Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Guantanamo inmates suffering mental damage: report
Over two-thirds of the detainees in the Guantanamo Bay prison are suffering from or at risk of mental problems because they are kept isolated in small cells with little light or fresh air, according to Human Rights Watch.
In a report entitled "Locked Up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantanamo", the group says 185 of the 270 detainees at the U.S. military prison for terrorism suspects are housed in facilities similar to "supermax" prisons.
They spend 22 hours alone in cramped cells, have very limited contact with other human beings and are given little more than the Koran to occupy themselves, said the report, which is based interviews with government officials and attorneys.
Detainees held in this manner include many that have not been charged with crimes and have already been cleared for release or transfer, according to the report.
"Guantanamo detainees who have not even been charged with a crime are being warehoused in conditions that are in many ways harsher than those reserved for the most dangerous, convicted criminals in the United States," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch.
More than six years after the United States began sending terrorism suspects to the naval base in Cuba, not a single case has gone to trial. (Reuters)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.S.
U.S. Official Cites 'Hardening' of Iraqi Detainees
U.S. combat commanders are currently sending about 30 prisoners a day to the main U.S.-run detention centers in Iraq, with more of the detainees likely to be held for longer periods as security risks than those prisoners taken when the U.S. troop buildup first began last year, according to Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone Jr., the former head of the Iraq detention program.
"We're seeing a hardening of the population where there are guys that are as bad as they come," Stone told reporters yesterday at a Pentagon news conference. "Division commanders have gotten much better at determining that the guy's a real, legitimate . . . imperative security risk," he added, saying "conditions are perhaps a little bit less chaotic on the ground, so you can collect more information" about the detainees and determine that they would not be released after their initial six-month review.
Stone, who is ending a 14-month tour in Iraq during which he transformed the U.S. detention program, said there are now less than 21,000 Iraqis being held in U.S. facilities, down from a high of around 25,000. He said the number is coming down slowly, with about 50 detainees leaving and 30 entering daily, for a net decline of 20 per day. (Washington Post)
Friday, June 6, 2008
U.N. experts rap U.S. "cruelty" to child prisoners
United Nations experts on child rights criticized the United States on Friday over detention of juveniles at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and voiced concern that some may have suffered cruel treatment.
They also called for an end to recruitment of under-18s into the U.S. armed forces and for a halt to enlistment campaigns aimed specifically at young people from minority groups and poor or single-parent families.
The strictures were issued in a report from the 18-member Committee on the Rights of the Child, which monitors performance under U.N. pacts, including two signed by Washington on children and armed conflict and on child prostitution.
On under-18s -- defined by the U.N. as children -- held in U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Committee said it was "concerned over reports indicating the use of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment."
The 18 experts, nominated by governments but expected to be independent of them, said they had similar reports on abuse of young prisoners held for several years at the U.S. naval base in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay. (Reuters)
US to probe why Guantanamo detainees talked
U.S. military officers responsible for defending Guantanamo detainees said they will investigate why five men accused in the Sept. 11 attacks were allowed to talk among themselves at their arraignment, allegedly pressuring one of the defendants to reject his lawyers.
All five said they would represent themselves in the death penalty trial, the first U.S. attempt to prosecute those believed to be directly responsible for killing 2,973 people in the bloodiest terrorist attacks ever on U.S. soil.
None entered pleas, and two said they hope to become martyrs for their anti-American cause.
Lawyers for Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi complained he was pressured by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the former third-ranking al-Qaida leader and alleged mastermind of the 2001 attacks.
"It was clear Mr. Mohammed was trying to intimidate Mr. Hawsawi," said Army Maj. Jon Jackson, his lead military attorney. "He was shaking."
Jackson complained to the judge after an interpreter overheard other defendants asking al-Hawsawi questions like, "So, you're in the Army now?"
Al-Hawsawi, who allegedly helped Sept. 11 hijackers prepare for the attacks with money and Western-style clothing, looked thin and frail as he sat on a pillow on his chair. The others appeared to be in robust health. (AP)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.S.
Justice Dept. Investigating Deportation to Syria
The Justice Department’s ethics office is reviewing a decision in 2002 by department officials to send a Canadian citizen to Syria, where he was tortured, American officials said Thursday.
A Justice Department spokesman, Peter A. Carr, said that its inquiry, by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, was begun in March 2007 and was examining the role of department lawyers in expelling Maher Arar to Syria, which has long been identified by the State Department as habitually using torture on prisoners.
