truth and consequences

US: Iraqis jailing too many innocents

2007-05-07T11:13:00.000-07:00

The US Army is now shifting the blame on Iraqis for arresting "too many innocents." Officers complain that it takes a "couple of weeks" to clear up mistakes and release innocent detainees caught up in these "dragnets." Those innocent detainees in Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca who wait eight months for the US to grant them hearings must not be able to laugh at the irony of this assertion.

Lt. Col. Steve Duke, leader of the U.S. military transition team of advisers for the 5th Brigade of the Iraqi army's 6th Division, cited two recent examples of this dynamic at work.

In late March, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 10th Iraqi Army Division detained 54 men in Baghdad after an improvised explosive device attack, he said.

"If you were near the IED, or you could spell IED, you were detained," he said.

It took "a couple of weeks" before the Iraqis released any of them, he said.

"The Iraqis are not good at field interviews ... and there's a perception that subordinate commanders do not have the authority to release, but they do have the authority to detain," Duke said.

Authority to release any detainee rests with Iraqi Lt. Gen. Abud Ganbar Hashimi, who heads the Baghdad Operational Command, said Maj. Michael Philipak, a U.S. Army intelligence officer who advises the Iraqi army 6th Division.

The second reason cited by U.S. officers is that the Iraqi defense and interior ministries are drawing up lists of individuals to be detained and sending them down to brigade and even battalion levels of the Iraqi army, all based on "intelligence" that is never shared with either Iraqi commanders or their U.S. counterparts, according to American and Iraqi officers.

BTIF: Bagram, Black Hole

2007-05-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

I've been a fan of Eliza Griswold ever since I read some of her poetry in the New Yorker and then read more of her work on the Pastun/tribal Pakistani-Afghan border. Her latest piece for the New Republic, "The Other Guantantamo: Black Hole" is a wake-up call.

Sometimes the spotlight on Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo leads the public to forget that the US still operates a prison at Bagram Airbase, and probably other secret prisons in Afghanistan. The military has a virtual free-hand to treat the 650 prisoners there as it wishes because of the lack of media scrutiny and the overall lack of interest in Afghanistan. What I find really interesting is the father of a detainee's insistence on the existence of photos proving abuse at Bagram. He desperately knows that after Abu Ghraib, without photos, the world simply does not care. I decided to post the whole article here for future reference:

Early last spring, outside a guesthouse in Kabul where I was staying, an injured Afghan man limped up to the locked gate. He wore a blazer with suede elbow patches and leaned on crutches. Because a suicide bomber had attacked the building not long before, a guard blocked the entrance of the unannounced supplicant. The fact that the man refused to give his name didn't help his case. But, finally, once inside, he blurted his reason for traveling across a war zone to the building: He had heard that American lawyers with whom I was traveling were staying there and that these lawyers wanted to represent prisoners held by the Americans at Bagram Airbase, some 40 miles north. "My son is in prison at Bagram," the man said, clutching a cell phone: A sympathetic Afghan guard inside Bagram Theater Internment Facility (btif) had sent him a photograph of his son after he had been badly beaten, his eye swollen shut.

Btif is currently home to about 650 detainees. Unlike the prison in Guantánamo, there aren't congressional junkets regularly touring the facility, let alone any reporters. Inside one of the low-slung, pale concrete buildings, on the vast floor of what was once a machine shop, is a scene one former interrogator describes as a dungeon, full of "medieval sounds"--the dragging of leg shackles, shouts from military police. Most of its windows, initially installed by the Soviet army, are broken and boarded up. There are six large 60-foot-long cages ringed in coiled barbed wire where detainees are kept, 15 to 20 prisoners to a cage. Before the prisoners enter or leave these cages, they are transferred temporarily to cages large enough for only one prisoner called "sally ports," which are encased in coils of concertina wire and reinforced with steel beams. On a level above the machine shop floor, there are isolation rooms walled in plywood with chicken-wire ceilings.

