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New Accounts of Torture by U.S. Troops...
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| New Accounts of Torture by U.S. Troops Soldiers Say Failures by Command Led to Abuse (New York, September 24, 2005) -- U.S. Army troops subjected Iraqi detainees to severe beatings and other torture at a base in central Iraq from 2003 through 2004, often under orders or with the approval of superior officers, according to accounts from soldiers released by Human Rights Watch today. The new report, �Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division,� provides soldiers� accounts of abuses against detainees committed by troops of the 82nd Airborne stationed at Forward Operating Base Mercury (FOB Mercury), near Fallujah. Three U.S. army personnel�two sergeants and a captain�describe routine, severe beatings of prisoners and other cruel and inhumane treatment. In one incident, a soldier is alleged to have broken a detainee�s leg with a baseball bat. Detainees were also forced to hold five-gallon jugs of water with their arms outstretched and perform other acts until they passed out. Soldiers also applied chemical substances to detainees� skin and eyes, and subjected detainees to forced stress positions, sleep deprivation, and extremes of hot and cold. Detainees were also stacked into human pyramids and denied food and water. The soldiers also described abuses they witnessed or participated in at another base in Iraq and during earlier deployments in Afghanistan. According to the soldiers' accounts, U.S. personnel abused detainees as part of the military interrogation process or merely to �relieve stress.� In numerous cases, they said that abuse was specifically ordered by Military Intelligence personnel before interrogations, and that superior officers within and outside of Military Intelligence knew about the widespread abuse. The accounts show that abuses resulted from civilian and military failures of leadership and confusion about interrogation standards and the application of the Geneva Conventions. They contradict claims by the Bush administration that detainee abuses by U.S. forces abroad have been infrequent, exceptional and unrelated to policy. �The administration demanded that soldiers extract information from detainees without telling them what was allowed and what was forbidden,� said Tom Malinowski, Washington Director of Human Rights Watch. �Yet when abuses inevitably followed, the leadership blamed the soldiers in the field instead of taking responsibility.� Soldiers referred to abusive techniques as �smoking� or �fucking� detainees, who are known as �PUCs,� or Persons Under Control. �Smoking a PUC� referred to exhausting detainees with physical exercises (sometimes to the point of unconsciousness) or forcing detainees to hold painful positions. �Fucking a PUC� detainees referred to beating or torturing them severely. The soldiers said that Military Intelligence personnel regularly instructed soldiers to �smoke� detainees before interrogations. One sergeant told Human Rights Watch: �Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport� One day [a sergeant] shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy�s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger, a metal bat.� The officer who spoke to Human Rights Watch made persistent efforts over 17 months to raise concerns about detainee abuse with his chain of command and to obtain clearer rules on the proper treatment of detainees, but was consistently told to ignore abuses and to �consider your career.� He believes he was not taken seriously until he approached members of Congress to raise his concerns. When the officer made an appointment this month with Senate staff members of Senators John McCain and John Warner, he says his commanding officer denied him a pass to leave his base. The officer was interviewed several days later by investigators with the Army Criminal Investigative Division and Inspector General�s office, and there were reports that the military has launched a formal investigation. Repeated efforts by Human Rights Watch to contact the 82nd Airborne Division regarding the major allegations in the report received no response. The soldiers� accounts show widespread confusion among military units about the legal standards applicable to detainees. One of the sergeants quoted in the report described how abuse of detainees was accepted among military units: �Trends were accepted. Leadership failed to provide clear guidance so we just developed it. They wanted intel [intelligence]. As long as no PUCs came up dead it happened. We heard rumors of PUCs dying so we were careful. We kept it to broken arms and legs and shit.� The soldiers� accounts challenge the Bush administration�s claim that military and civilian leadership did not play a role in abuses. The officer quoted in the report told Human Rights Watch that he believes the abuses he witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan were caused in part by President Bush�s 2002 decision not to apply Geneva Conventions protection to detainees captured in Afghanistan: �[In Afghanistan,] I thought that the chain on command all the way up to the National Command Authority [President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld] had made it a policy that we were going to interrogate these guys harshly. . . . We knew where the Geneva Conventions drew the line, but then you get that confusion when the Sec Def [Secretary of Defense] and the President make that statement [that Geneva did not apply to detainees] . . . . Had I thought we were following the Geneva Conventions as an officer I would have investigated what was clearly a very suspicious situation.� The officer said that Bush�s decision on Afghanistan affected detention and interrogation policy in Iraq: �None of the unit policies changed. Iraq was cast as part of the War on Terror, not a separate entity in and of itself but a part of a larger war.� As one sergeant cited in the report, discussing his duty in Iraq, said: �The Geneva Conventions is questionable and we didn�t know we were supposed to be following it. . . . [W]e were never briefed on the Geneva Conventions.� Human Rights Watch called on the military to conduct a thorough investigation of the abuses described in the report, as well as all other cases of reported abuse. It urged that this investigation not be limited to low-ranking military personnel, as has been the case in previous investigations, but to examine the responsibility throughout the military chain of command. Human Rights Watch repeated its call for the administration to appoint a special counsel to conduct a widespread criminal investigation of military and civilian personnel, including higher level officials, who may be implicated in detainee abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere. Human Rights Watch also called on the U.S. Congress to create a special commission, along the lines of the 9/11 commission, to investigate prisoner abuse issues, and to enact proposed legislation prohibiting all forms of detainee treatment and interrogation not specifically authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation and all treatment prohibited by the Convention Against Torture. �When an experienced Army officer goes out of his way to say something�s systematically wrong, it�s time for the administration and Congress to listen,� Malinowski said. �That means allowing a genuinely independent investigation of the policy decisions that led to the abuse and communicating clear, lawful interrogation rules to the troops on the ground.� |
There was a good PBS documentary called The Torture Question that aired about a week ago. It included interviews with interrogators who have come forth to describe the top down atmosphere that demanded results with a wink, a nod, and a blind eye. It was very well done and it forshadowed the fact that 10 years from now, once all the details are brought out into the open (with a lot more publicity than a pbs documentary), we'll look with shame upon this administration for the willful neglect that not only allowed this behaviour to happen, but encouraged it. I guess nobody in this administration had any experience at all with the first lesson of good corporate governance ... it all starts with a top-down attitude.
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Cruel. Inhuman. Degrades us all. Stop torture and ill-treatment in the �War on terror� First published in 2005 by Amnesty International Publications - Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 0DW United Kingdom www.amnesty.org � Amnesty International Publications 2005 ISBN: 0-86210-385-1AI Index: ACT 40/010/2005 Original language: English Printed by: Lynx DPM, Chalgrove, United Kingdom All rights reserved. This publication is copyright, but may be reproduced by any method without fee for advocacy, campaigning and teaching purposes, but not for resale. The copyright holders request that all such use be registered with them for impact assessment purposes. For copying in any other circumstances, or for re-use in other publications, or for translation or adaptation, prior written permission must be obtained from the publishers, and a fee may be payable. Torture and ill-treatment are repugnant, immoral and illegal, and are always wrong. "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Universal Declaration of Human Rights What is torture? What is ill-treatment? What�s the difference? At the heart of the definition of torture in the UN Convention against Torture is the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering for purposes such as obtaining information or a confession, or punishing, intimidating or coercing someone. There is not always agreement on whether a particular form of abuse amounts to torture or to other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (ill-treatment). However, all forms of torture and other ill-treatment are absolutely prohibited under international law, including the laws of war. In any event, it is not simply a matter of law. The universal legal prohibition is based on an international ethical consensus that torture and ill-treatment are repugnant, abhorrent and immoral. Torture is terror The photographs of US soldiers humiliating and terrorizing defenceless Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib shocked the world when they were published in 2004. But the abuses they exposed were not an aberration. The images followed numerous allegations of torture and ill-treatment reported from detention centres in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guant�namo Bay. In the context of the "war on terror", the international ban on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment has been flouted and challenged by governments around the world. States have inflicted unspeakable suffering on captives using methods so abhorrent and brutal that they have long been outlawed by the international community. The argument that torture and ill-treatment are always wrong was won many years ago. This was not a minority view or "liberal" position � governments around the world agreed, and wrote into international law, that there was never any circumstance that justified the use of torture or ill-treatment, not even wars or national emergencies. In the aftermath of the Second World War an international consensus emerged that led to the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment at all times. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to be free from torture and ill-treatment. The Geneva Conventions and their Protocols, which regulate conduct during armed conflicts, explicitly ban the torture and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and other non-combatants. "Amnesty International condemns in the strongest possible terms all acts of violence directed at civilians. Deliberately attacking civilians can never be justified and flouts the most fundamental principles of humanity." Now that consensus is under threat. Members of the US administration, backed by academics, journalists and intellectuals at home and abroad, have put forward arguments to justify loosening the ban on torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Some claim that the world changed irrevocably after the attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001, attacks condemned by Amnesty International and many others as a crime against humanity. They contend that the response to terrorist threats can therefore no longer be bound by the previously agreed rules. Others seek to distinguish between torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, claiming that torture is wrong, but some forms of ill-treatment can be countenanced. This allows them to assert that they remain opposed to torture while justifying the use of techniques that constitute at the very least cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment � treatment that is also absolutely prohibited in international law. The US government has been in the forefront of arguing that the previously accepted international legal framework no longer applies, and that people rounded up in the "war on terror" can be denied the protection of the Geneva Conventions. US forces, with the collusion of other states, have snatched people from other parts of the world, held them in secret, illegally transferred them between countries, and subjected them to torture and ill-treatment. Senior US officials have authorized the use of interrogation techniques that are cruel, inhuman or degrading and can amount to torture. Mohammed C., a Chadian national born in Saudi Arabia, was just 14 years old when he was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, in October 2001. He was taken to a prison and allegedly suspended from his wrists. He says that for around three weeks he was held in this position for between 10 and 16 hours a day, always blindfolded apart from some five minutes a day when he ate. In late November 2001 he was transferred into US custody, and his nightmare continued. He says that he was put into blue overalls, hooded, shackled, beaten, threatened with death, and repeatedly called "******", a word he had never heard before. He was then flown to the US airbase in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he says he was assaulted, kept naked, doused in freezing water, and told that his penis would be cut off with scissors. In early January 2002 he was transferred to Guant�namo, where he says he was hung by the wrists for up to eight hours at a time, beaten, subjected to sleep deprivation, strobe lighting and extreme cold, and racially abused. In 2003 an interrogator allegedly burned his arm with a cigarette. His arm still has scars. In May 2004 he was transferred to Camp 5 in Guant�namo, where conditions are extremely harsh. He is held for up to 24 hours a day in solitary confinement in a small concrete cell. Mohammed is now 18. He has been in Camp 5 for more than a year, and in US military custody for three and a half years, but has still not been charged with a crime. As the most powerful country in the world, the USA�s conduct influences governments everywhere, encouraging the spread of unacceptable practices and giving comfort to those who commit torture routinely. Amnesty International�s campaign to stop torture and ill-treatment in the "war on terror" calls on the USA to take a lead in reasserting and upholding the values of human dignity that it proclaims. These values have been betrayed by the US government in its pursuit of the "war on terror", and other states have been quick to follow suit. "All indicated that they had been horribly treated, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan� The stories they told were remarkably similar � terrible beatings, hung from wrists and beaten, removal of clothes, hooding, exposure naked to extreme cold, naked in front of female guards, sexual taunting by both male and female guards/interrogators, some sexual abuse (rectal intrusion), terrible uncomfortable positions for hours. All confirmed that all this treatment was by Americans� Several mentioned the use of electric shocks � like ping pong paddles put under arms � some had this done; many saw it done." Notes of a US lawyer after meeting Kuwaiti detainees in Guant�namo Bay in January 2005 Some governments have used the rhetoric of the "war on terror" to justify or intensify old patterns of repression. These include China, Egypt, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Other states have introduced or intensified the use of draconian laws and abusive practices. Among these are Australia, Jordan and the UK, as well as countries in the Gulf region. Some countries, including Germany, Turkey and the UK, have been reluctant to take up the cases of their nationals or residents detained and ill-treated by US agents. Still others, such as Egypt, Gambia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Pakistan and Sweden, have allowed foreign agents from countries including China, Egypt, Syria and the USA, to take people illegally from their territory. Sean Baker, a US military guard, volunteered to wear an orange jumpsuit and pretend to be an uncooperative detainee in Guant�namo during a training exercise in January 2003. The guards, who did not know who he was, beat and choked him to the point where he suffered permanent brain injury. In countries where torture and ill-treatment are rife, governments have been encouraged by the new climate of tolerance towards such abuses. Such countries include Pakistan, Russia, Syria and Yemen to name but a few. The Abu Ghraib scandal prompted top US officials to condemn the exposed abuses � although maintaining they were the atypical actions of a few soldiers � and to restate US opposition to torture (but not to other ill-treatment). However, more than a year after the photos were published, and despite mounting evidence of continuing torture and other ill-treatment committed by US agents, not one has been prosecuted for torture or other war crimes under US law. Only a handful of low-ranking soldiers have been charged under military law with assault and cruelty to prisoners. No one higher up the chain of command has been charged. Every government has the duty to take steps to protect people from violent attacks. But they may not use methods that flout human rights. The ban on torture and ill-treatment remains absolute, in all circumstances. If governments use torture and ill-treatment, they are resorting to tactics of terror. Both torturers and terrorists rely on fear to achieve their aims. Both negate the very basis of human dignity and decency. Both torture and terrorism should be rejected absolutely, with no exceptions. Torture and ill-treatment in the �war on terror� Governments have used terror tactics to break the will of detainees held during the "war on terror" in Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Uzbekistan and elsewhere. It is true that these countries face complex challenges and threats, but violations of human rights are never justified. While adopting a war mentality, these governments have ignored the laws of war (such as the Geneva Conventions) and discarded core human rights principles. This undermines the rule of law, the international system protecting human rights and the struggle to hold torturers to account. It also undermines the very values the "war on terror" claims to defend. The US administration has repeatedly stated that it is committed to what it calls the "non-negotiable