Psyche, Science, and Society

Senate Armed Services Committee on importing SERE techniques to Iraq

Yesterday the Senate Armed Services Committee [SASC], or rather, its Chair, Senator Carl Levin [no other members deigned to come to the hearing on US war crimes] held a hearing on the export of SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] tactics to Iraq, leading, eventually, to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.

At the hearing they heard from Col. Steven Kleinman, an interrogator and former JPRA official [Joint Personnel Recovery Administration, the SERE parent agency] and Col. John Moulton, former JPRA Commander. They testified about Col. Kleinman’s mission to Iraq, in which he was asked to demonstrate SERE techniques. He witnessed abusive interrogations and stopped them. He was then sent back home. Col. Kleinman is one of the heros of this sordid episode.

Documents released at the hearing also contained a questionaire ansered by Secretary of State, and foemer National Security Adviser, Condoleeza Rice in which she admitted being briefed on SERE methods in the White House. She claims to have been  “that these techniques had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm.” In fact, as was clarified by th hief SERE psychologists at the June 17 SASC hearing, these techniques were deemed safe for use in training US troops, because of the combination of psychological screening, careful monitoring, ability of troops to stop at any time, and extensive multi-session debriefings afterwards. This psychologist did not claim or provide any evidence that these techniques were safe when used as interrogation techniques of captured detainees.

There are many other goodies revealed in these hearings that I am only beginning to understand.

The AP and Washington Post covered the hearings. I will here post the AP account. Then I will post Senator Levin’s Opening Statement separately. Here is the AP:

Interrogator details pre-Abu Ghraib abuses

By Pamela Hess

WASHINGTON — A military interrogation expert, Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, told Congress on Thursday that prior to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he witnessed interrogations of Iraqi detainees that he considers violations of the Geneva Conventions.

One interrogation was conducted by an Air Force civilian and a contractor employed by his own organization, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. It had sent a small team to Iraq in September 2003 to help a special forces task force improve its interrogations of stubborn prisoners. The team was asked to demonstrate an interrogation on an Iraqi prisoner. It was an unusual role for the organization, which trains soldiers how to resist interrogations, not conduct them.

Kleinman said his two colleagues forcibly stripped an Iraqi prisoner naked, shackled him and left him standing in a dank, six-foot cement cell with orders to the guards that the prisoner was not to move for 12 hours. Had the prisoner passed out, he would have hit his head on a wall, Kleinman said.

Kleinman stopped the interrogation, which had veered from his careful plan into abuse.

“Until their time in Iraq they had never seen a real world interrogation,” he said.

The men, Terrence Russell and Lenny Miller, had learned the harsh techniques working with the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training program for U.S. forces, which conducts stressful mock interrogations to prepare soldiers to withstand and resist abusive questioning in the event they are taken prisoner. The program uses methods derived from the real-life experiences of American prisoners of war. The techniques include forced nudity, stress positions, exposure to extremes in weather and waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.

Russell is a civilian JPRA employee involved in research and program development. Miller was a contractor who no longer works for JPRA, according to the military.

Joint Forces Command, which oversees JPRA, did not investigate Kleinman’s allegations because they were made directly to the task force in Iraq, said spokesman Capt. Dennis Moynihan.

Attempts to locate Russell and Miller independently were unsuccessful.

At the time, Kleinman called his now retired commander, Col. John Moulton II, to express concern about the harsh methods he saw being used in several interrogations. He said Moulton checked with his superiors and called him back to say the techniques had been specifically approved. Moulton later told investigators that he understood that the Pentagon’s general counsel or higher had approved the measures, and that the prisoners were considered terrorists and were not protected by the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Conventions, however, did apply in Iraq.

The Senate Armed Services Committee also released responses from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and legal counsel John Bellinger regarding their knowledge of the CIA interrogation program when Rice was the national security adviser and Bellinger was the National Security Council’s top lawyer.

She and Bellinger were also briefed on SERE interrogation methods at the White House in 2002 or 2003.

“I recall being told … that these techniques had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm,” Rice wrote.

