TORTURE
Dr. Samuel Johnson was
one who saw that capital punishment satisfied a sinister
human craving for power over others' lives, but did not
really deter crime. Undiscriminating severity simply made
criminals more cunning and more desperate, and confused
small crimes with great ones." -Clive Elmsley, Crime
and Society in Society in England 1750-1900
Nov.11th in Brad Blog:Editor & Publisher is reporting
today that Senator Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis
Hastert have requested a congressional inquiry into
"the leaking of classified information" which
led to the article about secret al-Qaeda prisons run by
the CIA in Europe. RAW STORY has obtained the actual letter requesting the inquiry
by Frist and Hastert. UPDATE: Inquiry into
who leaked info on secret prisons may bite Republicans in
the ass. Trent Lott reports that it was a leak by a
Republican after a meeting held recently with Dick Cheney
and Republican Senators. Says Lott, "He was up here
last week and talked up here in that room right there in
a roomful of nothing but senators and every word that was
said in there went right to the newspaper." RAW STORY has more...
Frist worried about leak, not prisons: Senate Majority Leader
Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of
information regarding secret CIA detention centers than
activity in the prisons themselves
U.N.
Blasts Practice of Outsourcing Torture;
By Thalif
Deen
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, 10 Nov (IPS) -
Six countries -- the United States, Britain, Canada,
France, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan -- have been singled out
for violating international human rights conventions by
deporting terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt,
Syria, Algeria and Uzbekistan, where they may have been
tortured.
The charges, which come at a time when the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is accused of running
secret detention centres overseas, have been catalogued
in a 15-page U.N. report presented to the 191-member
General Assembly by Manfred Nowak, a special rapporteur
on torture.
"Several governments, in the fight against
terrorism, have transferred or proposed to return alleged
terrorist suspects to countries where they may be at risk
of torture or ill-treatment," says the report titled
"Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment". The study cites
Article 3 of the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which
says "clearly and unequivocally" that "No
State party shall expel, return ('refouler') or extradite
a person to another State where there are substantial
grounds for believing that he would be danger of being
subjected to torture."
The practice of deportation has been strongly
criticised by several human rights groups, including
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. But
countries such as the United States and Sweden have
justified the extradition on the ground that countries
receiving the deportees have given "diplomatic
assurances or formal guarantees" that there will be
no torture, ill-treatment or the death penalty.
But according to Nowak, "diplomatic assurances
are unreliable and ineffective in the protection against
torture and ill-treatment and such assurances are sought
usually from States where the practice of torture is
systematic". He also points out that
diplomatic assurances are not legally binding.
"Therefore they carry no legal effect and no
accountability, if breached, and the person whom the
assurances aim to protect has no recourse if the
assurances are violated."
In a separate report titled "Protecting Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering
Terrorism", U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
pointedly says that "while States have the duty to
protect their citizens against terrorism,
counter-terrorist measures must be in conformity with
international human rights, humanitarian and refugee
law".
"The Secretary-General, the High Commissioner
for Human Rights, and many human rights experts continue
to express concern that many counter-terrorism measures
are infringing on human rights and fundamental
freedoms," the report warns. Both U.N. reports
are currently before the General Assembly's Third
Committee dealing with social, humanitarian and cultural
issues.
Mouin Rabbani, contributing editor to the
Washington-based Middle East Report, concurs with the
arguments by U.N. officials and human rights experts
condemning the deportation of terrorist suspects.
"The conclusions of the new U.N. report and
concerns expressed in it strike me as entirely warranted,
all the more so because there is concrete and
indisputable evidence from recent cases to demonstrate
the validity of the report's conclusions and concerns, as
well as evidence that intelligence personnel from the
rendering countries play a role in such interrogations
and procedures," he told IPS. Why are
so-called "renditions" employed in the first
place? Rabbani asked. "It seems to me that in many,
and probably most cases, the reasoning behind them is
quite simple: governments in countries resorting to
renditions are unable to demonstrate the validity of
their claims and suspicions against suspects to the
satisfaction of national courts, or to do so while
observing laws that guarantee due process that may be
upheld by these courts," he said. Or, he
argued, governments may have other reasons to deport
undesired individuals, to whom they previously granted
asylum, back to their countries of origin.
