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By Patrick O’Connor – WSWS.org

The reaction of governments around the world to the murder of Hamas member Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month underscores the extent to which basic precepts of international law have been torn up under the “war on terror”. As far as the US government and its allies are concerned, extra-judicial executions and so-called targeted killings now constitute a legitimate state activity and do not warrant comment, let alone condemnation.

While the Israeli government has refused to confirm or deny any involvement, its intelligence agency, Mossad, is widely understood to be directly responsible for the Dubai operation. The Obama administration has maintained a strict silence over the affair, while the governments of Britain, Australia, France, Germany and Ireland have merely issued pro forma protests over the doctoring of their passports. None has condemned Mabhouh’s murder.

The assassination was a cold-blooded operation, planned down to the last detail. According to Dubai police, 27 men and women were involved in the preparation which culminated in Mabhouh being injected with a muscle relaxant drug, succinylcholine, then suffocated with a pillow. The killers reportedly left behind medicine for high blood pressure in order to give the initial appearance of a natural death, hung a “do not disturb” card on their victim’s hotel room door and fled Dubai before the authorities were notified after Mabhouh’s wife was unable to telephone her husband.

By Raw Story

Two psychologists working on the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation techniques pushed for the use of "mock burials" on terror suspects, according to documents released by the Department of Justice.

Blogger Marcy Wheeler reports that the Department of Justice rejected a request from psychologists Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell to give the CIA the power to pretend to bury terror suspects during interrogations in the years after the 9/11 attacks.

A report (PDF, 289 pages) from the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, released last Friday, documents ten interrogation techniques approved by Bush administration lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

But Wheeler notes that the psychologists had requested twelve techniques. One of those two techniques has already been revealed to be prolonged diapering. Wheeler uncovers evidence that the other one was mock burial.

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