19 March 2010
By Stephen Lendman On
January 28 in TomDispatch.com, Anand Gopal headlined,
"Night Raids, Hidden Detention Centers, the 'Black
Jail,' and the Dogs of War in Afghanistan," recounting
unreported US media stories about killings,
abductions, detentions, interrogations, and torture in
"a series of prisons on US military bases around the
country." Bagram prison, for example, is "a facility
with a notorious reputation for abusive behavior,"
including brutalizing torture and cold-blooded
murder. Even
worse is the "Black Jail," a facility consisting of
individual windowless concrete cells with bright
24-hour lighting, described by one former detainee as
"the most dangerous and fearful place" in which
prisoners endure appalling treatment. The
pattern is predictable. US/NATO convoys are attacked
or reports of Taliban forces are received. Americans
respond accordingly, rounding up suspects, mostly
innocent civilians, and detaining them for
interrogations, torture, abuse and degrading treatment
- not just in Afghanistan but in secret black sites
globally, according to a January 26 UN Human Rights
Council (HRC) report detailing practices engaged in by
various countries including America, by far the
world's worst offender in its war on terror - one
waged against humanity for unchallengeable power and
total global dominance.
Besides Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, HRC said the
CIA runs scores of offshore secret prisons in over 66
countries worldwide for dissidents and alleged
terrorists - in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco,
Syria, Libya, Tunisia, India, Pakistan, Russia,
Uzbekistan, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ethopia, Djibouti, Kenya,
Poland, Romania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Thailand, Diego
Garcia, and elsewhere.
Post-9/11, "the United States embarked on a process of
reducing and removing various human rights and other
protection mechanisms" through numerous laws and
administrative acts including: --
the September 18, 2001 joint House-Senate
Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) for
"the use of United States Armed Forces against those
responsible for the recent attacks launched against
the United States"; --
the October 2001 USA Patriot Act (just renewed) that
shredded civil liberty protections, including due
process, freedom of association, and the right to be
free from unreasonable searches and seizures; --
the October 2002 House-Senate "Joint Resolution to
Authorize the Use of the United States Armed Forces
Against Iraq," even though the country (and
Afghanistan) posed no threat to America, had no
ability or intention to strike, or did so on 9/11 or
any other time; --
the November 2001 Military Order Number 1 authorizing
the president to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest
non-citizens (and later citizens) anywhere in the
world for any reason and hold them indefinitely
without charge, evidence, or due process and judicial
fairness protections in a civil court; --
numerous presidential Executive Orders, memorandums,
findings, National and Homeland Security Presidential
Directives, and other documents authorizing the
abduction, detention, torture, and killing of alleged
terrorists; --
National Presidential Directive 51 granting the
president dictatorial power to declare a national
emergency, followed by martial law without
congressional approval; --
the February 2002, a presidential memorandum declaring
Geneva's Common Article 3 (prohibiting torture and
other lawless acts) and Third Geneva, pertaining to
prisoners of war, null and void for "al-Qaeda or
Taliban detainees;" --
the November 2002 Homeland Security Act creating a
national Gestapo; --
the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act denying detainees
habeas rights and authorizing the use cruel, abusive,
inhumane or degrading treatment in the interests of
national security; --
the 2006 Military Commissions Act, known as "the
torture authorization act," granted the executive
sweeping unconstitutional powers to detain,
interrogate and prosecute alleged terror suspects and
collaborators (including US citizens), imprison them
indefinitely in military prisons without proof of
guilt, and deny them habeas and judicial fairness
protections; and --
various other actions subverting the letter and spirit
of international and US laws to pursue a global war on
terror, including worldwide detention centers,
claiming human rights laws there don't apply. "One
of the consequences of this policy was that many
detainees were kept secretly and without access to the
protection accorded to those in custody" under
international and US laws.
Secret Detention Under International
Law For
purposes of HRC's report, they occur when governments
authorize, consent, support or acquiesce to depriving
persons of their liberty; where they're denied contact
with the outside world, including legal counsel; or
when states neither confirm or deny knowledge or
involvement in detaining alleged terrorists or
suspected collaborators. The
practice is abhorrent and irreconcilable with
international human rights and humanitarian law. Under
no circumstances is it justified, yet America is a
serial offender. As
arbitrary arrests, they deny personal liberty and
security. Among other international law provisions,
they violate Article 1 of the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) stating:
"Everyone has the right to liberty and security of
person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest
or detention," and other provisions affirming
fundamental international law rights. The
UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights Working Group
on Arbitrary Detention calls secret ones arbitrary and
illegal by denying detainees information on charges
against them, a prompt hearing before a judge, and
right to a fair trial according to established
international law principles.