The purpose is thus to exploit what is often the
tenuous residency status of rendered individuals to
permit the courts and security forces in countries of
origin to "sort them out" -- to use more robust
interrogation techniques like physical torture and
credible threats against loved ones to extract punishable
confessions or apply emergency laws to put them behind
bars without the inconvenience of due process, he said.
"An added benefit is that all this tends to
take place far away from the limelight of publicity, in
environments where media and access are typically
strictly controlled or forbidden entirely," Rabbani
told IPS.
Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at
the University of Illinois College of Law, is
particularly critical of the policies of the
administration of President George W. Bush --
specifically on renditions. He condemned the
"reprehensive policy known euphemistically as
'extraordinary renditions'" that involve both the
"enforced disappearances of persons" and
torture, as being "widespread" and
"systematic." Such acts, Boyle told IPS,
constitute a "crime against humanity" as
defined by Article 7 of the Rome Statute for the
International Criminal Court (ICC). "That is
precisely why the Bush Jr. administration has done
everything humanly possible to sabotage the ICC," he
added.
To the contrary, Boyle argued, everyone in the
chain of command responsible for this criminal policy --
from Bush down through Vice President Dick Cheney,
National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, CIA
Director Porter Goss and operatives at the Clandestine
Services Unit of the CIA -- "must be prosecuted
under both U.S. domestic criminal law, international
criminal law, and the domestic criminal legal systems of
every state in the world". Boyle also pointed out that there is no
statute of limitations for such grievous international
crimes. "Furthermore, all Bush Jr.
administration lawyers at the White House, the Department
of Justice, and the CIA, inter alia, who signed off on
'extraordinary renditions' must also be prosecuted for
aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, war crimes,
torture, enforced disappearances, murder, and
kidnapping," said Boyle, the author of
"Destroying World Order" (2005) and
"Biowarfare and Terrorism" (2005). He
said that Italy is correctly starting to do this.
Other states are obligated to follow under basic
principles of both treaty and customary international
law, Boyle added.
Rabbani dismissed the so-called diplomatic
assurances on deportations as "largely
meaningless". "In reality, this is
Guantanamo Bay (the U.S. detention facility for terror
suspects in Cuba) on a global scale." Rabbani said there is no persuasive
explanation of why else renditions have in the past
several years become a weapon of choice for officials who
have demonstrated a total contempt for the rule of law,
and have very publicly indicated their determination to
leapfrog restrictions, such as the Geneva Conventions and
longstanding protections of civil liberties, on their
handling of suspects. "Why else governments
would willingly deport suspects they claim pose serious
threats to their own national security, is beyond
me," Rabbani added.
Report Warned on
C.I.A.'s Tactics in Interrogation
By DOUGLAS JEHL
11/09/05 "New
York Times " -- --
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - A classified report issued last year
by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general
warned that interrogation procedures approved by the
C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some
provisions of the international Convention Against
Torture, current and former intelligence officials
say.The previously undisclosed findings from the report,
which was completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep
unease within the C.I.A. about the interrogation
procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques
authorized early in 2002 for use against terror suspects
included one known as waterboarding, and went well beyond
those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of
war.