The existence of the Justice inquiry was disclosed at a Congressional hearing on Thursday by Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Skinner told two House subcommittees that the Arar case involved “very questionable” actions by United States government officials and that he “could not rule out” that Mr. Arar was sent to Syria with the intention of having him questioned under torture about possible connections to terrorists. (NY Times)
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Egypt releases three detained over April 6 strike
Three men detained over recent deadly protests at Egypt's biggest textile plant over price hikes and pay demands have been released after weeks of "torture," one of the workers said on Monday. "We were subjected to electric shocks, to beatings and there was no food and or drink for the first few days," blogger Karim al-Beheiri told AFP a day after his release. "We went through weeks of torture and humiliation." Beheiri, Tarek Amin and Kamal al-Fayoumy were arrested on April 6 at the Misr Spinning and Weaving company in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla after riots which left three people dead and hundreds detained. They were accused of "inciting unrest, damage to property and demonstrating," a security official told AFP. The three were fired from their jobs after their arrest, said Beheiri, whose detention was condemned by international rights groups. "Many of us had never seen the inside of a prison before," Beheiri said, describing his first weeks at Borg al-Arab prison near the Mediterranean city of Alexandria sharing a small cell with 25 people as "terrifying." "We had bread thrown at us. They would dip their hands in our food before throwing it at us," said Beheiri who, with the others, staged two hunger strikes while in detention. On April 16, the prosecution ordered the release of several detainees including Beheiri, Fayoumy and Amin, but the three remained behind bars until Sunday. Beheiri said that during interrogations at state security offices in various Egyptian cities, questioning focused mainly on his blog and on his connections to other bloggers. "It's the new fashion," he said of a large-scale crackdown against Egypt's cyber-dissidents. In recent months Egypt has seen a number of strikes and protests against low salaries and price rises that have been one of the most serious challenges to the regime of veteran President Hosni Mubarak.(AFP)
Labels: Egypt, Free Speech, Torture
On Stand, Imam Tells of Torture in Israel
A Muslim cleric living in New Jersey graphically described on Monday the torture to which he claims he was subjected in Israeli custody. The description came during the final day of testimony as he fought to block efforts by the United States to deport him on grounds that he lied on his residency application.
The detention is at the heart of the deportation proceedings against the cleric, Mohammad Qatanani, a Palestinian who has been the spiritual leader at the Islamic Center of Passaic County in New Jersey since 1996.
United States officials, in rejecting his bid for permanent residency, said that Mr. Qatanani failed to disclose on his green card application a 1993 arrest and conviction in Israel for being a member of the militant group Hamas.
Mr. Qatanani denies the charges, saying he and many other Palestinians were detained, not arrested, by the Israelis at the time. He claims that he was not aware of the conviction and that he was subjected to physical and mental abuse while in detention. Over the past few weeks, a number of character witnesses have testified on his behalf, including a rabbi and several high-ranking New Jersey law enforcement officials. (NY Times)
Saturday, May 31, 2008
RIGHTS: These Names Have Never Been Spoken in a U.S. Court
"My name is Ahmed Mohammed," she told police after her arrest outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington in January.
On Thursday, in a courtroom in the U.S. capital, she has -- at her own insistence -- been charged under that name, although her real one is Sherrill Hogen.
"Torture is a product of a sick society," Hogen told the DC Superior Court, "Of leaders bloated with power and fear, and is the antithesis of human goodness, compassion and love. I don't think I have a choice about where to put my energies."
Hogen, a 69-year-old retired social worker, was arrested while protesting in front of the Supreme Court building against the indefinite detention of the alleged terror suspects at the U.S. military base in the Cuban territory of Guantanamo Bay.
Like 34 other activists who took part in the protest on the doorstep of the Supreme Court building on Jan. 11, Hogen is now facing trial on minor criminal charges ranging from "unlawful free speech" to disorderly conduct.
"We came to the Supreme Court building because it has jurisdiction over the [primary] issue about which we knew there were violations of justice," she said to the judge Thursday. "[That is] the denial of habeus corpus to the prisoners held by the U.S. at Guantanamo." (IPS)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.S.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Human Rights Report Assails U.S.
Sixty years after the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, governments in scores of countries still torture or mistreat their people, Amnesty International said Wednesday in a report that again urged the United States to close down the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
In its annual report, the London-based human rights watchdog said “flashpoints” in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq/ and Myanmar “demand immediate action.”
