So far, the Obama administration has managed to close off virtually every avenue of accountability for torture by US officials. But the courts has refused to join the Obama DOJ in declaring torture of anyone anywhere anytime by US officials totally protected. In two weeks two US courts have ruled that former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld can be sued by US citizens who claim they were tortured on his orders. While not much, this does break a tiny hole into the Obama doctrine of sovereign immunity for torture. Dahlia Lithwick explains:
It’s important to understand that the court makes no judgment on Vance and Ertel’s claims. But for the purposes of Rumsfeld’s motion to dismiss, the court is legally bound to treat their claims as if they are true. That’s hugely consequential because, as Adam Serwer explained last week: “When deciding whether or not these cases are allowed to go forward, judges have to assume that the plaintiff’s version of events is ‘reasonable.’ So part of what Rumsfeld and his team have to argue is that even if the allegations were true, the law doesn’t allow Doe to sue the government for torturing him and detaining him without trial.” Rumsfeld and the Obama administration have taken precisely this position. Even if everything Vance alleges is true, he still loses. They claim, in short, that Rumsfeld should be immune from suit because it was unreasonable to have expected him to know that the abuse he authorized was unconstitutional. They also raise claims about the dangers of judicial intrusions on the executive branch’s war-making powers and—of course—about the danger of disclosing state secrets.
The full article:
Damages
An appeals court allows a suit against Donald Rumsfeld to go forward.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Last week, a federal district court judge in Washington, D.C., determined that a lawsuit filed against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by a former military translator who claimed to have been tortured by U.S. forces at Camp Cropper in Iraq could go forward despite claims from Rumsfeld and the Obama administration that he should be immune from suit. After assessing the claims of “John Doe,” Judge James S. Gwin found that American citizens don’t lose their constitutional rights simply because it’s wartime. “The court finds no convincing reason,” wrote Gwin, “that United States citizens in Iraq should or must lose previously-declared substantive due process protections during prolonged detention in a conflict zone abroad.”
On Monday, a three-judge panel from the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals came to pretty much the same conclusion. Reviewing a different lawsuit, filed by two different military contractors, alleging similar forms of abuse at the same camp, the panel determined, with one judge filing a partial dissent, that their suit against Rumsfeld could proceed.
The case of Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel reads like Catch-22, updated for an even sillier war. In a 2006 profile of Vance for the New York Times, Michael Moss laid out the story: Vance was “a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the FBI about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading. But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there [Ertel] were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.”
Vance and Ertel became suspicious about activities at Shield Group Security the Iraqi security firm that employed them—activities that included stockpiling weapons and offering liquor to U.S. soldiers in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs. When he became an informant for the FBI, he was risking his life to protect national security. Shield Group Security began to suspect Vance and Ertel and things got hairy. A military team sent in to rescue them ended up shipping them to Camp Cropper and warehoused them at Compound 5, the maximum-security unit where Saddam Hussein was held.
Overnight, Vance and Ertel went from U.S. contractors to “enemy combatants,” and both were allegedly subjected to sleep deprivation, aggressive interrogation, blindfolding, shackling, hooding, and “walling.” Both were denied access to legal counsel for their appearances before the Detainee Status Board, and neither was allowed to see the evidence against them. Writing for the majority today, Judge David Hamilton doesn’t mince words about this treatment:
After the plaintiffs were taken to Camp Cropper, they experienced a nightmarish scene in which they were detained incommunicado, in solitary confinement, and subjected to physical and psychological torture for the duration of their imprisonment—Vance for three months and Ertel for six weeks. They allege that all of the abuse they endured in those weeks was inflicted by Americans, some military officials and some civilian officials. They allege that the torture they experienced was of the kind “supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.” If the plaintiffs’ allegations are true, two young American civilians were trying to do the right thing by becoming whistleblowers to the U.S. government, but found themselves detained in prison and tortured by their own government, without notice to their families and with no sign of when the harsh physical and psychological abuse would end.
The two were never charged with any crime. Instead, in a resolution that looks ever more familiar, both were eventually dumped at the airport in Baghdad to make their own way home. They sued Rumsfeld and other “unknown defendants” for “their roles in creating and carrying out policies that caused plaintiffs’ alleged torture.” Rumsfeld moved to dismiss all claims. The district court agreed to dismiss some claims but allowed the case to proceed on others, including the claim that their treatment amounted to unconstitutional cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
It’s important to understand that the court makes no judgment on Vance and Ertel’s claims. But for the purposes of Rumsfeld’s motion to dismiss, the court is legally bound to treat their claims as if they are true. That’s hugely consequential because, as Adam Serwer explained last week: “When deciding whether or not these cases are allowed to go forward, judges have to assume that the plaintiff’s version of events is ‘reasonable.’ So part of what Rumsfeld and his team have to argue is that even if the allegations were true, the law doesn’t allow Doe to sue the government for torturing him and detaining him without trial.” Rumsfeld and the Obama administration have taken precisely this position. Even if everything Vance alleges is true, he still loses. They claim, in short, that Rumsfeld should be immune from suit because it was unreasonable to have expected him to know that the abuse he authorized was unconstitutional. They also raise claims about the dangers of judicial intrusions on the executive branch’s war-making powers and—of course—about the danger of disclosing state secrets.
