UN investigator who exposed US army abuse forced out
of his job
By Nick Meo in Kabul

25 April 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=632719

The UN's top human rights investigator in Afghanistan
has been forced out under American pressure just days
after he presented a report criticising the US
military for detaining suspects without trial and
holding them in secret prisons.

Cherif Bassiouni had needled the US military since his
appointment a year ago, repeatedly trying, without
success, to interview alleged Taliban and al-Qa'ida
prisoners at the two biggest US bases in Afghanistan,
Kandahar and Bagram.

Mr Bassiouni's report had highlighted America's policy
of detaining prisoners without trial and lambasted
coalition officials for barring independent human
rights monitors from its bases.

Prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the
region are held at US bases, often before being
shipped to Guantanamo Bay. Human Rights Watch called
on Saturday for a US special prosecutor to investigate
the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and Charles
Tenet, the former-CIA director, for torture and abuse
of detainees in jails around the world, including Abu
Ghraib in Iraq. They should be held responsible under
the doctrine of "command responsibility," it said.

On Friday, the US army investigation into the torture
of prisoners at Abu Ghraib cleared four out of five
top officers of responsibility for the scandal which
shocked the world when it broke a year ago. The only
officer recommended for punishment is Brigadier
General Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of Iraqi
prisons at the time.

The UN eliminated Mr Bassiouni's job last week after
Washington had pressed for his mandate to be changed
so that it would no longer cover the US military.

Just days earlier, the Egyptian-born law professor,
now based in Chicago, had presented his criticisms in
a 24-page report to the UN Commission on Human Rights
in Geneva.

The report, based on a year spent travelling around
Afghanistan interviewing Afghans, international agency
staff and the Afghan Human Rights Commission,
estimated that around 1,000 Afghans had been detained
and accused US troops of breaking into homes,
arresting residents and abusing them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

U.S.: Abu Ghraib Only the “Tip of the Iceberg”

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/04/27/usint10545.htm

(New York, April 27, 2005)— The crimes at Abu Ghraib
are part of a larger pattern of abuses against Muslim
detainees around the world, Human Rights Watch said on
the eve of the April 28 anniversary of the first
pictures of U.S. soldiers brutalizing prisoners at the
Iraqi jail.

Human Rights Watch released a summary (below) of
evidence of U.S. abuse of detainees in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as of
the programs of secret CIA detention, “extraordinary
renditions,” and “reverse renditions.”

“Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg,” said
Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch.
“It’s now clear that abuse of detainees has happened
all over—from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay to a lot
of third-country dungeons where the United States has
sent prisoners. And probably quite a few other places
we don’t even know about.”

Human Rights Watch called this week for the
appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the
culpability of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
and ex-CIA Director George Tenet, as well as Lt. Gen.
Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top U.S. commander in
Iraq, and Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander
of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba in cases of
crimes against detainees. It rejected last week’s
report by the Army Inspector General which was said to
absolve Gen. Sanchez of responsibility.

“General Sanchez gave the troops at Abu Ghraib the
green light to use dogs to terrorize detainees, and
they did, and we know what happened, said Brody. “And
while mayhem went on under his nose for three months,
Sanchez didn’t step in to halt it.”

Human Rights Watch also expressed concern that,
despite all the damage that had been done by the
detainee abuse scandal, the United States had not
stopped the use of illegal coercive interrogation. In
January 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
claimed in a written response during his confirmation
hearings that the prohibition on cruel, inhuman, or
degrading (CID) treatment does not apply to U.S.
personnel in the treatment of non-citizens abroad,
indicating that no law would prohibit the CIA from
engaging in CID treatment when it interrogates
non-Americans outside the United States.

Human Rights Watch said that the U.S. government was
still withholding key information about the treatment
of detainees, including directives reportedly signed
by President George W. Bush authorizing the CIA to
establish secret detention facilities and to “render”
suspects to countries where torture is used.

“If the United States is to wipe away the stain of Abu
Ghraib, it needs to investigate those at the top who
ordered or condoned abuse and come clean on what the
president has authorized,” said Brody. “Washington
must repudiate, once and for all, the mistreatment of
detainees in the name of the war on terror.”