The convention, which was drafted by the United Nations,
bans torture, which is defined as the infliction of
"severe" physical or mental pain or suffering,
and prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if
they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The
United States is a signatory, but with some reservations
set when ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.'s inspector
general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted
torture, which is also prohibited under American law, the
officials said. But Mr. Helgerson did find, the officials
said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel,
inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The agency said in a written statement in March that
"all approved interrogation techniques, both past
and present, are lawful and do not constitute
torture." It reaffirmed that statement on Tuesday,
but would not comment on any classified report issued by
Mr. Helgerson. The statement in March did not
specifically address techniques that could be labeled
cruel, inhuman or degrading, and which are not explicitly
prohibited in American law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed
particular techniques used by the C.I.A. against
particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror
suspects being held by the agency in secret locations
around the world. They said it referred in particular to
the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to
have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been
detained in a secret location by the C.I.A. since he was
captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those
believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in
which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to
believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about
whether the use of the techniques could expose agency
officers to legal liability, the officials said. They
said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush
administration view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and
degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to
C.I.A. interrogations because they take place overseas on
people who are not citizens of the United States. The
current and former intelligence officials who described
Mr. Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of
his findings. None would agree to be identified by name,
and none would describe his conclusions in specific
detail. They said the report had included 10
recommendations for changes in the agency's handling of
terror suspects, but they would not say what those
recommendations were.
Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, testified this year
that eight of the report's recommendations had been
accepted, but did not describe them. The inspector
general is an independent official whose auditing role at
the agency was established by Congress, but whose reports
to the agency's director are not binding. Some former
intelligence officials said the inspector general's
findings had been vigorously disputed by the agency's
general counsel. To date, the Justice Department has
brought charges against only one C.I.A. employee in
connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have
signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against
C.I.A. officers in several other cases involving the
mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the
current and former intelligence officials said Mr.
Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the
agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding
interrogation procedures.
"The ambiguity in the law must cause nightmares for
intelligence officers who are engaged in aggressive
interrogations of Al Qaeda suspects and other terrorism
suspects," said John Radsan, a former assistant
general counsel at the agency who left in 2004. Mr.
Radsan, now an associate professor at William Mitchell
College of Law in St. Paul, would not comment on Mr.
Helgerson's report.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an
unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol
Hill over whether the C.I.A. should be subjected to the
same strict rules on interrogation that the military is
required to follow. In opposing an amendment sponsored by
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Mr. Goss and
Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the C.I.A.
should be granted an exemption allowing it extra
latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in
interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have
knowledge about future attacks. The issue of the agency's
treatment of detainees arose shortly after the attacks of
Sept. 11, after C.I.A. officers became involved in
interrogating prisoners caught in Afghanistan, and the
agency sought legal guidance on how far its employees and
contractors could go in interrogating terror suspects,
current and former intelligence officials said.
The list of 10 techniques, including feigned drowning,
was secretly drawn up in early 2002 by a team that
included senior C.I.A. officials who solicited
recommendations from foreign governments and from agency
psychologists, the officials said. They said officials
from the Justice Department and the National Security
Council, which is part of the White House, were involved
in the process.
Among the few known documents that address interrogation
procedures and that have been made public is an August
2002 legal opinion by the Justice Department, which said
that interrogation methods just short of those that might
cause pain comparable to "organ failure, impairment
of bodily function or even death" could be allowable
without being considered torture. The administration
disavowed that classified legal opinion in the summer of
2004 after it was publicly disclosed.
A new opinion made public in December 2004 and, signed by
James B. Comey, then the deputy attorney general,
explicitly rejected torture and adopted more restrictive
standards to define it. But a cryptic footnote to the new
document about the "treatment of detainees"
referred to what the officials said were other
still-classified opinions. Officials have said that the
footnote meant that coercive techniques approved by the
Justice Department under the looser interpretation of the
torture statutes were still lawful even under the new,
more restrictive standards.
It remains unclear whether all 10 of the so-called
enhanced procedures approved in early 2002 remain
authorized for use by the C.I.A. In an unclassified
report this summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee
referred briefly to Mr. Helgerson's report and said that
the agency had fully put in effect only 5 of his 10
recommendations. But in testimony before Congress in
February Mr. Goss said that eight had.
