Claims of torture in Guantanamo Bay
Reporter: Ben Knight
Guantanamo detainee Mamdouh Habib (ABC)
LINDA MOTTRAM: New claims have emerged that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are being tortured by their American captors, and the claims say that Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib are among the victims.
US-based Australian lawyer, Richard Bourke, has made the allegations after working for almost two years on the cases of Camp X-Ray detainees. He says that he and his colleagues have been receiving reports of horrendous abuse of prisoners in Cuba, and in Afghanistan.
They’ve made slow progress through the American court system. Mr Bourke says he’s now prepared to take the cases to international tribunals, including the UN Standing Committee on Torture.
Ben Knight reports.
BEN KNIGHT: Two years ago, Richard Bourke was a Melbourne criminal barrister, who left for the US to defend death row inmates who couldn’t afford lawyers. Not long after he arrived there, David Hicks was arrested in Afghanistan and since then, Richard Bourke has been working on his case, as well as those of dozens of other Camp X-ray inmates.
Two weeks ago, he helped open a resource centre for other lawyers doing the same, but progress through the American courts has been slow and now, Richard Bourke says he and his colleagues will look at taking their cases to international tribunals like the International Court of Justice and the UN Standing Committee on Torture.
RICHARD BOURKE: They are torturing people. They are torturing people on Guantanamo Bay. They are subjecting them to cruel and unnecessary treatment. And people sometimes argue about the definition of torture. What they’re doing clearly comes within the definition of torture under the convention, under the international convention, but it also…they are engaging in acts which amount to torture in the medieval sense of the phrase. They are engaging in good old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages.
BEN KNIGHT: Richard Bourke says reports have been leaked by American military personnel, adding to the descriptions given by prisoners who’ve already been released.
RICHARD BOURKE: One of the detainees had described being taken out and tied to a post and having rubber bullets fired at them. They were being made to kneel cruciform in the sun until they collapsed.
The reports about the number of suicide attempts and the level of mental health of the detainees is evidence of the treatment that they’re receiving.
BEN KNIGHT: And he believes the two Australian detainees, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, have also been tortured.
RICHARD BOURKE: I, I don’t doubt that. I think the very fact that David Hicks was one of the first designated for prosecution is clear evidence that he has made confessions, presumably multiple confessions to something or other and has indicated that he is willing to take a plea.
The US tactic is to have a series of show trials in which people admit their guilt and plead guilty to vindicate the US policy amongst those early prosecutions and the fact that David Hicks was designated simply backs up what they’ve done.
BEN KNIGHT: A spokesman for the Federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, confirmed that no one has raised these allegations before. He also said that Australian officials who’ve visited Guantanamo Bay reported that the two men were in good health, and being treated humanely and that the Red Cross also has access to the prisoners.
But lawyers have still been unable to get to them and while two of Richard Bourke’s colleagues are currently applying to represent David Hicks at the military tribunal, the American courts will not allow an Australian lawyer to do the same.
Richard Bourke says it’s now time to take these cases to the international justice bodies, but he concedes it’s not going to be easy.
RICHARD BOURKE: What we really require is other governments around the world to be willing to stand up and say, we think there’s a problem here and we want it investigated. We want the UN to be investigating the reports of torture as they’re empowered to do under the torture convention.
There is enough evidence out there to justify them looking at what’s occurring and they’ve certainly looked at other situations with far less evidence. What we need is a government to sponsor that type of action.
LINDA MOTTRAM: Richard Bourke is an Australian lawyer working full time in the US on the cases of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan. He was speaking to Ben Knight.
Comment:
The US claims that they are the maintainers of human rights and people like saddam hussain are evil because they violate the rights of their citizens. But the Americans think that they are above all laws and can do as they wish to extract forced confessions. Where are the human rights organisations like Amnesty International and others who constantly accuse muslim countries of violating human rights why do they not expose the americans violations in Guantanamo bay, is it because they are a political tool in the hands of the american government?
And now having been caught napping he is giving replies as if he was sleep walking.