Ban Torture

60 Minutes last night reported the story of Murat Kurnaz, a German resident who was picked up in Pakistan, transferred to U.S. forces for $3,000 bounty, and held for five years in Kandahar and Guantanamo Bay. Kurnaz claims he was tortured by holding his head underwater, administering electric shocks to the soles of his feet, and hanging him suspended from the ceiling of an aircraft hangar.  Kurnaz was held for three and a half years after U.S. and German intelligence found no evidence and declared him innocent.  He was released in 2006.  Kurnaz wrote a book soon to be released in English, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo.

Despite the disappointing interview (it should have been conducted in German) and Scott Pelley’s leading questions, this is an interesting story. For the background, read the Washington Post’s coverage back in 2005 or the record of his military tribunal (note that about 75 pages remain classified).

In the news this week

Destroyed CIA tapes cause more problems

The government is fighting off several claims that it destroyed evidence when the CIA destroyed interrogation tapes of detainees.  (March 28)

President Bush refuses to withdraw Bradbury

The Senate is blocking key nominations and judgeships until President Bush withdraws the nomination of Steven Bradbury to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).  Bradbury has been serving as acting head of the OLC since June 2005.  He approved two still-secret legal memos in 2005 authorizing the use of waterboarding, and in February justified the CIA’s use of waterboarding.  Human Rights Watch opposes his nomination.

Habeas corpus cases look bleak

The Supreme Court heard arguments for two U.S. citizens being detained in Iraq, Mohammad Munaf and Shawqi Omar, but the arguments “turned a rather clear-cut case into a roller derby.”  Slate has a good article explaining why you should care (they have American families; Omar served in the Minnesota National Guard), and Scotusblog serves up the transcripts and blow-by-blow account.

The question is whether federal courts have jurisdiction to consider a habeas petition of a U.S. citizen detained by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq pending a transfer to Iraqi authorities following a conviction in an Iraqi criminal court. The two men are Sunni Muslims, and both fear torture if they are transferred to Iraqi officials.

Psychological impact of torture

Dr. Richard Miller attacks Senator Lieberman’s support of waterboarding.  Lieberman said “It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological.”  Miller has been medical director of Khmer Health Advocates in West Hartford, Connecticut, for 25 years, and witnesses the psychological damage of torture firsthand.

If Sen. Lieberman minimizes the psychological impact of torture, what will he say to U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq who have post-traumatic stress and depression? Will he tell them that their suffering is “only psychological?”

Read his editorial, Torture’s Scars Run Deep.

Close Guantanamo

Five former U.S. secretaries of State said that the next president should move quickly to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  That single act would improve America’s dismal reputation in the world immediately, agreed Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell at a University of Georgia roundtable discussion.  (March 27)

How did I get Iraq wrong?

Andrew Sullivan reflected on his initial support of the Iraq War and wondered “How Did I Get Iraq Wrong?“  Here’s part of his Slate essay (March 21):

I certainly never believed that a war I supported for the sake of freedom would actually use as its central weapon the deepest antithesis of freedom—the destruction of human autonomy and dignity and will that is torture. To distort this by shredding the English language, by engaging in newspeak that I had long associated with totalitarian regimes, was a further insult.

Andrew wrote a powerful essay in 2005 which is the best argument I’ve found for opposing torture — unequivocally and absolutely.  It reminds me why I decided to dedicated time to this effort.  Please read The Abolition of Torture: Winning the War on Terrorism Without Sacrificing Freedom.

Don’t ask, don’t tell

The firestorm over Abu Ghraib subsided. Courts-martial were held, and no one higher than a sergeant was convicted. All the rest, the officers who knew what was happening at the prison and said nothing, or the higher-ups in the field and in Washington who suggested indifference, were not touched. In fact, the Bush administration’s position on torture was much like the military’s on gays — don’t ask, don’t tell.

The Ultimate Casualty by Richard Cohen, The Washington Post.

Abu Ghraib’s femmes fatales

Stern interviews Lynndie England, who is sorry the pictures were made public but claims was just following orders (via IHT).

To be honest, the whole time I never really felt guilty because I was following orders and I was doing what I was supposed to do. So I’ve never felt guilty about doing anything that I did there.

Meanwhile, the New Yorker takes an in-depth sympathetic look at Specialist Sabrina Harman in Exposure: The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib, by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris. March 24.

She faulted herself for not being a more enthusiastic soldier when prisoners on Tier 1A were being given the business. When she was asked how other M.P.s could go at it without apparent inhibition, all she could say was “They’re more patriotic.”