Rice told the committee the CIA had sought NSC approval before embarking on its own harsh interrogation program in the spring of 2002. Rice said she asked then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to review its legality. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the White House on legal matters, later determined the CIA’s program to be legal.

Rice also said Bellinger advised her regularly about “concerns and issues” relating to the Pentagon’s interrogation and detention program at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. She said the Justice Department never discussed with her the FBI’s now documented concerns with interrogation practices at Guantanamo Bay and CIA detention facilities.

Bellinger said he knew the FBI refused to participate in some CIA interrogations, which included waterboarding for at least three detainees. He was also aware of allegations of abuse at Guantanamo in 2003.

Also Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee took a step closer to forcing the Justice Department to hand over secret legal memos authorizing the Bush administration to use harsh and potentially illegal interrogation techniques on detainees.

By a 10-9 vote, the committee agreed to give the chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., authority to subpoena the memos from the Office of Legal Counsel. It is now up to Leahy to decide whether to issue the subpoena, which the Justice Department likely will fight because much of the information in the memos is highly classified.

Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse did not answer a question about whether the department would comply with such a subpoena.

“We regret that the committee authorized the subpoena,” Roehrkasse said in a statement. “We will continue to work with them to ensure that their legitimate oversight needs are met.”

Add comment September 26th, 2008

Torture and the American Psyche: 33 minute video

Earlier we posted the video and audio from our May 3 forum: torture and th American Psyche. The film crew has now edited the three hour discussion down to 33 minutes. A fabulous job!

After watching the digest, go watch the entire show. I guarantee there are many more nuggets there.

Add comment July 28th, 2008

US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual leaked

Newly obtained by Wikileaks is the US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual. Here is brief report by Wikileaks investigative editor Julian Assange:

How to train death squads and quash revolutions from San Salvador to you

By Julian Assange (investigative editor)
Monday June 15, 2008

Wikileaks has obtained a sensitive US military counter-insurgency manual. The manual, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004), may be critically described as “What we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places”. Its contents are both history defining for Latin America and, given the continued role of US Special Forces in the suppression of insurgencies and guerilla movements world wide, history making.

The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine. It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations, concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it directly advocates the extensive use of “psychological operations” (propaganda) to make these and other “population & resource control” measures more palatable.

The document has been particularly informed by the long United States involvement in the El Salvador. However it is worth noting what the US Ambassador to El Salvador, Robert E. White had to say in FOIA documents obtained from the US State Department about the situation, as early as 1980:

The major, immediate threat to the existence of this government is the right-wing violence. In the city of San Salvador, the hired thugs of the extreme right, some of them well-trained Cuban and Nicaraguan terrorists, kill moderate left leaders and blow up government buildings. In the countryside, elements of the security forces torture and kill the campesinos, shoot up their houses and burn their crops. At least two hundred refugees from the countryside arrive daily in the capital city. This campaign of terror is radicalizing the rural areas just as surely as Somoza’s National Guard did in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, the command structure of the army and the security forces either tolerates or encourages this activity. These senior officers believe or pretend to believe that they are eliminating the guerillas.[1]

Selected extracts follow. Note that the manual is 219 pages long and contains substantial material throughout. These extracts should merely be considered representative. Emphasis has been added for further selectivity. The full manual can be found at US Special Forces counter-insurgency manual FM 31-20-3.

Here are a few of the quotes selected out by Wikileaks:

Most of the counterintelligence measures used will be overt in nature and aimed at protecting installations, units, and information and detecting espionage, sabotage, and subversion. Examples of counterintelligence measures to use are

• Background investigations and records checks of persons in sensitive positions and persons whose loyalty may be questionable.
• Maintenance of files on organizations, locations, and individuals of counterintelligence interest.
• Internal security inspections of installations and units.
• Control of civilian movement within government-controlled areas.
• Identification systems to minimize the chance of insurgents gaining access to installations or moving freely.
• Unannounced searches and raids on suspected meeting places.
• Censorship.

[...]