U.S. Abuse of Detainees around the World

Afghanistan:

Nine detainees are now known to have died in U.S.
custody in Afghanistan—including four cases already
determined by Army investigators to be murder or
manslaughter. Former detainees have made scores of
other claims of torture and other mistreatment. In a
March 2004 report, Human Rights Watch documented cases
of U.S. personnel arbitrarily detaining Afghan
civilians, using excessive force during arrests of
non-combatants, and mistreating detainees. Detainees
held at military bases in 2002 and 2003 described to
Human Rights Watch being beaten severely by both
guards and interrogators, deprived of sleep for
extended periods, and intentionally exposed to extreme
cold, as well as other inhumane and degrading
treatment. In December 2004, Human Rights Watch raised
additional concerns about detainee deaths, including
one alleged to have occurred as late as September
2004. In March 2005, The Washington Post uncovered
another death in CIA custody, noting that the case was
under investigation but that the CIA officer
implicated had been promoted.

Guantánamo Bay, Cuba:

There is growing evidence that detainees at Guantánamo
have suffered torture and other cruel, inhuman, or
degrading treatment. Reports by FBI agents who
witnessed detainee abuse—including chained detainees
forced to sit in their own excrement—have recently
emerged, adding to the statements of former detainees
describing the use of painful stress positions, use of
military dogs to threaten detainees, threats of
torture and death, and prolonged exposure to extremes
of heat, cold and noise. Ex-detainees also said they
had been subjected to weeks and even months in
solitary confinement—at times either suffocatingly hot
or cold from excessive air conditioning—as punishment
for failure to cooperate. Videotapes of riot squads
subduing suspects reportedly show the guards punching
some detainees, tying one to a gurney for questioning
and forcing a dozen to strip from the waist down. The
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has
told the U.S. government in confidential reports that
its treatment of detainees has involved psychological
and physical coercion that is “tantamount to torture.”


Iraq:

Harsh and coercive interrogation techniques such as
subjecting detainees to painful stress positions and
extended sleep deprivation have been routinely used in
detention centers throughout Iraq. The Schlesinger
panel appointed by Secretary Rumsfeld noted 55
substantiated cases of detainee abuse in Iraq, plus 20
instances of detainee deaths still under
investigation. The earlier report of Maj. Gen. Antonio
Taguba found “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant,
and wanton criminal abuses” constituting “systematic
and illegal abuse of detainees” at Abu Ghraib. Another
Pentagon report documented 44 allegations of such war
crimes at Abu Ghraib. An ICRC report concluded that in
military intelligence sections of Abu Ghraib, “methods
of physical and psychological coercion used by the
interrogators appeared to be part of the standard
operating procedures by military intelligence
personnel to obtain confessions and extract
information.”

CIA “Disappearances” and Torture:

At least 11 al-Qaeda suspects, and most likely many
more, have “disappeared” in U.S. custody. The Central
Intelligence Agency is holding the detainees in
undisclosed locations, with no notification to their
families, no access to the International Committee of
the Red Cross or oversight of any sort of their
treatment, and in some cases, no acknowledgement that
they are even being held, effectively placing them
beyond the protection of the law. One detainee, Khalid
Shaikh Muhammed, was reportedly subjected to “water
boarding” in which a person is strapped down, forcibly
pushed under water, and made to believe he might
drown. It was also reported that U.S. officials
initially withheld painkillers from Abu Zubayda, who
was shot during his capture, as an interrogation
device.

“Extraordinary Renditions”:

The CIA has transferred some 100 to 150 detainees to
countries in the Middle East known to practice torture
routinely. In one case, Maher Arar, a Canadian in
transit in New York, was detained by U.S. authorities
and sent to Syria. He was released without charge from
Syrian custody ten months later and has described
repeated torture, often with cables and electrical
cords. In another case, a U.S. government-leased
airplane transported two Egyptian suspects who were
blindfolded, hooded, drugged, and diapered by hooded
operatives, from Sweden to Egypt. There the two men
were held incommunicado for five weeks and have given
detailed accounts torture, including electric shocks.
In a third case, Mamdouh Habib, an Australian in
American custody, was transported from Pakistan to
Afghanistan to Egypt to Guantánamo Bay. Now back home
in Australia, Habib alleges that he was tortured in
Egypt with beatings and electric shocks, and hung from
the walls by hooks.

“Reverse Renditions”:

Detainees arrested by foreign authorities in
non-combat and non-battlefield situations have been
transferred to the United States without basic
protections afforded to criminal suspects. `Abd
al-Salam `Ali al-Hila, a Yemeni businessman captured
in Egypt, for instance, was handed over to U.S.
authorities and “disappeared” for more than a year and
a half before being sent to Guantánamo Bay Naval Base
in Cuba. Six Algerians held in Bosnia were transferred
to U.S. officials in January 2002 (despite a Bosnian
high court order to release them) and were sent to
Guantánamo.


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