posted May 20, 2006 12:44 PM              

quote:

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Now Gen. Hayden refuses in public to forswear the use of such barbaric treatment. The damage done by such silence to America's global standing and long-term interests is incalculable.

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Military Prison's Closure Is Urged
U.N. Panel Faults Detention Policies

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 20, 2006; Page A01

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 -- A U.N. anti-torture panel Friday called on the United States to close its prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to expressly ban controversial interrogation techniques, and to halt the transfer of detainees to countries with a history of abuse and torture.

The U.N. panel, charged with monitoring compliance with the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which the United States has ratified, also asserted that the CIA imprisonment of suspects in secret detention facilities without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross constituted a clear violation of the treaty.

Bush administration officials countered that the U.N. Committee Against Torture had not given the United States a fair hearing, that it had overreached its authority by calling for Guantanamo's closure, and that its report is riddled with errors and misstatements.

"We acknowledge that there were serious incidents of abuse. We've all seen Abu Ghraib," the State Department's top lawyer, John B. Bellinger III, told reporters. But "clearly our record has improved over the last few years," he said.

The 11-page report was issued one day after two Guantanamo Bay detainees tried to kill themselves by overdosing on antidepressants. The attempts brought to 41 the number of inmates who have tried to commit suicide since 2002, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of Guantanamo Bay detainee operations, said Friday.

After the unsuccessful suicide attempts, Guantanamo Bay inmates rioted, attacking guards with electric fans and other improvised weapons after a prisoner lured them into a cell by faking an attempt to hang himself. Guards subdued them by firing sponge grenades and five rounds of rubber balls from a 12-gauge shotgun, Harris said.

The U.N. report was a rebuke for the Bush administration and some of the main counterterrorism approaches it adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was delivered as the United States faces increasing pressure from international critics, including U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. The administration has engaged in an internal debate over the fate of the controversial island facility.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that President Bush has made it clear "he doesn't want the United States to be the world's jailers, that we at some point in the future would very much like to see Guantanamo Bay closed down." But, McCormack added, "at the moment, it's housing some dangerous people."

The U.N. panel, made up of nine international experts, said the United States "should cease to detain any person at Guantanamo Bay and close this detention facility, permit access by the detainees to judicial process or release them as soon as possible."

The committee urged the Bush administration to establish a law criminalizing torture and to eliminate some of its most controversial interrogation techniques, including sexual humiliation, the use of dogs to induce fear and "water boarding," a practice that involves simulating the sensation of near-drowning. It also pressed the administration to "promptly, thoroughly, and impartially investigate" senior military or civilian officials responsible for "authorizing, acquiescing or consenting" to torture committed by subordinates.

The report urged the United States to disclose and publicly condemn the existence of any secret prisons. The Washington Post reported last year that the CIA has maintained secret facilities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The panel said the United States "should ensure no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its de facto effective control." It said: "Detaining persons in such conditions constitutes, per se, a violation of the convention."

There are about 460 foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. About 287 detainees have left the facility, including 192 who were released and 95 who were transferred to more than 16 countries. The United States recently transferred 15 Saudi nationals to the Saudi government's custody and sent five Chinese Muslims to Albania.

White House spokesman Tony Snow defended the Bush administration's policies at Guantanamo Bay, saying that "everything that is done in terms of questioning detainees is fully within the boundaries of American law."

The Bush administration sent a large delegation to Geneva earlier this month to answer the U.N. committee's questions. It also submitted a 184-page defense of its treatment of detainees in its fight against terrorism. "It was not a particularly auspicious time for the United States to have to be filing a periodic report before the convention against torture, in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib," said Bellinger, who headed the U.S. delegation. "But we take our obligations seriously, and we did not shy away from going to Geneva."

Bellinger said that the United States "has respect for the committee" and that it will comply with a request to provide additional responses to questions by next year. But he said the committee's report is "skewed and reaches well beyond the scope and mandate of the committee."

For instance, there "is nothing in the convention that says anything about holding people indefinitely . . .," he said. "So it's outside the scope for them to be calling for the closure of Guantanamo."

Human rights and civil rights advocates have raised concerns about the fate of those kept at Guantanamo Bay, and of those who are transferred to other countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, which has a history of abusing political detainees. They noted that the committee's report has undercut confidence in the United States' ability to ensure the safety of detainees who are transferred abroad.

"The message from the torture committee leaves no doubt that the U.S. policies and practices at home and abroad violated bedrock principles against torture and abuse," said Jamil Dakwar, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rights advocates pressed the United States to accept the committee's recommendations. Gabor Rona, an expert on the committee at the New York based-advocacy groups Human Rights First, urged the United States to "take immediate steps to implement" legislation by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would establish "a single clear interrogation standard for all U.S. officials that clearly prohibits all forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of anyone in U.S. custody, anywhere in the world."

