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Case of Tortured U.S. Citizen Tests Obama Administration on Human Rights.

In 2 weeks, US citizen Naji Hamdan will be tried in the United Arab Emirates for "nonspecific charges of ‘promoting terrorism.’"
Last July, Hamdan was "summoned" to the US Embassy in UAE:

He drove two hours through the desert heat from Dubai to answer questions from FBI agents who had arrived from Los Angeles, where Hamdan had gone to school, started a family, built a successful auto-parts business and become a U.S. citizen.

Six weeks later, men kidnapped and rendered him from his apartment for his imprisonment in UAE, where he was tortured in a case his lawyer claims was torture by proxy, or "at the behest" of his own government:

Hamdan was told he was a prisoner of the UAE and was held in a cell painted glossy white to reflect the lights that burned round the clock, according to a note he wrote from prison. Between interrogations, he wrote, he was confined in a frigid room overnight, strapped into "an electric chair" and punched in the head until he lost consciousness.
In one session, the blindfolded prisoner recalled hearing a voice that sounded American. The voice said, "Do what they want or these people will [expletive] you up," Hamdan wrote.
The prisoner obliged, signing a confession that he later said meant only that he would do anything to make the pain stop. The case might have ended there but for Hamdan's U.S. citizenship and his American attorney's assertion that he was tortured "at the behest" of his own government.

The way he was tortured is similar to Bush’s torture program:

In criminal custody, Mr. Hamdan told both his family and the U.S. consular officer who visited him that he had been severely tortured: repeatedly beaten on his head, kicked on his sides, stripped and held in a freezing cold room, placed in an electric chair and made to believe that he would be electrocuted, and held down in a stress position while his captors beat the bottoms of his feet with a large stick. During this horrific process, he said whatever the agents wanted him to say, and those statements may now be used against him in a criminal trial in the U.A.E.

This is not be the first time that Americans asked foreign governments to render, arrest or imprison US citizens under a practice known as "proxy detention."MORE Torture roundup here

Asshole POS Democrat Joe Lieberman teamed up with Republican Graham to insert an amendment in a supplemental bill that would suppress the detainee torture pics in the name of national security Progressive Dems and pissed off progressive bloggers unite to defeat the bill.

The response? Lieberman-Graham Threaten to Shut Down Senate, Add Detainee Photo Suppresion Amendment to FDA Tobacco Regulation Bill

Meantime

There are torture documents that describe in detail how the US tortured Abu Zubaydah (same guy whose torture was videotaped, and said videotapes destroyed by the CIA.) The ACLU is fighting a court case to get those things introduced into evidence. Mr Panetta is refusing. Because:
Leon Panetta: I’ve Got to Protect the Contractors from Unwarranted Invasion of Privacy

Indeed.

Glenn Greenwald weighs in with Defeat of Graham-Lieberman and the ongoing war on transparency

(I will point out that there are very good arguments to be made about the release of pics not being best for the detainees see here and here that are giving me a lot to think about. This, obvs., is NOT what teh adminstration is up to. They are specifically trying to avoid being brought to justice for war crimes. There can be ways to deal with the pics, like releasing them to the judges and juries for instance, blocking faces etc.)

and ABC News' interview with Lakhdar Boumedienean and our current policies

(Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released -- in January, 2002 -- he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured.) MORE

What the new Jim Comey torture emails actually reveal

Also: Did Obama’s New GM Chairman Spy on Americans?