Secret detentions take many forms, including black
sites for "High Value Detainees (HVD)," where they're
physically and psychologically tortured for extended
periods to extract confessions that are inadmissible
in courts, according to international law. The
UN's study showed detainees held incommunicado often
aren't charged with a crime, informed of charges,
provided counsel, allowed time to prepare a proper
defense, or tried by impartial tribunals to establish
their guilt or innocence.
Under the International Convention for the Protection
of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the
practice places individuals outside legal protections,
and is conducive to coercing confessions under torture
and other abusive treatment. The
Rome Statute's Article 7 calls "enforced disappearance
of person" a crime against humanity if it's committed
as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed
against a civilian population." In all respects, it's
abhorrent, illegal, and unjustifiable.
Geneva, applying to all conflicts, allows war prisoner
and civilian detentions - the former to be released
when hostilities end; the latter held under very
strict conditions, namely: --
if it's "necessary for imperative reasons of
security," and --
for penal prosecutions for individuals charged with a
crime.
America's "unlawful enemy combatant" designation has
no legitimacy in international law under any
conditions or circumstances.
Geneva mandates detainees be registered and held in
officially recognized facilities. Incommunicado
detentions are strictly prohibited.
America's Secret Gulag HRC
called a country complicit in secret detentions under
these conditions: --
when one nation asks another to do it; --
when a country won't identify persons on airplanes
passing through their airports or airspace after
information about CIA detentions are known; and --
when a nation "knowingly (takes) advantage of the
situation by sending questions to the State which
detains the person or by soliciting or receiving
information from persons" held secretly; this applies
to at least the following states: --
Britain; --
Germany; --
Canada; --
Australia; --
Italy; --
Kenya; and --
Macedonia. In
June 2007, in a report for the Council of Europe,
Swiss politician and former state prosecutor, Dick
Marty, said he had:
"enough evidence to state that secret detention
facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from
2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania. (He
noted that) the majority of detainees brought to
Romania were extracted 'out of theater(s) of
conflict.' This phrase pertains to transfers from
Afghanistan and Iraq. In
August 2009, The New York Times also reported that
former US intelligence officials oversaw the
construction of three small CIA facilities, each for
about a half dozen detainees, one being "a renovated
building on a busy street in Bucharest, Romania." In
Poland from 2003 - 2005, eight High Value Detainees (HVDs)
were allegedly held in Stare Kiejkuty village,
including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged 9/11
mastermind based on his torture-extracted confession,
rendering it void and inadmissible according to law.
Besides the UN Convention Against Torture, the Supreme
Court ruled Brown v. Mississippi (February 1936): "The
rack and torture chamber may not be substituted for
the witness stand," and an earlier Court (in Fisher v.
State - November 1926) called coerced confessions "the
chief iniquity, the crowning infamy (and) the curse of
all countries." Yet
Mohammed's will be used against him in a planned
kangaroo proceeding. So will those extracted from his
four alleged co-conspirators, denying them any measure
of justice, even though, in all likelihood, they're
innocent.
Marty reported information from civil aviation records
on CIA-operated planes landing at Szymany airport in
northeastern Poland and the Mihail Kogalniceanu
military airfield in Romania from 2003 - 2005. He also
explained how they were disguised using fake flight
plans.
HRC's report revealed further evidence about front
company flights from Bangkok, Thailand to Szymany on
December 5, 2002 ("disguised under multiple layers of
secrecy" to avoid US "fingerprints") and others from
December 3 - 6, 2002.
Other data "demonstrate(d) that a Boeing 737 aircraft
flew to Romania in September 2003" from Dulles
Airport, Washington DC on September 20, 2003.
Romania supplied information about secret CIA
detention centers and flights to and from the nation's
territory, but wouldn't confirm or deny if prisoners
left planes on its soil.
