Ban Torture

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.

News

President Bush vetoed a bill to require the CIA to limit interrogation methods to those outlined in the Army manual. Congress failed to override the veto on a party-line vote. Father Jonathan Morris (Fox News) argues that President Bush’s intentions are good, but not his philosophy.

President Bush has referred to these specialized procedures as “efficient,” “necessary,” “legal,” and “safe.” The problem here is that none of his adjectives get to the heart of what’s wrong with torture. Efficiency and necessity are purely pragmatic concepts. Under their banner, the world has witnessed every sort of evil. And legality and safety are equally unconvincing justifications. Does making something legal make it right? And safety? The twisted suggestion that some torture is safe obfuscates the horrid nature of torture, a degradation of human dignity and liberty.

The U.N. investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, was denied access to U.S.-run jails in Iraq. The British government has agreed to allow him to visit their detainees in Iraq. Reuters, March 11

The Pentagon discovered nearly 50 tapes documenting interrogations of two suspects. The tapes do not appear to reveal any unlawful treatment. The New York Times, March 11

The first U.S. war tribunals since World War II are underway. An Afghan prisoner on trial for throwing a grenade in Afghanistan when he was 16 compared U.S. forces to the Taliban government that imprisoned and killed people without trial. He claims he was tortured. Reuters, March 12

President Bush stripped the independent Intelligence Oversight Board of its authority to refer matters to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation. The Boston Globe, March 14

The week ended with the House holding a rare secret session to discuss non-secret material, and the start of a four-day protest by hundreds of veterans and active-duty soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars at a gathering called Winter Solder (interview at Democracy Now!).

International

The use of waterboarding by the United States affected a case in Canada against two suspected Al Qaeda operatives. Canada threw out evidence obtained through the CIA’s waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, stating that “torture is morally repugnant and not particularly reliable” and that Canada “does not knowingly use information which has been obtained through torture.” Tainted Evidence by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, March 5. NPR interview.

CIA extraordinary rendition jets keep popping up. Four landed at the Shannon airport recently. The Limerick Leader, March 10

Afghan detainees are not covered by Canada’s bill of rights, a Canadian judge ruled. Canadians had halted transfers of Taliban insurgency prisoners to Afghan authorities after evidence of torture. Transfers will resume. International Herald Tribune, March 12

Opinion

The current issue of the Washington Monthly includes 37 essays advocating an end to torture. No More: No Torture. No Exceptions.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewed Darius Rejali, author of Torture and Democracy:

“July 21st, a bunch of guys got on buses in London with bombs, and they escaped. The British police got them all in ten days, and the break in the case came when the parents of Muktar Said Ibrahim, loyal British Muslims, turned in their son when they saw the security video. Would they have turned him if they knew their son was going to be tortured? The answer is: obviously not. Right? We know the kinds of things that work in policing. The FBI knows it. This is a standard practice. And the more we torture, the less it is that people will surrender to us.”

Scott Shane wrote in The New York Times about the challenge of bringing scientific rigor to the art of interrogation. (March 9)

William Safire reviewed the history of the word “waterboarding” and reviews the use of the term and technique in U.S. history. (March 9)

Out-of-Context Quote of the Week

“We undertake this work because we believe that every human being bears the image of our maker. That’s why we’re doing this. No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.” President Bush, speaking to the National Religious Broadcasters convention (March 11)

As expected, President Bush vetoed the Intelligence Authorization Act which included a provision to limit the CIA to interrogation techniques included in the Army Field Manual.

New York Times article
Text of radio address

According to the acting chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Steven G. Bradbury, CIA interrogators used tactics that were “quite distressing, or uncomfortable, even frightening, but if it doesn’t involve severe physical pain, and it doesn’t last very long, it may not constitute severe physical suffering. That would be the analysis.”

“Under the mental side,” it “requires an intent to cause prolonged mental harm. That’s a mental disorder that is extended or continuing over time.”

See the article by Dan Eggen, Washington Post, and an opinion in USA Today by Jonathan Turley, and the full video (Real Player -  1hr 16min) of the Oversight Hearing on the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, February 14, 2008.  The quotes appear at around the 36-37 min mark.