It’s a pretty high standard for the plaintiffs to meet. As the court explains it, “the inquiry before us is whether the plaintiffs have pled sufficiently that defendant Secretary Rumsfeld personally established the relevant policies that authorized the unconstitutional torture they allege they suffered.” But the majority finds that Vance and Ertel did plead sufficient facts to show that Rumsfeld had personal responsibility for their mistreatment.
Turning to the question of Rumsfeld’s qualified immunity from suit, the majority finds that “plaintiffs have articulated facts that, if true, would show the violation of a clearly established constitutional right.” Judge Hamilton reminds us that the questions about the legality of torture are not really “questions” at all, asking: “On what conceivable basis could a U.S. public official possibly conclude that it was constitutional to torture U.S. citizens?” He then quotes 18 USC, Section 2340A (the statute criminalizing overseas torture); the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and Siderman de Blake v. Republic of Argentina (a 9th Circuit decision finding that “it would be unthinkable to conclude other than that acts of official torture violate customary international law”). Hamilton writes that “The wrongdoing alleged here violates the most basic terms of the constitutional compact between our government and the citizens of this country. … There can be no doubt that the deliberate infliction of such treatment on U.S. citizens, even in a war zone, is unconstitutional.”
The majority addresses and dismisses the national-security and state-secrets claims. It’s clear that for the majority, the fact that the victims here were American citizens abroad makes an enormous difference to the outcome of the case. When reached for comment today, Michael Kanovitz, who represents Vance and Ertel, reiterated that critical fact: “This court was faced with a choice between protecting the most fundamental rights of American citizens in the difficult context of a war or leaving those rights solely in the hands of politicians and the military. The court sided with the rights of the citizens. It was not an easy choice for the court to make, but it was the brave and right choice.”
That it was a brave and right choice may not be enough to rescue this case if and when it ever comes to a trial. (The case may still be appealed to the full Seventh Circuit or to the Supreme Court.) It will be a challenge for the plaintiffs to show what they say they can prove. But the case, even as it stands today, should suffice to remind the rest of us that this isn’t a case about foreigners at Guantanamo but a case about a Navy veteran caught up in a series of errors in the field. This case isn’t about the rights of an enemy soldier detained on a battlefield with a weapon in his hand. It’s about the rights of brave whistle-blowers who were tortured by bureaucratic mistake.
If you don’t believe the war on terror is migrating into your backyard, this case is confirmation. If you don’t think the state-secrets doctrine will be trotted out to protect the government’s abuse of innocent Americans as well as foreign prisoners, this case proves it. If you worry that “turning the page” means always finding more of the same, this case makes that plain. A country in which nobody is ever really responsible is a country in which nobody is ever truly safe.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor. Follow her on Twitter.
August 9th, 2011
In a recent article at hi new blog on Firedoglake, Jeffrey Kaye writes of the Australian prosecutor’s attempts to seize the proceeds from released Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks’ book:
Aussie Prosecutors’ Vendetta Targets Ex-Guantanamo Detainee’s Book Proceeds
By Jeff Kaye
Australian news sources have announced that the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) have initiated legal actions to seize the royalties former Guantanamo detainee David Hicks has earned from the publication of his autobiography, Guantanamo: My Journey. The book was published last year by Random House Australia, and has reportedly sold upwards of 30,000 copies. No U.S. publisher has bought rights to the book, and it remains unavailable through U.S. booksellers.
Terry Hicks, David’s father, called the move “absolutely disgusting,” and according to my sources, the Hicks family is said to be “devastated.”
According to a report by The Australian, under Australia’s Commonwealth Proceeds of Crime Act “a person cannot profit from proceeds derived from the commercial exploitation of their criminal notoriety arising from a foreign indictable offence.” The “offense” in this case is Hicks’ guilty plea before the spurious U.S. military commissions to supposedly “providing material support to terrorism.”
But as Australian barrister Ben Saul, who has advised Hicks in various matters, noted last February, responding to earlier propaganda beseeching the Australian government to confiscate Hicks’ book earnings:
Yet, it is almost certain that such offence did not exist in law at the time of Hicks’ conduct. As a result, his conviction is retrospective and contrary to international law. The conviction for that bogus offence also resulted from a procedurally unfair trial, and probably torture.