In the report issued Friday, described as an "advance unedited version," the committee said it welcomes the U.S. commitment that officials from all U.S. government agencies, including contractors, "are prohibited from engaging in torture at all times and in all places." It also welcomed the U.S. pledge not to transfer terrorism suspects to countries where they would "more likely than not" face torture.

But the committee expressed skepticism about the United States' commitment to comply with such pledges, citing concern about the adequacy of a U.S. policy of obtaining "diplomatic assurances" against torture from countries with poor rights records. It called on the United States to "cease" the transfer of "suspects, in particular by its intelligence agencies, to states where they face the real risk of torture."

Researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

4 Men Cleared of Terrorism Links but Still Detained
No Explanation Or Timetable for Release Given

By Josh White and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 20, 2006; Page A18

The May 5 release of Chinese Muslims from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, leaves four men there who have been cleared of all connections to terrorism but continue to live in a legal limbo, with no indication of when they will be freed, according to the captives' attorneys and military documents.

The government considers the men ready for outright release -- "no longer enemy combatants" (NLECs) in military jargon. In fact, 38 detainees, 5 percent of the 759 prisoners ever held at Guantanamo Bay, have officially earned NLEC status since the island prison opened in early 2002.

They are men such as Zakirjan Hassam, an Uzbek refugee who was sold to U.S. forces in Afghanistan for $5,000 in May 2002 by people he mistakenly believed would shelter him. He ended up in Guantanamo Bay the following month and is still there today.

According to the U.S. military, Hassam is not an enemy, and a military tribunal decided in 2004 that his stay at Guantanamo Bay had been based on inaccurate information. There is no evidence that Hassam took up arms against anyone or that he ever supported terrorism, and his only apparent link to alleged terrorist groups were conversations with fellow detainees during his imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, according to testimony by Hassam that is not disputed by the government.

"He's lost four years of his life for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and for being sold to U.S. forces," said Christopher Moore, a New York lawyer who represents Hassam.

Earlier this month, the government released five Chinese Uighurs who were among the last nine NLECs at Guantanamo Bay. After years of detention and, ultimately, government efforts to find them a home in a third country, the men were sent to Albania. The U.S. had feared that they would be jailed or tortured if returned to China.

Beijing, which considers Uighur separatists to be terrorists, demanded that they be returned.

The accounts of NLECs, contained in hearing transcripts, show that many were rounded up by profiteers along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and sold to U.S. or Northern Alliance forces. Some were Arabs who stood out in local populations, while others were arrested by overzealous Pakistani police forces seeking to cooperate with the U.S. effort to root out terrorists. The Uighurs were in transit to other countries or training for action against the Chinese government.

"In Afghanistan they heard that American forces are providing $25,000 to capture each Arab and $15,000 to capture each Afghan," Haji Shahzada, an Afghan NLEC who was released last year, told his military tribunal.

The NLECs are from 14 countries. One was captured in Mexico. Half are from Afghanistan, with the others from Pakistan, France, the Maldives, Jordan, Sudan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey and China.

"Nobody ever asked who I am, what did I do, or where did I live," said Padsha Wazir, an Afghan detainee who was released. "They just handcuff me. . . . It has been three years, and it shouldn't take that long for Americans to find the truth."

In fact, Pentagon officials say that 121 of the approximately 460 detainees currently at Guantanamo Bay are now eligible for release or transfer to the custody of their home countries. The government still considers 104 of them threats to the United States and its allies. They are scheduled to be returned to the control of other nations, where they probably would be imprisoned. Many are waiting to go to Afghanistan, where the United States is helping to build a prison for some of them.

U.S. military officials have decided that they can free 13 other detainees, though they have not been given NLEC status. The remaining four are NLECs. But there are no immediate plans to release them.

Just this week, 15 other detainees were released into the custody of the Saudi government.

"At Guantanamo, the United States only holds enemy combatants that were members of or supporting Taliban, al-Qaeda and associated forces," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, who added that detainees' status is regularly reviewed. "We have no interest in detaining anyone longer than necessary."

The 38 NLECs earned their status through the military's Combatant Status Review Tribunal process between August 2004 and March 2005. Those hearings allowed detainees to learn the unclassified allegations against them and to tell their personal stories to a panel of military officials.

While their identities have not been released, The Washington Post obtained the NLECs' testimony, with names redacted, through a Freedom of Information Act request and compared it to the testimony of named detainees released by the Pentagon to the Associated Press in March.

Mustaq Ali Patel, a French detainee who was released in March 2005, told his hearing panel that he was simply trying to visit Afghanistan when he was arrested at the Iranian border. He said he was beaten by Afghan government officials who threatened to kill him if he did not say he was a Saudi citizen.

"I just want to say that I want to go home, and please set me free," Patel told his captors. "I have nothing to do with this; there's nothing more they could've written badly about me, except that I lied."

