected democratic government of Salvador Allende.

The acrid smell of disinfectant, sweat and fear filled Carlos Mauricio's nostrils. Blindfolded, he heard the moaning of other political prisoners inside the headquarters of El Salvador's national police. There were screams and shouted questions, the hollow thump of blows, and the sizzling zap of an electrical prod, followed by guttural protests and involuntary thrashing. "I realized I was in a chamber of torture," he said. "At that moment, I accepted my death."

Canada's prime minister apologized and offered $8.9 million in compensation Friday to Maher Arar, a Canadian software engineer who, based on incorrect information, was deported by U.S. officials to Syria in 2002, where he was imprisoned and tortured for a year. After being identified by Canadian police as an Islamic extremist in faulty intelligence shared with U.S. authorities, Arar was detained by American agents during a stopover at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.

RE: "The Fear Factor" [Jan. 29]. Yes, sadly, as the article points out, torture scenes proliferate on television and the big screen but fail to acknowledge the true ramifications of extreme pain. At the Program for Torture Victims, where we treat hundreds of survivors each year, we've seen firsthand the long-term consequences to physical and mental health. What the story fails to address is that in pop culture, torture "works." When Jack Bauer of "24" needs information to save the world, torturing the suspect produces the necessary intelligence.

Re "U.S. Allies Criticized for Rights Abuses," March 1: As you report, the State Department's criticism of torture and prisoner abuse in Egypt and Syria has raised concern among lawmakers over the U.S. practice of shipping prisoners to those countries for interrogation. Though it's true that a bill has been introduced to ban this practice, it's also unfortunately true that the House GOP leadership, under Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, has already announced the intention to block any such legislation.

A new day dawns over the sleepy neighborhood known as Muhallah 665. The dappled sunlight, pink in the dusty haze, casts long shadows over houses with grandiose touches -- a high arch here, a Doric column there, a balustraded balcony. Before the war, this neighborhood of northwest Baghdad was a well-ordered enclave where favors and privileges went hand in hand with support -- obsequious, often humiliating support -- for Saddam Hussein. An elaborate system of rewards and punishments prevailed.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has awarded nearly $1 billion in damages to a group of American soldiers and their families who sued Saddam Hussein, the Republic of Iraq and the Iraqi intelligence service for torture they endured while imprisoned during the 1991 Gulf War. The award -- to 17 former POWs who U.S. District Judge Richard W.

Torture is a thriving business. Perhaps not a growth industry but certainly not on the wane, according to the organizations that monitor and combat it. Amnesty International reports increasingly scientific methods of torture are practiced in at least 98 countries as unacknowledged government policy--primarily for the purpose of discouraging dissent. Torture victims are legion, and many survivors, it turns out, are living within the large immigrant populations of Southern California.

Sheik Lami Abbas Ajali looked around at the small cell where he spent several bleak weeks of his life and recounted the torture: how he was hit, prodded, had his eyelids pulled back, had electric shocks applied to his temples and genitals, how his hands were cuffed behind him then raised until he was off the ground. He recalled Saturday how torturers stuffed 10 suspects into an 8-by-6-foot room so only two could sleep at any given time while the other eight were forced to stand.

His memory is as blurry and golden as a dreamscape. He is a boy of 9 in his house on the river in Africa, playing hide-and-seek. His mother hums on the sun-warmed veranda. Christopher de Victorino has clung to this warm memory ever since paramilitary men came to take his life away. It wrestles for his attention with other recollections that are the stuff of nightmares: The sight of his father, bound and bloodied. The sound of his mother being raped on the bathroom floor.