“World leaders are in a state of denial but their failure to act has a high cost,” Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement accompanying the report. “As Iraq and Afghanistan show, human rights problems are not isolated tragedies, but are like viruses than can infect and spread rapidly, endangering all of us.”
The report singled out for criticism China, the United States, and Russia and accused the European Union of complicity in the rendition of terrorism suspects. The European Union, it said, must “set the same bar on human rights for its own members as it does for other countries.” (NY Times)
Labels: Amnesty International, Human Rights, Torture, U.S.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
'CIA used Portuguese airspace for 56 rendition flights'
A total of 56 flights used by the CIA for transporting prisoners used Portuguese airspace between July 2005 and December 2007, a member of Parliament said Friday. Communist MP Jorge Machado said the figures were contained in a report he had seen from the Transport Ministry to the government, which has previously said it had no proof of illegality. Machado said five of the flights stopped over at the military base of Lajes in the Portugese Azores archipelago, which the United States has used for over 50 years. Machado urged the government to come clean on what it knew, accusing it of passive connivance with the CIA practice of so-called extraordinary rendition, whereby terrorism suspects are flown covertly to a third country or to US-run detention centers. The practice has been strongly criticized in many countries since it began in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US. In February last year the Portuguese judiciary began an investigation into rendition as it concerned Portugal. Lisbon has rejected allegations by the British rights group Reprieve that 94 CIA flights from or to the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, carried more than 700 prisoners through Portuguese airspace between 2002 and 2006. (Daily Star)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
FBI interrogation warning 'ignored'
Senior Bush administration officials ignored warnings from the FBI over interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan, a new US government report says.
The FBI clashed with the Pentagon and the CIA over techniques which included the use of dogs and sexual provocation, according to the US justice department report.
The justice department report released this week said the FBI and justice department raised concerns with the National Security Council and with officials at Guantanamo Bay.
It admits that FBI agents did "use techniques that would not normally be permitted in the United States or participate in interrogations during which such techniques were used by others", but said they did so "in only a few instances".
For the most part, the report says, FBI agents avoided participating in detainee abuse and many denounced any abuse that they witnessed. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.S.
Interrogation Tactics Were Challenged at White House
Five years ago, as troubling reports emerged about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a career lawyer at the Justice Department began a long and relatively lonely campaign to alert top Bush administration officials to a strategy he considered "wrongheaded."
Bruce C. Swartz, a criminal division deputy in charge of international issues, repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of harsh interrogation tactics at White House meetings of a special group formed to decide detainee matters, with representatives present from the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA.
Swartz warned that the abuse of Guantanamo inmates would do "grave damage" to the country's reputation and to its law enforcement record, according to an investigative audit released earlier this week by the Justice Department's inspector general. Swartz was joined by a handful of other top Justice and FBI officials who said the abuse would almost certainly taint any legal proceedings against the detainees. (Washington Post)
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
'Suicide attempt' of 9/11 suspect
The alleged "20th hijacker" in the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US tried to commit suicide days before his charges were dropped, his lawyer said.
Mohammad al-Qahtani thought he was to be executed at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay and attempted suicide, his attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez said.
The Pentagon dropped the charges of murder and war crimes against Mr Qahtani on 13 May.
No reason was given for dropping the charges, which could be filed again.
Ms Gutierrez said her client had tried to cut himself at least three times in April, once badly enough to require hospital treatment.
Mr Qahtani had made the suicide attempts after learning that he and five other Guantanamo prisoners faced possible death sentences for their alleged roles in the 11 September attacks that killed about 3,000 people. (BBC)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture
Saturday, May 17, 2008
US military lawyers want Sept. 11 charges dropped
Charges against five Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks should be thrown out because they were improperly influenced by a Pentagon legal adviser, U.S. military lawyers said in documents filed on Friday.
Also on Friday, a U.S. military judge postponed the Guantanamo trial of Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan, until July 21, to allow time to assess his mental competency.
Hamdan was to be the first prisoner tried in the U.S. war crimes court at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba.
The Guantanamo tribunals are the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War Two and have faced steady criticism from human rights activists and reversals in American courts.
The tribunals were established after Sept. 11, 2001 to try non-American captives whom the Bush administration considers "enemy combatants," who are not entitled to the legal protections granted to soldiers and civilians.
