| It is time for Americans to admit that our government is responsible for the kind of abductions, torture and "disappearances" for which we have long criticized third world dictatorships. |
| They disappear without any notification to family or friends and without any charges, court appearances or due process. They are imprisoned in foreign countries where they will likely be tortured, a direct violation of U.S. law.
[C]oalition intelligence officers told the Red Cross that 70 percent to 90 percent of detainees in Iraq are eventually found innocent and released. Many innocent children are swept up with their parents in chaotic nighttime dragnets based on tips from unreliable informants. "We know of children under 15," Clarisa Bencomo of Human Rights Watch told me, " held for over a year at Guantánamo Bay, whom the government later said were not security risks." Even if a child is found guilty, he or she should be treated humanely, rather than tortured or "rendered," as the C.I.A. puts it, to third parties that torture. Source: "Arrested Development" By ARLIE HOCHSCHILD - NY Times - June 29, 2005 An Italian judge on Friday ordered the arrests of 13 CIA officers for secretly transporting a Muslim preacher from Italy to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts -- a rare public objection to the practice by a close American ally. The Egyptian was spirited away in 2003, purportedly as part of the CIA's ''extraordinary rendition'' program in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, subjecting them to possible torture. The statement said Nasr was seized by two people as he was walking from his home toward a mosque and bundled into a white van. He was taken to Aviano, a joint U.S.-Italian base north of Venice, and flown to a U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany, before being taken to Cairo. [I]n April-May 2004, Nasr phoned his wife and another unidentified Egyptian citizen and told them he had been subjected to violent treatment by interrogators in Egypt, the statement said. Italian newspapers have reported that Nasr, 42, said in the wiretapped calls that he was tortured with electric shocks. Source: "Italian Judge Names 13 in Abduction Tied to C.I.A." By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (via NY Times) - June 24, 2005 [I]n the world outside the Beltway, what is really reprehensible is the detention of hundreds of people for years without granting them prisoner-of-war status or charging them with a crime. What is reprehensible is letting dogs attack naked prisoners, shipping others out to be tortured by totalitarian regimes and covering up the deaths of prisoners during interrogations. What Amnesty International attempted to do in its current report is what it always does: hold all nations to a plumb line of integrity on human rights. How dare the White House and Pentagon, which have for three years rationalized torture and fought off the courts' attempts to grant the detainees some basic right of appeal, blame Amnesty International, rather than themselves, for besmirching the U.S. human rights record. Source: "Blaming the messenger fools no one" by Robert Scheer - Creators Syndicate - 6/8/05 The Geneva Conventions, which protect people captured in conflict, prohibit "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." The scope of that clause's legal obligation has been debated, but previous American governments abided by it. President Bush decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members who are detained at Guantánamo. The United Nations Convention Against Torture, also ratified by the United States, requires signatories to "prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction ... cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." The Bush administration declared that this provision did not apply to the treatment of non-Americans held outside the United States. Finally, there is the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It makes cruelty, oppression or "maltreatment" of prisoners a crime. Armed services lawyers worried that some methods of interrogation might violate the Uniform Code and federal criminal statutes, exposing interrogators to prosecution. A Pentagon memorandum obtained by ABC News said a meeting of top military lawyers on March 8, 2003, concluded that "we need a presidential letter" approving controversial methods, to give interrogators immunity. The idea that a president can legalize the unlawful evidently came from a series of memorandums written by Justice Department officials. They argued, among other things, that President Bush's authority as commander in chief to set interrogation methods could trump treaties and federal law. No one can seriously doubt now that cruelties and indignities have been inflicted on prisoners at Guantánamo. Nor is there any doubt that worse has happened elsewhere - prisoners beaten to death by American soldiers, untold others held in secret locations by the Central Intelligence Agency, others rendered to be tortured by governments such as Uzbekistan's. Source: "Guantánamo's Long Shadow" byy ANTHONY LEWIS - NY Times - June 21, 2005 Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say that there still may be as many as six prisoners who were captured before their 18th birthday and that the military has sought to conceal the precise number of juveniles at the prison camp. One lawyer [Clive A. Stafford Smith, of London] said that his client, a Saudi of Chadian descent, was not yet 15 when he was captured and has told him that he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an interrogator pressed a burning cigarette into his arm. The details of M.C.'s accusations are contained in a 17-page account prepared by Mr. Stafford Smith, in which the prisoner said that he was suspended from hooks in the ceiling for hours at a time with his feet barely missing the floor, and that he was beaten during those sessions. M.C. said a special unit known as the Immediate Reaction Force had knocked out one of his teeth and later an interrogator burned him with a cigarette. Mr. Stafford Smith said he saw the missing tooth and the burn scar. Some of M.C.'s descriptions match accounts given not only by other detainees, but also by former guards and interrogators who have been interviewed by The New York Times. [T]hree detainees released in January 2004 were thought by officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross to have been ages 12 to 14 at the time. Source: "Some Held at Guantánamo Are Minors, Lawyers Say" By NEIL A. LEWIS - NY Times - 6/13/05 [Sen. Chuck ]Hagel raised questions about the quality of leadership that would allow such things to happen, drawing a comparison to his own experience fighting in Vietnam. "We've been reassured for the last two years it's not happening when in fact it is happening," he said. "There's either a culture of leadership or there's not. This kind of stuff will fill the vacuum, and it needs to stop." Hagel and Feinstein said they weren't sure whether the facility should be closed and were looking forward to Senate Judiciary Committee hearings this week on whether detainees had adequate legal protection. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also is planning hearings later this month. Source: |
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