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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Crime & Police : Elections & Legislation : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Iraq : Labor : Prisons : Regime |
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Calls Mount for Independent Prisoner Abuse Commission |
Current rating: 0 |
by William Fisher
(No verified email address) |
27 Sep 2005
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"Court-martialing low-level enlisted servicemen and servicewomen while silencing commanders who attempt to expose systemic abuses serves to perpetuate the abuse..." |
NEW YORK - New allegations of prisoner torture in Iraq are likely to add urgency to pending legislation that would create a 9/11-type commission to investigate detainee treatment and ensure that the U.S. operates within the law on interrogations.
The charges are the subject of a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW), which claims that U.S. Army troops subjected Iraqi detainees to severe beatings and other torture at a base in central Iraq from 2003 through 2004, often under orders or with the approval of superior officers, according to accounts from soldiers.
"The administration demanded that soldiers extract information from detainees without telling them what was allowed and what was forbidden. Yet when abuses inevitably followed, the leadership blamed the soldiers in the field instead of taking responsibility," said Tom Malinowski, HRW's Washington director.
According to the Rev. Tim Simpson of the recently-formed Christian Alliance for Progress, a national movement that advocates tolerance and diversity, "What is so disheartening about these latest revelations is that they demonstrate the seared moral conscience of our government and its supporters."
"Our government reacted to this disclosure with hardly a yawn," he told IPS. "Rather than moving to see to it that such atrocities are halted immediately, the president is instead moving to ensure that the prospects for repeating these acts remain open to future generations by promising to veto legislation targeted at prevention."
"And from the 'champions of virtue' on the Christian Right we hear nothing but silence, as they continue to lend their support to the administration's policy of torture."
The new charges come as the U.S. Senate is poised to debate two amendments to the Defence Department's funding bill. These amendments were introduced by Senators John McCain, an Arizona Republican and former Vietnamese prisoner of war, and Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, along with three other Democrats -- Sens. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, John Rockefeller of West Virginia, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
The amendments are designed to correct policies that led to hundreds of allegations of abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody. The McCain amendment would help ensure the United States operates within the law on interrogations. The Levin Amendment would create an independent commission to examine past abuses and make policy recommendations for the future.
Sen. Lindsay Graham, a conservative South Carolina Republican who has served for many years as a military judge, has said he supports the McCain proposal. And more than a dozen high ranking military officers have also endorsed the amendment.
In a letter to Pres. Bush and Sen. McCain, the military leaders called torture and cruel treatment "ineffective methods, because they induce prisoners to say what their interrogators want to hear, even if it is not true, while bringing discredit upon the United States".
"It is now apparent that the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere took place in part because our men and women in uniform were given ambiguous instructions, which in some cases authorised treatment that went beyond what was allowed by the Army Field Manual."
"Administration officials confused matters further by declaring that U.S. personnel are not bound by longstanding prohibitions of cruel treatment when interrogating non-U.S. citizens on foreign soil. As a result, we suddenly had one set of rules for interrogating prisoners of war, and another for 'enemy combatants'; one set for Guantanamo, and another for Iraq; one set for our military, and another for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)," the letter said.
The McCain proposal would mandate that all branches of the U.S. military use only the U.S. Army's Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation (FM 34-52), which prohibits use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. government agency, to define the limits of prisoner custody.
Both the McCain and Levin proposals have been opposed by the White House, which has said an independent investigatory commission is unnecessary since the military's own investigations of prisoner abuse have led to charges against a number of soldiers.
Pres. Bush has threatened to veto any Defence Department funding bill that contains the McCain amendment. The Pentagon's funding legislation was taken off the Senate calendar and has been on hold since the introduction of the McCain amendment.
Sen. Levin's proposed commission would be modeled after the 9/11 Commission. It would report on its findings regarding the causes of detainee abuse, determine who should be held responsible for such abuses, and make recommendations for changes in U.S. policy and law relating to the treatment of detainees.
"We are calling for an Independent Commission on the Treatment of Detainees because the Defense Department has shown that it is not capable of investigating itself," said Levin. "The most serious scandal in recent military history needs an objective investigation."
That view was echoed by Jumana Musa, Amnesty International USA's advocacy director for International Justice.
She told IPS, "The time for an independent, comprehensive investigation of this matter is long overdue. By continuing to insist that these were isolated acts that bore no reflection on the policies designed and implemented at the highest levels of government, the administration has shown itself either incapable or unwilling to address the depth and scope of torture and ill-treatment of detainees in U.S. custody and control."
"Court-martialing low-level enlisted servicemen and servicewomen while silencing commanders who attempt to expose systemic abuses serves to perpetuate the abuse," Musa said.