Some former intelligence officials have said the C.I.A.
imposed tighter safeguards on its interrogation
procedures after the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison came to
light in May 2004. That was about the same time Mr.
Helgerson completed his report.
The agency issued its earlier statement on the legality
of approved interrogation techniques after Mr. Goss, in
testimony before Congress on March 17, said that all
interrogation techniques used "at this time"
were legal but declined to make the same broad assertion
about practices used over the past few years.
On March 18, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, the agency's
director of public affairs, said that "C.I.A.
policies on interrogation have always followed legal
guidance from the Department of Justice."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
(In accordance with
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational purposes. Information Clearing
House
torture and abuse
of prisoners
Former Powell aide
links Cheney's office to abuse directives
By Agence France-Presse
Information Clearing House
11/03/05 -- -- WASHINGTON Vice President Dick
Cheney's office was responsible for directives that led
to U.S. soldiers' abusing prisoners in Iraq and
Afghanistan, a former top State Department official said
Thursday.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to
Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, told National
Public Radio he had traced a trail of memos and
directives authorizing questionable detention practices
up through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office
directly to Cheney's staff. "The secretary of
defense under cover of the vice president's office,"
Wilkerson said, "regardless of the president having
put out this memo" - "they began to authorize
procedures within the armed forces that led to what we've
seen."
He said the directives contradicted a 2002 order by
President George W. Bush for the U.S. military to abide
by the Geneva conventions against torture. "There
was a visible audit trail from the vice president's
office through the secretary of defense, down to the
commanders in the field," authorizing practices that
led to the abuse of detainees, Wilkerson said. The
directives were "in carefully couched terms,"
Wilkerson conceded, but said they had the effect of
loosening the reins on U.S. troops, leading to many cases
of prisoner abuse, including at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison,
that were contrary to the Geneva Conventions.
"If you are a military man, you know that you just
don't do these sorts of things," Wilkerson said,
because troops will take advantage, or feel so pressured
to obtain information that "they have to do what
they have to do to get it."
He said that Powell had assigned him to investigate the
matter after reports emerged in the media about U.S.
troops abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both
men had formerly served in the U.S. military. Wilkerson
also called David Addington, the vice president's lawyer,
"a staunch advocate of allowing the president in
his capacity as commander in chief to deviate from the
Geneva Conventions."
On Monday, Cheney promoted Addington to his chief of
staff to replace I. Lewis Libby, who has been indicted
over the unmasking of a CIA agent.
Wilkerson also told National Public Radio that Cheney's
office ran an "alternate national security
staff" that spied on and undermined the president's
formal National Security Council. He said National
Security Council staff stopped sending e-mails when they
found out Cheney's staff members were reading their
messages. He said he believed that Cheney's staff
prevented Bush from seeing a National Security Council
memo arguing strongly that the United States needed many
more troops for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of
Iraq.
Wilkerson also said that the former CIA chief George
Tenet did not inform Cheney's office of key weaknesses in
the government's argument that Saddam Hussein had or was
seeking weapons of mass destruction. That argument was
central to the Bush administration's justifications for
the Iraq war.
Wilkerson has also said recently that Cheney and Rumsfeld
operated a "cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign
and military policy.
Copyright © 2005 the International Herald Tribune
(In accordance with
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational purposes.
POW Abuse Nothing
New
ZNet Commentary, November 06, 2005
By Mickey Z
http://www.zmag.org
As news of a prisoner hunger strike finally begins to
trickle out from Guantanamo, rest assured any wrongdoing
will be pinned on a few bad apples. However, even a
cursory glance at U.S. treatment of enemies captured
during military interventions will demonstrate that the
goings-on at Gitmo (or Abu Ghraib for that matter) are
standard operating procedure for the home of the brave.