PSYOP [Psychological Operations] are essential to the success of PRC [Population & Resources Control]. For maximum effectiveness, a strong psychological operations effort is directed toward the families of the insurgents and their popular support base. The PSYOP aspect of the PRC program tries to make the imposition of control more palatable to the people by relating the necessity of controls to their safety and well-being. PSYOP efforts also try to create a favorable national or local government image and counter the effects of the insurgent propaganda effort.

Control Measures

SF [US Special Forces] can advise and assist HN [Host Nation] forces in developing and implementing control measures. Among these measures are the following:

• Security Forces. Police and other security forces use PRC [Population & Resources Control] measures to deprive the insurgent of support and to identify and locate members of his infrastructure. Appropriate PSYOP [Psychological Operations] help make these measures more acceptable to the population by explaining their need. The government informs the population that the PRC measures may cause an inconvenience but are necessary due to the actions of the insurgents.
• Restrictions. Rights on the legality of detention or imprisonment of personnel (for example, habeas corpus) may be temporarily suspended. This measure must be taken as a last resort, since it may provide the insurgents with an effective propaganda theme. PRC [Population & Resources Control] measures can also include curfews or blackouts, travel restrictions, and restricted residential areas such as protected villages or resettlement areas. Registration and pass systems and control of sensitive items (resources control) and critical supplies such as weapons, food, and fuel are other PRC measures. Checkpoints, searches, roadblocks; surveillance, censorship, and press control; and restriction of activity that applies to selected groups (labor unions, political groups and the like) are further PRC measures.

[...]

Psychological Operations

PSYOP can support the mission by discrediting the insurgent forces to neutral groups, creating dissension among the insurgents themselves, and supporting defector programs. Divisive programs create dissension, disorganization, low morale, subversion, and defection within the insurgent forces. Also important are national programs to win insurgents over to the government side with offers of amnesty and rewards. Motives for surrendering can range from personal rivalries and bitterness to disillusionment and discouragement. Pressure from the security forces has persuasive power.

[...]

Special Intelligence-Gathering Operations

Alternative intelligence-gathering techniques and sources, such as doppelganger or pseudo operations, can be tried and used when it is hard to obtain information from the civilian populace. These pseudo units are usually made up of ex-guerrilla and/or security force personnel posing as insurgents. They circulate among the civilian populace and, in some cases, infiltrate guerrilla units to gather information on guerrilla movements and its support infrastructure.

Much time and effort must be used to persuade insurgents to switch allegiance and serve with the security forces. Prospective candidates must be properly screened and then given a choice of serving with the HN [Host Nation] security forces or facing prosecution under HN law for terrorist crimes.

Government security force units and teams of varying size have been used in infiltration operations against underground and guerrilla forces. They have been especially effective in getting information on underground security and communications systems, the nature and extent of civilian support and underground liaison, underground supply methods, and possible collusion between local government officials and the underground. Before such a unit can be properly trained and disguised, however, much information about the appearance, mannerisms, and security procedures of enemy units must be gathered. Most of this information comes from defectors or reindoctrinated prisoners. Defectors also make excellent instructors and guides for an infiltrating unit. In using a disguised team, the selected men should be trained, oriented, and disguised to look and act like authentic underground or guerrilla units. In addition to acquiring valuable information, the infiltrating units can demoralize the insurgents to the extent that they become overly suspicious and distrustful of their own units.

[...]

After establishing the cordon and designating a holding area, the screening point or center is established. All civilians in the cordoned area will then pass through the screening center to be classified.

National police personnel will complete, if census data does not exist in the police files, a basic registration card and photograph all personnel over the age of 15. They print two copies of each photo- one is pasted to the registration card and the other to the village book (for possible use in later operations and to identify ralliers and informants).

The screening element leader ensures the screeners question relatives, friends, neighbors, and other knowledgeable individuals of guerrilla leaders or functionaries operating in the area on their whereabouts, activities, movements, and expected return.

The screening area must include areas where police and military intelligence personnel can privately interview selected individuals. The interrogators try to convince the interviewees that their cooperation will not be detected by the other inhabitants. They also discuss, during the interview, the availability of monetary rewards for certain types of information and equipment.

[...]

