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'Living
in hell:' 14,000 detainees held in secret by
U.S.
September
17, 2006 10:25 PM | News
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By PATRICK QUINN
In
the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled
off to
Guantanamo
, the
U.S.
military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its
islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the
reach of established law.
Disclosures
of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke
from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and
the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from
inside the system, the size of several major
U.S.
penitentiaries.
"It
was hard to believe I'd get out,"
Baghdad
shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press
after his release — without charge — last month. "I
lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I
was living in hell."
Captured
on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off
streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have
passed through
U.S.
detention, the vast majority in
Iraq
.
Many
say they were caught up in
U.S.
military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then
released months or years later without apology, compensation
or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of
the
Iraq
detentions in 2003 were "mistakes,"
U.S.
officers once told the international Red Cross.
Defenders
of the system, which has only grown since soldiers' photos of
abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked the world, say it's an unfortunate
necessity in the battles to pacify
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action.
Every
U.S.
detainee in
Iraq
"is detained because he poses a security threat to the
government of
Iraq
, the people of
Iraq
or coalition forces," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin
Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations
in
Iraq
.
But
dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human
rights activists, lawyers and scholars in
Iraq
,
Afghanistan
and the
United States
said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on
terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in
Iraq
and elsewhere.
Building
for the Long Term
Reports
of extreme physical and mental abuse, symbolized by the
notorious Abu Ghraib prison photos of 2004, have abated as the
Pentagon has rejected torture-like treatment of the inmates.
Most recently, on Sept. 6, the Pentagon issued a new
interrogation manual banning forced nakedness, hooding, stress
positions and other abusive techniques.
The
same day, President Bush said the CIA's secret outposts in the
prison network had been emptied, and 14 terror suspects from
them sent to
Guantanamo Bay
,
Cuba
, to face trial in military tribunals. The U.S. Supreme Court
has struck down the tribunal system, however, and the White
House and Congress are now wrestling over the legal structure
of such trials.
Living
conditions for detainees may be improving as well. The
U.S.
military cites the toilets of
Bagram
,
Afghanistan
: In a cavernous old building at that air base, hundreds of
detainees in their communal cages now have indoor plumbing and
privacy screens, instead of exposed chamber pots.
Whatever
the progress, small or significant, grim realities persist.
Human
rights groups count dozens of detainee deaths for which no one
has been punished or that were never explained. The secret
prisons — unknown in number and location — remain
available for future detainees. The new manual banning torture
doesn't cover CIA interrogators. And thousands of people still
languish in a limbo, deprived of one of common law's oldest
rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are
imprisoned.
"If
you, God forbid, are an innocent Afghan who gets sold down the
river by some warlord rival, you can end up at Bagram and you
have absolutely no way of clearing your name," said John
Sifton of Human Rights Watch in
New York
. "You can't have a lawyer present evidence, or do
anything organized to get yourself out of there."
The
U.S.
government has contended it can hold detainees until the
"war on terror" ends — as it determines.
"I
don't think we've gotten to the question of how long,"
said retired admiral John D. Hutson, former top lawyer for the
U.S. Navy. "When we get up to 'forever,' I think it will
be tested" in court, he said.
The
Navy is planning long-term at
Guantanamo
. This fall it expects to open a new, $30-million
maximum-security wing at its prison complex there, a
concrete-and-steel structure replacing more temporary camps.
In
Iraq
, Army jailers are a step ahead. Last month they opened a
$60-million, state-of-the-art detention center at
Camp
Cropper
, near
Baghdad
's airport. The Army oversees about 13,000 prisoners in
Iraq
at Cropper,
Camp
Bucca
in the southern desert, and
Fort
Suse
in the Kurdish north.
Neither
prisoners of war nor criminal defendants, they are just
"security detainees" held "for imperative
reasons of security," spokesman Curry said, using
language from an annex to a U.N. Security Council resolution
authorizing the U.S. presence here.
Questions
of Law, Sovereignty
President
Bush laid out the
U.S.
position in a speech Sept. 6.
"These
are enemy combatants who are waging war on our nation,"
he said. "We have a right under the laws of war, and we
have an obligation to the American people, to detain these
enemies and stop them from rejoining the battle."