The man had come to the guest house on bad information. The lawyers with whom I traveled represented prisoners in Guantánamo, and they weren't seeking new clients from Bagram. As the man took in this depressing fact, he grew irate and began pressing his case with even greater fervor. "There are more photographs," he exclaimed, turning to leave. "Someday, you will see them."

That day may be fast approaching. The photos accompanying this piece are the first to be published from inside the prison. Last month, lawyers pleaded two separate cases before the D.C. District Court, demanding that the justices review petitions of habeas corpus for Bagram detainees. These cases represent the rare moment when Bagram will actually receive scrutiny. Unlike Guantánamo, a puddle-jumper away from Miami, Bagram is tucked into the Afghan countryside, not far from where combat with the Taliban still flares. And this remoteness has made the plight of its prisoners all the more dire: Only the International Committee of the Red Cross knows the names of Bagram's occupants. Eric Lewis, a co-counsel in one of the habeas cases, says, "The nightmare of Guantánamo is something of a picnic compared to Bagram," a fact that prisoners can relate with firsthand knowledge: A good portion of the detainees in Guantánamo were first held in Bagram. "Our clients were beaten more badly in Afghanistan than in Guantánamo, basically because, in Cuba, the whole world is watching," says Lewis.

Bagram is a 6.5-square-mile plot located on the vast, once-verdant Shomali plain and encircled by the snowy Panjshir mountains. After the Soviet invasion in the late '70s, the Russians built a two-mile runway and airbase at Bagram. During the decades of civil war, the defunct base repeatedly switched between Taliban and Northern Alliance control. In late 2001, as it trounced the Taliban, the United States took possession of the base and outfitted its cavernous machine shop to detain captured combatants. Former prisoners and interrogators say that there were old Soviet signs written in Cyrillic still on the walls.

The detention facility was designed as a short-term collection point, where American interrogators sorted erroneous and low-level captures from those of higher intelligence value. And, at first, the prison actually served this purpose: Detainees from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and North Africa were transported to Guantánamo--although there are still some Arabs held at Bagram. (We know this, in part, because a Yemeni prisoner, held virtually incommunicado for more than five years, sent his father a letter through the Red Cross. "BT," meaning Bagram Theater, was marked on the upper-left-hand corner.)

From the start, the processing of prisoners entailed some grisly practices. When Captain Carolyn Wood assumed control of the prison in the summer of 2002--she ran it until taking over Abu Ghraib a year later--interrogation tactics came to include beatings, anal violation with sharp objects, blows to the genitals, and "peroneal" strikes (an incapacitating blow to the leg with a baton, a knee, or a shin). We know about these tactics because an internal Army investigation into two prisoner deaths was obtained by The New York Times. These detainees--a 22-year-old taxi driver and the brother of a Taliban commander--were found dead and hanging from the wrists by shackles. A coroner's report said the two men died after being subjected to dozens of peroneal strikes. According to the coroner's report, the "pulpified" legs of one of the corpses looked as if they had "been run over by a bus."

During these early years, one of the most notorious figures at the prison was Private First Class Damien M. Corsetti, known in turns as the "King of Torture" and "Monster." Corsetti tattooed an Italian translation of the latter moniker across his stomach. In the end, a military tribunal cleared Corsetti of all charges. His lawyer successfully argued before the tribunal that the rules for detainee treatment were unclear: "The president of the United States doesn't know what the rules are. The secretary of defense doesn't know what the rules are. But the government expects this Pfc. to know what the rules are?" But, in the course of proving his innocence, Corsetti revealed several damning details. One of the prisoners he called to testify on his behalf told the military judges that a Saudi detainee recounted how Corsetti had threatened to rape him. He had even taken out his penis and yelled, "This is your God!"