Civilian Self-Defense Forces [Paramilitaries, or, especially in an El-Salvador or Colombian civil war context, right wing "death squads"]

When a village accepts the CSDF program, the insurgents cannot choose to ignore it. To let the village go unpunished will encourage other villages to accept the government’s CSDF program. The insurgents have no choice; they have to attack the CSDF village to provide a lesson to other villages considering CSDF. In a sense, the psychological effectiveness of the CSDF concept starts by reversing the insurgent strategy of making the government the repressor. It forces the insurgents to cross a critical threshold-that of attacking and killing the very class of people they are supposed to be liberating.

To be successful, the CSDF program must have popular support from those directly involved or affected by it. The average peasant is not normally willing to fight to his death for his national government. His national government may have been a succession of corrupt dictators and inefficient bureaucrats. These governments are not the types of institutions that inspire fight-to-the-death emotions in the peasant. The village or town, however, is a different matter. The average peasant will fight much harder for his home and for his village than he ever would for his national government. The CSDF concept directly involves the peasant in the war and makes it a fight for the family and village instead of a fight for some faraway irrelevant government.

Now go read the entire manual and report on what tidbits you find.

Add comment June 16th, 2008

Torture and the American Psyche forum audio

Thanks to Dori Smith of Talk Nation Radio, our May 3 forum — Torture and the American Psyche: Blurring the Boundaries Between Healers and Interrogators — was audio-recorded. Dori has edited the material for two hald hour shows on Talk Nation Radio. That material is now available. [NOTE: The forum was also video recorded. These videos should be available soon, on YouTube or a similar site. Stay tuned.]

For those who don’t read this blof regularly, here’s the description of the speakers:

SPEAKERS:

Eric Fair currently a divinity student at Princeton will speak from his experience as a civilian contract interrogator in Baghdad, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib in early 2004. He will lend his first person account to our conversation.

Leonard Rubenstein, J.D. President of Physicians for Human Rights, a Nobel Prize winning organization, is an attorney and veteran of many human rights struggles. He will speak of the role of torture in our contemporary political culture.

David Sloan-Rossiter, Ph.D. will bring his long standing interest in using a psych oana¬lytic perspective to aid communities to the role of moderator of the program. He is co-chair of the Curriculum Committee at Boston Institute for Psychotherapy and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Stephen Soldz, Ph.D. a local psychoanalyst, social activist and Professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, is one of the nation’s leaders in opposing psycholo¬gist participation in torture and abuse. He will speak to the history of that struggle in the context of the broader struggle for human rights.

Talk Nation Radio

TNR Show I contains material from the Introduction by David Sloan-Rossiter and an interspersing of material from the talks by Leonard Rubenstein (President of Physicians for Human Rights) and myself. [See Dori's description here and download mp3 here.]

TNR Show II contains the conclusion from my talk, the talk by former Iraq interrogator Eric Fair, and some discussion, including comments by Stephen Behnke, the Ethics Director of the American Psychological Association. [See Dori's description here and download mp3 here.]

Complete Talks, unedited

The Talk Nation Radio versions are selected and cleaned up. For those who would like to listen to the complete talks, Dori has kindly made available the raw recordings.

David Sloan-Rossiter Introduction and Stephen Soldz talk here.

Leonard Rubenstein talk here.

Eric Fair talk here.

The Question & Answer session is available here.

1 comment June 2nd, 2008

More background on the Iraq fighting

The LA Times gets the story of the fighting in Iraq right. It points out that the attacks are a power grab by some corrupt Shiite factions to destroy their more popular rivals in the Mehdi Army. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that US Special Forces have joined the fighting in Basra on the side of the corrupt “government” forces, better known as the Iranian-backed Badr Organization.

With the Iraq government cracking down on Sadr fighters in Basra, the U.S. military’s own gains with the militia are at risk

By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 30, 2008

BAGHDAD — The biggest surprise about the raging battles that erupted last week in southern Iraq was not that the combatants were fellow Shiites, but that it took this long.