The senators said the various Defence Department reviews to date were "highly inadequate". In calling for an independent commission, they voiced concern that "there has been no accountability at senior levels for policies, actions, and failures to act that may have contributed to widespread abuse of detainees. The responsibility of civilian leaders, in particular, remains essentially unexamined."
They added, "A full, objective, and independent inquiry into the treatment of detainees would serve to restore the United States ' credibility and leadership in the world."
Kenneth D. Hurwitz, senior associate with the U.S. Law & Security and International Justice Programmes of Human Rights First, agrees.
"That it took 17 months and a trip to Congress to prod commanders into investigating severe abuses conducted routinely and openly for months shows yet again the need for an independent 9/11 type commission that is free of command influence," he told IPS.
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service
http://www.ipsnews.net |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Torturous Silence on Torture |
by Ray McGovern
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
27 Sep 2005
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Where do American religious leaders stand on torture? Their deafening silence evokes memories of the unconscionable behavior of German church leaders in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Despite the hate whipped up by administration propagandists against those it brands "terrorists," most Americans agree that torture should not be permitted. Few seem aware, though, that although President George W. Bush says he is against torture, he has openly declared that our military and other interrogators may engage in torture "consistent with military necessity."
For far too long we have been acting like "obedient Germans." Shall we continue to avert our eyes - even as our mainstream media begin to expose the "routine" torture conducted by US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo?
Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman, John Warner took a strong rhetorical stand against torture early last year after seeing the photos from Abu Graib. Then he succumbed to strong political pressure to postpone Senate hearings on the subject until after the November 2004 election. Those of us who live in Virginia might probe our consciences on this. Shall we citizens of the once-proud Old Dominion simply acquiesce while Sen. Warner shirks his constitutional duty?
We have come a long way since Virginia patriot Patrick Henry loudly insisted that the rack and the screw were barbaric practices that must be left behind in the Old World, "or we are lost and undone." Can Americans from other states consult their own consciences with respect to what Justice may require of them in denouncing torture as passionately as the patriots who founded our nation?
On September 24, The New York Times ran a detailed report regarding the kinds of "routine" torture that US servicemen and women have been ordered to carry out (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/politics/24abuse.html). This week's Time also has an article on the use of torture by US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo.
Those two articles are based on a new report from Human Rights Watch, a report that relies heavily on the testimony of a West Point graduate, an Army Captain who has had the courage to speak out. A Pentagon spokesman has dismissed the report as "another predictable report by an organization trying to advance an agenda through the use of distortion and errors of fact." Judge for yourselves; the report can be found at (http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/). Grim but required reading.
Inhuman
History, even recent history, demonstrates once again that total power corrupts totally. See if you can guess the author of the following:
"In this land that has inherited through our forebears the noblest understandings of the rule of law, our government has deliberately chosen the way of barbarism...
There is a price to be paid for the right to be called a civilized nation. That price can be paid in only one currency - the currency of human rights...When this currency is devalued a nation chooses the company of the world's dictatorships and banana republics. I indict this government for the crime of taking us into that shady fellowship.
The rule of law says that cruel and inhuman punishment is beneath the dignity of a civilized state. But to prisoners we say, 'We will hold you where no one can hear your screams.' When I used the word 'barbarism,' this is what I meant. The entire policy stands condemned by the methods used to pursue it.
We send a message to the jailers, interrogators, and those who make such practices possible and permissible: 'Power is a fleeting thing. One day your souls will be required of you."'"
-- Bishop Peter Storey, Central Methodist Mission, Johannesburg, June 1981
I asked a Muslim friend recently what the Koran says about torture. After consulting an imam, she reported that the Koran does not address the subject because the Koran deals only "with human behavior." Do not we of the Judeo-Christian tradition also reject torture as inhuman and never morally permissible?
The various rationalizations for torture do not bear close scrutiny. Intelligence specialists concede that the information acquired by torture cannot be considered reliable. Our own troops are brutalized when they follow orders to brutalize. And they are exposed to much greater risk when captured. Our country becomes a pariah among nations. Above all, torture is simply wrong. It falls into the same category of evil as slavery and rape. Torture is inhuman and immoral, whether or not our bishops and rabbis can summon the courage to name it so.
It Is Up To Us
By keeping their tongue-tied heads way down, our religious leaders have forfeited the moral authority with which they otherwise could speak. They end up playing the role of Hitler's Reichsbishops, who supported - or at least acquiesced in - the policies and methods of the Third Reich.