It's not that Bagram has entirely escaped scrutiny. Army investigators have recommended criminal charges for 27 alleged Bagram-based torturers. But, of these 27, only four soldiers have been sentenced to prison time--for no more than several months. The alleged abusers have evaded punishment largely with the help of, among others, Donald Rumsfeld, who approved a December 2002 memorandum that permitted the use of stripping, dogs, and stress positions in interrogations. In fact, many of the top brass who presided over Bagram have done more than escape punishment. Despite the many accounts of Captain Wood's encouragement of torture--Amnesty International has called her a "torture architect"--she has received two Bronze Stars.

While Bagram began as a temporary jail, it has over time morphed into a more permanent facility. As the bulk of its Arab prisoners were shipped to Guantánamo, it increasingly held Afghans for long (and in many cases indefinite) terms. "One of the worst aspects of Bagram is that no one knows how long they'll be held there," says Sam Zia-Zarifi, the research director for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. The secrecy shrouding the prison makes it hard to discern the precise composition of its occupants. But we do know that, last year, its population swelled by about 100 detainees, thanks to new U.S.-nato operations aimed at routing the resurgent Taliban. And even the Pentagon has implicitly conceded that the prison no longer serves its initial short-term purpose, changing its name from Bagram Collection Point to the Bagram Theater Internment Facility.

During this transformation, some of the worst abuses at Bagram, such as anal violations and beatings, have been curbed, according to former detainees, the Afghan Human Rights Commission, and Human Rights Watch. The Department of Defense claims that prisoners now gain an average of 15 pounds during their detention. And, several weeks ago, the first Afghan prisoners were transferred from Bagram into Afghan custody in the U.S.-built wing of the infamous Policharki prison. Lieutenant Colonel Todd Vician, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, tells me, "We have no desire to be the world's jailer."

But, for all these changes, the growing detainee population still lives in overcrowded cages. Prisoners don't even have the limited access to lawyers available to prisoners in Guantánamo. Nor do they have the right to Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which Guantánamo detainees won in the 2004 Supreme Court ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Instead, if a combat commander chooses, he can convene an Enemy Combatant Review Board (ecrb), at which the detainee has no right to a personal advocate, no chance to speak in his own defense, and no opportunity to review the evidence against him. The detainee isn't even allowed to attend. And, thanks to such limited access to justice, many former detainees say they have no idea why they were either detained or released.

With a victory in the pending habeas cases, Bagram detainees might eventually win the same legal rights now held by Guantánamo prisoners. But, according to Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network and co-counsel on the habeas petitions, "Even if the cases are successful, we are unlikely to see dramatic changes at Bagram any time soon." It will remain too far from the public eye, too deep in a war zone, to receive the public pressure that forced the reform of Guantánamo. That's a shame, because the prison--and, more precisely, its infamy--has hurt the American cause in Afghanistan. "[It] undermines our legitimacy in building democracy and human rights in Afghanistan," says Barnett Rubin, director of studies at New York University's Center on International Cooperation.

I began to understand this cost as I sat in the Kabul guesthouse with the American lawyers. Over a cup of tea, one local official named Zalmay Shah told us that he had once worked closely with U.S. Special Forces. At the beginning of the U.S. invasion, he had helped a commander named "Tony" round up a handful of midlevel Taliban. The soldiers had awarded him a letter of commendation for his efforts, and he developed a sincere affection for the Americans. That soon changed.

While delivering one wanted man into U.S. custody, Shah was himself arrested, hooded, shackled, and stripped. Soldiers taped his mouth shut, refusing to let him spit out the snuff he was chewing. For three days, his jailers in Bagram denied him food. All the while, Shah pleaded his innocence and reminded the Americans of his friendship with "Tony." And, eventually, the Americans concluded that they had mistakenly identified the man as a Taliban official and released him. Despite all this, the U.S. military has continued to ask Shah for his help. "I have refused," he told us. "When the Americans came, we thought we would be free. But, on the contrary, we have suffered." Placing his elbows on the table, he hunched forward and cupped his hands around the now cold tea. "If the Americans don't change their policies soon, neither we nor they will have a way out."