Enmity has long festered between the two sides: one a ruling party that has struggled against the widespread perception that it gained power on the back of the U.S. occupation, the other a populist movement that has positioned itself as a critic of the U.S.-backed new order.As they vie for power before October provincial elections that will determine who controls the oil-rich south, the stakes are high not only for the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the largest Shiite faction in the Iraqi coalition government, and the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr.

The conflict also poses great difficulties for the Americans, who are widely seen as siding with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party against Sadr.

The Iraqi government’s offensive in Basra has spelled the end to a seven-month cease-fire by Sadr’s militia in all but name.

In an ominous sign Saturday, Sadr in a rare TV interview praised armed resistance. Separately, he urged his followers to defy Maliki’s ultimatum to surrender their weapons.

Iraqi forces battling the Mahdi Army called in U.S. airstrikes Saturday in Basra, and two American soldiers were killed in a mostly Shiite area of east Baghdad.

Sadr’s cease-fire, which he imposed in August after his loyalists clashed with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council’s militia in the southern city of Karbala, was widely credited with helping calm Baghdad.

The U.S. military now risks forfeiting gains with the Sadr group, arguably the most popular Shiite political movement across Iraq. Already, U.S. officers have reported an increase in the number of attacks against them in Baghdad, where soldiers had benefited from the Mahdi Army’s tacit cooperation.

“It would be disastrous if the United States ended up as supporters on a crackdown on the Sadrists for reasons mainly to do with internal Shiite politics,” said Reidar Visser, editor of the southern Iraq-related website historiae.org.

“The fight in Basra shows the folly of trying to control all the Shiites of Iraq through a small minority, which appears to be the current U.S. policy.”

Many Iraqis have viewed the members of the post-Saddam Hussein administrations as isolated returning exiles, backed by Iran or the U.S. The officials’ credibility has been diminished by government failings since the U.S.-led invasion — notably endemic corruption, the lack of security and abysmal public services.

In contrast, the Sadr movement’s foundations are built upon the legacy of Sadr’s father, who challenged Hussein’s rule in sermons and was killed in 1999. Its voice, fiercely anti-U.S. and staunchly nationalist, has emerged as one of the few alternatives for Iraqis. The movement has even survived a two-year stint in the government and, like other Shiite militias, its involvement in sectarian killings.

Sadr loyalists allege that as the elections approach, their group has been deliberately targeted by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council through the army and police’s top commanders, where the party wields influence. The Sadr camp mostly boycotted the last local elections in January 2005, and predicts that it will rout its opponents this time.

But a senior Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council leader, Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, said the Sadr loyalists were trying to cover up their criminal activities with the allegations of politically motivated attacks.

“They have an overt plan to control the provinces; this is what is happening. They want to take over certain provinces. There is no hiding this,” he said. “They will deal with the devil, they will deal with criminal elements if it helps them reach their goals.”

The dislike runs deep. Sadr loyalists curse members of the rival group’s armed wing, the Badr Organization, with a play on words, calling them “Ghadr” — Arabic for treachery. Mahdi Army fighters accuse the Badr Organization of killing Sunnis in Baghdad and then blaming it on them.

In turn, asked about Sadr, one senior official from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council answered coldly: “You know what they say, once a problem, always a problem.”

The animosity is also rooted in a historic rivalry between the Sadr family, long seen as a champion of the underclass, and the Supreme Council’s senior leader, Sheik Abdelaziz Hakim, son of a conservative grand ayatollah, whose family traditionally enjoyed the support of the country’s Shiite merchant class.

Observers warned a year ago that the situation in the Shiite-majority south was deteriorating as anger mounted within the Mahdi Army over delays in holding provincial elections. Then, the senior coalition commander in the southern city of Diwaniya, Polish Maj. Gen. Pawel Lamla, said that an increase in Shiite militia violence could be traced to the power struggle.

“The Badr Organization and the government are a little afraid of the future elections,” Lamla said. “Now they have the power, but who knows about the future?”

Many in the Mahdi Army had chafed under the cease-fire, believing that the Americans and Iraqi security officials, backed by the Badr Organization, continued to go after Sadr supporters who weren’t involved in violence.

“The law has been taken advantage of by certain actors for political gain,” said Liwa Sumaysim, head of Sadr’s political bureau. “There is fear and anxiety that this is what is happening in Basra.”