demands of human dignity". However, in February 2002 President Bush announced that anyone detained in the conflict in Afghanistan would not be treated as a prisoner of war. The global "war on terror" was to be waged with new rules, rules that allowed the US government to ignore the Geneva Conventions, in particular the parts which protect everyone captured during a conflict. The President was advised that such a decision would make future prosecutions of US agents for "war crimes" under US law more difficult. Jamal Naseer was just 18 years old in March 2003 when he died in US custody in Gardez, Afghanistan. The young soldier was arrested along with seven other Afghans, and held for 17 days before he died. He was reportedly subjected to torture including electric shocks, beatings and immersion in water. There was no autopsy to establish how he died. While proclaiming their opposition to torture, US officials adopted a narrower definition of torture, apparently so that US agents would be less likely to be found criminally responsible for abuses under the USA�s anti-torture law. Meanwhile, the administration accepted advice that there was a wide array of cruel, inhuman or degrading techniques that would not amount to torture and could therefore be used. Officials then approved techniques for use by US agents that can constitute ill-treatment or, especially when used together or over long periods, torture. These included stress positions, isolation, sensory deprivation, dogs, hooding, removal of clothing, extremes of hot and cold, sleep deprivation and threats. Since 11 September 2001, torture and ill-treatment have been facilitated by the prolonged detention with little or no access to the outside world of thousands of people detained in the "war on terror". The USA has held approximately 70,000 people outside US territory since late 2001, and more than 10,000 are believed to be still in US custody in prisons and camps in the USA, Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan. People are also reportedly held in secret detention elsewhere. Incommunicado detention in the context of the "war on terror" has been reported from many countries. For example, in Pakistan, the armed forces mounted a two-week operation in March 2004 to remove people believed to be associated with the Taleban and al-Qa�ida from South Waziristan. A senior official stated that the people arrested were "not considered prisoners of war but criminals" held as part of an "anti-terrorist operation". Those who were captured were held in incommunicado detention. Although the Council of Europe has sophisticated mechanisms aimed at preventing torture and ill-treatment, including an international expert committee to inspect places of detention, some member states have authorized measures that are known to provide the breeding ground for torture and ill-treatment. The Spanish authorities have more than doubled the period that certain detainees could be held incommunicado. The UK has reduced meaningful access to the courts for those held under anti-terror legislation. Attempts at the UN to address human rights concerns in the context of the "war on terror" have been opposed by some states. For example, the US and UK governments blocked efforts at the UN to specify the obligations of forces in Iraq under international humanitarian and human rights law. In June 2004 they prevented a proposal to set out these duties in a UN Security Council resolution. The Spanish government rejected as "unacceptable" a February 2004 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on torture into allegations of torture by people detained as part of counter-terrorism measures. The report concluded that the allegations were not fabrications and that the incidence of torture and ill-treatment, while not regular, was "more than sporadic and incidental". Baha Dawood Salem al-Maliki was one of eight Iraqi hotel workers arrested and reportedly beaten in September 2003 by UK soldiers in Basra, Iraq. Three days later Baha al-Maliki�s father was handed his son�s body, severely bruised and covered in blood. Another detainee, Kefah Taha, was admitted to hospital in a critical condition. The UK government condemned the abuses, but when the case came to court officials claimed that neither the European Convention on Human Rights nor the UK Human Rights Act was applicable. However, in December 2004, a higher court ruled that � in limited circumstances � both domestic and international human rights law could apply to UK forces during the occupation of Iraq, and that there had not yet been an adequate inquiry into the death of Baha al-Maliki. Outsourcing torture Two Egyptian asylum-seekers, Ahmed Hussein Mustafa Kamil Agiza and Muhammad Muhammad Suleiman Ibrahim El-Zari, were forcibly and secretly taken from Sweden to Egypt in December 2001. The Swedish authorities said they had obtained so-called "diplomatic assurances" from the Egyptian authorities that the two men would not be harmed. Within hours of Sweden�s decision not to grant the two men asylum, they were bundled onto a US government-leased plane by six masked US security agents. Before putting them on the plane, the agents reportedly hooded, shackled and drugged them. The two men subsequently said they were tortured in detention in Egypt. In the context of the "war on terror", or hiding behind its rhetoric, governments have forcibly transferred people, without any recourse to a court, to other countries. Such transfers are known in the USA as "extraordinary renditions". In some cases during the "war on terror", people have been transferred in this way to countries where they are at significant risk of torture and ill-treatment. States including China, Egypt, Gambia, Jordan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Pakistan, Sweden and the UK have been implicated in renditions around the globe. There are reports of airports in Europe and elsewhere being used as stopping off points for planes used for "war on terror" renditions. Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, and Jamil al-Banna, a Jordanian refugee, are among at least five UK residents held in Guant�namo Bay. Amnesty International is concerned at the role that the UK authorities may have played in their unlawful transfer to US custody. The US government has sent people to countries with well-established records of torture, including Egypt and Syria. On 24 June 2005 an Italian judge ordered the arrest of 13 CIA officers for secretly kidnapping and transporting a Muslim cleric to Egypt as part of US anti-terrorism efforts. The cleric was seized on a Milan street in 2003 and flown to Egypt for questioning. He said he was tortured there. Governments that want to ignore the ban on sending people to places where they risk torture or ill-treatment have sought "diplomatic assurances" � formal guarantees from the government in the country of return that a person will not be ill-treated there. However, such guarantees are virtually worthless. Why should anyone trust the word of a government that routinely denies that its agents are torturing prisoners, when such torture is known to be systematic? "Diplomatic assurances" have been relied on not only by Sweden and the USA but also by other countries including Austria, the Netherlands and Turkey. A further disturbing aspect of recent renditions has been the apparent willingness of the authorities in some countries to use information extracted under duress in other countries. This amounts to collusion in torture and ill-treatment. In August 2004, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales ruled that information extracted under torture abroad could be admitted as evidence in court, provided UK agents had not committed the torture or connived in it. In Germany, the Hamburg Supreme Court decided on 14 June 2005 to accept as evidence testimonies which may have been obtained through the use of torture. Some governments have played a duplicitous role in the detention without any legal basis of their residents and nationals in Guant�namo. For example, UK intelligence officers have interrogated people held in Guant�namo and have used the information extracted against people held under anti-terror legislation. Torture is wrong and illegal, wherever it happens and whoever carries it out. Governments cannot escape their responsibility by exporting people abroad to be tortured. The international ban on torture and ill-treatment includes a prohibition on sending people, whatever they have been accused of, to any country where they would be at risk of torture or other cruel inhuman or degrading treatment. This prohibition is as absolute as the ban on committing torture and ill-treatment. Normalizing torture and ill-treatment: the case of the USA The USA�s laws on freedom of information have allowed human rights activists and others to document the US government�s moves to rewrite the rules banning torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Undermining the Geneva Conventions 19 January 2002 � Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issues a message: "Al-Qa�ida and Taleban individuals under the control of the Department of Defense are not entitled to prisoner of war status". They should be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity". 22 January 2002 � Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee advises that neither the US War Crimes Act nor the Geneva Conventions apply to the detention conditions of al-Qa�ida prisoners. He asserts that customary international law (which bans torture and ill-treatment absolutely and is binding on all states, regardless of what treaties they have agreed to) does not apply to the US President or military, because it is not federal law under the US Constitution. 25 January 2002 � the White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez advises in a draft memorandum that adherence to the Geneva Conventions would restrict the interrogation methods used by the USA in this "new kind of war". Not applying the Geneva Conventions to certain prisoners, he wrote, "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution [of US agents] under the War Crimes Act". 7 February 2002 � President Bush issues a directive that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to al-Qa�ida suspects captured in Afghanistan, and that neither they nor Taleban members would be eligible for prisoner of war status. This central policy memorandum, still in force, says that "our values as a nation� call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment". Redefining torture 1 August 2002 � a memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice by Jay S. Bybee defines torture so narrowly that a wide range of interrogation methods are allowed, including some that would amount to torture under internationally agreed criteria. It states that for an act to constitute torture it must inflict pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death". It states that in order to be convicted of torture, a defendant must have acted with the primary objective of inflicting severe pain. The memorandum also suggests that while torture may be unacceptable, this is not necessarily the case for other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Moreover, it argues that the President, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces during war, can order torture and that torturers would then be immune from criminal responsibility. This memorandum represented the position of the administration until its repudiation in June 2004, after the Abu Ghraib revelations. 22 June 2004 � after the Bybee memorandum is leaked, the administration makes it public and agrees to review the policy. 30 December 2004 � a revised opinion is issued by the Office of the Legal Counsel in the Attorney General�s office which still allows for psychological methods of coercion, such as death threats, that Amnesty International believes can amount to torture. It maintains that acts prohibited by the federal anti-torture statute, including the use of "procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the sense or personality", are not considered torture unless there is evidence of long-term harm. The revised opinion does not amend the previous position on other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. It also fails to reject the stance that the President may order torture and grant immunity, on the grounds that the President has been "unequivocal" in prohibiting torture. Authorizing the unacceptable 11 October 2002 � US Army Colonel Jerald Phifer sends a memo to the head of the intelligence task force at Guant�namo. It proposes three categories of interrogation methods to be used on "uncooperative" detainees. � Category 1 techniques include yelling at the detainee and techniques of deception � Category 2 techniques include sensory deprivation, hooding, 20-hour interrogations, forced nudity and the exploitation of individual phobias � Category 3 techniques include threats of death or injury and near-suffocation 2 December 2002 � Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approves the interrogation methods in Categories 1 and 2, and, from Category 3, "mild, non-injurious physical contact". 4 April 2003 � a Working Group set up by Secretary Rumsfeld recommends hooding, environmental manipulation, threats of transfer to a country where a person might be killed, forced grooming, forced nudity, sleep deprivation and inducement of fear. These were among 26 techniques recommended for use with "unlawful combatants". A further nine are allowed with prior approval. 16 April 2003 � Secretary Rumsfeld approves the use in Guant�namo of 24 specified "counter-resistance" techniques from those approved by the Working Group. He reserved the right to authorize personally any "additional interrogation techniques" on a case by case basis. Some of the tactics authorized by the US government applied only to particular detainees. Others formed part of the conditions for the entire captive population. Some directives applied to Guant�namo, some to Afghanistan, some to Iraq. The central policy memorandum signed by President Bush for "war on terror" detentions directed that detainees in military custody should be treated humanely, and "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity", in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. Given that what the US administration meant by "humane" treatment is unclear, this left a loophole for torture. What is more, this directive appears not to have applied to the CIA. Evading scrutiny Central to the USA�s "war on terror" detention policy has been to keep the detainees away not only from international law and scrutiny, but also from the USA�s own courts. The administration chose to establish a detention centre at the US naval base at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba because it believed that it was beyond the jurisdiction of the US courts. Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi national, died in Abu Ghraib in November 2003 from "blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration", according to the death certificate. He was a "ghost detainee" brought into the prison by US forces and left unregistered and untreated for a head injury sustained on arrest. In June 2004, the US Supreme Court decided that US federal courts had the authority to hear cases on whether foreign nationals held in Guant�namo Bay were lawfully imprisoned. By June 2005, not one of the more than 500 detainees still held there had had the legality of his detention reviewed by a court. The US government is still arguing to block any such review or to keep it as minimal as possible for as long as possible. The administration responded to the Supreme Court decision by setting up Combatant Status Review Tribunals, panels of three military officers, to determine if each detainee was an "enemy combatant" � not an internationally recognized legal term. The detainee had no access to secret evidence used against him in this process and no legal assistance. Information extracted under torture or other ill-treatment could be used as evidence. The Tribunals started in July 2004 and the final decisions for current detainees were issued late in March 2005. In 93 per cent of the 558 cases, the Tribunal affirmed the detainee�s "enemy combatant" status. On 31 January 2005, a federal judge found that this process was inadequate and unconstitutional; the government�s appeal against the ruling was upheld in July 2005. Investigation or whitewash? After the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, the US administration ordered a number of investigations and reviews of its detention and interrogation practices. While some of these inquiries have provided welcome insight and analysis, they have lacked the independence or reach necessary to investigate all agencies, all activities and all levels of the security forces and government. The reviews have generally been uncritical of interrogation techniques and detention conditions which are prohibited under international law. Much of the information from these reviews remains classified. The investigations include: * the Taguba report, an investigation into abuses at Abu Ghraib (February 2004), which found "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuse" of detainees in Abu Ghraib: it did not interview any military personnel above the rank of brigade commander * the Schlesinger Panel, an investigation of Department of Defense operations (August 2004), which criticized the Pentagon�s leadership for failing to exercise adequate oversight and allowing conditions that led to abuse of detainees in Iraq, but said it did not find any US "policy of abuse", or "approved procedures" that permitted the inhumane treatment of detainees * the Fay investigation into the activities of military personnel at Abu Ghraib (August 2004), which found "misconduct (ranging from inhumane to sadistic) by a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians" * a review by Vice Admiral Albert Church of detention procedures at Guant�namo (in May 2004), which found "no evidence of current abuse" * a review of Department of Defense worldwide interrogation operations, also by Vice Admiral Church (summary March 2005), which found seven cases of "relatively minor abuse" * an "inspection" of US detainee operations by Brigadier General Chuck Jacoby in Afghanistan (May-June 2004), which "did not disclose new allegations of abuse". "I couldn�t bear it any longer�even if I was an animal I couldn�t put up with it." Salah Nasser Salim �Ali speaking about his detention by US authorities in secret places of detention Salah Nasser Salim �Ali, a 27-year-old Yemeni, was arrested in August 2003 while shopping in Indonesia where he lived with his Indonesian wife. He says he was flown to Jordan where he was held for four days and tortured. He was interrogated but never told why he had been arrested. Salah says he was blindfolded and shackled by US guards, then transported in a small military plane to a secret location. There, for between six and eight months, he was held in solitary confinement in what he describes as an old-style underground facility with high walls. His tiny cell had a bucket for a toilet. Western music was piped into the cell 24 hours a day. Again, he was shackled and blindfolded and put on a small military aircraft, then a helicopter, before arriving at the next, unknown place of detention. Salah describes it as a modern purpose-built detention facility run by US