In the case of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other prisoners who could face execution if convicted, the military defense lawyers said the charges were tainted by meddling and "overreaching" on the part of Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann.
Hartmann was assigned to provide impartial legal advice to the Pentagon appointee overseeing the Guantanamo trials. (Reuters)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.S.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Judge says Berlusconi can testify in CIA kidnap case
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi can be called to testify in a trial of U.S. and Italian spies who are accused of kidnapping a terrorism suspect in Milan and flying him to Egypt, a Milan judge ruled on Wednesday.
Berlusconi is not accused of any crime and would appear as a witness to speak on the tricky issue of state secrets in the case. Italy's former spy chief says classified documents prove his innocence.
The 71-year-old Italian prime minister could become the first head of government in the world to testify in criminal proceedings over secret U.S. transfers of terrorism suspects, known as renditions.
Judge Oscar Magi ruled that former prime minister Romano Prodi, who handed over to Berlusconi last week, can also be called to testify on the same issue.
Twenty-six Americans, nearly all of them believed to be CIA agents, are being tried in absentia on charges of kidnapping a an Egyptian-born imam in 2003.
Prosecutors say a CIA-led team kidnapped Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off the streets of Milan and secretly flew him to Egypt. There, Nasr says he was tortured under questioning and held for years without charge before being released in 2007. (Reuters)
Labels: Egypt, Italy, Torture, U.S.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
RIGHTS-US: Abuse Claims Mount Against Pentagon, Contractors
As human rights groups demanded the release of a report on a long-running investigation of the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the unlawful interrogations of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, new torture claims were leveled at two U.S. military contractors by a former Abu Ghraib "ghost" detainee who was wrongly imprisoned and later released without charge.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act request this week with the Departments of Justice and Defence demanding release of a report by the Justice Department's Inspector General (OIG), which the group says has been completed for months but blocked by the Defence Department.
The OIG investigation was initiated in 2005 after the ACLU obtained documents in which FBI agents described interrogations that they had witnessed at Guantánamo Bay.
While the documents were most notable for their description of illegal interrogation methods used by military interrogators, they also raised serious questions about the FBI's participation in abusive interrogations, the actions of FBI personnel who witnessed abusive interrogations, and the response of FBI officials to reports of abuse.
Testifying before a Congressional committee last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller denied that the FBI participated in any of the interrogations. The Defence Department has said the OIG's report must be reviewed and redacted to eliminate classified information before it can be made public. (IPS)
Labels: Military Contractors, Torture, U.S.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
House panel subpoenas top Cheney aide
The House Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to compel a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney to testify to the committee about the Bush administration's interrogation practices.
David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, refused to testify without a subpoena. No date has been set for his appearance before Congress.
Addington is one of several lawyers believed to have played a key role in crafting the administration's interrogation policies shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, policies which some say amounted to torture.
John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who wrote a now-repudiated memo allowing the harsh interrogations of military prisoners agreed late Monday to testify to Congress about those practices, averting a subpoena. Yoo is now a law professor at University of California-Berkeley.
Yoo's memo, dated March 14, 2003, outlines a legal justification for military interrogators to use harsh tactics against al-Qaida and Taliban detainees overseas — so long as they did not specifically intend to torture their captives. (AP)
Guantanamo man says UK knew he would be tortured
British intelligence knew in advance that a former London janitor now awaiting trial by a U.S. military commission in Guantanamo Bay would be tortured in an Arab country to extract evidence, his lawyers allege.
Lawyers for Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, 29, filed a High Court case on Tuesday to try to force the British government to give evidence that would help his defense to expected charges before the tribunal at the U.S. detention camp on Cuba.
They say a British security official interviewed Mohamed after he was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002, and told him he would be transferred to an Arab country and tortured.
Mohamed says he was flown to Morocco in July 2002 on a CIA plane and held there for 18 months, during which time he says he was repeatedly stripped naked and cut with a scalpel on his chest and penis. He was transferred to Afghanistan in 2004 and finally, later that year, to Guantanamo. (Reuters)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.K., U.S.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Iraqi alleges Abu Ghraib torture, sues US contractors
An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors Monday, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.
Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications punched him, slammed him into walls, hung from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003.
Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as "Big Steve." The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.