Saul also commented in the same article on the irony that calls have gone out to confiscate any profits David Hicks might receive from his book, while former Australian Prime Minister John Howard is free to profit from his own memoir, recently published, Lazarus Rising. Howard, Saul notes “has evaded comparable scrutiny, principally because his suspected crime – the illegal, aggressive invasion of Iraq – is not covered by Australia’s proceeds of crime laws.”
Indeed, not only was Howard guilty of using his executive powers to commit Australian forces to the U.S.-organized 2003 invasion of Iraq, he was also heavily involved in decisions made around the incarceration of Hicks himself, as the former Guantanamo detainee and torture victim describes in his book (which again, I stress, is unavailable through routine retail outlets in the United States). It was only through the intervention of Dick Cheney, and his hand-picked military commissions Convening Authority Susan Crawford, on behalf of U.S. authorities desperate at the time to conclude at least one of their military commissions prosecutions, that a plea deal was ever struck.
Interestingly, the plea deal allowed an Alford plea, which meant Hicks could plea guilty to the single “material support” charge, while never formally agreeing to admit to guilt in his actions. In his book, Hicks clearly states that he pleaded guilty in order to get out of Guantanamo, and that up to that time, he had been in fact considering suicide.
Susan Crawford, after negotiating with my lawyers and saying no to serving less time, agreed to allow me to enter an Alford Plea if I chose, as an incentive to cooperate. Under this US legislation, a person can plead guilty without admitting to the act they are accused of. In other words, contrary to media reports, I did not ‘admit’ or ‘confess’ to providing material support to terrorism; I pleaded guilty without accepting guilt to the charge so I could return home. To plead guilty was really saying that the system was unfair and I could never win, not that I ever provided support to a terrorist organisation.
I had two choices: take the Alford Plea and face all ramifications and consequences that would follow, or return to my cell, resign myself to hopelessness and follow through with my suicide plan.
The plea bargain also included other onerous conditions, including a one-year gag order, an agreement he would assign all monies from his story to the Australian government, a statement that he was not coerced into accepting the plea bargain, and an agreement to cooperate with U.S. and Australian security officials for the rest of his life, among other ridiculous stipulations.
It is difficult to know why the CDPP has decided now to officially go after Hicks’ royalties. One wonders if it had anything to do with the warm reception and ovation he received when he spoke to “a packed audience of 1000 people at the Sydney Writers’ Festival” last May. At the same event, Hicks “also warned that Julian Assange could face a similar abandonment by the Australian government, if the US government get their hands on him.”
Certainly the Australian government has not taken kindly to the fact that David has chosen not to remain silent about the abuses he endured, or the criminal activities that took place at Guantanamo. Last year, he submitted an affidavit (PDF) to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, detailing numerous breaches of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights relevant to his case.
One of the items concerns the charges of “material support”:
In 2007, a United States (US) military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, convicted Mr Hicks of the offence of ‘providing material support for terrorism’ under section 950v(25) of the Military Commission Act 2006 (USA) (‘MCA’) (Annexure C). That offence was unknown to international law or US domestic law at the time of Mr Hicks’ alleged conduct and Mr Hicks was thus subject to retroactive criminal punishment, contrary to article 15 of the ICCPR. By entering into a Prisoner Transfer Arrangement (Annexure Q) with the US, to enforce Mr Hicks’ sentence of imprisonment in an Australian prison, and by enacting related domestic legislation, Australia assumed direct responsibility for the unlawful, retrospective criminal punishment of Mr Hicks. Such conduct was not justifiable and reasonable alternatives to it were available in order to achieve the humanitarian purpose of securing Mr Hicks’ release from Guantanamo Bay.
Nevertheless, according to The Australian article, University of New South Wales law professor George Williams thought the CDPP had “a strong case.” “But that is subject to a court giving weight and recognizing the validity of Hicks’s plea and the conviction. This may well be an opportunity for David Hicks to open up questions about those matters,” Professor Williams said.
Torture and Medical Experimentation
Why would a man plead guilty to something to which he was innocent? Why was such a plea — or suicide — preferable to continued detention in the U.S. Cuban island prison?
As David Hicks outlined in his book, he was subjected to numerous kinds of torture, in addition to probable medical experiments. Last February, investigative journalist Jason Leopold published at Truthout the first in-depth interview with Hicks. In his introduction, Leopold summarized the torture Hicks endured at the hands of Guantanamo authorities:
Hicks was brutally tortured. Psychologically and physically for four years, maybe longer. He was injected in the back of his neck with unknown drugs. He was sodomized with a foreign object. He spent nearly a year in solitary confinement. He was beaten once for ten hours. He was threatened with death. He was placed in painful stress positions. He was subjected to sleep deprivation. He was exposed to extremely cold temperatures, loud music and strobe lights designed to disorient his senses. He was interrogated on a near daily basis.