But
others say there's no need to hold these thousands outside of
the rules for prisoners of war established by the Geneva
Conventions.
U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared last March that the
extent of arbitrary detention here is "not consistent
with provisions of international law governing internment on
imperative reasons of security."
Meanwhile,
officials of Nouri al-Maliki's 4-month-old Iraqi government
say the
U.S.
detention system violates
Iraq
's national rights.
"As
long as sovereignty has transferred to Iraqi hands, the
Americans have no right to detain any Iraqi person," said
Fadhil al-Sharaa, an aide to the prime minister. "The
detention should be conducted only with the permission of the
Iraqi judiciary."
At
the Justice Ministry, Deputy Minister Busho Ibrahim told AP it
has been "a daily request" that the detainees be
brought under Iraqi authority.
There's
no guarantee the Americans' 13,000 detainees would fare better
under control of the Iraqi government, which U.N. officials
say holds 15,000 prisoners.
But
little has changed because of these requests. When the
Americans formally turned over Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi
control on Sept. 2, it was empty but its 3,000 prisoners
remained in
U.S.
custody, shifted to
Camp
Cropper
.
Life
in Custody
The
cases of U.S.-detained Iraqis are reviewed by a committee of
U.S.
military and Iraqi government officials. The panel recommends
criminal charges against some, release for others. As of Sept.
9, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq had put 1,445 on trial,
convicting 1,252. In the last week of August, for example, 38
were sentenced on charges ranging from illegal weapons
possession to murder, for the shooting of a U.S. Marine.
Almost
18,700 have been released since June 2004, the
U.S.
command says, not including many more who were held and then
freed by local military units and never shipped to major
prisons.
Some
who were released, no longer considered a threat, later joined
or rejoined the insurgency.
The
review process is too slow, say U.N. officials. Until they are
released, often families don't know where their men are —
the prisoners are usually men — or even whether they're in
American hands.
Ex-detainee
Mouayad Yasin Hassan, 31, seized in April 2004 as a suspected
Sunni Muslim insurgent, said he wasn't allowed to obtain a
lawyer or contact his family during 13 months at Abu Ghraib
and Bucca, where he was interrogated incessantly. When he
asked why he was in prison, he said, the answer was, "We
keep you for security reasons."
Another
released prisoner, Waleed Abdul Karim, 26, recounted how his
guards would wield their absolute authority.
"Tell
us about the ones who attack Americans in your
neighborhood," he quoted an interrogator as saying,
"or I will keep you in prison for another 50 years."
As
with others, Karim's confinement may simply have strengthened
support for the anti-U.S. resistance. "I will hate
Americans for the rest of my life," he said.
As
bleak and hidden as the
Iraq
lockups are, the Afghan situation is even less known. Accounts
of abuse and deaths emerged in 2002-2004, but if Abu Ghraib-like
photos from Bagram exist, none have leaked out. The
U.S.
military is believed holding about 500 detainees — most
Afghans, but also apparently Arabs, Pakistanis and Central
Asians.
The
United States
plans to cede control of its Afghan detainees by early next
year, five years after invading
Afghanistan
to eliminate al-Qaida's base and bring down the Taliban
government. Meanwhile, the prisoners of Bagram exist in a
legal vacuum like that elsewhere in the
U.S.
detention network.
"There's
been a silence about Bagram, and much less political
discussion about it," said Richard Bennett, chief U.N.
human rights officer in
Afghanistan
.
Freed
detainees tell how in cages of 16 inmates they are forbidden
to speak to each other. They wear the same orange jumpsuits
and shaven heads as the terrorist suspects at
Guantanamo
, but lack even the scant legal rights granted inmates at that
Cuba
base. In some cases, they have been held without charge for
three to four years, rights workers say.
Guantanamo
received its first prisoners from
Afghanistan
— chained, wearing blacked-out goggles — in January 2002.
A total of 770 detainees were sent there. Its population today
of Afghans, Arabs and others, stands at 455.
