Terminating Torture

Reed Brody is special counsel with
Human Rights Watch in New York.

We must all—like President George W. Bush—share a "deep
disgust" at the pictures of U.S. military personnel
subjecting Iraqi detainees to humiliating treatment.
The problem, however, is that this does not appear to
be an isolated incident.

Across the world, the United States is holding
detainees in offshore and foreign prisons where
allegations of mistreatment cannot be monitored. It has
also been accused of sending terror suspects to
countries where information has been beaten out of
them.

The classic case, of course, has been Guantanamo, Cuba,
which the Bush administration deliberately chose as a
detention facility for more than 700 detainees from 44
countries in an attempt to put them beyond the reach of
the U.S. courts—and of any courts, for that matter. The
U.S. government has argued that U.S. courts would not
have jurisdiction over these detainees, even if they
were being tortured or summarily executed.

But Guantanamo may not be the worst problem; indeed, it
may even be a diversion from more extreme situations.
Perhaps out of concern that Guantanamo will eventually
be monitored by the U.S. courts, the Bush
administration does not hold its most sensitive and
high-profile detainees there. Terrorism suspects like
Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are
detained instead in undisclosed locations outside the
United States, with no access to Red Cross or other
visits.

In Iraq, we now have pictures of American soldiers
degrading captives. The brazenness with which the
soldiers conducted themselves, snapping photographs and
flashing the "thumbs-up" sign as they abused prisoners,
suggests they felt they had nothing to hide from their
superiors. Indeed, there are now reports that their
higher-ups in military intelligence urged such behavior
to create better conditions for interrogation.

This is all the more disturbing because the United
States has failed to provide clear information on its
treatment of 10,000 civilians held in Iraq—and has
provided no information at all for at least 200
so-called "high-security detainees."

In Afghanistan, the United States is also holding
civilians in a legal black hole at a number of
off-limits detention facilities—with no tribunals, no
legal counsel and no family visits.

Human Rights Watch has presented compelling evidence
that there, too, U.S. personnel have committed inhumane
and degrading acts against detainees. Released
detainees have said that U.S. forces severely beat
them, doused them with cold water and subjected them to
freezing temperatures. Three people have died in U.S.
custody there, and two of the deaths were ruled
homicides by U.S. military doctors who performed
autopsies. The Department of Defense has yet to explain
adequately the circumstances of any of these deaths.

And then there are the so-called "renditions" of
suspects to countries where they are tortured. In one
case, Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian in transit
from a family vacation through John F. Kennedy airport
in New York, was detained by U.S officials and sent,
against his wishes, to Syria—a country where torture is
systematic. There, Arar was interrogated and, he
alleges, tortured repeatedly during a 10-month
confinement in an underground dungeon before returning
to Canada.

The Bush administration still has not answered charges
leveled in The Washington Post which, citing numerous
unnamed U.S. officials, described the rendition of
captured Al Qaeda suspects from U.S. custody to other
countries—such as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia and Morocco—where they were tortured or
mistreated. These countries, like Syria, are ones where
the United States itself has criticized the practice of
torture.

The sordid photos from Iraq and reports that the
behavior was actually encouraged confirm that
systematic changes in the U.S. treatment of prisoners
are needed immediately. The United States must finally
investigate and publicly report on allegations of abuse
by its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as
persistent accounts that suspects sent to other
countries have been tortured.

>From Guantanamo to Iraq and Afghanistan, the United
States must also ensure that people taken into custody
are fairly treated in accordance with international
legal standards, such as the Geneva conventions. In
particular, it must stop holding detainees in legal
"black holes" where conduct cannot be monitored.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10334/view/print

Editor’s Note: This piece originally appered in the
International Herald Tribune on May 3, 2004.