In Guantanamo: My Journey, Hicks described one of the medical experiments:
I was given an injection. Within an hour or so I couldn’t help but huddle in a corner of the cage. Physically, I felt comfortable, even though it was an odd thing for me to do. In the back of my mind I knew it was strange, but as long as I stayed in that corner I had no real thoughts at all. When I tried to move from that position, whether to eat or go to the toilet, I became extremely agitated and nervous. I would quickly resume my huddled position. Getting the slight shakes was another side effect of this medication. Some time on the second day I began to feel normal again and came out of the corner. I knew I had acted unusually but, because most of that period was a blank in my mind, I could not decide if the injection was responsible. I think it was the day after, when I began to feel normal again, that I was given another injection. I was scared and pleaded for them not to, but I was threatened with an IRFing if I did not cooperate. [The Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) was a riot squad mobilized to brutalize Guantanamo inmates.] A majority of detainees were being IRFed by then for refusing medication, so I just surrendered my arm, thinking that the needle might snap off in my shoulder if they jabbed me during a beating. I was quickly aware of the results. I went straight to the corner again and curled up but, unlike last time, I was under no illusions about what was happening or why. I tried to fight this chemical reaction but was powerless. My mind was clear and alert, and I could identify my behaviour as abnormal, but my body would not listen to my mind. I had no control and remained in the corner, despite wanting to move. This time around the experience was very distressing. All I could do was wait for the effects of the medication to wear off a full day later.
Once again it was the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] that saved us. This period of forced injections and pills coincided with another visit from the only group of people on that island who did not wish us harm: the ICRC. Before I was given a third injection, MPs came and escorted me to an interrogation building, where I had a private interview with an ICRC employee. I pleaded with him to do something about these medical experiments. He told me that nearly every detainee he had seen so far had reported the same program and its effects. Almost instantly after that interview the injections and tablets were stopped, and I did not have to endure another injection. Instead of nearly daily doses, it went back to the normal – at least one injection every two months, including having blood samples taken.
In the United States, outrageously there has been next to no interest in pursuing charges of medical experimentation upon detainees held by the United States. Similar stories of such experiments have been given by a number of released detainees. Additionally, Jason Leopold and I have published a number of articles about the abusive administration of an unprecedented mass administration of a controversial antimalarial drug, melfoquine, known for serious neuropsychiatric effects, on all Guantanamo detainees as part of their initial in-processing. (See here, here, and here.)
A FOIA of an Inspector General report on drugging of detainees has been in process for this reporter for nearly a year, with such delay belying claims of “transparency” and prompt Freedom of Information response by the Obama Administration.
Clearly, the attempts to seize royalties from David Hicks is part of an attempt to impugn his work, and to punish or isolate him for truth-telling. Such bullying can only be stopped by international and Australian protest.
Update: The Justice Campaign, an Australian human rights, anti-torture organization formed largely to help publicize the David Hicks case has released a statement on the CDPP legal actions.
The Justice Campaign (TJC) is appalled at the news that the Australian Government has moved to recover the proceeds of David Hicks’ book, Guantanamo: My Journey.
TJC patron, the Hon. John Dowd said today “David Hicks has not been convicted of a crime in Australia. He has not been convicted of an offence under US law. There is no basis for removing any profits from the sale of his book.” Justice Dowd said.
“The Military Commissions Charges were invalid under US law and he was coerced.”
TJC spokesperson, Stephen Kenny said today “this is a blatant move to shift the focus of the Australian government’s responsibility to thoroughly and openly investigate torture allegations….
The Justice Campaign remains committed in calling for an investigation into David’s credible allegations of torture and the political interference in his eventual plea deal.
(Note: differences in spelling of some words, i.e. between U.S. and Australian spellings, has been left intact in this article, when Australian spellings were included in quoted material.)
July 22nd, 2011
Those of us who opposed the Bush administration torture program have been demoralized by the lack of accountability for the numerous abuses committed as part of that program. President Obama decried torture, and said he would end it, but he also said he wanted to “look forward, not back,” apparently precluding investigations of the abuses committed by the previous administration.
The Obama administration has not merely refused to initiate criminal investigations of those who approved and ordered the Bush-Cheney torture program. They have declined even to support a Commission of Inquiry to explore what happened in a non-judicial forum. Further, the administration used every legal tool available – including spurious arguments about national security in US courts and diplomatic pressure on foreign governments – to stymie efforts at accountability through ethics complaints, domestic civil trials, and foreign criminal cases for the crimes committed by predecessors.
Over the last few years, as one avenue of accountability after another was closed, it looked as if the torture program would be protected as carefully by the Obama administration as it was by the Bush administration. The result, many feared, was that torture would remain an available tool of the state, to be dragged out by future administrations who could cite the lack of accountability for Bush torture by a Democratic administration as evidence of a bipartisan consensus that torture really isn’t that bad. Many human rights experts have argued that future courts, too, could view the current lack of accountability as a legal precedent, potentially further shielding future torturers.