Proof CIA still using secret prisons

2007-04-29T00:29:00.000-07:00

Photo by Trevor Paglen

Last September, the Bush administration made noise announcing that no more secret prison facilities would be used by the CIA to hold prisoners seized in the "war on terror." Since then, sporadic reports have questioned the truth of this assertion.

Now, with the handover of Al-Qaeda suspect Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi to Guantanamo, it becomes clear he was held in detention in a secret place for months prior.

Why are secret prisons necessary, especially when they have been declared closed by the President? Why must this Administration constitently flaunt the rule of law? And who will hold them accountable?

According to the New York Times:

The Pentagon announced the transfer, giving few details about his arrest or confinement.

Mr. Iraqi’s case suggests that the C.I.A. may have adopted a new model for handling prisoners held secretly — a practice that Mr. Bush said could resume and that Congress permitted when it passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Unlike past C.I.A. detainees, including the Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was held by the agency for several years after being seized in Pakistan in 2003, Mr. Iraqi was turned over to the Pentagon after a few months of interrogation. He appears to have been taken into C.I.A. custody just weeks after Mr. Bush declared C.I.A. jails empty.[...]

Intelligence officials said that under questioning Mr. Iraqi had provided valuable intelligence about Qaeda hierarchy and operations. It appears he gave up this information after being subjected to standard interrogation methods approved for the Defense Department — not harsher methods that the C.I.A. is awaiting approval to use.

A debate in the administration has delayed approval of the proposed C.I.A. methods.

Military and intelligence officials said the prisoner was captured last fall on his way to Iraq, where he may have been sent by top Qaeda leaders in Pakistan to take a senior position in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. That group has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in Iraq, including the bombing last year of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

Dilawar, RIP

2007-04-28T03:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the attention that "Taxi to the Dark Side" is garnering in the mainstream media (Post, WSJ, Salon), for a while at least, innocent Afghan Dilawar is remembered as a victim of American military institutionalized brutality.

Tenet Denies CIA Torture

2007-04-27T12:16:00.001-07:00

"Journalist" allowing the Administration to manhandle him.

"Listen to me."

"I want you to listen to me!"

Tenet sounds like a stupid Hollywood character, not the head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

"There was so much we did not know!"

This kind of bluster is typical of the Bush Administration, which combats solid questions with bullying. They refuse to prove any of their own supposed accomplishments or disprove charges of torture on the grounds that this proof would "threaten our security" ("I can't talk about techniques").

To see the full interview, and see if CBS' journalist actually challenges this nonsense (don't hold your breath) tune into 60 Minutes on Sunday April 29.

Ex-commander at Camp Cropper accused

2007-04-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

Lt Col. William Steele, ex prison commander at Camp Cropper, the US' second largest detention facility, is being charged on multiple misconduct charges. The Army says he "mishandled" information, keeping classified information in his personal quarters, and accuses him of inappropriate relations with his interpreter, and of "fraternizing" with the daughter of a detainee. He also allegedly allowed certain detainees to have unmonitored cell phone conversations. He was also accused of possessing pornography. (How many servicemen are innocent of this "crime"?)

Steele will face an "Article 32" hearing to determine whether he will face court-martial.

According to the LA Times:

Steele, whose age was not released, was the commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment. In that role, he was one of a handful of senior officers who reported to the commander of Camp Cropper, Aberle said.

In October, Steele moved to Camp Victory in Baghdad to work with the 89th Military Police Brigade, the Associated Press reported. Some of the charges stem from that period. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum sentence for aiding the enemy is death. U.S. military officials did not say when or where the Article 32 hearing would take place.

Iraqis "do the dirty work" (torture)

2007-04-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

The New York Times revealed again in detail, as it has often over the past years, the ways in which the US military allows Iraqi security forces to torture and abuse detainees to gather information. In West Baghdad, Alissa Rubin quotes Iraq security forces bragging about how they whipped a detainee before his two colleagues, and after this the detainee led American forces to their safe house and IED supplies.