Fueling the Sadrists’ concerns about Basra is the fact that some of Maliki’s trusted security advisors are from the Badr camp. The head of the Basra security command, Gen. Mohan Freiji, is also considered loosely affiliated with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC, said a Western advisor at the Defense Ministry.

The offensive in Basra so far has targeted only Sadrist neighborhoods and has avoided going after the Al Fadila al Islamiya party of Basra Gov. Mohammed Waeli or the Badr Organization, both of which have elements that have contributed to the problems in the port city.

“How could the Sadrists interpret U.S. air support of the Basra operation other than as the manifestation of a U.S.- SIIC alliance?” asked Joost Hiltermann, a Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group think tank.

British officers have noted that the Fadila party is suspected of involvement in oil smuggling, one of the major security concerns in Basra. The Badr Organization has also been implicated in racketeering at ports and controlling the city’s police intelligence service, according to the International Crisis Group. Without tackling Fadila and Badr’s lawless elements, Basra’s problems are likely to continue.

The current violence also jeopardizes the Americans’ detente with Sadr loyalists around the country. After the cleric’s cease-fire in August, U.S. officers in Baghdad cut deals with moderate elements of the Mahdi Army to stabilize the capital’s western neighborhoods. Officers were even given lists of Mahdi Army fighters they could not arrest.

Now, the same Shiite militiamen are battling U.S. forces again.

Abu Ali, a member of the Sadr movement in the capital’s New Baghdad area, had been helping enforce Sadr’s cease-fire, but said his local office had returned to planting homemade bombs in case U.S. soldiers dared to enter their area.

“We have called for jihad,” Abu Ali said. “The government came with the occupier and supports the occupiers and they know the Americans will protect them. We are fighting to get our rights.”

ned.parker@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Rasheed, Mohammed Rasheed and Said Rifai contributed to this report.

Add comment March 30th, 2008

Taxi to the Dark Side

Academy award winning Taxi to the Dark Side is now available from Google video:

Add comment March 13th, 2008

Many at Guantanamo not even acused of anti-US “terrorism”

The Boston Globe today brings word that many of those held at Guantanamo Concentration Camp are not even accused of anti-US “terrorism”, but are simply Afghans, possibly corrupt ones, who got in the way of US plans to control the country post-Taliban:

When US special forces wanted to defeat the Taliban, they befriended Abdullah Mujahid, the police chief of this mountainous province. They visited his home with a gift of chocolates, and gave money and equipment to his fighters.

Mujahid met frequently with US troops, and even arrested and handed over a suspect the US military sent to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But as the threat of the Taliban receded, US forces sought to replace Mujahid — an illiterate leader who had been accused of corruption — with a professionally trained police chief. Soon, Mujahid was accused of being responsible for an attack on US forces. He was sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he languishes not far from the man he arrested.

The fall of Mujahid offers a rare glimpse into the trials of postwar Afghanistan, where US special forces struggled to rein in the warlords they once wooed.

But it also reveals the extent to which the military is using the Guantanamo Bay detention center for a starkly different purpose than the one outlined by President Bush: to keep the worst terrorism suspects behind bars.

A Globe investigation found that the military has used Guantanamo Bay not just for terrorists “picked up on the battlefield” — as Bush has repeatedly asserted — but also for uncooperative or unruly tribal chieftains, many of whom had been key supporters of the US-led invasion.

The use of Guantanamo Bay for purposes other than fighting international terrorism could have legal significance, because Bush has tried to justify creating a place where detainees can be held without normal legal protections on the grounds that the prisoners are enemy combatants who might launch a terrorist attack if they are released.

Despite Bush’s assertions, at least 52 detainees who had been held at Guantanamo Bay were not accused of ties to the Taliban or Al Qaeda, according to publicly released military records detailing the accusations against nearly 500 prisoners. At least a dozen were once officials in the post-Taliban government, arrested in their homes or offices during a broader US campaign to rein in warlords.