Phone messages left for Arlington, Va.-based CACI and New York City-based L-3 Communications, formerly Titan Corp., were not immediately returned Monday. Stefanowicz could not immediately be reached for comment at a Los Angeles address.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles because Stefanowicz lives there, seeks unspecified monetary damages. (AP)
Labels: Iraq, Military Contractors, Torture, U.S.
Sudan minister defends weak al-Hajj
A Sudanese minister has refuted a US defence department official's claim that Sami al-Hajj, a released detainee of Guantanamo Bay, was affecting weakness on his return from the camp to Sudan.
The US official had told ABC news that al-Hajj was "a manipulator and a propagandist".
Dr Kamal Obeid, the Sudanese state minister for media affairs, said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Sunday that he was "surprised" to hear the remarks.
He said that on his arrival in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, from Guantanamo Bay early on Friday morning, "al-Hajj appeared exhausted, with very slow heart beats and low blood pressure.
"When I grasped his hands, they were very cold, apparently affected by the cooling system in the aircraft.
"But when I greeted his other two colleagues, their bodies were much warmer."
An official from the US state department said that he had viewed al-Hajj's show of weakness as an attempt to influence pubic opinion. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Guantanamo, Sudan, Torture, U.S.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
US secret prisons 'bigger issue'
Wearing a pristine white thobe, a dark skinned eight-year-old boy of Sudanese descent looks into a video camera.
He says: "Ana bahibak baba" (I love you dad) - part of a message to be sent to his father.
Mohammed al-Hajj, the timid boy on Al Jazeera English's studio lawn, is sending the message because he has not seen his father for six years.
And his father is desperate for any scraps of communication and support from the outside world - he is Sami al-Hajj, an inmate at Guantanamo Bay.
Al-Hajj is currently being force fed as he is on hunger strike and, according to Clive Stafford Smith, his British lawyer, he is also being subjected to psychological torture.
Stafford Smith says that the US authorities, desperate to get al-Hajj to end his hunger strike, have resorted to new methods of control.
"They've been telling him that he is strongly suspected of having cancer of the kidney and that he can't have proper medical care until he stops the hunger strike," Stafford Smith says.
"I honestly don't know if they are trying to terrify him to get him to stop the hunger strike or whether they are just being delinquent in not giving him medical care. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.S.
Lawmakers to See Secret Documents
The Justice Department yesterday agreed to grant lawmakers limited access to secret memos that authorized CIA interrogation strategies, an offer that Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) immediately criticized as "certainly too late . . . and too little, as well."
Bowing to intense pressure from congressional Democrats, senior Justice officials said they soon will release unredacted versions of memos drafted by staff members in the department's Office of Legal Counsel. Several of the controversial memos have been repudiated while others remain under fire from critics who say they encourage torture and civil liberties abuses.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse called the move an "extraordinary accommodation" to help members of the intelligence committees understand the Bush administration's legal reasoning on "vital" national security policies.
But Feingold, who presided over a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday on excessive government secrecy, said that access to the memos comes with strings attached that will make it difficult for lawmakers to conduct a thorough review.
Under the terms of the arrangement, for instance, the members will not be allowed to keep paper or electronic copies of the documents. (Washington Post)
Alleged Driver for Bin Laden Boycotts Military Hearing
Salim Ahmed Hamdan carried out his threat Wednesday morning to boycott military commission hearings here, opting to sleep in his prison cell while lawyers debated legal motions ahead of his scheduled trial in late May.
But Hamdan's move immediately put his team of defense lawyers in an awkward position, as the Yemeni detainee had also refused to allow his lawyers to make arguments on his behalf without his presence in the courtroom.
That left prosecutors to argue while defense attorneys sat silently nearby, leaving their earlier written pleadings to stand on their own. Many motions were deferred to later hearings.
"Mr. Hamdan told guards not to wake him this morning, that he didn't want to go to court, he wanted to sleep in," said Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, who is presiding over the hearings. "So they did not wake him."
Allred suggested that the defense team attempt to convince their client in coming weeks that it would be in his best interest to appear in court for the trial. During a 40-minute dialogue with Hamdan on Tuesday, Allred had patiently implored him to take part in the proceedings to try to convince a panel of military officers that he is not guilty of terror charges, but Hamdan did not bend. (Washington Post)
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Ex-prosecutor testifies for Guantanamo inmate, cites political pressure
Political pressure and evidence obtained by abusing prisoners has undermined the Guantanamo "war on terror" tribunals, US media quotes their former chief prosecutor as having testified. Colonel Morris Davis, who resigned last year as the Pentagon's chief prosecutor for terrorism cases, was called to testify Monday on behalf of Osama bin Laden's former driver at a military commission at the remote US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Davis said senior officials in President George W. Bush's administration urged him to move high-profile trials along quickly for political reasons, The Washington Post reported. Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and other Pentagon officials told him that charging well-known detainees before elections this year could have "strategic political value," Davis was quoted as saying by the Post.
