Amnesty International report denounces US treatment of war prisoners
By Ruby Rankin
25 September 2003
World Socialist Web Site
A recent report by Amnesty International (AI) warns that the Bush
administration is repudiating basic democratic rights and undermining
the entire post-World War II system of international humanitarian law.
The 60-page document, which exposes US torture of those captured in the
“war on terror”, is entitled The threat of a bad example: undermining
international standards. It details the US government’s treatment of
foreign war prisoners held without charge and denied access to their
families and legal counsel for almost two years in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
and Bagram US Air Base, Afghanistan.
AI quotes the US president and other high-level government officials,
including the secretary of state, condemning the use of torture by
various countries and proclaiming America as the world’s foremost
proponent of human rights. These comments are juxtaposed against
current examples of US-inflicted torture.
“Allegations of abuses such as arbitrary arrests, prolonged
incommunicado detention, ill-treatment, interrogations without legal
counsel and threats of unfair trials by military bodies are raised each
year in the US State Department’s reports on human rights practices in
other countries,” the report states. “Now they are being made against
the US government in the context of its ‘war on terror’.”
AI interviewed some of the handful of prisoners released from US
military detention, establishing that those held at Guantanamo Bay,
Bagram Air Base and other locations are regularly being tortured with
“stress and duress” techniques.
Detailing the methods used, the AI report says: “Colonel Roger King,
the chief US military spokesman in Bagram, confirmed that ‘we do force
people to stand for an extended period of time… Disruption of sleep
has been reported as an effective way of reducing people’s inhibition
about talking or their resistance to questioning.’ He was reported as
saying that a ‘common technique’ was to maintain 24-hour illumination
in cells or to wake inmates up every 15 minutes to disorient them.
Forced standing, he said, could also be used to punish any inmate who
spoke to another… Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, Commander of Joint
Task Force 180 in Afghanistan, also acknowledged that prisoners had
been subjected to forced prolonged standing in Bagram.”
Those detained at Guantanamo Bay are subject to President Bush’s
Military Order enacted following the September 11 terrorist attacks on
the US. It renders them eligible for trial by military commission.
Under this order anyone who is not a US citizen can be arrested, held
incommunicado and even executed in secrecy without recourse to due
process of law. These methods are no different from those used by
military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Peru and other Latin
American countries during the 1970s and 80s.
AI notes the discrimination between US nationals and others, with only
non-US citizens subject to the Military Order. It also records,
however, that US citizens are not immune from arbitrary and inhumane
treatment. The Bush administration has no hesitation in eliminating
anyone it regards as standing in its way. For example, a CIA-controlled
Predator unmanned aerial vehicle summarily executed a US citizen in
November 2002 in Yemen.
The report refers to “irregular rendition”—a technique employed by the
US government to avoid normal channels of extradition between
countries. This involves the kidnapping of individual suspects by
foreign military and police authorities, working under US direction,
and moving them to third countries for torture.
Using this method, men deemed as terrorists by US authorities have been
picked off the streets in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malawi and other
countries, held incommunicado and tortured. The “lucky” ones are
released days, weeks or months later. No charges are laid or trial
held. Others kidnapped in this way have been transported by the US
military to Guantanamo Bay, Bagram or other undisclosed locations,
including Zimbabwe, Morocco, Jordan or Egypt, where they are being held
without charge.
Demolishing Bush administration claims that those held in Guantanamo
Bay were “illegal combatants” captured “on the battlefield aiding and
abetting the Taliban”, AI cited several cases of men captured outside
Afghanistan but “rendered” to Guantanamo Bay. This included six
Algerian men in Bosnia-Herzegovina who were handed over to US
authorities in January 2002 by Bosnian police and two men arrested in
Gambia, and secretly transferred to Bagram then Guantanamo.