The one avenue for accountability that wasn’t closed by the Obama administration was the investigation by Department of Justice prosecutor John Durham. Durham, readers may recall, was the Federal prosecutor originally tasked to investigate the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes in apparent violation of a court order. In 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder expanded Durham’s mandate to include investigating incidents of detainee treatment that went beyond even those actions approved under the so-called “torture memos” of the Bush Justice Department.
Durham’s expanded investigation has dragged on for two years with little visibility, except for his declaration in January that he would not indict anyone for the destruction of the interrogation videotapes. Many in the human rights community took the lack of indictments in the tapes case as an indication that Durham would ultimately decline to prosecute anyone, thus closing yet another avenue for possible accountability.
The pro-torture party of former Bush officials and right-wing pundits who defended the “enhanced interrogation” torture program at every opportunity did not appear as convinced as human rights advocates that Durham’s investigation would ultimately turn into a paper tiger. In the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid, they repeatedly harped on two issues. First, they vociferously claimed, using patently absurd arguments, that Bin Laden’s death showed that torture “worked.” Second, they frantically demanded that Durham’s investigation be called off.
It now appears that the pro-torture party may have recognized the implications of Durham’s investigation better than did most human rights advocates. On Monday, Adam Zagorin reported in TIME that Durham was in the process of actively investigating the murder of Manadel al-Jamadi, the Iraqi general whose frozen, brutally abused body appeared in the Abu Ghraib photographs. While al-Jamadi’s death had earlier been ruled a homicide, the Justice Department had taken no action. But Zagorin reports that Durham is now presenting evidence to a grand jury on the Jamadi case. And he apparently has his eyes on a possible perpetrator:
Perhaps most important, according to someone familiar with the investigation, Durham and FBI agents have said the probe’s focus involves “a specific civilian person.” Durham didn’t name names, but those close to the case believe that person is Mark Swanner, a non-covert CIA interrogator and polygraph expert who questioned al-Jamadi immediately before his death.
Also important is that Zagorin has a copy of a subpoena from the investigation that suggests that Durham may be looking beyond al-Jamadi:
TIME has obtained a copy of a subpoena signed by Durham that points to his grand jury’s broader mandate, which could involve charging additional CIA officers and contract employees in other cases. The subpoena says “the grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes (18 USC/2441), Torture (18 USC 243OA) and related federal offenses.”
Thus, this investigation may be the beginning of a broader investigation of “CIA officers and contract employees.” One wonders if the CIA’s torture psychologist contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen may be among Durham’s targets. This seems plausible since — based on later torture memos — their waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” tactics went, well beyond those authorized at the time in their intensity and longevity, providing potential liability under Durham’s mandate.
If Mitchell and Jessen are indeed targets, that could well explain the near panic of the torture defenders when they refer to the Durham investigation. These former officials and their apologists may be worried that an investigation into the actions of Mitchell and Jessen will go higher up the chain of command. Reportedly, everything done in the secret CIA prisons was approved in Washington, sometimes even in the White House. And, as Watergate demonstrated, investigations, once started, can sometimes climb the command chain to the very top.
There are no certainties in human rights work. But this latest news about Durham’s investigation is a rare bright spot in an otherwise bleak picture of continued abuses and absent accountability. It now appears possible that we might have some torture accountability after all.
June 13th, 2011
Among the many horrors of Guantanamo is that many children were among those imprisoned there for years, often on flimsy or nonexistent evidence. Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project has been trying to determine exactly how many children were among the 700+ prisoners at the island prison at one time or another. Using the recently released Wikileaked Detainee Assessment Briefs and other documents, Ojeda has now shown that at least 15 children were there, a number double that given by the US to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Meanwhile, Andy Worthington claims that the number of imprisoned children was at least 22:
Guantánamo’s Children: The Wikileaked Testimonies
By Almerindo E. Ojeda
A couple of months ago, the transparency organization Wikileaks began to release Detainee Assessment Briefs and other classified documents for all 779 Guantánamo prisoners.
As a consequence of these wikileaked releases, military documents now in the public domain acknowledge that fifteen children were imprisoned, at some time or another, at Guantánamo.
This would be three more than the twelve the State Departmentacknowledged to the public after the earlier report on the subject put out by the Guantánamo Testimonials Project, and seven more than the eight the State Department reported to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
In other words, wikileaked documents indicate that the number of children that have been imprisoned at Guantanamo is one-and-a-quarter times what the State Department has admitted to the public and almost twice as many as it reported to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
These and other findings are contained in a new report I authored and released earlier this month within our Guantánamo Testimonials Project. The Project aims to gather testimonies of prisoner abuse at the Cuban base, to organize them in meaningful ways, to make them widely available online, and to preserve them there in perpetuity.