officials, probably underground. It was air-conditioned with modern toilets. He was given books and films to watch, and a doctor checked him once a fortnight. However, he was again held in solitary confinement, always shackled and handcuffed. In May 2005, without explanation, Salah was released from secret detention and flown to Yemen, where he remains in prison, still without charge. Yemeni officials say he is being detained at the request of US authorities. While a relatively small number of mainly low-ranking soldiers have been court martialled, and a larger number issued with administrative penalties such as letters of reprimand, not a single person has been charged under the USA�s War Crimes Act or anti-torture statute. Discrimination One thread that runs through many of the testimonies from prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from Guant�namo, is that of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic and other racist abuse. There is evidence that some of the approved techniques, although humiliating, painful or frightening for anyone, have been selected to exploit perceived religious or cultural sensitivities in the case of Muslim detainees. Such techniques include forced shaving, stripping and the use of dogs to inspire fear. Secretary Rumsfeld also approved the removal of religious items, including the Qur�an, as an interrogation technique. Colonel Henry Nelson, a US Air Force psychiatrist, concluded that among the factors contributing to the abuse in Abu Ghraib was a perceived "association of Muslims with terrorism". The labelling of uncharged detainees by senior officials as "terrorists", "killers", "dangerous" and "bad people" contributed to the dehumanization process. A leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) noted a "widespread attitude of contempt" on the part of the US guards towards detainees held in Iraq � some detainees were given wristbands marked "terrorist". Secret detentions: outside the protection of the law Secret detention is banned under international law for a simple reason � it places detainees outside the protection of the law and so facilitates torture and other serious abuses of human rights. The USA is holding an unknown number of detainees in secret custody in unknown locations. These so-called ghost detainees have "disappeared". The Taguba report said that "on at least one occasion" military guards at Abu Ghraib held six to eight "ghost detainees", who were moved around the prison to hide them from the ICRC. This manoeuvre was described as "deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law." The Fay report into Abu Ghraib found cases of eight "ghost detainees", but concluded that it could not determine the real number, or who was responsible. In September 2004, General Paul Kern, who oversaw the Fay investigation, said that the real number of "ghost detainees" was much higher � "in the dozens, to perhaps up to 100". More recently, the Church Report summary of March 2005 concluded that "to the best of our knowledge, there were approximately 30 �ghost detainees�." At least one "ghost detainee" died in US custody in Iraq. As well as detainees held in secret in known prisons, secret US facilities have reportedly been located in Afghanistan, Egypt and Pakistan, and in the US base on the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia. For example, there was reported to be a CIA facility in Kabul in the former Ariana hotel, and one known as "The Salt Pit", also in Kabul, where at least one detainee reportedly died in CIA custody. The Salt Pit has since been demolished. Some "high-value" detainees � perhaps several dozen � are allegedly held in CIA custody in secret locations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Not even the ICRC has access to such detainees, whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown. "They told me to take off my shirt. I said �How can I do that?� Then I told myself �Take your shirt off.� When I took off my shirt, they told me to undo my belt. I found that very painful. I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown. In my entire life I�d never exposed myself. With respect, I have a bladder problem and I could not stop urinating. After that I was so humiliated I couldn�t see for my pain ... And this happened when I�m old, white-bearded with no teeth. And this outrage happened to me." Noor Mohammad Lala, an elderly Afghan man, who was arrested in his village by US marines in June 2004 and detained for three days Torture works... to inflict unspeakable pain on defenceless people to break the will and destroy the personality of the victim to brutalize the victim and torturer to make the victim say what the torturer wants to hear to increase terrorism by normalizing brutality and antagonizing communities to inspire hatred and terror across whole communities to deepen divisions in society by dehumanizing certain groups to lower the moral standards of society Torture doesn�t work... to stop terrorism to make us safer Not in our name "I�m in a cage like an animal. No-one�s asked me am I human or not". Wazir Mohammed, an Afghan taxi driver held in Bagram and Guant�namo, released in late 2003 "I did not see light for two weeks� They put me in the dark. I was surprised. I did not know what I did wrong or what I did. They starved me; they handcuffed me, there was no food� I was surprised that the Americans would do such a thing. It shocked me." Jamil El Banna, a Jordanian national with refugee status in the UK, describing his treatment in Bagram, Afghanistan "Americans hit me and beat me up so badly I believe I�m sexually dysfunctional� I point to where the pain is� I think they take it as a joke and they laugh." A Guant�namo detainee quoted in tribunal transcripts released under a US Freedom of Information Act lawsuit "I needed the toilet and I asked the interrogator to let me go. But he just said, �You�ll go when I say so�� Finally, I squirmed across the floor and did it in the corner� He comes back with a mop and dips it in the pool of urine. Then he starts covering me with my own waste, like he�s using a big paint-brush� All the while, he�s racially abusing me, cussing me." Martin Mubanga, a UK national held in Guant�namo from May 2002 to October 2004 "The British interrogators also interrogated me with a soldier in a corner with a gun. They saw that I was shaking and shivering and what a bad state I was in medically. However, they did nothing for me." Tarek Degoul, a UK national held in US custody in Afghanistan "They punched me, they kicked me, once to my chin. Another time I was told to lie down and they picked me up by my neck so I was half-strangled and they said �we are going to kill you unless you confess what you did�." Jannat Gul, an Afghan held in the US military facility in Gardez, Afghanistan, and then for 16 months in Bagram. He was released in March 2005 "I was questioned for four weeks in a windowless room by plain-clothed US agents. I didn�t know if it was day or night. They said they could make me disappear." Mohammed, a former detainee allegedly held in a facility jointly run by the Pakistan intelligence services and the CIA �We�ll break you into a thousand pieces� At the heart of the attack on the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in the "war on terror" has been the attempt to designate different types of treatment simply as "coercive" interrogation techniques, and to argue that they fall outside the ban. Techniques frequently described by detainees who have been held in the context of the "war on terror" by forces from the USA, the UK and other countries include: prolonged isolation sleep deprivation sensory manipulation such as exposure to bright lights and loud music sexual and other forms of humiliation the use of dogs, mock executions and other threats to instil terror being forced to stand motionless or in stressful positions for hours on end beatings "environmental manipulation", where detainees are exposed to extremes of heat and cold repeated insults with a racial and religious focus, described in US army manuals as "pride and ego down" prolonged handcuffing hooding and blindfolding Most of these techniques do not leave physical scars, but all can have devastating consequences for the victims. All forms of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment attack the identity and humanity of the individual. They can also have serious long-term consequences for the health of victims. Symptoms commonly experienced include: anxiety disorders depression irritability shame and humiliation memory impairment reduced capacity to concentrate headaches sleep disturbance and nightmares emotional instability physical problems including stomach, lung and heart complaints sexual problems amnesia self-mutilation preoccupation with suicide social isolation. All these symptoms have been observed among detainees who have been interrogated at US-run detention centres in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guant�namo Bay. For example, a leaked February 2004 report on Abu Ghraib prison by the ICRC said that detainees presented "signs of concentration difficulties, memory problems, verbal expression difficulties, incoherent speech, acute anxiety reactions, abnormal behaviour and suicidal tendencies. These symptoms appeared to have been caused by the methods and duration of interrogation". "They said, �If you swear to God again, we�ll break you into a thousand pieces�� They had music played very loud on huge speakers and they made us dance. It was played straight into our ears. There was abuse throughout the night. We were beaten on the ground. They placed tape on our mouths, and bags on our heads." Ahmad Muhammad Hussein al-Badrani, a freelance television journalist working for Reuters in Falluja, who was held by US forces in Iraq for three days in January 2004 In Guant�namo, there were 350 acts of self-harm in 2003 alone, according to a US army spokesperson. In the UK, psychiatrists who examined detainees held under anti-terrorist legislation documented "significant levels of depression and anxiety� a high level of suicidal ideation [imagining, planning and thinking about suicide] and attempts at self-harm." The Royal College of Psychiatrists in January 2005 found that "� indeterminate detention, lack of normal due legal process and resultant sense of powerlessness, are likely to cause significant deterioration in detainees� mental health". The impact of torture and other ill-treatment varies from individual to individual, both immediately and in the long term. The suffering spreads to the families of victims too. Relatives often experience feelings of fear, loss, danger and vulnerability as a result of the imprisonment and ill-treatment of their loved one. Families also suffer as a result of the changed behaviour of the torture survivor following release. With some interrogation methods, it is easy to understand why they are wrong because the infliction of pain and the possibility of lasting harm are clear. We all know that beatings hurt. We can imagine the aches we would suffer if forced to squat or maintain other stress positions for hours on end. We can all understand the anguish that would result from the withdrawal of food, water or medical care. But many techniques are directed solely at the mind. They are designed to break the prisoner�s ability to resist the interrogator�s demands by arousing intense fear and destroying the victim�s sense of self and security. So how much harm do they really do? Prolonged isolation Being left alone in a cell doesn�t sound like it would cause much harm. According to medical experts, however, prolonged isolation can have profound and long-lasting consequences for the mental health of victims. The adverse effects include: depression inability to think or concentrate anxiety feeling unwell all the time disorientation hallucinations loss of coordination inability to perform simple tasks hypersensitivity to stimuli paranoia obsessive behaviour suicidal tendencies. Medical experts say the effects of isolation are exacerbated when people are not told why they are being detained or for how long they will be held, precisely the conditions facing virtually all "war on terror" detainees. In November 2002, FBI agents at Guant�namo reported that a detainee held in intense isolation for three months in a cell bathed in light was talking to non-existent people, hearing voices and spending hours crouched in a corner under a sheet. Some detainees have been held in solitary confinement for more than a year by US forces. Sensory deprivation or manipulation Again, hooding and exposure to loud music may not at first sound too harmful. The medical evidence, however, shows just how quickly such treatment affects prisoners. Hooding isolates the prisoner, impedes breathing, and rapidly induces panic and disorientation. When hooding and exposure to white noise (loud indistinct sounds) are combined, this causes confusion and psychological disturbance, and after 40 minutes most victims begin to hallucinate. The adverse effects of sensory deprivation, which can involve prolonged exposure to white light, include: anxiety disorientation visual and auditory hallucinations changed sense of time impairment of cognitive functions increased suggestibility. The ICRC, in a leaked report on abuses by US forces in Iraq, stated: "Hooding was sometimes used in conjunction with beatings, thus increasing anxiety as to when blows would come." It said hooding lasted from a few hours to four consecutive days. Sexual and other humiliation "Sexual abuse, whatever form it takes, is an extremely damaging form of torture. For tormentors to penetrate this most private realm produces deep feelings of despair and self-loathing." Uwe Jacobs, Executive Director of Survivors International, March 2005 Some of the types of sexual abuse alleged to have taken place at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere cause physical as well as emotional pain and are clearly torture. But what about forced nudity, being forced to assume sexually degrading positions and forced masturbation? These do not necessarily cause physical pain, but are designed to degrade and humiliate, and to undermine the person�s sense of identity. The adverse effects of sexual humiliation include: making victims feel deeply humiliated and ashamed, stripped of their identity and powerless in front of interrogators arousing a heightened fear of imminent sexual and physical assault post-traumatic stress disorder severe depression flashbacks and nightmares anxiety chronic headaches eating disorders digestive problems suicidal tendencies. "I�m 50 years old, and no one has ever taken my clothes. It was a very hard moment for me. It was death for me". An Afghan man released from US custody in Afghanistan in April 2004 who said he was photographed naked in detention Long-term problems commonly caused by sexual abuse compound the suffering. Victims, whether male or female, often face ostracism in their community. Some methods of sexual abuse target a man�s sexual identity in ways that draw on prejudices about gender and homosexuality, for example by threatening him with rape or by making him wear women�s underwear. Such methods can leave long-term physical problems and deep emotional scars. "They used girls to tempt us to have sexual intercourse with them in order to degrade us and our faith... [Once] a woman came into my cell trying to seduce me." Mehdi Healy, a Swedish national released from Guant�namo Sexual abuse and taunting, as well as other forms of humiliation such as forced shaving, are alleged to have frequently been used by US forces to break the resistance detainees. In Afghanistan, detainees were reportedly stripped and photographed in "shameful" positions or touched inappropriately by female interrogators. In Guant�namo, humiliation allegedly included female interrogators violating Muslim sensitivities on sex and contact with women, particularly during the holy month of Ramadan. In Abu Ghraib, sexual humiliation was used as part of the interrogation process. "When the male detainees were first brought to [Abu Ghraib], some of them were made to wear female underwear, which I think was to somehow break them down." US soldier interviewed by US Major General Taguba, February 2004 New names, old abuses New terms are being used to describe old abuses in order to deflect accusations of torture. �Stress and duress� techniques Also known as "enhanced interrogation techniques", these are painful, psychologically damaging and physically debilitating procedures authorized by the US administration. Many can constitute torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Environmental manipulation Forcing prisoners to suffer extremes of cold and heat, dazzling and permanent white light (or oppressive and permanent darkness), loud noise, including music chosen to offend the victims. Forced grooming Forcibly shaving prisoners, a practice that causes additional distress and humiliation for Muslim men. Sleep adjustment Repeatedly waking a prisoner to induce disorientation. Stress position An initially uncomfortable and progressively more painful position, such as a half squat with arms raised, that prisoners are forced to maintain for long periods. This causes intense pain with-out physical contact or scarring. Waterboarding This has been described as a technique whereby the detainee�s head is forced under water to the point where they believe they will drown. The Church Report described it as when water is poured on a detainee�s towelled face to induce the perception of drowning. In both cases, it amounts to torture. Sleep deprivation A few nights� disrupted sleep surely can�t be torture or ill-treatment? Ask any student or new parent. This common sense view is shattered by the reality of what prisoners suffer when they are deprived of sleep for long periods or their sleep is repeatedly broken. The adverse effects include: loss of skills such as reasoning and decision-making inability to concentrate short-term memory problems speech impairments high blood pressure and other cardiovascular disease. A spokesperson for the US military in Afghanistan in 2003 said it was common to keep detainees awake by keeping bright lights on all the time or to disturb their sleep every 15 minutes. In Abu Ghraib exposure to loud music and constant light were reportedly used in 2003 to disturb sleep. Detainees held by UK forces in Iraq told Amnesty International they were subjected to sleep deprivation. Inspiring fear "[T]he threat to inflict pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain." "Coercive Techniques" in the CIA�s 1983 Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual "Inducing stress by use of detainees� fears" was approved as an interrogation technique for US agents by Secretary Rumsfeld in December 2002. A Pentagon document also authorized the exploitation of the "Arab fear of dogs". When intense fear is experienced by victims, the effects are often long-lasting. They include: * chronic fear and a sense of helplessness * repeated flashbacks and intrusive memories, especially repeatedly reliving the moments before expected death * intense anxiety * self-harming behaviour. Among the interrogation methods used on "war on terror" suspects that appear designed to provoke fear have been: threats of beatings, threats of electric shocks, the use of dogs, mock executions, the threat to send prisoners abroad to be tortured, and threats against the detainee�s family. Thahe Mohammed Sabbar, an Iraqi