During the Second World War, for example, it required a
mouthpiece none other than prominent racist Colonel
Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. to expose American tactics in
the Pacific. His sentiments are summed up in the
following journal entry:
"It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers
tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at
times as the Japs themselves. Our men think nothing of
shooting a Japanese prisoner or a soldier attempting to
surrender. They treat the Jap with less respect than they
would give to an
animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone.
We claim to be fighting for civilization, but the more I
see of this war in the Pacific the less right I think we
have to claim to be civilized."
"When Lindbergh finally left the Pacific islands and
cleared customs in Hawaii," says author John Dower,
"he was asked if he had any [Japanese] bones in his
baggage. It was, he was told, a routine question."
While the treatment of Japanese POWs was commonly little
more than making sure there were no Japanese POWs, those
Axis soldiers captured in the European theater often
learned firsthand how good the good guys were.
"Before the invasion of Sicily, General Patton told
his men to accept no surrender from enemy soldiers who
continued to fire within the highly lethal 200-yards
range," says historian Michael C.C. Adams. "At
Biscari, U.S. troops killed thirty-four unarmed prisoners
who had given up at the correct distance, but these GIs
had seen buddies killed, and they didn't feel that a few
yards made any difference...[Even] Audie Murphy told new
men to take no prisoners and to kill Axis wounded."
Many of those who were actually taken prisoner may have
soon wished they were killed. "Captured Germans held
in France under the command of General Dwight D.
Eisenhower were systematically starved," writes
David K. Wright while another 676,000 or so German
prisoners were shipped to the United States between 1942
and 1946.
Alexander Cockburn adds: "In U.S. camps, POWs were
starved to the point of collapse, performed 20 million
man-days of work on army posts and 10 million man-days
for contract employers. Some were assigned to work for
the Chemical Warfare Center at Edgewood Arsenal in
Maryland."
Some 372,000 German POWs in the United States were
forced-at the behest of Eleanor Roosevelt-to undergo a
re-education program, "to return them to 'Christian
practices' and to reject 'German thinking,' says
Cockburn. "As time wore on, the name of the program
was changed to 'intellectual diversion'."
Canadian writer James Bacque, in his book "Other
Losses," goes even further, claiming that up to one
million German POWs in Europe died from Allied neglect
while others were used by the French to fight the
Vietnamese. While perusing "Good War" documents
called the "Weekly Prisoner of War and Disarmed
Enemy Report," Bacque found statistics under the
heading "Other Losses" which he interpreted to
mean POW deaths. The author consulted with Colonel Philip
S. Lauben, who had been chief of the German Affairs
Branch of the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary
Force (SHAEF).
"[Other Losses] means deaths and escapes,"
Lauben explained.
When asked how many escapes he recalled, Lauben replied,
"Very, very minor." Bacque later discovered the
number was less than one-tenth of one percent.
"It is beyond doubt," Bacque writes, "that
enormous numbers of men of all ages, plus some women and
childen, died of exposure, unsanitary conditions, disease
and starvation in the American and French camps in
Germany and France starting in April 1945." Bacque
puts those numbers at "almost certainly over
900,000, and quite likely over a million."
Needless to say, these controversial figures have been
vigorously denied by official sources. Adams addressed
Bacque's unsettling work in his book: "Bacques'
crediblity has been assailed by Stephen Ambrose, a
biographer of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man who would
bear ultimate responsibility for these crimes. Ambrose
points out that Bacque at times relied on slender or
circumstantial evidence and that it would have been hard
to keep so great a scandal quiet for so long [New York
Times Book Review, February 24, 1991]. On the other hand,
American guards have come forward to support Bacque. One
wrote: 'I witnessed the atrocities Stephen E. Ambrose
tries to deny or gloss over' [New York Times Book Review,
April 14, 1991]...The truth is probably somewhere in the
middle...As another guard admitted: 'we sometimes slipped
over the boundary of civilized behavior and resembled to
some extent what we were fighting against.'"