Described
as the most dangerous of
America
's "war on terror" prisoners, only 10 of the
Guantanamo
inmates have been charged with crimes. Charges are expected
against 14 other al-Qaida suspects flown in to
Guantanamo
from secret prisons on Sept. 4.
Plans
for their trials are on hold, however, because of a Supreme
Court ruling in June against the Bush administration's plan
for military tribunals.
The
court held the tribunals were not authorized by the U.S.
Congress and violated the Geneva Conventions by abrogating
prisoners' rights. In a sometimes contentious debate, the
White House and Congress are trying to agree on a new,
acceptable trial plan.
Since
the court decision, and after four years of confusing claims
that terrorist suspects were so-called "unlawful
combatants" unprotected by international law, the Bush
administration has taken steps recognizing that the Geneva
Conventions' legal and human rights do extend to imprisoned
al-Qaida militants. At the same time, however, the new White
House proposal on tribunals retains such controversial
features as denying defendants access to some evidence against
them.
In
his Sept. 6 speech, Bush acknowledged for the first time the
existence of the CIA's secret prisons, believed established at
military bases or safehouses in such places as
Egypt
,
Indonesia
and eastern Europe. That network, uncovered by journalists,
had been condemned by U.N. authorities and investigated by the
Council of Europe.
The
clandestine jails are now empty, Bush announced, but will
remain a future option for CIA detentions and interrogation.
Louise
Arbour, U.N. human rights chief, is urging Bush to abolish the
CIA prisons altogether, as ripe for "abusive
conduct." The CIA's techniques for extracting information
from prisoners still remain secret, she noted.
Meanwhile,
the
U.S.
government's willingness to resort to "extraordinary
rendition," transferring suspects to other nations where
they might be tortured, appears unchanged.
Prosecutions
and Memories
The
exposure of sadistic abuse, torture and death at Abu Ghraib
two years ago touched off a flood of courts-martial of mostly
lower-ranking
U.S.
soldiers. Overall, about 800 investigations of alleged
detainee mistreatment in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
have led to action against more than 250 service personnel,
including 89 convicted at courts-martial,
U.S.
diplomats told the United Nations in May.
Critics
protest that penalties have been too soft and too little has
been done, particularly in tracing inhumane interrogation
methods from the far-flung islands of the overseas prison
system back to policies set by high-ranking officials.
In
only 14 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed
or suspected killings of detainees, the New York-based Human
Rights First reports. The stiffest sentence in a
torture-related death has been five months in jail. The group
reported last February that in almost half of 98 detainee
deaths, the cause was either never announced or reported as
undetermined.
Looking
back, the
United States
overreacted in its treatment of detainees after Sept. 11, said
Anne-Marie Slaughter, a noted American scholar of
international law.
It
was understandable, the
Princeton
University
dean said, but now "we have to restore a balance between
security and rights that is consistent with who we are and
consistent with our security needs."
Otherwise,
she said, "history will look back and say that we took a
dangerous and deeply wrong turn."
Back
here in
Baghdad
, at the Alawi bus station, a gritty, noisy hub far from the
meeting rooms of
Washington
and
Geneva
, women gather with fading hopes whenever a new prisoner
release is announced.
As
she watched one recent day for a bus from distant
Camp
Bucca
, one mother wept and told her story.
"The
Americans arrested my son, my brother and his friend,"
said Zahraa Alyat, 42. "The Americans arrested them
October 16, 2005. They left together and I don't know anything
about them."
The
bus pulled up. A few dozen men stepped off, some blindfolded,
some bound, none with any luggage, none with familiar faces.
As
the distraught women straggled away once more, one
ex-prisoner, 18-year-old Bilal Kadhim Muhssin, spotted
U.S.
troops nearby.
"Americans,"
he muttered in fear. "Oh, my God, don't say that
name," and he bolted for a city bus, and freedom.
___
The
Associated Press staff in Baghdad and AP writers Andrew Selsky
in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Matthew Pennington in Kabul,
Afghanistan; Anne Plummer Flaherty in Washington, and Charles
J. Hanley in New York contributed to this report.
Copyright
© 2006 The Associated Press
Copyright
© 2006 Capitol Hill Blue. All rights reserved
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/content/2006/09/living_in_hell.html
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