in his thirties, was reportedly subjected to mock executions, hooding and humiliation when held by US forces in various locations in Iraq, including Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib, between July 2003 and January 2004. Since then, he says he has suffered from severe nightmares, incontinence, impotence and uncontrollable bouts of shaking and crying. Torture won�t make us safe "Apologists for torture generally concentrate on the classical argument of expediency: the authorities are obliged to defeat terrorists or insurgents who have put innocent lives at risk." Amnesty International, Torture in the Eighties, 1984 Nothing that has happened in recent years shakes Amnesty International�s conviction that torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment are NEVER justified. Over the decades Amnesty International has witnessed a simple truth � torture is never limited to "just once". Once you allow torture or ill-treatment in one circumstance, for example in an attempt to stop a bomb exploding, it is soon used on people who might plant bombs, or on people who might think of planting bombs, or on people who might know someone who might plant bombs, or on people who defend the kind of person who might plant bombs, and so on. The methods used tend to escalate in severity � the slap that doesn�t make the prisoner talk becomes a beating. If the beating doesn�t work, then more pain has to be inflicted. For example, the Israeli government legalized "moderate physical pressure" with controls to limit its use. Predictably, thousands of Palestinians were then tortured after being arrested for offences such as stone throwing, and torture became routine. In 1999, the government was forced to withdraw its previous guidelines. Moreover, people who have power over detainees and are allowed to inflict pain and suffering often become so brutalized that they begin to abuse their charges for their own sadistic amusement, or in retaliation for friends and colleagues lost in battle, or to conquer their own fears. These patterns have been seen in the "war on terror". The US administration authorized "coercive" techniques in limited circumstances for a relatively small number of detainees. In practice, the authorized techniques became more and more cruel, and the number of victims soared. Amnesty International�s experience is that states that use torture and ill-treatment against political opponents also use other violent and repressive measures, such as "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions. The abuses are not confined to detainees, but are also directed against a wider population associated with the "enemy". Countries such as China, Egypt, Malaysia, Russia, Syria and Uzbekistan, which have adopted the language of the "war on terror" as a new justification for long-standing repression, have used torture and ill-treatment alongside other forms of abuse. If torture and ill-treatment are no longer absolutely prohibited, law enforcement attitudes change. Over time, the attitude that torture and ill-treatment can be acceptable gains ground and spreads throughout the entire system. People suspected of ordinary crimes receive the same treatment as terror suspects. In short, once the door is opened to torture or ill-treatment, their use quickly becomes institutionalized. And once that happens, no one is safe. The only way people can be protected � both from governments and suicide bombers � is to treat every single human being as possessing fundamental rights that no government, group or individual may ever justifiably take away. Human rights are grounded in fundamental values that create "no go areas" � actions that one human being must never do to another, no matter how heinous the crimes of that person or how extreme the circumstances. Justifying the unjustifiable Some people are now willing to argue openly that torture and ill-treatment are justified. They assert that the use of torture could be controlled and limited to the most extreme and urgent circumstances. Some even contend that, because torture is bound to happen, it is better that it be legalized and regulated than that it be denied or done clandestinely. However, arguments that torture and ill-treatment are permissible to prevent the imminent loss of many lives � the "ticking bomb" scenario � are based on a hypothetical situation. Any would-be torturer would need to know: that a bomb really exists; that it will explode unless it is defused; that the person being held knows where the bomb is; that the bombers� plans haven�t been changed; that the detainee will talk if tortured; that the information will be accurate and will enable the bomb to be defused in time; and that there is no other way to discover the bomb. Such an unlikely scenario cannot justify giving governments powers to license their officials to use torture and ill-treatment. A US military investigation into the death of Dilawar, an Afghan taxi driver, in Bagram in December 2002 exposed his terrible death. He was apparently picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was kept chained to the ceiling of his cell for long periods over four days, hooded most of the time. His pleas for water were sometimes ignored. The report estimated that in one 24-hour period he had been struck over 100 times on the side of the leg just above the knee. His legs, according to one observer, "had basically been pulpified". Any policy or legislation which permits the use of torture or ill-treatment undermines the principled opposition to its use, and it is impossible to identify a clear stopping point. Is 100 volts of electricity to the genitals acceptable, while 200 volts is not? Is 30 minutes of agony justifiable, while 35 minutes is not? Them and us The suggestion that torture and ill-treatment might be justified in some circumstances is based on a premise that at least sometimes the end justifies the means � a rationale often used in attempts to justify acts of terrorism. Throughout history, people have tried to justify torture and ill-treatment by invoking some superior goal � the common good, freedom, religious ideals, national security or military necessity. But we cannot defend principles and ideals by actions which undermine them. Proponents of the argument that torture is the lesser of two evils often divide the world between the "good" people (us), and the "evil" people (them) who use "barbaric" and illegal means to achieve their aims. They seek to dehumanize the enemy: once the enemy is seen as less than human, it becomes easier to persuade people that the torture or ill-treatment of a few of "them" is an acceptable price to pay for protecting "us". "Make no mistake: every regime tortures does so in the name of salvation, some superior goal, some promise of paradise. Call it communism, call it the free market, call it the free world, call it the national interest, call it fascism, call it the leader, call it civilisation, call it the service of God, call it the need for information; call it what you will, the cost of paradise, the promise of some sort of paradise� will always be hell for at least one person somewhere, sometime." Ariel Dorfman, Chilean writer, May 2004 Justice not revenge Human rights activists are sometimes accused of not caring about the needs of victims of terrorist acts. "How would you feel if your child�s life was at stake?" they are asked. What we would do in a moment of such panic and desperation is difficult to predict, but it is a measure of the extent of our despair rather than a guide for moral behaviour. Maybe we would ourselves commit an atrocity if we believed it would save our loved ones � but it would remain an atrocity. Law and government policy should remain guided by the need to protect the human rights of everyone. Ineffective methods "You can make anyone say anything, but you can�t have any confidence in what that person says." Mike Baker, former CIA agent If people are tortured or ill-treated to get information out of them, some will talk. Some won�t. Of those who talk, many will say anything to stop their suffering � truth, lies, half-truths. Governments that resort to torture and ill-treatment claim they can get useful intelligence out of people by abusing them. However, history shows that insurgents and other violent opponents cannot be defeated by resorting to torture and ill-treatment. Irrespective of whatever information may be extracted, using such methods creates pain, suffering, humiliation, fear, anger and, ultimately, hatred, in the tortured person and the community they come from. For example, French army officers who tortured prisoners during the Algerian war of independence said that they had extracted important information to counter planned attacks, and believed that such tactics were needed to intimidate the population into submission. However, their strategy proved counter-productive. The violence they used and their failure to distinguish between key activists and others caused a backlash whereby they lost any hope of winning the "hearts and minds" of Algerians and lost their moral authority at home in France. Human rights equal security "We�re making a drastic mistake here. What I saw as a whole was inconsistent with who we are and the values we represent as a nation." US army sergeant Eric Saar, who was on duty in Guant�namo in late 2002 There is no contradiction between security and human rights. You cannot have one without the other. In a society where people are protected from violent attacks, whatever the source, their rights to life and physical and mental integrity are respected. The right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is at the heart of a secure society. Governments have to consider and balance everyone�s rights. It may be necessary to deprive someone of their liberty to protect others. Such decisions are made in the criminal justice system. In extreme circumstances, international human rights law allows governments to go further in limiting basic freedoms, for example by imposing curfews or temporarily forbidding gatherings. But there is a red line that no government can cross � the ban on torture and ill-treatment. All governments have agreed that this ban can never be loosened, however grave the threat. Governments have a duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent acts of terror, and to bring to justice those responsible for committing or planning such acts. But they must not respond to terror with terror. The use of torture and ill-treatment can jeopardize the process of bringing to justice those who have committed acts of terror, since many countries prohibit information obtained as a result of torture being used as evidence. The people behind the bombings of buses in Israel, Iraq and Turkey, or the clubs in Bali, or the trains in Madrid and London, should be brought to justice in fair trials. By using methods that undermine the prospect of such justice and that lower society�s standards, governments contribute to the cycle of insecurity and violence. The threat of international terrorism requires law enforcement agencies to develop special skills and techniques in policing, investigation and intelligence, including international cooperation. Such techniques need to address the new characteristics of international terrorism, such as its use of the Internet and other new technology. That may require new forensic and other law enforcement techniques, but it cannot justify the use of old unlawful methods such as torture and ill-treatment. Human rights are not a luxury for good times. They must be upheld always, including in times of danger and insecurity. Adherence to clear rules, laid down by international consensus in human rights treaties, is especially important during conflicts, emergencies or crises because at such times there is always some "necessity" that can be used to try and justify abuses, no matter how heinous. Respect for human rights is the route to security, not the obstacle to it. |
I had to split up this post in two since it was too long...
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| Stoking up fear Because of the actions of certain groups and individuals, entire communities � identified by race, religion or national origin � are being viewed with suspicion. The stigmatization has been compounded by racial profiling and detention of immigrants in the USA, and by some politicians and media outlets describing refugees and asylum-seekers in Europe as if they were all potential terrorists. In a climate of increasing xenophobia and racism, asylum-seekers and terror suspects are being sent back to countries where they face arbitrary detention and torture or ill-treatment. A report on Belgium by the European Committee against Racism and Intolerance, published in January 2005, drew a direct link between 11 September 2001 and increased racism. Whipping up public fears in the interests of short-term political gains is a dangerous business. If governments abandon the rule of law and use methods of terror such as torture or ill-treatment, then won�t groups fighting governments feel justified using methods of terror themselves? If whole communities are antagonized and alienated by security forces using terror, aren�t those communities more likely to respond by supporting the use of violence? Millions of people around the world believe that the "war on terror" is a war on Muslims, despite repeated denials by the US administration. These denials are undermined whenever it emerges that Muslim prisoners have been degraded and humiliated. In communities around the world, news of such abuses politicizes the uncommitted and reinforces hostility to those leading the "war on terror". Amnesty International�s campaign Amnesty International consistently urges all governments to condemn and prohibit torture and ill-treatment, to investigate all allegations of such abuse, and to prosecute any official who condones, acquiesces in or commits torture or ill-treatment. Amnesty International is now mobilizing people in a campaign to challenge the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in the "war on terror". The USA, which has led the assault on international human rights standards during the "war on terror", should set the example in reasserting these standards. All governments must play their part. STOP! * Stop torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in the "war on terror": make clear that these are prohibited absolutely and will not be tolerated. * Close Guant�namo Bay: shut down the detention camp, charge the detainees under US law in US courts or release them. * Stop secret and incommunicado detention, and "disappearance" � human rights violations in themselves and conditions in which torture thrives. * End the practice of sending people to countries where they risk torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. * Diplomatic assurances should not be relied upon in deciding whether a person is at risk of torture or ill-treatment if transferred to another country. * Prevent the use of information obtained under torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. INVESTIGATE! * The US Congress should establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the actions of all relevant US agencies in all aspects of the US detention and interrogation policies and practices in the "war on terror" anywhere in the world: in Bagram in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and other locations elsewhere, including secret locations. * The US Attorney General should appoint an independent Special Counsel to carry out a criminal investigation into the conduct of any official against whom there is evidence of involvement in crimes in the "war on terror". * All places of detention should be open to international and independent scrutiny. PROSECUTE! * The US authorities should prosecute any individual against whom there is evidence of having committed, ordered or authorized torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. * All states should investigate and prosecute alleged perpetrators of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, wherever it has occurred. See also Amnesty International�s 12-Point Programme for the Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by Agents of the State (AI Index: ACT 40/001/2005, available at: web.amnesty.org/library/index/engact400012005). What you can do * TORTURE AND CRUEL, INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT ARE ALWAYS WRONG * TAKE ACTION TO STOP IT HAPPENING. DON�T IGNORE IT * DON�T LET SUPPORT FOR TORTURE GO UNCHALLENGED * DON�T LET GOVERNMENTS TORTURE IN THE NAME OF YOUR �SECURITY� You can: � DENOUNCE the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in all circumstances � CHALLENGE the argument that torture is being used to defend your security. Torture doesn�t prevent terror; torture is terror � REFUTE any justification (by politicians, officials or anyone else) for torture and ill-treatment You can: � SPEAK OUT against torture and ill-treatment � talk to your friends, relatives and colleagues, and contact your local media � DEMAND that your government prevents the use of torture and ill-treatment and complies with international human rights standards that ban these abuses � SUPPORT Amnesty International and other organizations that are campaigning to stop torture and ill-treatment. YOU CAN STOP A PERSON BEING TORTURED BY TAKING ACTION! Torture and ill-treatment are always wrong Torture or any other treatment that is cruel, inhuman or degrading is repugnant, immoral and illegal, and is always wrong. All governments should publicly denounce such abuse in the strongest possible terms, and never allow it to happen at home or abroad. All governments should use national and international law to prosecute anyone who has been directly or indirectly responsible for torture or other forms of ill-treatment. No one should be held in secret or incommunicado. Such conditions can constitute ill-treatment, and facilitate other forms of ill-treatment and torture. No one should be sent to a country where they may be tortured or subjected to any other form of treatment that is cruel, inhuman or degrading. My security will not be best protected by torturing and ill-treating detainees but by respecting everyone�s human rights. Torture does not stop terror. Torture is terror. Torture or other ill-treatment not only harms the victim, it brutalizes the perpetrator and the societies that allow it to happen. It is cruel. It is inhuman. It degrades us all. amnesty international www.amnesty.org ******** |
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| Originally posted by occrider Good god please change the font size. |
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| Originally posted by occrider There was a good PBS documentary called The Torture Question that aired about a week ago. It included interviews with interrogators who have come forth to describe the top down atmosphere that demanded results with a wink, a nod, and a blind eye. It was very well done and it forshadowed the fact that 10 years from now, once all the details are brought out into the open (with a lot more publicity than a pbs documentary), we'll look with shame upon this administration for the willful neglect that not only allowed this behaviour to happen, but encouraged it. I guess nobody in this administration had any experience at all with the first lesson of good corporate governance ... it all starts with a top-down attitude. |
It's time the world blows us up already.