With the high level of censorship existing in the Allied
theater of operations, perhaps the key to keeping
"so great a scandal quiet for so long" is that,
for most people, it never existed. At the time, General
George S. Patton wrote in his diary: "Ike made the
sensational statement that while hostilities were in
progress, the one important thing was order and
discipline, but now that hostilities were over, the
important thing was to stay in with world public
opinion-apparently whether it was right or
wrong...Eisenhower talked to us very confidentially on
the necessity for solidarity in the event that any of us
are called before a Congressional Committee."
No matter who's in office or where the war takes place,
it's all the same.
Mickey Z. is the author of several books, most recently
"50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to
Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism"
(Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web at
http://www.mickeyz.net.
http://www.zmag.org
FACILITY
1391, ISRAEL
By Julie Flint
The Daily Star, Beirut, Jan
29, 04
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
The
Guantanamo detention camp is, quite rightly, the subject
of loud and unrelenting protest by all major
international human rights organizations. As the American
facility in Cuba entered its third year this month,
Amnesty International denounced it as a human
rights scandal. Amnestys UK director said it
was two years too many, and called for the
immediate closure of a place where prisoners detained in
the course of President George W. Bushs war
against terrorism are held without access to
lawyers and without charge or trial.
But have
you heard of Facility 1391, Israels Guantanamo?
Probably not, because it is not mentioned by those
campaigning against Americas Guantanamo. The only
human rights organizations speaking out against Facility
1391 are Israeli. Yet the facility is, in every respect,
far more shocking than Guantanamo. It is, in the words of
Israels Haaretz newspaper: (O)ne of the
darker corners of Israel.
Sheikh
Abdel Karim Obeid, who is due to be released today as
part of the prisoner exchange between Israel and
Hizbullah, was held in administrative
detention, without charge or trial, in Facility
1391 for 13 years. Mustafa Dirani, who will also be
released today, was detained there for eight years
seven in solitary confinement. For most of those years,
Dirani was held in subhuman conditions tortured and,
according to his Israeli lawyer, raped. Obeid, Dirani and
other Lebanese prisoners held in Facility 1391 some of
them teenagers were not visited by the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) because the ICRC did
not know the prison existed. The Lebanese prisoners did
not even know where they were. If they asked, they were
told they were on the moon, in outer
space, or, even, in Honolulu.
Facility 1391 was airbrushed out of aerial
photographs and is unmarked on maps. Officially, it did not exist, and what
happened there happened with the certainty of complete
impunity. And all the evidence suggests that what still
happens there is very much worse than what happens at Guantanamo.
Set in a
concrete fortress on a rise overlooking a kibbutz, close
to the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank,
Facility 1391 belongs to the Israeli Army
specifically, to an army intelligence group known as Unit
504, which specializes in interrogation. Unit 504s
heyday came during the occupation of south Lebanon, when
it ran a vast network of collaborators and was
responsible for interrogating captured resistance
fighters (and others who were not fighters).
At the
end of the 1980s, Unit 504 began kidnapping Lebanese
Shiites who could be held as hostages in the search for
information about the fate of men like Ron Arad, the
Israeli pilot who was shot down over Lebanon in 1986 and
who has been missing without sight or sound since 1987.
This was not only a violation of international
humanitarian law, which categorically prohibits hostage
taking; after April 2000, when Israels highest
court ruled that the administrative detention of Lebanese
nationals as bargaining chips was illegal, it
was also a violation of Israeli law.
But not
for long: In March 2002 the Knesset passed a draconian
and repressive piece of legislation that allowed Israel
to continue holding bargaining chips. No
prizes for guessing why the law, titled the
Imprisonment of Combatants Who are Not Entitled to
Prisoner-of-War Status, was popularly called the
Obeid-Dirani Law.