Gordon, the Pentagon spokesman, said that "everyone who is or has been detained at Guantanamo was sent there for a valid reason." He noted that of the 10,000 people captured in and around Afghanistan since 2002, fewer than 10 percent have ended up at Guantanamo Bay.

But many cases take years to resolve.

Fethi Boucetta, for example, is an Algerian national who was arrested in Pakistan when local authorities came looking for another man. According to his tribunal records, Boucetta sought asylum in Pakistan in 1996 after leaving Algeria to avoid military service. A doctor who was teaching at an embassy in Pakistan, Boucetta had not entered Afghanistan after 1992 and told a military representative that he did not organize or belong to any extremist groups, as U.S. officials alleged.

"They went to his house and asked to speak with somebody else, and Fethi said he didn't know that person and that he wasn't there," said Danielle R. Voorhees, a U.S. lawyer representing Boucetta, who is still held at Guantanamo Bay. "Pakistani police came back with Americans in plain clothes, and they said they wanted to question him. That's when he was arrested."

According to his attorneys, Boucetta was told in May 2005 that he was no longer considered an enemy combatant and could go home, but he has learned nothing since of efforts to have him released. His first contact with his wife in Algeria in four years was a telephone conversation in late April.

"It's easy for us to say 'Just release him,' but it's a difficult situation," said Don Degnan, another lawyer who represents Boucetta. "There's not a lot of First World countries that want a Guantanamo detainee released into their country."

Lawyers from the Justice Department have told federal judges that there are continuous discussions with other nations about transferring detainees but that the government has a strict policy of not releasing them to countries likely to mistreat them. The same lawyers have said that they do not want any of the men, even those not considered threats, released in the United States.

In one unusual NLEC case, lawyers have asked federal courts to order the government not to release their client so that he will not be sent to his native Egypt, where they fear he would be arrested, jailed and possibly tortured.

Late last year, Justice Department lawyers said that Ala Abdel Maqsud Muhammad Salim, an NLEC still held at Guantanamo Bay, would be released to Egypt. But, in January, they filed a motion stating that new information warranting further investigation had resulted in there no longer being "immediate plans to transfer, repatriate, or release" him.

Salim -- also referred to in documents as Alladeen -- was born in Egypt in 1967 and spent his first 22 years there, a period that included several arrests that never resulted in charges, according to briefs filed by his Washington-based attorney, Carol Elder Bruce. He left Egypt for Saudi Arabia in 1989 and later went to Pakistan, where he worked for the Islamic Relief Organization distributing aid to Afghanistan. He was arrested by Pakistani authorities in 2002 and transferred to U.S. custody; he was later sent to Guantanamo Bay.

At Guantanamo Bay, Bruce asserts in legal papers, Salim was interrogated by Egyptian officials who chained him to the floor and threatened to harm him when he is released. "We will take you somewhere and they will never see you again," Bruce wrote, quoting Salim's interaction with the Egyptian delegation.

In a November hearing, U.S. District Judge James Robertson expressed concern that the United States would "release" Salim to Egypt, where he could face pressure from the government because he had been detained at Guantanamo Bay.

New Face, Old Evasion
Is 'waterboarding' still practiced by the CIA?
Saturday, May 20, 2006; Page A22

AT THE SENATE intelligence committee hearing Thursday on Gen. Michael V. Hayden's nomination to head the CIA, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked the nominee a simple question: Is "waterboarding" an acceptable interrogation technique? Gen. Hayden responded: "Let me defer that to closed session, and I would be happy to discuss it in some detail." That was the wrong answer. The right one would have been simple: No. Last year Congress banned cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment of detainees; one of its explicit aims was to stop the CIA's use of waterboarding, which induces an excruciating sensation of drowning and is considered by most human rights organizations to constitute torture. So why couldn't Gen. Hayden say clearly that the technique is now off-limits?

Few issues facing the next CIA director are more important than what to do about the agency's network of secret prisons, in which it is holding -- and has been abusively interrogating -- high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives. Gen. Hayden acknowledged in open session that the new law binds the CIA and made clear as well that it requires all federal agencies, including the one he is slated to lead, "to handle detainees wherever they may be located in a way that is not cruel, inhumane or degrading."

Yet in signing the law, President Bush made clear he reserved the right to override it as part of his inherent powers as commander in chief. What's more, his administration has quietly taken the view that waterboarding could actually be consistent with a ban on cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment. Now Gen. Hayden refuses in public to forswear the use of such barbaric treatment. The damage done by such silence to America's global standing and long-term interests is incalculable.

posted May 20, 2006 11:05 PM              

It is contrary to everything this nation always stood for.

Some of those prisoners may be high-ranking al Quada operatives but they are still human beings. Torturing and abusing them only places us on the same level as them.

posted May 21, 2006 04:48 PM              

Of course one's going to say ANYTHING anybody wants to hear to stop the unbearable pain of torture....

Seems torturers would understand that.......but - probably having never been victims of torture themselves, it never occured to them....