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z My bad, I'm trying to fix it. Had problems getting it in the right format. EDIT: Done. |
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| Originally posted by josh4 dude theres no reason to post the entire length of ones that long. no one reads the whole thing anyway. just post the first portion and include a link with a note that theres a lot more this goes for all of you |
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U.S.: License to Abuse Would Put CIA Above the Law Congress Should Reject Proposed Exemption From Ban on Inhumane Treatment (New York, October 26, 2005) � The Bush administration is now the only government in the world to claim a legal justification for mistreating prisoners during interrogations, Human Rights Watch said today. The administration recently approached members of the U.S. Congress to seek a waiver that would allow the CIA to use cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment on detainees in U.S. custody outside the United States. While many other governments practice torture and other forms of mistreatment and have records of abuse far worse than the United States, no other government currently claims that such abuse is legally permissible, Human Rights Watch said. �The administration is setting a dangerous example for the world when it claims that spy agencies are above the law,� said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch. �Congress should reject this proposal outright. Otherwise, the United States will have no standing to demand humane treatment if an American falls into the hands of foreign intelligence services.� Earlier this month, in a 90-9 vote, the U.S. Senate approved a measure sponsored by Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham that would prohibit the military and CIA from using �cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment� in the case of any detainee, anywhere in the world. But last week, Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA director Porter Goss met with Sen. McCain to propose a presidential waiver for the proposed legislation. The proposed waiver states that the measure �shall not apply with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense. . . if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.� The waiver, which by its own terms applies to non-military counterterrorism operations against non-citizens overseas, states that such operations need to be �consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and treaties to which the United States is a party.� But the Constitution does not robustly curtail the conduct of the CIA overseas, and relevant domestic laws contain numerous jurisdictional loopholes. Moreover, administration officials have previously told Congress that they do not consider CIA personnel operating outside the United States to be bound by legal prohibitions against �cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment� under treaties to which the United States is party. �This exception contains code language that could give the CIA a green light to treat prisoners inhumanely,� said Malinowski. �If allowed to stand, it will render President Bush�s past pledges about humane treatment meaningless.� Human Rights Watch said the waiver would also open the door for outright torture, as interrogators would find it impossible to draw lines between illegal and �allowable� mistreatment. Bush administration officials, under questioning from members of Congress in the past, have failed to clearly define differences between torture and lesser forms of mistreatment. They have also made inaccurate statements about the definition of torture; for instance, administration officials have claimed that �waterboarding� (suffocating a person until he believes he is about to drown) is not a form of torture. |
Rumsfeld is full of shit and really needs to resign, and congress hasn't had any luck so far. 
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Rumsfeld Defends Policy on U.N., Detainees Tue Nov 1, 4:32 PM ET Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday defended the government's decision not to permit United Nations human rights investigators to meet with detained terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Last week the Pentagon invited three U.N. experts to visit the detention facilities in Cuba. But while the experts said they were happy the invitation finally came after more than three years of requests, they said they would not go if they could not interview prisoners. "It makes no sense (to go)," Manfred Nowak, special investigator on torture and other cruel treatment, told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York on Monday. "You cannot do a fact-finding mission without talking to the detainees." Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference that it was not appropriate to give U.N. investigators the same extensive access at Guantanamo that has been granted to officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross. "There has to be a limit to how one does that," Rumsfeld said. He added that the decision not to provide full access to the U.N. officials was made not by the Pentagon but by the U.S. government as a whole. Rumsfeld also was asked why he believes some of the detainees have been conducting a hunger strike. "What they're trying to do is capture press attention, obviously, and they've succeeded," he replied. Seven of the detainees on the hunger strike are hospitalized and being force-fed, according to the government. Many of the nearly 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been held more than 3 1/2 years without charge or access to lawyers. Most were captured in the Afghanistan war, suspected of ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network or the Taliban regime ousted by U.S. forces in late 2001. |
When the fuck is this going to stop? Surely there are plenty of people who're well aware of these abused by now and still nothing is being done about it.
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Soldier lifts lid on Guantanamo 'abuse' By Matthew Davis BBC News, Washington A former US soldier who worked on interrogations at Guantanamo Bay has written a damning expose of the brutal, degrading treatment he says was meted out to prisoners there. Sgt Erik Saar's book, Inside the Wire, comes with the US military's treatment of prisoners in the spotlight due to court hearings over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. In an interview with the BBC, Sgt Saar says that bizarre, sexual abuses at the prison camp set dangerous precedents that paved the way for mistreatment of US detainees in Iraq. And the former translator argues that despite attempts to right wrongs at Guantanamo, the camp still defiles the values the US is fighting for in the war on terror. 'Does that please Allah?' One of the most disturbing interrogations Sgt Saar says he saw in his six months at the prison concerned a female interrogator trying to break a Saudi detainee, captured after enrolling in a US flight school.
He tells how she began peeling off her clothes, taunting the man sexually in an attempt to shame him and stop him relying on his faith for support. She left the interrogation room, Sgt Saar says, and found a red marker pen. "'Brooke' came back round his [the prisoner's] other side, and he could see that she was beginning to withdraw her hand from her pants," said Sgt Saar. "As it became visible, the Saudi saw what looked like red blood on her hand." When the interrogator wiped what he thought was menstrual blood on his face, the prisoner raged, almost breaking free from his handcuffs. But "Brooke" taunted him further, said Erik Saar, asking whether Allah would be pleased with him and telling him to have fun trying to pray. Finally the detainee was returned to his cell without water, leaving him unable to cleanse himself. 'Start of a mistake' Sgt Saar volunteered for Guantanamo in 2002. He was a US Army linguist, an expert in Arabic and had high security clearance. But he says what he saw completely changed his attitude towards the camp, and his country. There were many more suicide attempts in the camp than the US government has ever admitted, Sgt Saar says. He claims storm trooper-like IRF (initial reaction force) teams were involved in numerous beatings of captives. And of the 600 or so prisoners there, no more than a few dozen were "hardcore terrorists", says Erik Saar. "The US Government portrays Guantanamo as a place where we are sending the worst of the worst, but this is not true. "Guantanamo was the beginning of a mistake. It set a precedent in labelling people as enemy combatants, blurring the line between right and wrong. "You can see it as the seed that may well have led to the naked human pyramids in Abu Ghraib." FBI memos In December 2004, the American Civil Liberties Union released a slew of material relating to prisoner abuse, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.
This included an FBI email - from December 2003, six months after Sgt Saar left - that said Defense Department interrogators at Guantanamo had impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" on a detainee. US Southern Command told the BBC it was investigating alleged detainee abuse following the publication of the FBI memos. But USSC says it will not comment on any abuse allegations until the inquiry report is published. Officials also deny allegations in Erik Saar's book that interrogations at Guantanamo were "staged" for visiting inspectors. A spokesman told the BBC that Mr Saar was merely a junior linguist, "not in a position to understand the decisions behind interrogation planning". 'Whitewash' The US Army is addressing the issue of how to treat a prisoner humanely, while still applying the pressure needed to get them to reveal critical information. It is poised to issue a new field interrogation manual, which will expressly forbid certain harsh techniques and include detailed examples with references to the Geneva Conventions. Throwing a chair against a wall in a fit of mock anger may be permissible, for instance, but using the chair to hit the detainee would not. In March, a Pentagon investigation into the interrogation of prisoners detained in the war on terror found its policy did not lead to abuse. The review - launched last year - examined 187 Pentagon investigations of alleged abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Human rights groups criticised the review as a whitewash. Sgt Saar believes improvements have been made at the camp, but says more radical change is needed, to bring prisoners within the US judicial system. "People say if what I have written is the worst that went on, it is not too bad," he says. "But Guantanamo has become a symbol of everything wrong with America's image. If we are trying to build a bridge to the Muslim world, what sort of face are we portraying?" Inside the Wire by Erik Saar and Viveca Novak is published in the United States by The Penguin Press. |
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U.S. Operated Secret �Dark Prison� in Kabul (New York, December 19, 2005) � Accounts from detainees at Guant�namo reveal that the United States as recently as last year operated a secret prison in Afghanistan where detainees were subjected to torture and other mistreatment, Human Rights Watch said today. Eight detainees now held at Guant�namo described to their attorneys how they were held at a facility near Kabul at various times between 2002 and 2004. The detainees, who called the facility the �dark prison� or �prison of darkness,� said they were chained to walls, deprived of food and drinking water, and kept in total darkness with loud rap, heavy metal music, or other sounds blared for weeks at a time. The detainees offer consistent accounts about the facility, saying that U.S. and Afghan guards were not in uniform and that U.S. interrogators did not wear military attire, which suggests that the prison may have been operated by personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency. The detainees said U.S. interrogators slapped or punched them during interrogations. They described being held in complete darkness for weeks on end, shackled to rings bolted into the walls of their cells, with loud music or other sounds played continuously. Some detainees said they were shackled in a manner that made it impossible to lie down or sleep, with restraints that caused their hands and wrists to swell up or bruise. The detainees said they were deprived of food for days at a time, and given only filthy water to drink. The detainees also said that they were held incommunicado and never visited by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross or other independent officials. �The U.S. government must shed some light on Kabul�s �dark prison,�� said John Sifton, terrorism and counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch. �No one, no matter their alleged crime, should be held in secret prisons or subjected to torture.� The detainees� allegations were communicated to Human Rights Watch by their attorneys and are contained in attorneys� contemporaneous notes. Human Rights Watch was unable to interview the detainees directly, since the United States has not allowed human rights organizations to visit detainees at Guant�namo or other detention sites abroad. However, Human Rights Watch believes that the detainees� allegations are sufficiently credible to warrant an official investigation. The detainees are of different nationalities and have different attorneys. None claimed to have been detained at the secret facility for more than six weeks at a time, and did not otherwise make extraordinary claims. Most of the detainees said they were arrested in other countries in Asia and the Middle East, and then flown to Afghanistan. Detainees who arrived by airplane said they were driven about five minutes from a landing field to the prison. Afghan guards told some of them that the facility was located near Kabul. Some detainees who were kept at the facility were transferred at various times to and from another secret facility near Kabul. The detainees said they were later transferred to the main U.S. military detention facility near Bagram, where many other Guant�namo detainees say they were initially held. Human Rights Watch said that the �dark prison� may have been closed after several detainees were transferred to the Bagram facility in late 2004. M.Z., a detainee arrested in another country in 2002 (name and identifying details withheld at his attorney�s request), said he was held at the �prison of darkness� for about four weeks. He says he was sent to �an underground place, very dark� where there was �loud music� playing continuously. He said he was held in solitary confinement, where it was �pitch black... no light.� M.Z. said that when he was interrogated he was taken to a room with a strobe light, and shackled to a ring on the floor. During the interrogations, he says, an interrogator threatened him with rape. Benyam Mohammad, an Ethiopian-born Guant�namo detainee who grew up in Britain, said he was held at the �dark prison� in 2004 and described his experience to his attorney in English: It was pitch black no lights on in the rooms for most of the time.... They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours of sleep on the second day, then hung up again, this time for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb.... There was loud music, [Eminem�s] �Slim Shady� and Dr. Dre for 20 days.... [Then] they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. [At one point, I was] chained to the rails for a fortnight.... The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night.... Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off. J.K., another detainee (name withheld at attorney�s request), also alleged that he had been held in the dark, shackled to the wall and subjected to weeks of sleep deprivation and constant loud music and noise, as well as being beaten during interrogations. �People were screaming in pain and crying all the time,� he told his attorney. Abd al-Salam Ali al-Hila, a Yemeni whose arrest and transfer to Afghanistan was previously documented by Human Rights Watch Guantanamo: New �Reverse Rendition� Case, said he was kept at the �dark prison� at various times in 2003. He told his lawyers he had been chained to the wall, kept in almost constant darkness, and subjected to sleep deprivation and constant noise. Similarly, attorneys for Hassin Bin Attash, Jamil el Banna and Bisher al Rawi, three other detainees who said they were previously held at the �dark prison,� said their clients made allegations about constant darkness, shackling, sleep deprivation, inadequate food and water, and beatings during interrogations. One other detainee provided similar information through his attorney, who requested that the client�s name and nationality be kept confidential. On November 18, ABC News reported that several CIA officials told ABC that the CIA had operated a secret facility in Kabul, and voiced concerns about interrogations there. The CIA officials, who requested anonymity from ABC, said that CIA officials authorized six techniques for use against detainees with �high-level� intelligence value, including long-term sleep deprivation, exposure to cold for more than 40 hours, and �waterboarding,� in which interrogators poured water over the detainee�s face until he believed he would suffocate or drown. The officials told ABC that the CIA had authorized these techniques in March 2002 and that they were used at the Kabul facility and elsewhere. The accounts given by the Guant�namo detainees about the Kabul facility are also consistent with stories told by four detainees, who in July escaped from U.S. military custody at Bagram, on a videotape obtained by ABC News and Al-Arabiya. On the videotape, the detainees said they were held at �the dark prison� before being sent to Bagram, and describe being subjected to loud music and total darkness, as well as physical abuse. Human Rights Watch has previously identified 26 �disappeared� persons believed to be held in secret facilities operated or used by the U.S. A �disappearance� is an unlawful detention in which the detaining authorities deny holding the person or refuse to disclose his or her whereabouts. Human Rights Watch said today that the U.S. may have used the facility near Kabul to hold �disappeared� detainees at various times. Human Rights Watch said that the alleged torture and other mistreatment of detainees, if proven, would amount to serious violations of U.S. criminal law, such as the War Crimes Act and the Anti-Torture Statute, as well as the laws of Afghanistan. The mistreatment of detainees also violates the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which the United States has ratified, and the laws of war. (Summary of statutes) Human Rights Watch has long called for a special prosecutor to investigate alleged mistreatment of detainees in U.S. detention facilities abroad. �We�re not talking about torture in the abstract, but the real thing,� said Sifton. �U.S. personnel and officials may be criminally liable, and a special prosecutor is needed to investigate.� Human Rights Watch called on the United States to move �disappeared� persons into known detention facilities, articulate the legal basis under which detainees are held, and allow access to all detainees by independent monitors. �It�s time for the Bush administration to shut the secret prisons and stop holding people illegally,� said Sifton. |
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Guantanamo Bay inmates 'tortured' Treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay constitutes torture in some cases and violates international law, a leaked UN draft report says. The document, seen by the Los Angeles Times, suggests that investigators will recommend the prison camp is shut down. It also questions the legal status of the camp and the classification of detainees as enemy combatants. The US State Department has criticised the draft report as "hearsay". 'Force-fed' The Los Angeles Times published the draft report in its paper on Monday and spoke to one of the authors, the UN special raporteur on torture, Manfred Novak. "We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government. There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture," Mr Nowak told the LA Times.
The report suggests some of the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay meets the definition of torture under the UN Convention Against Torture. This includes the force-feeding of hunger strikers through nasal tubes and the simultaneous use of several interrogation techniques such as prolonged solitary confinement and exposure to extreme temperatures, noise and light. The UN team also questions the legal status of the Guantanamo camp. It says insufficient effort has been made to prove that the inmates really are enemy combatants. It also recommends the prison camp is shut down. "The US government should close Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay," the report says. "The US government should either expeditiously bring all Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial ... or release them without further delay." 'Spurious claims' Mr Nowak was one of five UN envoys who interviewed former prisoners, detainees' lawyers and families during the past 18 months.