The
first glimpses of what went on behind the thick, high
walls of Facility 1391 followed the accidental disclosure
of the prisons existence in the wake of Operation
Defensive Shield, the Israeli Armys re-invasion of
West Bank towns in April 2002. Mass arrests strained
Israels customary detention facilities to breaking
point, and 1391 was used to accommodate the overflow. In
the course of inquiries into the whereabouts of one young
Palestinian, an Israeli human rights organization,
Hamoked, eventually forced an admission that he was being
held in a prison that no one had ever heard of: Facility
1391.
Former
Palestinian guests of 1391 have described a vision of
hell: tiny, stinking, windowless cells where they could
barely see their own hands; solitary confinement cells
without a toilet where prisoners used their own clothes
to contain their waste; water turned on and off at the
whim of guards; torture as a matter of routine during
interrogation - even after the Israeli Supreme Court
banned torture in 1999.
Obeid
and Dirani will be the first long-term foreign nationals
to give insider accounts of Facility 1391, but everything
suggests that their treatment was even worse than that of
Palestinian detainees. Diranis lawyer, Zvi Rish,
has filed a $1.3 million lawsuit against Israel claiming
that his client was raped and systematically beaten.
Diranis cousin, Ghassan, developed catatonic
schizophrenia during his 13-year incarceration without
trial some of those years in 1391.
In his
suit, Dirani charges that he was subjected to torture and
humiliating treatment for more than a month after he was
kidnapped. He says he was beaten, shaken violently,
deprived of sleep, kept naked during five weeks of
interrogation and forced to squat for hours on end with
his hands tied behind his back. He says he was raped
twice - on one of those occasions sodomized with a club
by the head of his interrogation team.
Rish
said that after the club incident, they forced him
to drink oil and a lot of water, put a diaper on him and
forced him to relieve himself in that for days while they
laughed at him and photographed him. Dirani was
reportedly refused all medical assistance, despite severe
bleeding.
The
Israeli government has denied Dirani was raped, but has
confirmed that prisoners were routinely stripped naked
for interrogation.
To this
day, Israel refuses to answer many of the questions asked
about Facility 1391. How many people are being held
there, and in what conditions? Why? Will they be put on
trial? Answers are needed, and those answers may not be
forthcoming without the unrelenting pressure of
international organizations. They should speak out. Now.
Julie
Flint is a veteran journalist based in Beirut and London.
She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR
Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, New
York, 10 December 1984 www.ohchr.org/
english/bodies/cat/
|
Last
update: |
7 October 2005. |
Entry
into force: |
26 June
1987, in accordance with article 27 (1) 1 . |
Registration:
|
26 June
1987, No. 24841. |
Status: |
Signatories:
74, Parties: 140. |
Text: |
United
Nations, Treaty Series , vol. 1465, p.
85. |
Note: The Convention,
of which the Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian
and Spanish texts are equally authentic, was adopted by
resolution 39/46 2 of 10 December 1984
at the thirty-ninth session of the General Assembly of
the United Nations. The Convention is open for signature
by all States, in accordance with its article 25.
ISRAEL,
Israel |
22 Oct 1986 |
3 Oct 1991
|
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
United States of America 11 |
18 Apr 1988 |
21 Oct 1994 |
GERMANY Upon signature:
The Government of the Federal Republic of Germany
reserves the right to communicate, upon ratification,
such reservations or declarations of interpretation as
are deemed necessary especially with respect to the
applicability of article 3.
Upon ratification:
Article 3
This provision prohibits the transfer of a person
directly to a State where this person is exposed to a
concrete danger of being subjected to torture. In the
opinion of the Federal Republic of Germany, article 3 as
well as the other provisions of the Convention
exclusively establish State obligations that are met by
the Federal Republic of Germany in conformity with the
provisions of its domestic law which is in accordance
with the Convention.
Israel Reservations:
"1. In accordance with article 28 of the
Convention, the State of Israel hereby declares that it
does not recognize the competence of the Committee
provided for in article 20.
"2. In accordance with paragraph 2 of article 30,
the State of Israel hereby declares that it does not
consider itself bound by paragraph 1 of that
article."