Davis also accused Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, the legal adviser to the military official in charge of the tribunals, of tolerating evidence obtained from "waterboarding," an interrogation method that simulates drowning and is widely condemned as a form of torture.
"To allow or direct a prosecutor to come into the courtroom and offer evidence they felt was torture, it puts a prosecutor in an ethical bind," Davis told the court. But he said Hartmann replied that "everything was fair game - let the judge sort it out." (AFP)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.S.
Guantanamo, Pakistan detainees plan to sue Britain
Lawyers for former detainees are preparing to sue the British government and intelligence services for alleged complicity in abuse of terrorism suspects by the United States and Pakistan.
The cases, if they reach court, would be among the first anywhere to examine alleged wrongdoing by spy agencies in the U.S.-led "war on terrorism". Similar lawsuits in the United States have been thrown out on grounds of national security.
Lawyers for eight former inmates of the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba are launching proceedings to sue Britain for alleged complicity with their abduction, ill-treatment and interrogation, sources familiar with the case say.
Five are British and three are foreign nationals living in Britain. (Reuters)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.K., U.S.
Lawmaker Threatens Subpoenas for Aides
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee threatened yesterday to subpoena Bush administration officials who have refused to appear at a hearing on torture and interrogation policies.
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said he would "have no choice but to consider compulsory process" if current and former officials, including vice presidential chief of staff David S. Addington, reject the panel's requests for testimony next week.
Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft and John C. Yoo, a former Office of Legal Counsel deputy have rebuffed the committee's request. Yoo cited Justice Department instructions that he not discuss the "deliberative communications" he had with other administration officials.
Their refusal marks the latest skirmish in a lengthy battle over the scope of presidential authority and the administration's treatment of detainees. Under Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and his predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales, the Justice Department has refused to enforce congressional subpoenas for testimony. (Washington Post)
UN probe urged over Iraqi inmates
The UN Security Council should address serious concerns about the detention policies of the US-led forces in Iraq, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.
The New York-based group says thousands of Iraqis are being held indefinitely and without judicial review.
It claims that many inmates are subject to judicial review processes that do not meet international standards.
HRW says the US improperly uses Council resolutions which permit internment for "imperative reasons of security".
Separately, the group adds that there are also concerns about what is describes as widespread torture of detainees by the Iraqi authorities.
US and Iraqi officials have so far not commented on the claims by HRW. (BBC)
Labels: Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Iraq, Torture, U.S.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Letters Give C.I.A. Tactics a Legal Rationale
The Justice Department has told Congress that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law.
The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A. would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees.
While the Geneva Conventions prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity,” a letter sent by the Justice Department to Congress on March 5 makes clear that the administration has not drawn a precise line in deciding which interrogation methods would violate that standard, and is reserving the right to make case-by-case judgments.
“The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public. (NY Times)
Thursday, April 24, 2008
CIA Foresaw Interrogation Issues
The CIA concluded that criminal, administrative or civil investigations stemming from harsh interrogation tactics were "virtually inevitable," leading the agency to seek legal support from the Justice Department, according to a CIA official's statement in court documents filed yesterday.
The CIA said it had identified more than 7,000 pages of classified memos, e-mails and other records relating to its secret prison and interrogation program, but maintained that the materials cannot be released because they relate to, in part, communications between CIA and Justice Department attorneys or discussions with the White House.
Nineteen of those documents were withheld from disclosure specifically because the Bush administration decided they are covered by a "presidential communications privilege," according to the filings, made in federal court in Manhattan. Some were "authored or solicited and received by the President's senior advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made by the president." (Washington Post)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Jordanian Islamists call for ban on torture
Jordan's Islamist opposition on Monday demanded the government ban torture and protect prisoners' rights, a week after rioting at a jail near the capital led to the deaths of three inmates. "The government should reform its prison policies in order to protect the rights of prisoners and ban beatings and torture," the influential Islamic Action Front (IAF) said in a statement. "The authorities should find civilized ways, including dialogue, to deal with the prisoners and their problems," said the party, which has six seats in the 100-member lower house of Parliament.