Septicisle, in his blog Obsolete, compares these two articles, and notes “Everyone, regardless of the pressures upon them on that time, is capable of making a choice.”

Detainee trials

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments tomorrow (March 25) for two U.S. citizens now being detained in Iraq — Munaf v. Geren (06-1666) and Geren v. Omar (07-394). ScotusWiki provides an excellent summary of the cases. The question is whether federal courts have jurisdiction to consider a habeas petition of a U.S. citizen detained by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq pending a transfer to Iraqi authorities following a conviction in an Iraqi criminal court. The two men are Sunni Muslims, and both fear torture if they are transferred to Iraqi officials.

The U.S. military has given an interrogator (Army Sgt. Joshua R. Claus) immunity for possible abuses against a Canadian prisoner, Omar Khadr, in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors. Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured, is accused of hurling a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier in Afghanistan. Claus was previously sentenced to five months in prison in 2005 for assaulting an Afghan detainee at Bagram who later died. (CNN March 20))

Andy Worthington expands on this case, describes five others, and explains how “hopelessly blurred the distinctions between military resistance (aka insurgency) and terrorism have become, so that anyone caught fighting US occupation is not engaged in a war (with its own well-established laws) but is automatically part of a global terrorist movement.” (March 21)

CIA Renditions

An Italian judge ordered the continuation of a trial against 26 Americans and several former Italian intelligence officials for the 2003 abduction and rendition of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. The trial in absentia is the first anywhere over the U.S. practice of extraordinary rendition. (Reuters via the Jurist, March 19)

To protect its agents against litigation for harsh interrogation and extraordinary rendition, the CIA now covers the full cost of legal liability insurance. (AP March 17)

America must be a good role model

John McCain comments in the Financial Times (March18):

We all have to live up to our own high standards of morality and international responsibility. We will fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundations of our societies. We cannot torture or treat inhumanely the suspected terrorists that we have captured. We must close the detention facility at Guantánamo and come to a common international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.

Popular Culture

NPR’s Pam Fessler investigates why Jack Bauer of 24 is so appealing and attracts fans such as Dick Cheney and Michael Chertoff.

Chertoff says he sees parallels between the difficult choices Jack Bauer has to make and the real fight against the terrorist threat. “He knows sometimes there’s only bad choices, and you’ve got to make the least bad choice,” Chertoff says. “And … he does it, and he takes responsibility for it. And I think that’s in many ways something that the public values, and frankly something that I think is great aspiration.”

In this week’s New Yorker, David Denby reviews Taxi to the Dark Side, and George Saunders defends washboarding of prisoners. That’s right, washboarding.

News

The D.C. Circuit Court ruled that federal trial judges still have the authority to stop the government from transferring Guantanamo Bay detainees to countries where they fear torture. Judges may consider pleas to block transfers until the Supreme Court decides the cases of Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. U.S. (06-1196) heard on Dec. 5. A decision by the Justices is expected some time this spring or early summer. (scotusblog, March 14)

The CIA acknowledged secretly detaining a prisoner, Muhammad Rahim, for at least six months beginning last summer. The prisons were emptied in the fall of 2006, but President Bush signed an executive order last July that reiterated the CIA’s authority to use interrogation techniques more coercive than those permitted by the Pentagon. (Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times, March 15)

Director of national intelligence Mike McConnell participated in a symposium at Johns Hopkins University and said that waterboarding is a legal technique that works.

Just to put it in context, probably upwards of a quarter to a third of all the information generated in this period of time came from these three individuals [who were waterboarded]. It’s saved lives… Does it work? Yes, it works.

Reports

Yemeni national Khaled Abdu Ahmed Saleh al-Maqtari was held by the US without charge for 32 months in Abu Ghraib and two secret CIA prisons before being returned to Yemen in 2007. Amnesty International documented his case, corroborates his account with other prisoners, and provides an overview of international and US law. (via Jurist and BBC)

Human Rights First released a new report, Tortured Justice, discussing the problem of coerced evidence. “The introduction of coerced evidence, obtained through the use of official cruelty, into military commission trials at Guantanamo Bay is rapidly contaminating the justice system and jeopardizing the prospects for the successful prosecution of terrorists”

Mother Jones reports the CIA’s extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar from Milan to Egypt. Italy is prosecuting the kidnapping and has indicted 26 American officials. By Peter Bergen, March/April issue). Other articles in the Torture Hits Home issue.