The terrorist attacks of September 11 were an unspeakable crime against humanity. Unfortunately, what these attacks unleashed was the full scale military invasion and occupation of a severely impoverished country followed by the worldwide implementation of a set of policies and practices of detention – such as at Guantanamo — that have led to a profound betrayal of the values on which our nation was built. They have also undermined the security of our nation both at home and abroad.
Abuses we’ve recorded at UC Davis include: international alliances with criminal armed groups; human trafficking; civilian arrests without warrants; denial of the writ of habeas corpus; secret detention; life-threatening, open-air, holding pens; medical neglect; interference of interrogation on medical treatment; fatal, disabling, and disfiguring beatings; hanging by the wrists; threats of death or bodily harm; mauling by military dogs; torture by proxy (extraordinary rendition); controlled drowning (waterboarding); sensory deprivation; sensory assault; forced nudity; temperature and dietary manipulation; sleep deprivation; disorientation in space and time; positional torture (stress positions and prolonged standing); binding torture (tight shackling or cuffing); solitary confinement; indefinite detention; severe humiliation; sexual assaults; assaults with excreta; forced feeding; interference with religious practices; verbal abuse, and the exploitation of cultural idiosyncracies and personal phobias.
These policies and practices are outrages upon human dignity, and aresubject to criminal prosecution under both national and international law.
The Guantánamo Testimonials Project has called for a full, independent, and transparent inquiry into the policies and practices of detention enacted by the US government since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Such an inquiry is the essential first step of a four-part process involving truth,accountability, reform, and reconciliation.
Truth is the foundation of all else. Without it, accountability is abusive, reform is blind, and reconciliation is hollow. Accountability and reform are preconditions for reconciliation as well. Without them, the victims have no reason to believe that the crimes will not be revisited, upon them or upon others, in the future. Consequently, they will continue to be on guard. Worse yet, they may feel that the period of abuse has not really ended, and they will not be delivered from the temptation to retaliate.
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Almerindo E. Ojeda is the founding director of the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas and the Principal Investigator for its flagship Guantánamo Testimonials Project.
June 11th, 2011
A bill in New York would ban health professionals involvement in torture. It is a sad comment that such a bill is needed. The state medical association is opposed. In contrast, the state psychological association supports it. We are pushing a similar bill in Massachusetts, as are psychologists in other states. Here is an article from the AMA newsletter:
Medical board could discipline physicians for torture under N.Y. bill
The unique proposal would give the state board the authority to punish doctors and others who take part in, or conceal evidence of, torture
By Kevin O’Reilly
A New York bill that is the first of its kind in the nation would make participation in torture or interrogation of prisoners grounds for board discipline of physicians and other health professionals.
Dozens of medical students and other health professionals in training lobbied in favor of the legislation in late May, meeting with nearly 40 New York state legislators, said Allen Keller, MD. He helped organize the lobbying trip and directs the Bellevue Hospital Center/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture in New York City.
The bill, which was introduced in March by Democratic Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried and has 39 co-sponsors, would give the state medical board and other health professional licensing boards the explicit authority to suspend or revoke practice rights based on evidence presented in accordance with the state’s usual due-process procedures (assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0At&bn=A05891&term=&Summary=Y).
Under the bill, physicians and other health professionals would be barred from directly participating in torture, treating patients with the intent of determining when torture could continue, concealing medical evidence of torture or taking part in individual interrogations. Health professionals could generally advise interrogators on rapport building or other nonabusive techniques.
The bill is needed to give medical licensing boards clear authority to discipline doctors and others for participating in torture, supporters say. In 2007, a complaint was brought against one psychologist alleged to have participated in abusive interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, but the New York state body that licenses psychologists said it did not have jurisdiction to investigate the matter.
“We want to clarify that this is, indeed, grounds for discipline and also to achieve a preventive effect,” said Dr. Keller, associate professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine. “It’s easier for individuals to torture than we’d like to think, because of hierarchies and environments that allow it. We believe this legislation would help physicians who are put in an untenable position to say, ‘I can’t do this; I’d lose my license.’ ”
A state matter?
The American Medical Association and the Medical Society of the State of New York have policy opposing physician participation in torture or direct participation in interrogations. But the MSSNY said the matter is best handled at the federal level, noting that torture is already criminal under federal law. In a June 2 letter to the New York State Assembly, MSSNY Senior Vice President and Chief Legislative Counsel Gerard Conway noted other concerns.
“The bill provides no practical recourse for physicians who are intimidated by military superiors into withholding reports of torture,” Conway wrote. “There are inherent challenges and barriers to evidentiary discovery for accusations of torture in the military and prisons. Physicians may be poorly positioned to defend themselves since, ostensibly, many of these incidents would occur overseas. Physicians would have to overcome claims of national security and national defense and would have to operate in domains in which civil authority will be limited.”