However, Lithuanian officials gave the CIA a building
for as many as eight alleged terrorists where they
were held for over a year until late 2005, after which
they were moved because of public disclosure. In
November 2009, it was learned that the facility was
built inside an exclusive riding academy in Antaviliai,
and that Lithuania cooperated with CIA detentions in
2004. Two Afghanistan to Vilnius flights were
identified - on September 20, 2004 and on July 28,
2005. In
November 2009, the Lithuanian government confirmed
that its State Security Department (SSD) received
requests to "equip facilities....suitable for hold
detainees," but it wouldn't admit they were used for
that purpose. When
late 2005 Washington Post and ABC News reports
revealed Eastern European detentions, prisoners were
allegedly moved from Europe to other undisclosed black
sites, possibly in war zones or Africa.
Guantanamo has at least one black site, "unnamed and
officially unacknowledged" out of sight about a mile
north of Camp Delta. "The unacknowledged 'Camp No' is
described as having no guard towers and being
surrounded with concertina wire, with one part of the
compound having 'the same appearance as the
interrogation centers at other prison camps.' " It's
not known if the CIA or Joint Special Operations
Command runs it.
Other reports reveal American black sites at Camp
Bondsteel in Kosovo and Eagle Base in Tuzla, Bosnia.
The Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner,
Alvaro Gil-Robles, told Le Monde he was "shocked" by
Camp Bondsteel's facility, "a smaller version of
Guantanamo." In December 2005, UN Kosovo Ombudsman,
Marek Antoni Nowicki, said:
"There can be no doubt that for years there has been a
prison in the Bondsteel base with no external civilian
or judicial oversight. (It) looks like the pictures we
have seen of Guantanamo Bay." A Tuzla detainee said he
was also held at a secret Diego Garcia facility. He's
now at a Syria black site.
Afghanistan hold hundreds of detainees in numerous
facilities, including three well-known ones at Bagram
airbase (called "The Hanger), and two others near
Kabul - the "Dark Prison" (with no lights, heating or
decoration) and the "Salt Pit." Another is in the
Panjshir valley, north of Kabul, and three others are
called Rissat, Rissat 2, and "Prison Number Three." In
all US and black site facilities, former detainees
(ones lucky to be released) describe nightmarish
treatment, including: --
being hooded or blindfolded; --
painfully shackled for extended periods; --
exposed to extreme heat and cold; --
kept naked; --
waterboarded numerous times; --
held in isolation or tiny cells with other prisoners
where sleeping must occur in shifts; --
severe physical and psychological treatment creating
permanent trauma for many; --
beatings; --
continuous blaring noises or music; --
24-hour bright light or total darkness; --
sleep deprivation for days; --
painful stress positions for extended periods; --
being sodomized; --
denied food, too little, or inedible kinds; --
painful force-feeding for hunger strikers; --
denied medical care; --
coerced to confess to offenses they never committed; --
hung from steel bars in their cells or from metal
hooks in interrogation rooms for extended periods; --
kept in tubs of ice water creating hypothermia; --
threatened with or attacked by dogs; --
given electro-shocks; and --
other cruel, abusive and degrading treatment. In
Iraq, the same practices occurred, exposed at Abu
Ghraib, but at other facilities as well throughout the
country, including at Forward Operating Base Tiger in
Al-Anbar Province, a base outside Mosul, a temporary
holding camp near Nasiriyah, a Tikrit Forward
Operating Base, and others. In
2005, it was learned that America secretly captured,
transferred and detained alleged terrorists at its own
sites, sending many to secret ones in other states.
After the 2001 Afghan invasion, the CIA was involved
straightaway in US and foreign black site detentions
and torture, yet in its January 13, 2006 report to the
Committee Against Torture, the Bush administration
claimed: "The
United States does not transfer persons to countries
where (it's believed) it is 'more likely than not'
that they will be tortured. The United States obtains
assurances, as appropriate, from a foreign government
to which a detainee is transferred that it will not
torture the individual being transferred."
Clear evidence shows otherwise - that prisoners were
subjected to cruel, inhumane, abusive and degrading
treatment at US and foreign sites, contrary to Bush
administration assurances and later from the equally
culpable Obama administration.
After promising to respect human rights and close
Guantanamo and other detention facilities as
expeditiously as possible, and refrain from operating
new ones, it's kept them open, endorsed preventive
detentions without charges, continues extraordinary
renditions to black sites, and embraces torture as
official US policy like the Bush administration.
America's torture prisons still flourish as secretly
and abusively as under George Bush despite promises of
more humane practices, quickly broken to pursue
America's imperial agenda for unchallengeable power
and total global dominance.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre
for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and
can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished
guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the
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