Investigators rejected an invitation to tour the base in Cuba because they would not have been allowed to interview the prisoners directly. The US State Department has criticised the findings. "Just because they decided not to take up the US government on the offer to go to Guantanamo Bay does not automatically give [them] the right to publish a report that is merely hearsay and not based on fact," spokesman Sean McCormack said. UN officials will include responses from the US government before the report is officially released at the end of the week. Mr Nowak says that nothing of substance will be altered when the final report is issued. The investigation was ordered by the UN Commission on Human Rights. The camp at Guantanamo Bay was set up in 2002 to hold foreign terror suspects, many of them captured in Afghanistan. It currently houses around 500 suspects. |
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Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 U.S. Policy of Abuse Undermines Rights Worldwide (Washington, D.C, January 18, 2006) � New evidence demonstrated in 2005 that torture and mistreatment have been a deliberate part of the Bush administration�s counterterrorism strategy, undermining the global defense of human rights, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2006 World Report 2006: Audio Commentaries . The evidence showed that abusive interrogation cannot be reduced to the misdeeds of a few low-ranking soldiers, but was a conscious policy choice by senior U.S. government officials. The policy has hampered Washington�s ability to cajole or pressure other states into respecting international law, said the 532-page volume�s introductory essay. �Fighting terrorism is central to the human rights cause,� said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. �But using illegal tactics against alleged terrorists is both wrong and counterproductive.� Roth said the illegal tactics were fueling terrorist recruitment, discouraging public assistance of counterterrorism efforts and creating a pool of unprosecutable detainees. U.S. partners such as Britain and Canada compounded the lack of human rights leadership by trying to undermine critical international protections. Britain sought to send suspects to governments likely to torture them based on meaningless assurances of good treatment. Canada sought to dilute a new treaty outlawing enforced disappearances. The European Union continued to subordinate human rights in its relationships with others deemed useful in fighting terrorism, such as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. Many countries � Uzbekistan, Russia and China among them � used the �war on terrorism� to attack their political opponents, branding them as �Islamic terrorists.� Human Rights Watch documented many serious abuses outside the fight against terrorism. In May, the government of Uzbekistan massacred hundreds of demonstrators in Andijan, the Sudanese government consolidated �ethnic cleansing� in Darfur, western Sudan, and persistent atrocities were reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chechnya. Severe repression continued in Burma, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Tibet and Xinjiang in China, while Syria and Vietnam maintained tight restrictions on civil society and Zimbabwe conducted massive, politically motivated forced evictions. There were bright spots in efforts to uphold human rights by the Western powers in Burma and North Korea. Developing nations also played a positive role: India suspended most military aid to Nepal after the king�s coup, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations forced Burma to relinquish its 2006 chairmanship because of its appalling human rights record. Mexico took the lead in convincing the United Nations to maintain a special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism. Kyrgyzstan withstood intense pressure from Uzbekistan to rescue all but four of 443 refugees from the Andijan massacre, and Romania gave them temporary refuge. The lack of leadership by Western powers sometimes ceded the field to Russia and China, which built economic, social and political alliances without regard to human rights. In his introductory essay to the World Report, Roth writes that it became clear in 2005 that U.S. mistreatment of detainees could not be reduced to a failure of training, discipline or oversight, or reduced to �a few bad apples,� but reflected a deliberate policy choice embraced by the top leadership. Evidence of that deliberate policy included the threat by President George W. Bush to veto a bill opposing �cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,� Roth writes, and Vice President Dick Cheney�s attempt to exempt the Central Intelligence Agency from the law. In addition, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed that the United States can mistreat detainees so long as they are non-Americans held abroad, while CIA Director Porter Goss asserted that �waterboarding,� a torture method dating back to the Spanish Inquisition, was simply a �professional interrogation technique.� �Responsibility for the use of torture and mistreatment can no longer credibly be passed off to misadventures by low-ranking soldiers on the nightshift,� said Roth. �The Bush administration must appoint a special prosecutor to examine these abuses, and Congress should set up an independent, bipartisan panel to investigate.� The Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 contains survey information on human rights developments in more than 70 countries in 2005. In addition to the introductory essay on torture, the volume contains two essays: �Private Companies and the Public Interest: Why Corporations Should Welcome Global Human Rights Rules� and �Preventing the Further Spread of HIV/AIDS: The Essential Role of Human Rights.� |
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U.S. Operated Secret �Dark Prison� in Kabul (New York, December 19, 2005) � Accounts from detainees at Guant�namo reveal that the United States as recently as last year operated a secret prison in Afghanistan where detainees were subjected to torture and other mistreatment, Human Rights Watch said today. Eight detainees now held at Guant�namo described to their attorneys how they were held at a facility near Kabul at various times between 2002 and 2004. The detainees, who called the facility the �dark prison� or �prison of darkness,� said they were chained to walls, deprived of food and drinking water, and kept in total darkness with loud rap, heavy metal music, or other sounds blared for weeks at a time. The detainees offer consistent accounts about the facility, saying that U.S. and Afghan guards were not in uniform and that U.S. interrogators did not wear military attire, which suggests that the prison may have been operated by personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency. The detainees said U.S. interrogators slapped or punched them during interrogations. They described being held in complete darkness for weeks on end, shackled to rings bolted into the walls of their cells, with loud music or other sounds played continuously. Some detainees said they were shackled in a manner that made it impossible to lie down or sleep, with restraints that caused their hands and wrists to swell up or bruise. The detainees said they were deprived of food for days at a time, and given only filthy water to drink. The detainees also said that they were held incommunicado and never visited by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross or other independent officials. �The U.S. government must shed some light on Kabul�s �dark prison,�� said John Sifton, terrorism and counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch. �No one, no matter their alleged crime, should be held in secret prisons or subjected to torture.� The detainees� allegations were communicated to Human Rights Watch by their attorneys and are contained in attorneys� contemporaneous notes. Human Rights Watch was unable to interview the detainees directly, since the United States has not allowed human rights organizations to visit detainees at Guant�namo or other detention sites abroad. However, Human Rights Watch believes that the detainees� allegations are sufficiently credible to warrant an official investigation. The detainees are of different nationalities and have different attorneys. None claimed to have been detained at the secret facility for more than six weeks at a time, and did not otherwise make extraordinary claims. Most of the detainees said they were arrested in other countries in Asia and the Middle East, and then flown to Afghanistan. Detainees who arrived by airplane said they were driven about five minutes from a landing field to the prison. Afghan guards told some of them that the facility was located near Kabul. Some detainees who were kept at the facility were transferred at various times to and from another secret facility near Kabul. The detainees said they were later transferred to the main U.S. military detention facility near Bagram, where many other Guant�namo detainees say they were initially held. Human Rights Watch said that the �dark prison� may have been closed after several detainees were transferred to the Bagram facility in late 2004. M.Z., a detainee arrested in another country in 2002 (name and identifying details withheld at his attorney�s request), said he was held at the �prison of darkness� for about four weeks. He says he was sent to �an underground place, very dark� where there was �loud music� playing continuously. He said he was held in solitary confinement, where it was �pitch black... no light.� M.Z. said that when he was interrogated he was taken to a room with a strobe light, and shackled to a ring on the floor. During the interrogations, he says, an interrogator threatened him with rape. Benyam Mohammad, an Ethiopian-born Guant�namo detainee who grew up in Britain, said he was held at the �dark prison� in 2004 and described his experience to his attorney in English: It was pitch black no lights on in the rooms for most of the time.... They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours of sleep on the second day, then hung up again, this time for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb.... There was loud music, [Eminem�s] �Slim Shady� and Dr. Dre for 20 days.... [Then] they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. [At one point, I was] chained to the rails for a fortnight.... The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night.... Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off. J.K., another detainee (name withheld at attorney�s request), also alleged that he had been held in the dark, shackled to the wall and subjected to weeks of sleep deprivation and constant loud music and noise, as well as being beaten during interrogations. �People were screaming in pain and crying all the time,� he told his attorney. Abd al-Salam Ali al-Hila, a Yemeni whose arrest and transfer to Afghanistan was previously documented by Human Rights Watch Guantanamo: New �Reverse Rendition� Case, said he was kept at the �dark prison� at various times in 2003. He told his lawyers he had been chained to the wall, kept in almost constant darkness, and subjected to sleep deprivation and constant noise. Similarly, attorneys for Hassin Bin Attash, Jamil el Banna and Bisher al Rawi, three other detainees who said they were previously held at the �dark prison,� said their clients made allegations about constant darkness, shackling, sleep deprivation, inadequate food and water, and beatings during interrogations. One other detainee provided similar information through his attorney, who requested that the client�s name and nationality be kept confidential. On November 18, ABC News reported that several CIA officials told ABC that the CIA had operated a secret facility in Kabul, and voiced concerns about interrogations there. The CIA officials, who requested anonymity from ABC, said that CIA officials authorized six techniques for use against detainees with �high-level� intelligence value, including long-term sleep deprivation, exposure to cold for more than 40 hours, and �waterboarding,� in which interrogators poured water over the detainee�s face until he believed he would suffocate or drown. The officials told ABC that the CIA had authorized these techniques in March 2002 and that they were used at the Kabul facility and elsewhere. The accounts given by the Guant�namo detainees about the Kabul facility are also consistent with stories told by four detainees, who in July escaped from U.S. military custody at Bagram, on a videotape obtained by ABC News and Al-Arabiya. On the videotape, the detainees said they were held at �the dark prison� before being sent to Bagram, and describe being subjected to loud music and total darkness, as well as physical abuse. Human Rights Watch has previously identified 26 �disappeared� persons believed to be held in secret facilities operated or used by the U.S. A �disappearance� is an unlawful detention in which the detaining authorities deny holding the person or refuse to disclose his or her whereabouts. Human Rights Watch said today that the U.S. may have used the facility near Kabul to hold �disappeared� detainees at various times. Human Rights Watch said that the alleged torture and other mistreatment of detainees, if proven, would amount to serious violations of U.S. criminal law, such as the War Crimes Act and the Anti-Torture Statute, as well as the laws of Afghanistan. The mistreatment of detainees also violates the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which the United States has ratified, and the laws of war. (Summary of statutes) Human Rights Watch has long called for a special prosecutor to investigate alleged mistreatment of detainees in U.S. detention facilities abroad. �We�re not talking about torture in the abstract, but the real thing,� said Sifton. �U.S. personnel and officials may be criminally liable, and a special prosecutor is needed to investigate.� Human Rights Watch called on the United States to move �disappeared� persons into known detention facilities, articulate the legal basis under which detainees are held, and allow access to all detainees by independent monitors. �It�s time for the Bush administration to shut the secret prisons and stop holding people illegally,� said Sifton. |
Reading these excessively long posts should qualify as torture. 
^ yes and now you've brought this thread back to continue the pain
-sigh-
well as long as it's here, might as well give it a valid reason to be
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| U.S. slams 'prisoner abuse' leak Australia's Howard defends U.S. handling of Abu Ghraib case (CNN) -- The United States has criticized the release of grisly images by an Australian television network which says it shows detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The Australian television network SBS program "Dateline" broadcast the pictures and videos Wednesday night. They included pictures of prisoners apparently forced to engage in sex acts and one video where five men wearing hoods masturbated for the camera, presumably under orders from their guards. The photos and videos reportedly date from 2003 -- the same time that previously released photographs of prisoner abuse were taken. Publication of the original set of pictures in 2004 sparked widespread international condemnation of the United States and led to the conviction of nine U.S. soldiers. (Gallery: Abu Ghraib pictures) After the SBS airing, U.S. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told The Associated Press the images "could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world, and would endanger our military men and women that are serving around the world." Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch ally of America, was quick to defend the United States on Thursday, saying the Bush administration has dealt with abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. "If further abuse has occurred then I unreservedly condemn it," he said. The newly released photographs appear to show more abuse, including cases of torture and sexual humiliation. They do not appear to show any new perpetrators. Olivia Rousset, the SBS reporter on the story, said only that she came across the photographs while researching a story on guards at Abu Ghraib. American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Amrit Singh said on "Dateline" she hoped the images would bring "further pressure to hold high-ranking officials accountable for what we now know to have been systemic and widespread abuse occurring throughout Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay." (Watch why the hoods, nudity and poses suggest abuse -- 2:02) In September, after the ACLU won access to those set of pictures via a Freedom of Information Act request, the U.S. government appealed the decision, tying up their release. Mike Carey, executive producer of "Dateline," said on the SBS network's Web site that his program "obtained a file of hundreds of pictures, some that have been seen before and others that show new abuses." Some images too graphic to air The program did not show all of the pictures. It deemed some of them too graphic for air, Carey said. Among the images broadcast were pictures of naked men who appeared to have suffered physical trauma, one of whom the report said had 11 nonlethal bullet wounds in his buttocks. Other pictures show corpses, one of which the program said a U.S. Army report identified as one of three men killed during a riot over living conditions at the prison. According to the TV report, two Abu Ghraib soldiers said that guards were ordered to use lethal rounds on prisoners after they ran out of rubber bullets trying to halt the riot. One image depicts two women described by a guard to "Dateline" as prostitutes held at the prison for two days. In one picture, the breasts of one of the women are exposed. Another grisly image shows a corpse that appears to have had a section torn from its head, while another one features a man whose arms are covered in purple bruises. Also broadcast was video that appears to show a prisoner -- handcuffed to a metal door -- repeatedly slamming his head full force against the door. Though the guards appear to have videotaped the incident from several vantage points, no one is seen intervening to stop the prisoner. The network said the man allegedly had mental problems and frequently covered himself in feces, but he was not given any psychiatric care. The TV program obscured most of the prisoners' faces so they could not be identified. The release of the photographs follows the release of a 2004 videotape apparently showing British soldiers beating Iraqis. Three people have been arrested in that case, which was condemned by Prime Minister Tony Blair. (Full story) ACLU alleges orders came from brass When the original set of Abu Ghraib photographs was released nearly two years ago, members of Congress said they had received a private viewing of other, unreleased pictures. Seven low-ranking guards and two military intelligence soldiers -- described by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as "bad apples" -- have been disciplined for offenses documented in the original pictures. Last May, President Bush demoted Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib during the prison abuse scandal, to colonel. She had been formally relieved of command of the 800th military police brigade a month earlier. Another officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, was reprimanded and fined. The longest prison sentence -- 10 years -- was given to Army Cpl. Charles Graner, seen in many of the pictures. Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick, a U.S. Army reservist from Virginia, received an eight-year sentence. "Looking at the documents we've received under FOIA, it is very clear to us that the actions of these soldiers were part of a larger program to abuse detainees that was put in place by high-ranking officials," the ACLU's Singh told "Dateline." Find this article at: http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/m...otos/index.html |
^^ i watched that last night, absolutely fucking abhorrent
they showed a corpse and then the room in which he was interrogated in; litres and litres of blood everywhere, i had no idea someone could bleed that much. the walls were covered in it aswell as bloody handprints and trails where his body had been on the floor where they'd dragged him by the feet out of the room
| quote: |
| Also broadcast was video that appears to show a prisoner -- handcuffed to a metal door -- repeatedly slamming his head full force against the door. Though the guards appear to have videotaped the incident from several vantage points, no one is seen intervening to stop the prisoner. |
So apparently it seems that Abu Gharib is all about perfecting CIA torture techniques, to be more specific, psychological torture techniques (which experts and vicitms say is far worse that plain physical torture).