Another prisoner, Moazzam Begg, a dual UK/Pakistani national, one of
many seized in Pakistan, was transported in the boot of a car to
Kandahar and then Bagram before being flown, bound and gagged to
Guantanamo Bay. He wrote to his father, “I have not seen the sun for
over seven months except once, for around two minutes.” Begg is one of
the first six Guantanamo Bay prisoners who could be brought before a US
military tribunal.
Another well-documented example is the case of Sayed Abassin, a
28-year-old taxi driver detained en route from Kabul to Khost in April
2002. Although authorities were actually after one of Abassin’s
passengers, the taxi-driver was handed over to the US military and
flown to Bagram Air Base.
Amnesty International reports that Abassin was held in handcuffs and
shackles, kept under 24-hour lighting and constantly woken by guards
when he attempted to sleep during the first week. He was interrogated
six or seven times, not given enough food or allowed to talk to, or
look at, other detainees, and forced to stand or kneel for hours.
Abassin said he was blindfolded and hooded, with his ears covered, and
his hands and feet bound during his transfer to the US base in
Kandahar. He said that if detainees looked at US soldiers’ faces they
were made to kneel for an hour. If they looked twice, they were made to
kneel for two hours.
Abassin told the human rights organisation that he was interrogated
five or six times in Kandahar before being transferred to Guantanamo
Bay. On arrival he was grilled 10 or more times in the first few weeks
after his arrival and then held for another 10 months without any
interrogations before being released.
Violation of Geneva Conventions
As the AI report makes clear, the Bush administration is using the “war
on terrorism” to repudiate the US Constitution and numerous Geneva
Conventions.
The first Convention, which was inspired by Henri Dunant, founder of
the International Red Cross, was signed in 1864 to protect the sick and
wounded in wartime. Others were adopted in the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries to deal with chemical and biological warfare and
for the humane treatment of prisoners of war. The four Geneva
Conventions enacted in 1949, following WWII, underlie current
international law on the appropriate conduct of wars, including civil
wars, and the treatment of prisoners.
Now in the early days of the twenty-first century, the US government
has abandoned its democratic traditions at home and abroad and
repudiated in practice (if not in words) the international laws that
enshrine the most rudimentary principles of fairness and justice.
Although AI investigators were unable to determine how many children
are imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, they extracted a statement from Paul
Butler, US deputy assistant secretary of defence, who admitted that the
military was holding a “very small number” of detainees under the age
of 16. He claimed it was “difficult to determine the exact age for the
detainees, as birth records are not readily available”.
AI also cites General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, who “justifies” this violation of basic rights by declaring,
without any evidence, that the children were terrorists. “Despite their
age, these are very, very dangerous people,” Myers declared. “They may
be juveniles, but they’re not on a little-league team… they’re on a
major league team, and it’s a terrorist team.”
Irrespective of the precise age of the children or the allegations
against them, it is a criminal offence under international law and the
various human rights protocols to hold anyone under the age of 18 as a
war prisoner. The US is a signatory to 17 protocols adopted by the
Geneva Convention in 1949 to protect children in war zones and other
measures established under the United Nations Convention of the Rights
of the Child.
In highlighting the US government’s turn to arbitrary executive power,
the AI report quotes a former judge on the Superior Court of New
Jersey: “The very core of American history, law and culture condemns
the ideas of punishment before trial, denial of due process and secret
government by fiat. Who is an enemy combatant? Today, it can be anyone
the president wants. And that is terrifying.”
While Amnesty International provides no analysis of the political
character of the Bush administration and urges the regime to reform its
ways, the report is valuable in that it documents the extent to which
Washington is tearing up basic human rights. It calls on the US
government to drop its plans for military tribunals, to charge and
provide a fair trial to the war prisoners or release them, and to give
the human rights body access to detainees and officials at Bagram and
Guantanamo Bay.
Comment:
Who will account and bring to book the American cowboy, its a case of telling the world do as we say and not as we do. At the same time the Americans have the cheek and nerve to criticize muslims and call us terrorists, when the whole world knows that American methods put even the Nazis and Israelis to shame.