Three inmates at the Muaqqar jail died in clashes with policemen last Monday after prisoners rioted and set fire to their cells in what police said was a protest at being segregated from other convicts. But the National Center for Human Rights said after visiting the facility that mistreatment and severe beatings of inmates by some policemen were the cause of the riots. In August last year, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said Jordanian prisoners were subjected to widespread serious abuses, including "illegal beatings that sometimes turn into torture ... Guards hit prisoners with electrical cables and truncheons, and hang them in iron cuffs for hours on end." The IAF also called for an independent inquiry into the riots. (AFP)
Amnesty unveils shock 'waterboarding' film
An American expert in torture techniques has denounced his government for allowing "waterboarding" to be practised against terror suspects, just as a graphic advertisement showing the brutal reality of the technique is unveiled to British cinema-goers.
Malcolm Nance, who trained hundreds of US servicemen and women to resist interrogation by putting them through "waterboarding" exercises, demanded an immediate end to the practice by all US personnel.
He said: "They seem to think it is worth throwing the honour of 220 years of American decency in war out of the window. Waterboarding is out-and-out torture, and I'm deeply ashamed President Bush has authorised its use and dragged the US's reputation into the mud."
Mr Bush faced criticism recently when he vetoed a Bill that would have outlawed such methods of "enhanced interrogation" – the White House refuses to describe it as torture. (Independent)
Labels: Amnesty International, Torture, U.S.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Top US general 'hoodwinked' over aggressive interrogation
The US's most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques for terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, the Guardian can reveal.
The development led to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners.
General Richard Myers, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.
The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington - who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date - is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts from which will be published in tomorrow's Guardian.
In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, a professor of law at University College London, reveals:
• Senior figures in the Bush administration pushed through previously outlawed measures with the help of unqualified and inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo.
• Myers believes he was a victim of "intrigue" by top lawyers at the department of justice, the office of the vice president, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld's defence department.
• Myers wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from the army's field manual. (Guardian)
Labels: Guantanamo, Torture, U.S.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Torturers in the White House
The biggest news of the last week went virtually uncovered by the mainstream, print media. ABC News first reported last Wednesday that top Bush Administration officials, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, and George Tenet, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld met to discuss which particular torture techniques should be used against Al Qaeda suspects in U.S. custody.
The group signed off on specific techniques, including sleep deprivation, slapping, pushing, and waterboarding, and gave instruction "so detailed . . . some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed, down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic."
If John McCain is seriously considering Condoleezza Rice as a running mate, the former POW should keep in mind that Rice not only condoned torture, but chaired the National Security Council's "Principals Committee" meetings to plan the details of torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.
Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was so troubled by the meetings, he was moved to object: "Why are we discussing this in the White House?" he asked, according to ABC. "History will not judge this kindly." (Progressive)
ISA to give answers on interrogations
Knesset Law Committee chairman Menahem Ben-Sasson instructed the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on Sunday to prepare responses to case studies in a report by a human rights group, which charged that the agency frequently uses terror suspects' families to break them during interrogation.
The study by the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCTI) was released earlier in the morning. The organization charged that "there is widespread use of an interrogation technique whereby family members are used and detainees are subjected to psychological terrorism by exploiting the families."
The head of the Shin Bet investigations branch admitted to the committee that in the first case cited in the report - that of Mahmoud Sueti - the charges were correct.
"There was no reason to do what we did in the case of Sueti," he said. In light of that case, the official continued, the Shin Bet had drawn up rules prohibiting the use of the technique in all but extreme cases, where it was urgent to obtain information immediately. (JPost)
Labels: Israel, Palestine, Torture
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Bush Approved Meetings on Interrogation Techniques
President Bush said Friday that he was aware his top national security advisers had discussed the details of harsh interrogation tactics to be used on detainees.
Bush also said in an interview with ABC News that he approved of the meetings, which were held as the CIA began to prepare for a secret interrogation program that included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and other coercive techniques.
"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people" by learning what various detainees knew, Bush said in the interview at the presidential ranch here. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
The remarks underscore the extent to which the top officials were directly involved in setting the controversial interrogation policies. (Washington Post)
Friday, April 11, 2008
Cheney 'approved' waterboarding
The US vice-president approved the use of waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects, US media reports have said.