| quote: |
Friday, February 17th, 2006 Professor McCoy Exposes the History of CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror We now take a look at what lies behind the shocking images of torture at Abu Ghraib by turning to the history of the CIA and torture techniques. The International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International and other human rights groups say the recently released images of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib show a clear violation of international humanitarian law. The U.S. made a pledge against torture when Congress ratified the UN Convention Against Torture in 1994 - but it was ratified with reservations that exempted the CIA�s psychological torture method. So what were the results? A new expose gives an account of the CIA�s secret efforts to develop new forms of torture spanning fifty years. It reveals how the CIA perfected its methods, distributing them across the world from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, uncovering the roots of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture scandals. The book is titled "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror." * Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Author of �A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror� and also �The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.� RUSH TRANSCRIPT This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more... AMY GOODMAN: A new expose gives an account of the C.I.A.�s secret efforts to develop new forms of torture, spanning half a century. It reveals how the C.I.A. perfected its methods, distributing them across the world, from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, uncovering the roots of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture scandals. The book is called A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, and we're joined by its author, Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. We welcome you to Democracy Now! ALFRED McCOY: Thank you, Amy. AMY GOODMAN: And glad to have you with us, especially in light of your history. I first learned of you with your first book The Politics of Heroin: C.I.A. Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, for which you almost died. What happened then? ALFRED McCOY: Oh, when I was researching that book in the mountains of Laos, hiking from village to village, interviewing Laotian farmers about their opium harvest, and they were telling me that they took it down to the local helicopter pad where Air America helicopters would land, Air America being a subsidiary of the C.I.A., and officers, tribal officers in the C.I.A.�s secret army would buy the opium and fly it off to the C.I.A.�s secret compound, where it would be transformed into heroin and ultimately wound up in South Vietnam. And while I was doing that research, hiking from village to village, interviewing farmers, we were ambushed by a group of C.I.A. mercenaries. Fortunately, I had five militiamen from the village with me, and we shot our way out of there, but they came quite close. Then later on, a C.I.A. operative threatened to murder my interpreter unless I stopped doing that research. And then when -- AMY GOODMAN: How did you know they were C.I.A.? ALFRED McCOY: Oh, look, in the mountains of Laos, there aren�t that many white guys, okay? I mean, the mercenaries? First of all, the C.I.A. ran what was called the �Army Clandestine.� They had a secret army, and those soldiers that ambushed us were soldiers in the secret army. That, we knew. AMY GOODMAN: The Laotian army? ALFRED McCOY: The C.I.A.�s secret army. AMY GOODMAN: The Laotian mercenaries? ALFRED McCOY: Laotian mercenaries. That, everybody was clear about that. Nobody denied that. They said it was sort of an accident, but, no, it was very clear that it was intentional. And ultimately, when the book was in press, the head of covert operations for the C.I.A. called up my offices and my publisher in New York and suggested that the publisher suppress the book. They then got the right to prior review -- the publisher compromised. AMY GOODMAN: C.I.A. prior review. ALFRED McCOY: Prior review of the manuscript, and they issued a 14-page critique. The publisher�s legal department, HarperCollins�s legal department reviewed the critique, reviewed the manuscript, published the book unchanged, not a word changed. AMY GOODMAN: And the contention of that book was that the C.I.A. was complicit in the global drug trade? ALFRED McCOY: Right. In the context of conducting covert operations around the globe, particularly in the Asian opium zone, which stretched from the Golden Triangle of Vietnam and Laos all the way to Afghanistan, that in those mountains far away from home, when the C.I.A. had to mobilize tribal armies, the only allies were warlords, and when the C.I.A. formed an alliance with them, the warlords used this alliance to become drug lords, and the C.I.A. didn't stop them from their involvement in the traffic. AMY GOODMAN: Well, as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, you have not stopped looking at the C.I.A., and now you've written this new book. It's called A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Give us a history lesson. ALFRED McCOY: Well, if you look at the most famous of photographs from Abu Ghraib, of the Iraqi standing on the box, arms extended with a hood over his head and the fake electrical wires from his arms, okay? In that photograph you can see the entire 50-year history of C.I.A. torture. It's very simple. He's hooded for sensory disorientation, and his arms are extended for self-inflicted pain. And those are the two very simple fundamental C.I.A. techniques, developed at enormous cost. From 1950 to 1962, the C.I.A. ran a massive research project, a veritable Manhattan Project of the mind, spending over $1 billion a year to crack the code of human consciousness, from both mass persuasion and the use of coercion in individual interrogation. And what they discovered -- they tried LSD, they tried mescaline, they tried all kinds of drugs, they tried electroshock, truth serum, sodium pentathol. None of it worked. What worked was very simple behavioral findings, outsourced to our leading universities -- Harvard, Princeton, Yale and McGill -- and the first breakthrough came at McGill. And it's in the book. And here, you can see the -- this is the -- if you want show it, you can. That graphic really shows -- that's the seminal C.I.A. experiment done in Canada and McGill University -- AMY GOODMAN: Describe it. ALFRED McCOY: Oh, it's very simple. Dr. Donald O. Hebb of McGill University, a brilliant psychologist, had a contract from the Canadian Defense Research Board, which was a partner with the C.I.A. in this research, and he found that he could induce a state of psychosis in an individual within 48 hours. It didn't take electroshock, truth serum, beating or pain. All he did was had student volunteers sit in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones, earmuffs, so that they were cut off from their senses, and within 48 hours, denied sensory stimulation, they would suffer, first hallucinations, then ultimately breakdown. And if you look at many of those photographs, what do they show? They show people with bags over their head. If you look at the photographs of the Guantanamo detainees even today, they look exactly like those student volunteers in Dr. Hebb�s original cubicle. Now, then the second major breakthrough that the C.I.A. had came here in New York City at Cornell University Medical Center, where two eminent neurologists under contract from the C.I.A. studied Soviet K.G.B. torture techniques, and they found that the most effective K.G.B. technique was self-inflicted pain. You simply make somebody stand for a day or two. And as they stand -- okay, you're not beating them, they have no resentment -- you tell them, �You're doing this to yourself. Cooperate with us, and you can sit down.� And so, as they stand, what happens is the fluids flow down to the legs, the legs swell, lesions form, they erupt, they separate, hallucinations start, the kidneys shut down. Now, if you look at the other aspect of those photos, you�ll see that they're short-shackled -- okay? -- that they're long-shackled, that they're made -- several of those photos you just showed, one of them with a man with a bag on his arm, his arms are straight in front of him, people are standing with their arms extended, that's self-inflicted pain. And the combination of those two techniques -- sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain -- is the basis of the C.I.A.'s technique. AMY GOODMAN: Who has pioneered this at the C.I.A.? ALFRED McCOY: This was done by Technical Services Division. Most of the in-house research involved drugs and all of the LSD experiments that we heard about for years, but ultimately they were a negative result. When you have any large massive research project, you get -- you hit dead ends, you hit brick walls, you get negative results. All the drugs didn�t work. What did work was this. AMY GOODMAN: But when you talk about the �everyone knows the LSD experiments,� I don't think everyone knows. In fact, I would conjecture that more than 90% of Americans don't know that the C.I.A. was involved with LSD experiments on unwitting Americans. Can you explain what they did? ALFRED McCOY: Oh, sure. As a part of this comprehensive survey of human consciousness, the C.I.A. tried every possible techniques. And one of the things that they -- at the time that this research started in the 1940s, a Swiss pharmaceutical company developed LSD. AMY GOODMAN: Which one? ALFRED McCOY: I forget now. One of the major Swiss pharmaceutical companies. And Dr. Hoffman there was the man who developed it. The C.I.A. bought substantial doses, and they conducted experiments. One of the most notorious experiments was that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, inside the agency, spiked the drinks of his co-workers, and one of those co-workers suffered a breakdown, Dr. Frank Olson, and he either was -- I don't know whether he was pushed or jumped from a hotel here in New York City -- AMY GOODMAN: His son has never stopped pursuing this case? ALFRED McCOY: Right, his son Eric Olson insists that his father was murdered by the C.I.A. Eric Olson believes that his father did a tour of Europe, and he visited the ultimate Anglo-American test site, black site near Frankfurt, where they were doing lethal experiments, fatal experiments, on double agents and suspected double agents, and that his father returned enormously upset by the discovery that this research was actually killing people, and that, therefore, Eric Olson argues his father was killed by the C.I.A., that he was pushed. AMY GOODMAN: And didn't they do experiments in brothels in the San Francisco area? ALFRED McCOY: They had two kind of party houses. They had one in the San Francisco Bay Area, another in New York City. And what they did in San Francisco was they had prostitutes who go out to the streets, get individuals, bring them back, give them a drink, and there would be a two-way mirror, and the C.I.A. would photograph these people. AMY GOODMAN: So, the C.I.A. were running the brothel. ALFRED McCOY: They were running the brothel. They were running all of these experiments, okay? They did that on Army soldiers through the Army Chemical Warfare Division. AMY GOODMAN: What did they do there? ALFRED McCOY: Again, they gave them LSD and other drugs to see what effect they would have. AMY GOODMAN: And what did the soldiers think they were getting? ALFRED McCOY: They were just told they were participating in an experiment for national defense. AMY GOODMAN: Prisoners? ALFRED McCOY: No, these were -- AMY GOODMAN: Right, but also on prisoners, were there experiments? ALFRED McCOY: There were some in prisons in the United States and also the Drug Treatment Center in Lexington, Kentucky. The Federal Drug Treatment Center in Lexington, Kentucky, had this. All of this research, all this very elaborate research -- AMY GOODMAN: On unwitting Americans? ALFRED McCOY: Unwitting Americans, produced nothing, okay? What they found time and time again is that electroshock didn't work, and sodium pentathol didn't work, LSD certainly didn't work. You scramble the brain. You got unreliable information. But what did work was the combination of these two rather boring, rather mundane behavioral techniques: sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain. And in 1963, the C.I.A. codified these results in the so-called KUBARK Counterintelligence Manual. If you just type the word �KUBARK� into Google, you will get the manual, an actual copy of it, on your computer screen, and you can read the techniques [Read the report. But if you do, read the footnotes, because that's where the behavioral research is. Now, this produced a distinctively American form of torture, the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in centuries, psychological torture, and it's the one that's with us today, and it's proved to be a very resilient, quite adaptable, and an enormously destructive paradigm. Let�s make one thing clear. Americans refer to this often times in common parlance as �torture light.� Psychological to torture, people who are involved in treatment tell us it�s far more destructive, does far more lasting damage to the human psyche than does physical torture. As Senator McCain said, himself, last year when he was debating his torture prohibition, faced with a choice between being beaten and psychologically tortured, I'd rather be beaten. Okay? It does far more lasting damage. It is far crueler than physical torture. This is something that we don't realize in this country. Now, another thing we see is those photographs is the psychological techniques, but the initial research basically developed techniques for attacking universal human sensory receptors: sight, sound, heat, cold, sense of time. That's why all of the detainees describe being put in dark rooms, being subjected to strobe lights, loud music, okay? That�s sensory deprivation or sensory assault. Okay, that was sort of the phase one of the C.I.A. research. But the paradigm has proved to be quite adaptable. Now, one of the things that Donald Rumsfeld did, right at the start of the war of terror, in late 2002, he appointed General Geoffrey Miller to be chief at Guantanamo, alright, because the previous commanders at Guantanamo were too soft on the detainees, and General Miller turned Guantanamo into a de facto behavioral research laboratory, a kind of torture research laboratory. And under General Miller at Guantanamo, they perfected the C.I.A. torture paradigm. They added two key techniques. They went beyond the universal sensory receptors of the original research. They added to it an attack on cultural sensitivity, particularly Arab male sensitivity to issues of gender and sexual identity. And then they went further still. Under General Miller, they created these things called �Biscuit� teams, behavioral science consultation teams, and they actually had qualified military psychologists participating in the ongoing interrogation, and these psychologists would identify individual phobias, like fear of dark or attachment to mother, and by the time we're done, by 2003, under General Miller, Guantanamo had perfected the C.I.A. paradigm, and it had a three-fold total assault on the human psyche: sensory receptors, self-inflicted pain, cultural sensitivity, and individual fears and phobia. AMY GOODMAN: And then they sent General Miller to, quote, "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib. Professor McCoy, we�re going to break for a minute, and then we'll come back. Professor Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His latest book is called A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, author of a number of books. The Politics of Heroin: C.I.A. Complicity in the Global Drug Trade almost had him killed. Afterwards, the C.I.A. tried to have the book squelched, but ultimately it was published. Then A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation from the Cold War to the War On Terror is his latest book, and we're talking about the history of torture. Continue with what you were saying, talking about the Biscuit teams, the use of psychologists in Guantanamo, and then Geoffrey Miller, going from Guantanamo to, quote, �Gitmo-ize� Abu Ghraib. ALFRED McCOY: In mid-2003, when the Iraqi resistance erupted, the United States found it had no intelligence assets; it had no way to contain the insurgency, and they -- the U.S. military was in a state of panic. And at that moment, they began sweeping across Iraq, rounding up thousands of Iraqi suspects, putting many of them in Abu Ghraib prison. At that point, in late August 2003, General Miller was sent from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, and he brought his techniques with him. He brought a CD, and he brought a manual of his techniques. He gave them to the M.P. officers, the Military Intelligence officers and to General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. Commander in Iraq. In September of 2003, General Sanchez issued orders, detailed orders, for expanded interrogation techniques beyond those allowed in the U.S. Army Field Manual 3452, and if you look at those techniques, what he's ordering, in essence, is a combination of self-inflicted pain, stress positions and sensory disorientation, and if you look at the 1963 C.I.A. KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, you look at the 1983 C.I.A. Interrogation Training Manual that they used in Honduras for training Honduran officers in torture and interrogation, and then twenty years later, you look at General Sanchez's 2003 orders, there's a striking continuity across this forty-year span, in both the general principles, this total assault on the existential platforms of human identity and existence, okay? And the specific techniques, the way of achieving that, through the attack on these sensory receptors. AMY GOODMAN: And Rumsfeld's comment, when asked if it was torture, when people were forced to stand hours on end, that he stands at his desk? ALFRED McCOY: Right, he wrote that in one of his memos. When he was asked to review the Guantanamo techniques in late 2003 or early 2004, he scribbled that marginal note and said, you know, �I stand at my desk eight hours a day.