In response, Dr. Keller said that, with regard to accessing classified documentary evidence, physicians would be on a level playing field with anyone bringing a complaint. If the evidence were classified, then neither the medical board nor the physician would have it to use in a proceeding. On the other hand, if national-security documents were brought into evidence, then both the physician and the board would have equal access to them.
And, he said, it is appropriate for state medical boards to act because they are the bodies charged with regulating physician practice.
“Health professionals — whether they practice in their state or in the Army or wherever — they do so because they have a license that is issued not by the federal government or the Army but by a state,” Dr. Keller said.
The New York legislative session is scheduled to end June 20. Advocates are pushing to have similar legislation proposed in other states.
June 10th, 2011
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy has released the following press release announcing a statement opposing US support for the Bahrain government, currently brutally suppressing its own population with the aid of foreign troops. The statement was signed by Psychologists for Social Responsibility, which is acknowledged in the press release, along with 1,200 individuals, including hundreds of Bahrainis who signed at great personal risk.
If you would like to sign or donate to help publicize the statement, please do so now at the CPD website.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 24, 2011
Contact: Joanne Landy cpd@igc.org
HUNDREDS OF BAHRAINIS JOIN
U.S. CAMPAIGN AGAINST U.S. SUPPORT
FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF BAHRAIN
NEW YORK, N.Y., May 24 2011 – In a response that surprised U.S. organizers of a campaign calling on the United States government to repudiate its partnership with the Al Khalifa regime in Bahrain, hundreds of people from Bahrain joined in signing the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s launching statement “End U.S. Support for Bahrain’s Repressive Government.”
“The statement was originally circulated for signatures in the United States, but we have been deeply moved by the fact that hundreds of Bahrainis have added their names,” said Joanne Landy, CPD Co-Director. “Given the violent government crackdown in Bahrain, the very act of signing is incredibly courageous. Bahraini signers have implored us to pressure the Obama administration to decisively repudiate its support of their brutal and authoritarian government.”
On May 16, the New York-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) began circulating its statement, which has thus far gathered more than 1200 signatures including those of Ed Asner, Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Martin Duberman, Daniel Ellsberg, Mike Farrell, Chris Hedges, Adam Hochschild, Jan Kavan, Kathy Kelly, Dave Marsh, Frances Fox Piven, Katha Pollitt, Alix Kates Shulman and Cornel West. The statement is below and on the CPD website. Signatures are still being accepted. The statement will be sent to President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and key members of Congress, as well as to domestic and international media.
In the United States, Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) gave organizational endorsement to the statement. Stephen Soldz, PsySR president, stated, “We cannot be silent. Many of our members are health providers. The government of Bahrain has arrested nearly 50 doctors and other health providers, many of whom have been tortured. Their ‘crime’ is refusing to let injured protesters die and informing the world press about the abuses they witnessed.” [See the report by Physicians for Human Rights.]
In the face of mounting complaints against Washington for muting its criticisms of repression in Bahrain, President Obama did say in his May 19 speech on the Middle East, “…we have insisted both publicly and privately that mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens. The only way forward is for the government and oppositi on to engage in a dialogue, and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.” However, in the same speech Obama referred to Bahrain as a “friend” and “partner” of the U.S., thus signaling that the massive human rights violations in that country would not stand in the way of continuing U.S. support for the regime or the continuing presence of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, a naval force supporting an interventionist foreign policy.
In words reminiscent of the Administration’s disgracefully neutral stand on the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt up until the last moment, when the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes were clearly no longer sustainable, President Obama has called on both the government and the opposition in Bahrain to “engage in dialogue.” What is needed now, however, is not episodic toothless reprimands to Bahrain’s government or pressure on the opposition to engage in dialogue with the regime, but a clear U.S. break with the Al Khalifa government. This would involve:
- An unambiguous statement from Washington that because of the atrocious government repression, Bahrain is not a “partner” or “friend” of the U.S.
- An immediate end to all U.S. aid to Bahrain
- Vigorous condemnation of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for sending in forces at the request of Bahrain’s government to back up the repression
CPD has launched this campaign in order to build pressure on Washington to stop propping up the Al Khalifa government. The brave people of Bahrain deserve no less.
THE TEXT OF THE CPD STATEMENT FOLLOWS:
End U.S. Support for Bahrain’s Repressive Government
Statement by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy
May 16, 2011
(Add your name, donate or share at http://www.cpdweb.org/stmts/1019/stmt.shtml )
On Feb. 13, 2011, inspired by the forced resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, peaceful democratic protests erupted in Bahrain. Protests grew and, in response, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa invited other Gulf states to send security forces into the country to assist in violently suppressing the demonstrators. The March 15 invasion by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates brought an intensification of torture, secret trials, demolition of Shia mosques, and repression against human rights activists, journalists, labor, lawyers, medical professionals, students, political figures, and others. On March 18 the regime destroyed the Pearl Monume nt that had served as the protest center.