Dick Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials attended meetings to approve harsh interrogation techniques, which took place after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, ABC news and The Associated Press reported.
The officials took care to insulate George Bush, the US president, from the meetings, where waterboarding - simulating drowning and feelings of suffocation by causing reflexive choking and gagging - sleep deprivation and slaps and pushes were approved, according to the reports.
Participants were said to be members of a National Security Council's Principals Committee, a senior group of advisors to the president Bush.
Condoleezza Rice, formerly national security adviser now US secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, Colin Powell, who was secretary of state, George Tenet, the former CIA director and John Ashcroft, the former US attorney-general also reportedly attended the meetings.
It was unclear which officials attended which meetings.
Al Jazeera contacted the White House for a reaction, but it declined to comment. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Al Qaeda, Torture, U.S.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
"We'll make you see death"
On a recent trip to Amman, Jordan, during a visit to the home of someone who had been detained by the Jordanian intelligence service in 2002, I was given two very thin strips of paper covered with Arabic writing and marked with a thumbprint. Curled up into a tight spiral, they were no bigger than the cap of a pen.
My contact, who had smuggled the papers out of intelligence detention a few years previously, told me that the message therein had been written by a prisoner who had been detained with him. He said it gave a detailed account of that person's experiences.
That evening, in my hotel room, an Egyptian colleague translated the text, word for word. Stunned by its contents, I transcribed the message into electronic form and sent it into cyberspace for safekeeping.
The message's author was a Yemeni terrorism suspect named Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi, who was arrested in Pakistan in February 2002. Though the message was undated, it was clear from the narrative that it had been written in October 2002. (Salon)
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
HRW report lists Jordan as top US 'rendition' spot HRW report lists Jordan as top US 'rendition' spot
The CIA secretly transported at least 14 "war on terror" detainees to Jordan between 2001 and 2004, making it the top "rendition" destination at that time, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday. "While a handful of countries received persons rendered by the US during this period, no other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan," the rights group said in a statement.
The prisoners were interrogated and tortured by Jordan's General Intelligence Department (GID), according to a new HRW report that documents eight previously unknown cases of rendition. GID officials who met with Human Rights Watch in Amman in 2007 denied receiving CIA prisoners and denied using torture. The group said the denials were unconvincing "given the weight of credible evidence showing otherwise."
The report is "based largely on firsthand information from Jordanian former prisoners who were detained with the non-Jordanian terrorism suspects," it said.
"We've documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at HRW. (AFP)
Labels: Human Rights Watch, Jordan, Torture, U.S.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Gazans speak of torture by Egyptians
Several Gazans who were recently released from Egyptian prison said they were "brutally tortured" during interrogations.
According to the Palestinians, who returned to the Gaza Strip last week, the torture methods included severe beatings, stripping naked, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, electric shocks, whippings and verbal abuse.
The Gazans, who were suspected of membership in Hamas, entered Egypt during the 12 days after thousands of Palestinians knocked down the border fence on January 23.
They were detained without trial and without the possibility of seeing a lawyer or family members.
Sources in the Gaza Strip said at least 50 Palestinians had been held by Egypt since the border was breached.
Under pressure from Hamas, the Egyptian authorities last week released nearly half of the detainees, who were allowed to cross back into Gaza. (JPost)
Labels: Egypt, Palestine, Torture
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Pentagon memo approved use of harsh interrogation against terror suspects
The Pentagon has released a legal memorandum that approved the use of harsh interrogation techniques against terror suspects on the grounds that president George Bush's authority during wartime overrode any international ban on torture.
The justice department memo, dated March 14 2003, outlines legal justification for military interrogators to use harsh tactics against al-Qaida and Taliban detainees overseas so long as they did not specifically intend to torture their captives. It argues that poking, slapping or shoving would not give rise to criminal liability, and also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce "an extreme effect".
But even if an interrogator harmed a detainee in a way prohibited as torture under international law they would not be criminally liable because, the memo argues, the president's wartime power as commander in chief is not limited by UN and other international treaties against torture.
"Our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the president is free to override it at his discretion," said the memo written by John Yoo, who was then deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. "Even if the criminal prohibitions outlined above applied, and an interrogation method might violate those prohibitions, necessity or self-defense could provide justifications for any criminal liability," the memo concluded. (Guardian)