� He has a designer standing desk. �How come we're limiting these techniques of the stress position to just four hours?� So, in other words, that was a clear signal from the Defense Secretary. Now, one of the problems beyond the details of these orders is torture is an extraordinarily dangerous thing. There's an absolute ban on torture for a very good reason. Torture taps into the deepest recesses, unexplored recesses of human consciousness, where creation and destruction coexist, where the infinite human capacity for kindness and infinite human capacity for cruelty coexist, and it has a powerful perverse appeal, and once it starts, both the perpetrators and the powerful who order them, let it spread, and it spreads out of control. So, I think when the Bush administration gave those orders for, basically, techniques tantamount to torture at the start of the war on terror, I think it was probably their intention that these be limited to top al-Qaeda suspects, but within months, we were torturing hundreds of Afghanis at Bagram near Kabul, and a few months later in 2003, through these techniques, we were torturing literally thousands of Iraqis. And you can see in those photos, beyond the details of the techniques that we've described, you can see how that once it starts, it becomes this Dantesque hell, this kind of play palace of the darkest recesses of human consciousness. That�s why it�s necessary to maintain an absolute prohibition on torture. There is no such thing as a little bit of torture. The whole myth of scientific surgical torture, that torture advocates, academic advocates in this country came up with, that's impossible. That cannot operate. It will inevitably spread. AMY GOODMAN: So when, Professor McCoy, you started seeing these images, the first photos that came out at Abu Ghraib, the pictures we showed of the, you know, hooded man, electrodes coming out of his fingers, standing on the box, your response? ALFRED McCOY: Oh, I mean, the reason I wrote this book is when that photo came out in April 2004 on CBS news, at the Times, William Safire, for example, writing in the New York Times said this was the work of creeps. Later on, Defense Secretary Schlesinger said that this was just abuse by a few people on the night shift. There was another phrase: �Recycled hillbillies from Cumberland, Maryland.� In other words, this was the bad apple thesis. We could blame these bad apples. I looked at those photos, I didn't see individual abuse. What I saw was two textbook trademark C.I.A. psychological interrogation techniques: self-inflicted pain and sensory disorientation. AMY GOODMAN: We read our first headline today. It was about Maher Arar and the case � the judge has thrown out against him, the Canadian-Syrian man who was sent back to Syria -- the U.S. government calls it �extraordinary rendition,� and he was kept in an underground �grave-like� cell, he described, very small. He was held for almost a year. As you showed, and I looked at the book, the pictures of the places where prisoners are kept, and in speaking to Maher, he�s described this level of sensory deprivation. What about the shape and the size and the coffin-like nature of these rooms? ALFRED McCOY: The details are often left to the individual interrogators, but the manuals basically describe how you control the process, you control the environment right from the start when you pick somebody up. So, for example, often times we see in Iraq of people when they're arrested, their arms are behind their back. They're made to kneel in very uncomfortable positions, and they're hooded right away. That's one of the things they always specify is the time and conditions of arrest. You begin to break them down. You create this artificial environment of control, and then the techniques always vary. It can be extreme darkness or it can be extreme light; it can be absence of sound or a bombardment of sound. AMY GOODMAN: And that bombardment of sound is often joked about. �Oh, we played Britney Spears really loud,� or whatever it is. I don't know if it was her. But that's become a joke when soldiers play loud music. ALFRED McCOY: Well, though, actually, that's one of the problems of talking about this topic in the United States, is that we regard all of this panoply of psychological techniques as �torture light,� as somehow not really torture. Okay? And we're the only country in the world that does that. The U.N. convention bars � defines torture as the infliction of severe psychological or physical pain. The U.N. convention which bans torture in 1984 gives equal weight to psychological and physical techniques. We alone as a society somehow exempt all of these psychological techniques. That dates back, of course, to the way we ratified the convention in the first place. Back in the early 1990s, when the United States was emerging from the Cold War, and we began this process of, if you will, disarming ourselves and getting beyond all of these techniques, trying to sort of bring ourselves in line with rest of the international community, when we sent that -- when President Clinton sent the U.N. Anti-Torture Convention to the U.S. Congress for ratification in 1994, he included four detailed paragraphs of reservation that had, in fact, been drafted by the Reagan administration, and he adopted them without so much as changing a semicolon. And when you read those detailed paragraphs of reservation, what you realize is this, is that the United States Congress ratified the treaty, but basically we outlawed only physical torture. Those photographs of reservation are carefully written to avoid one word in the 26 printed pages of the U.N. convention. That word is "mental." Basically, we exempted psychological torture. Now, another problem for the United States, as well, was when the U.S. Army re-wrote the Army Field Manual in 1992, the same period, while, although let�s say the civil authorities were sort of skirting the law by exempting psychological techniques, the U.S. Army re-wrote their field manual with the intention of strictly observing the letter and the spirit of the U.N. Anti-Torture Convention and other similar treaties. So what happened is that when the Defense Department gave orders for extreme techniques, when General Sanchez gave orders for his techniques beyond the Army Field Manual, what that meant is when the soldiers were actually investigated, they had committed crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They would be prosecuted, and they�re all being sent to jail. AMY GOODMAN: Professor McCoy, you wrote a piece, �Why the McCain Torture Ban Won't Work: The Bush Legacy of Legalized Torture.� ALFRED McCOY: Right. Most Americans think that it's over, that in last year, December 2005, the U.S. Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act 2005, which in the language of Senator McCain, who was the original author of that amendment to the defense appropriation, the author of that act, it bars all inhumane or cruel treatment, and most people think that�s it, that it�s over, okay? Actually, what has happened is the Bush administration fought that amendment tooth and nail; they fought it with loopholes. Vice President Cheney went to Senator McCain and asked for a specific exemption for the C.I.A. McCain refused. The National Security Advisor went to McCain and asked for certain kinds of exemptions for the C.I.A. He refused. So then they started amending it. Basically what happened is, through the process, they introduced loopholes. Look, at the start of the war on terror, the Bush administration ordered torture. President Bush said right on September 11, 2001, when he addressed the nation, �I don't care what the international lawyers say. We�re going to kick some ass.� Those were his words, and then it was up to his legal advisors in the White House and the Justice Department to translate his otherwise unlawful orders into legal directives, and they did it by crafting three very controversial legal principles. One, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, could override laws and treaties. Two, that there was a possible defense for C.I.A. interrogators who engage in torture, and the defenses were of two kinds. First of all, they played around with the word "severe," that torture is the infliction of severe pain. That's when Jay Bybee, who was Assistant Attorney General, wrote that memo in which he said, ��severe� means equivalent to organ failure,� in other words, right up to the point of death. The other thing was that they came up with the idea of intentionality. If a C.I.A. interrogator tortured, but the aim was information, not pain, then he could say that he was not guilty. The third principle, which was crafted by John Yoo, was Guantanamo is not part of the United States; it is exempt from the writ of U.S. courts. Now, in the process of ratifying � sorry, passing the McCain torture � the torture prohibition, McCain�s ban on inhumane treatment, the White House has cleverly twisted the legislation to re-establish these three key principles. In his signing statement on December 30, President Bush said -- AMY GOODMAN: This was the statement that he signed as he signed the McCain so-called ban on torture? ALFRED McCOY: Right, he emailed it at 8:00 at night from his ranch in Crawford on December 30th, that he was signing this legislation into law. He said, �I reserve the right, as Commander-in-Chief and as head of the unitary executive, to do what I need to do to defend America.� Okay, that was the first thing. The next thing that happened is that McCain, as a compromise, inserted into the legislation a provision that if a C.I.A. operative engages in inhumane treatment or torture but believes that he or she was following a lawful order, then that's a defense. So they got the second principle, defense for C.I.A. torturers. The third principle was � is that the White House had Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina amend McCain�s amendment by inserting language into it, saying that for the purposes of this act, the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay is not on U.S. territory, and last month -- AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds. ALFRED McCOY: So, and then in the last month, the Bush administration has gone to federal courts and said, �Drop all of your habeas corpus suits from Guantanamo.� There are 160 of them. They've gone to the Supreme Court and said, �Drop your Guantanamo case.� They have, in fact, used that law to quash legal oversight of their actions. AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. I want to thank you very much, Professor Al McCoy, for speaking with us, professor of history at University of Wisconsin, Madison, his book A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War On Terror. |
*whimpers after reading the last post*
My eyes burn
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US Accused of Killing Iraqi Civilians Near Balad Meanwhile, Iraqi police have accused US troops of murdering 11 civilians in a raid just last week. According to an Iraqi police report obtained by the Knight Ridder news agency, the villagers were killed after US troops herded them into one room of a house near the city of Balad. The dead included two young children, a 6-month-old infant and an elderly woman. The report says the troops burned three vehicles, killed the villagers' animals and blew up the house. A local police commander said all the victims were found handcuffed with gunshot wounds to the head. Prison Abuse Continued After Abu Ghraib The New York Times has revealed new details of systematic prison abuse carried out by a special US military unit based out of Baghdad�s airport. According to the Times, Task Force 6-26 regularly beat Iraqi detainees, spit in their faces and used them as shooting targets during paintball games at the base, known as Camp Nama. The prisoners were denied access to lawyers or relatives and held for weeks without charge. The abuses continued despite warnings from Army investigators beginning in August 2003 � and even after the Abu Ghraib scandal was made public less than a year later. The unit reportedly kept a motto that said: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." |
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Who's Really Locked up in Guantanamo? By: Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch Published in the Los Angeles Times March 16, 2006. By now, just about every American ally in the world has said the United States should close its detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. God forbid, responds President Bush, for the camp holds terrorists caught on the battlefield fighting the U.S. and who would kill again the moment they are released. Yet it's an open secret that the administration itself is trying to make Guantanamo go away by releasing some prisoners and shipping the rest to other countries. What the administration has resisted with real fury are not the calls to close the camp but those to open it -- through the release of information and the scrutiny of courts. The reason may be that the more that is learned about these prisoners, the more holes appear in the president's narrative of a tough and triumphant fight against Al Qaeda. Instead, when the full story is told, Guantanamo may come to stand as much for incompetence as it does for injustice. Last week, under court order, the Pentagon released the transcripts of several hundred hearings held to decide whether Guantanamo prisoners were in fact "enemy combatants." Classified evidence was deleted, but what emerges is how insignificant most of these prisoners are. Fewer than half were caught on battlefields in Afghanistan or by U.S. troops. A majority were turned over by Pakistan (often for cash bounties). Few "combatants" are even accused of having fought. Many are held simply because they were living in a house associated with the Taliban or working for a charity linked to the group. It seems that U.S. forces, inundated by thousands of captives after the Afghan war, didn't have enough experienced interrogators and interpreters to sort out the actual terrorists from Arabs unaffiliated with Al Qaeda. But they were under pressure to get results and unwilling to believe that their Pakistani allies could deceive them. Prisoners who claimed to know nothing were subjected to increasingly brutal treatment until some confessed or accused others. According to Pentagon documents, Mohammed Al-Qahtani, the alleged 20th 9/11 hijacker, accused 30 fellow prisoners of being Osama bin Laden's bodyguards -- after Qahtani was tormented by weeks of sleep deprivation, isolation and sexual humiliation. That the Pentagon finds confessions obtained this way credible is, well, incredible. How many false leads has it chased, and how much lifesaving intelligence has been lost? What the administration doesn't want to face is that, as the small fish were taken to Cuba, Pakistan arranged escape routes from Afghanistan for more dangerous jihadists -- presumably those with cash or connections to Pakistani intelligence services -- including several hundred flown out of the city of Kunduz before it fell to U.S. forces. The Pakistani military maintains close links with Al Qaeda-linked militant groups created to wage war in Kashmir and Afghanistan, and the Taliban continues to hold sway over Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghan border. Bush should devote the resources needed to stabilize Afghanistan and tell Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to end, finally, the military-Islamist alliance that has made his country the new home base for Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In the meantime, here's the score: the U.S. got Guantanamo, the Pakistanis got paid and Al Qaeda and the Taliban mostly got away. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, recently told the National Journal that less than 10% of Guantanamo prisoners are high-value Al Qaeda operatives with any knowledge of terrorism. Of those turned over by Pakistan, he said: "We absolutely got the wrong people." That doesn't mean the camp's prisoners are all innocent farmers. Even if they weren't fighting the U.S., many went to Afghanistan to help the Taliban build its "pure" Islamic state -- precisely the kind of men Al Qaeda tries to recruit as cannon fodder. Some could become killers if released. But does that make them different from hundreds of thousands of other angry young men throughout the Muslim world who believe in the same cause? There is no shortage of potential suicide bombers. Guantanamo does nothing to solve that problem. It probably makes it worse. |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z So apparently it seems that Abu Gharib is all about perfecting CIA torture techniques, to be more specific, psychological torture techniques (which experts and vicitms say is far worse that plain physical torture). Source: Democracy Now! |
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On March 11, the New York Times printed the gripping story of Ali Shalal Qaissi, the Iraqi in the most famous photo from Abu Ghraib, depicted below:  The story begins:
The story continues in lurid detail, a searing indictment of the sadistic cruelty of the American armed forces. And Qaissi is described, sympathetically, as a man on a mission: he forgives his American torturers, but wants to prevent similar "atrocities" from occurring in the future. The Times article is titled "Symbol of Abu Ghraib Seeks to Spare Others His Nightmare." Indeed, Qaissi has made something of a career out of being the man in the famous photo, including, rather weirdly, distributing this business card:  It was indeed a gripping story. And, needless to say, one that suited the Times' political agenda. Just one problem, though: it wasn't true. Qaissi is a hoax. This morning's Times includes the following correction:
As the old newsman's adage goes, some stories are just too good to check. Besides, there was someone in the photograph. So I suppose the Times could say its story was fake, but accurate. |
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