Mujahid was one. The former head of the United Nations office in Gardez, Thomas Ruttig, said he urged the Afghan government to remove Mujahid from his post because he was seen as an uneducated, disruptive, and corrupt figure. But Ruttig said he expected Mujahid to be fired or tried for corruption in Afghanistan, not held indefinitely in Cuba without a trial.

“I never dreamed he would be sent to Guantanamo,” Ruttig said in a recent interview in Kabul.

John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch researcher, helped write a 2003 report that accused Mujahid and his inner circle of allowing their fighters to set up illegal checkpoints to take money from truck drivers. But he, too, said Mujahid should not have been sent to Guantanamo Bay.

“Guantanamo is not even vaguely the appropriate place for him,” he said, adding that the administration shouldn’t use its power to hold accused terrorists at Guantanamo to solve political or criminal problems in Afghanistan.

The distinction between Guantanamo and a regular military or civilian prison is significant because Guantanamo detainees are stripped of most of their rights, and can be held on unspecified charges without being given a chance to mount a normal legal defense.

For a year after Mujahid’s arrest in July 2003, the military refused to release any information about why he was arrested. But in 2004, after a Supreme Court ruling forced the government to reveal why people were being held, the military accused Mujahid of “being responsible for” an attack in which a US soldier was killed, though UN and Afghan officials say Mujahid was not in Gardez at the time.

Then, in 2005, the military accused him of being a senior leader of a militant group operating in India-held Kashmir. But Pakistani news accounts suggest that another man by the same name who died last fall was a senior leader of that group.

Now, even the military has stopped saying that Mujahid belongs in Guantanamo Bay. In February, Pentagon officials informed his lawyers that he was among a group of at least 12 detainees who had been cleared to return to Afghanistan, either for release or further detention.

Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gordon declined to discuss the accusations against Mujahid, but said the decision to clear him for transfer does not “change the fact that he still poses a threat to the United States.”

Presumably many of those held pose “a threat to the United States” beacuse they resent being imprisoned without charges or trial for years on end. And the potential that they might describe their treatment at US hands certainly makes them a danger to the government that subjected them to abuse for those long years.

Evidently, Mujahid’s major “crime” was refusing to cooperate in hiding torture and murder by US special forces:

Relations between Mujahid and the special forces deteriorated further in March 2003. US soldiers in Gardez had severely beaten a group of Afghan prisoners during an interrogation, and one of them had died, according to several former Afghan police and a report by the Afghan attorney general’s office, which investigated the case.

The second Commander Mike ordered that the seven living prisoners be transferred to Mujahid’s jail, according to the attorney general’s report and Raz Mohammad Dalili, the Afghan governor at the time who helped make the arrangements for the transfers.

At a joint security meeting, Commander Mike threatened to kill Mujahid if he released the prisoners, according to the Crimes of War Project, a Washington human rights group that investigated the alleged abuse.

The Americans who dropped off the prisoners spoke briefly to Mujahid in his office behind a closed door and then drove away, said Mehboob Ahmad, Mujahid’s personal driver.

Some of the prisoners were unconscious, and their bodies had turned black and blue, Ahmad said. Mujahid ordered that they be given medical treatment and mattresses, Ahmad said.

“Mujahid was upset. We all were,” he said. “I think anyone who would have seen them in that condition would be upset.”

Mujahid described the prisoners’ injuries to Afghan military prosecutors, who later wrote a report recommending that the American soldiers be punished. In January of this year, two special forces soldiers received administrative punishments in connection with the prisoners’ treatment. Major James Gregory, a spokesman, said at the time that the special forces command “takes all allegations of abuse seriously.”

Weeks after the prisoners were dropped off at Mujahid’s jail, the Afghan government decided to remove Mujahid from his post. Dalili, the governor, said in a recent interview in Kabul that the second Commander Mike helped persuade him — and Afghanistan’s central government — to replace Mujahid with a professionally trained police chief.

And the American abusers still run rampant across Afghanistan:

But a few things have not changed, according to the people of Gardez: Americans who use only their first names still broker deals, make arrests, and detain people across the restive countrywide.

The insurgency they are fighting rages on.

Add comment August 12th, 2007