Like many other autocracies in the region Bahrain has been a key U.S. partner. It has provided a home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, responsible for naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and the coast of East Africa as far south as Kenya. This is why Washington’s response to the vicious repression in Bahrain has been so muted and pro-forma, in contrast to forceful denunciations of repression in countries outside the U.S. orbit, such as Iran and Libya.
Richard Sollom from Physicians for Human Rights says health care workers in Bahrain have been targeted on a scale he has never encountered. Government forces have invaded hospitals; doctors have been dragged out of the operating room, abducted and detained for giving care to wounded protestors. The government says it will try 47 medical workers it accuses, incredibly, of causing the deaths of protesters by inflicting additional wounds on them.
Hundreds of workers, including union leaders, have been fired for striking for democratic change. Security forces closed down the General Bahraini Federation of Trade Unions headquarters. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights writes, “Bahrain is currently considered a dangerous zone for the freedom of press and journalists.” On April 3 the government suspended the country’s only independent newspaper, Al Wasat. On May 2 it arrested two politicians belonging to the opposition Al Wefaq party.
Bahrain’s population is 60 percent or more Shia, with the government dominat ed by a Sunni minority. There is systematic discrimination against the Shiite majority in political representation, employment, wages, housing, and other benefits. The government has tried to split the opposition along Shia-Sunni lines, but uprising leaders insist their struggle for democratic rights is non-sectarian.
Zainab Alkhawaja wrote to President Obama after her father, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, former head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was beaten unconscious in front of his family and arrested by masked men: “if anything happens to my father, my husband, my uncle, my brother-in-law, or to me, I hold you just as responsible as the Al Khalifa regime. Your support for this monarchy makes your government a partner in crime. I still have hope that you will realize that freedom and human rights mean as much to a Bahraini person as it does to an American, Syrian or a Libyan and that regional and political considerations should not be prioritized over liberty and human rights.”
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the International Crisis Group and many others have exhaustively documented the brutal terror of Bahrain’s government. No further evidence is needed. As long as the repression continues, the promise to lift the state of emergency is only an empty public relations gesture. The United States should end all aid to Bahrain, condemn the invasion by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and sharply denounceBahrain’s horrific suppression of democratic rights.
As the Arab Spring has swept through North Africa and the Middle East, the role of the United States has been truly shameful.Washington’s rhetoric cannot conceal a deep fear of democracy. Its first instinct was to stand behind its old friends. Only when it became obvious that Ben Ali’s and Mubarak’s days were numbered were they abandoned. As for Saudi Arabia, this ultra-reactionary monarchy, with its appalling treatment of women and religious minorities,is almost never criticized by U.S. officials.
There are those who, while deploring repression in Bahrain, justify continuing U.S. support for that country’s brutal tyranny as “realism”; in a dangerous world, they argue, our security depends on having a Middle Eastern state willing to host the Fifth Fleet. This argument is profoundly mistaken. Interventionist naval forces are part of a foreign policy that, by siding with despots and pitting the United States against the Arab people’s longing for responsible government and a better way of life, guarantees endless terrorism and bloodshed and an even more dangerous world for everyone. For good reason, democratic movements around the world today do not trust the United States, which they see as motivated by imperial interest. That is why the U.S. desperately needs a new foreign policy, one that welcomes democratic forces — not hypocritically, in order to manipulate them and blunt their impact, but to stand in solidarity with their struggles to win political power for the people and achieve social and economic justice.
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THE CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY advocates a new, progressive and non-militaristic U.S. foreign policy — one that encourages democratization, justice and social change. The Campaign sees movements for peace, social justice and democratic rights, taken together, as the embryo of an alternative to great power politics and to the domination of society by privileged elites. Founded in 1982, the Campaign opposed the Cold War by promoting “detente from below.” It engaged Western peace activists in the defense of the rights of democratic dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and enlisted East-bloc human rights activists against anti-democratic U.S. policies in countries like Nicaragua and Chile.
Recent CPD campaigns include: support for the democratic revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya; New York Review of Books letter to Iranian officials in defense of human rights leader Shirin Ebadi and a statement “End the War Threats and Sanctions Program Against Iran, Support the Struggle for Democracy Inside Iran.” Additional CPD statements have been Opposition to the U.S. Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and on Gaza, “No More Blank Check for Israel!”
Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Co-Directors Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison, 2790 Broadway, #12, NY, NY 10025. Email: cpd@igc.org Web: www.cpdweb.org
May 24th, 2011