Syrian Arab Republic Declarations:
In accordance with the provisions of article 28,
paragraph 1, of the Convention, the Syrian Arab Republic
does not recognize the competence of the Committee
against Torture provided for in article 20 thereof;
The accession of the Syrian Arab Republic to this
Convention shall in no way signify recognition of Israel
or entail entry into any dealings with Israel in the
context of the provisions of this Convention.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland Upon signature:
"The United Kingdom reserves the right to
formulate, upon ratifying the Convention, any
reservations or interpretative declarations which it
might consider necessary."
United States of America Upon
signature :
Declaration:
"The Government of the United States of America
reserves the right to communicate, upon ratification,
such reservations, interpretive understandings, or
declarations as are deemed necessary."
Upon ratification :
Reservations:
"I. The Senate's advice and consent is subject to
the following reservations:
(1) That the United States considers itself bound by
the obligation under article 16 to prevent `cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment', only
insofar as the term `cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment' means the cruel, unusual and
inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth,
Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution
of the United States.
(2) That pursuant to article 30 (2) the United States
declares that it does not consider itself bound by
Article 30 (1), but reserves the right specifically to
agree to follow this or any other procedure for
arbitration in a particular case.
II. The Senate's advice and consent is subject to the
following understandings, which shall apply to the
obligations of the United States under this Convention:
(1) (a) That with reference to article 1, the United
States understands that, in order to constitute torture,
an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe
physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain
or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or
resulting from (1) the intentional infliction or
threatened infliction of severe physical pain or
suffering; (2) the administration or application, or
threatened administration or application, of mind
altering substances or other procedures calculated to
disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (3) the
threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that another
person will imminently be subjected to death, severe
physical pain or suffering, or the administration or
application of mind altering substances or other
procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or
personality.
(b) That the United States understands that the
definition of torture in article 1 is intended to apply
only to acts directed against persons in the offender's
custody or physical control.
(c) That with reference to article 1 of the
Convention, the United States understands that
`sanctions' includes judicially-imposed sanctions and
other enforcement actions authorized by United States law
or by judicial interpretation of such law. Nonetheless,
the United States understands that a State Party could
not through its domestic sanctions defeat the object and
purpose of the Convention to prohibit torture.
(d) That with reference to article 1 of the
Convention, the United States understands that the term
`acquiescence' requires that the public official, prior
to the activity constituting torture, have awareness of
such activity and thereafter breach his legal
responsibility to intervene to prevent such activity.
(e) That with reference to article 1 of the
Convention, the Unites States understands that
noncompliance with applicable legal procedural standards
does not per se constitute torture.
(2) That the United States understands the phrase,
`where there are substantial grounds for believing that
he would be in danger of being subjected to torture,' as
used in article 3 of the Convention, to mean `if it is
more likely than not that he would be tortured.'
(3) That it is the understanding of the United States
that article 14 requires a State Party to provide a
private right of action for damages only for acts of
torture committed in territory under the jurisdiction of
that State Party.
(4) That the United States understands that
international law does not prohibit the death penalty,
and does not consider this Convention to restrict or
prohibit the United States from applying the death
penalty consistent with the Fifth, Eighth and/or
Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United
States, including any constitutional period of
confinement prior to the imposition of the death penalty.
(5) That the United States understands that this
Convention shall be implemented by the United States
Government to the extent that it exercises legislative
and judicial jurisdiction over the matters covered by the
Convention and otherwise by the state and local
governments. Accordingly, in implementing articles 10-14
and 16, the United States Government shall take measures
appropriate to the Federal system to the end that the
competent authorities of the constituent units of the
United States of America may take appropriate measures
for the fulfilment of the Convention.
III. The Senate's advice and consent is subject to the
following declarations:
(1) That the United States declares that the
provisions of articles 1 through 16 of the Convention are
not self-executing.
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