Many American men and women - Jews, Christians, Muslims of Abrahamic tradition - have learned not to depend on clergy leaders who bless the Empire. The inescapable conclusion is, as popular theologian Annie Dillard reminds us, "There is only us; there never has been any other."
The question is this: Are we are up to the challenge of confronting the evil of torture, or shall we prove Patrick Henry right? Is our country about to be "lost and undone?"
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and lives in Virginia.
http://www.telltheword.org |
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Officer Criticizes Detainee Abuse Inquiry |
by Eric Schmitt
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
27 Sep 2005
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WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - An Army captain who reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq said Tuesday that Army investigators seemed more concerned about tracking down young soldiers who reported misconduct than in following up the accusations and investigating whether higher-ranking officers knew of the abuses.
The officer, Capt. Ian Fishback, said investigators from the Criminal Investigation Command and the 18th Airborne Corps inspector general had pressed him to divulge the names of two sergeants from his former battalion who also gave accounts of abuse, which were made public in a report last Friday by the group Human Rights Watch.
Captain Fishback said the investigators who have questioned him in the past 10 days seemed to be less interested in individuals he identified in his chain of command who allegedly committed the abuses.
"I'm convinced this is going in a direction that's not consistent with why we came forward," Captain Fishback said in a telephone interview from Fort Bragg, N.C., where he is going through Army Special Forces training. "We came forward because of the larger issue that prisoner abuse is systemic in the Army. I'm concerned this will take a new twist, and they'll try to scapegoat some of the younger soldiers. This is a leadership problem."
In separate statements to the human rights organization, Captain Fishback and the two sergeants described abuses by soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division, including beatings of Iraqi prisoners, exposing them to extremes of hot and cold, stacking prisoners in human pyramids, and depriving them of sleep at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Falluja. The abuses reportedly took place between September 2003 and April 2004, before and during the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
After fruitlessly trying for 17 months to get his superiors to take action on his complaints, Captain Fishback said, he finally took his concerns this month to aides to two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the committee chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. When the Army learned he was talking to Senate aides, Captain Fishback said that Army investigators suddenly intensified their interest in his complaints.
Senior Pentagon and Army officials said Tuesday that the new allegations, which focus on the division's First Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, were being pursued vigorously. "All I know is that the Army is taking it seriously," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference. "To the extent somebody's done something that they shouldn't have done, they'll be punished for it."
Col. Joseph Curtin, an Army spokesman, added: "We do take the captain seriously and are following up on this. But it will take time, given the period of time that's elapsed since when these allegations took place."
Captain Fishback, 26, a West Point graduate from Michigan and son of a Vietnam War veteran, said he was deeply troubled by the Army's response to his concerns, beginning last spring, about what he believed to be treatment of detainees that violated the Geneva Conventions.
He said he had seen several interrogations where prisoners were abused and was told about other ill treatment of detainees by his sergeants. When he first took his complaints to his immediate superiors last spring, Captain Fishback said, his company commander cautioned him to "remember the honor of the unit is at stake." He said his battalion commander expressed no particular alarm.
As he moved up his chain of command, he said no one could give him clear guidance on how the Geneva Conventions applied in Iraq.
"We did not set the conditions for our soldiers to succeed," said Captain Fishback, who has served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We failed to set clear standards, communicate those standards and enforce those standards. For us to get to that point now, however, we have to come to grips with whether it's acceptable to use coercion to obtain information from detainees."
By this summer, Captain Fishback had met with Human Rights Watch researchers several times, voicing his complaints. He gave the organization the names of other members of his unit who could support his allegations.
Captain Fishback said that when his command learned about 10 days ago that he was preparing to speak to Senate aides about his concerns, they directed him to talk to criminal investigators, which he said he did for 90 minutes on Sept. 19. But when he refused to divulge the sergeants' names, he said, investigators told him there wasn't much they could do immediately.
But last Thursday, a day after Human Rights Watch notified the 82nd Airborne that it would be releasing a copy of its report outlining the allegations, Captain Fishback said he was summoned back to Fort Bragg from field training for nearly six hours of questioning by investigators.
The report was made public last Friday, and Captain Fishback said investigators had questioned him for about an hour on Monday and again on Tuesday. "They're asking the same questions over and over again," he said. "They want the names of the sergeants, and they keep asking about my relationship with Human Rights Watch."
Captain Fishback said he has refused to disclose the names of the two sergeants - one who has left the Army and another who has been reassigned - because he promised not to disclose their identities if they came forward. But he said his command told him Tuesday that he could face criminal prosecution if disobeyed its "lawful order" to disclose their names.
Captain Fishback said he had no regrets about coming forward, adding, "It's the right thing to do."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
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