What is amazing in this article is the use of loaded words like "culture," "civilization," and "conscience" by both sides. To the US military abuses in Abu Ghraib were a terrible aberration and the whipping of detainees is merely "part of their culture." According to them, it's not "civilization." But then according to the Iraqi Captain, he was simply acting according to his "conscience."

The Iraqi officers beamed. What the Americans did not know and what the Iraqis had not told them was that before handing over the detainees to the Americans, the Iraqi soldiers had beaten one of them in front of the other two. The stripes on the detainee’s back, which appeared to be the product of whipping with electrical cables, were later shown briefly to a photographer, who was not allowed to take a picture.

To the Iraqi soldiers, the treatment was normal and necessary. They were proud of their technique and proud to have helped the Americans.

"I prepared him for the Americans and let them take his confession,” Capt. Bassim Hassan said through an interpreter. "We know how to make them talk. We know their back streets. We beat them. I don’t beat them that much, but enough so he feels the pain and it makes him desperate." [...]

The Iraqi soldiers were ecstatic. They had delivered. They snapped photos of each other in front of the cache with the blasting cords in their mouths, grinning. The Americans were nervous. "One spark will blow this place up," said First Lt. Michael Obal as an Iraqi soldier flicked a lit cigarette butt within inches of one cache of explosives. "It’s highly unstable TNT."

Later, the Americans plotted into their computers the location of each of the Al Qaeda safe houses that [detainee] Mr. Jassam had pointed out. “He was singing like a songbird,” said First Lt. Sean Henley, 24.

After the prisoner was returned to the Iraqis, Captain Fowler was asked whether the Americans realized that the information was given only after the Iraqi Army had beaten Mr. Jassam. "They are not supposed to do that," Captain Fowler said. "What I don’t see, I don’t know, and I can’t stop. The detainees are deathly afraid of being sent to the Iraqi justice system, because this is the kind of thing they do. But this is their culture."

Lieutenant Obal, the captain’s deputy, was distraught at the thought that the detainee had been beaten. "I don’t think that’s right," he said. "We have intelligence teams, they have techniques for getting information, they don’t do things like that. It’s not civilization."

About 30 yards away, on the other side of the wall, the Iraqi soldiers suggested that the Americans were being naïve. The insurgents are playing for keeps, they say, and force must be answered with force.

"If the Americans used this way, the way we use, nobody would shoot the Americans at all," Captain Hassan said. "But they are easy with them, and they have made it easy for the terrorists."

"I didn’t beat them all, I beat Mustafa in front of the others. We tell him we’re going to string him up." He demonstrated his arms spread wide. "And, I made the others see him," he said.

Captain Hassan and his colleagues said they knew the Iraqi Army has rules against beatings, but "they tell us to do what we have to do," he said.

"For me it’s a matter of conscience, not rules," he said.

'Taxi to the Dark Side'

2007-04-18T23:42:00.001-07:00

Finally a "big" documentary about the Bagram homicides. Abu Ghraib has elicited a huge reaction especially in the past two years, by artists, writers and documentarists. But the sad fate of those tortured to death in Afghanistan has been largely forgotten. Recall that of the original 27 men recommended to prosecutors by Army investigators the killing of innocents Dilawar and Habibullah, only 6 were convicted or pled guilty. The stiffest punishment handed down has been 5 months in a military prison.

Involved among others as executive producer was journalist Sid Blumenthal. The film by Alex Gibney "Taxi to the Dark Side" portrays the arrest of taxi driver Dilawar and to his killing at Bagram Air Base. It premiers at the Tribeca Film Festival next week.

Tom Tomorrow shares his thoughts after seeing a preview.

Priests on trial for Arizona torture protest

2007-04-17T04:03:00.000-07:00

Two California priests, Fransiscan Father Louis Vitale and Jesuit Father Steve Kelly, related to the Catholic Worker movement, were arrested in November 2006 for trespassing at Ft. Huachuca military base in Southern Arizona. They knelt in front of the entry gates to the base to pray, with 120 other protesters, and asked to deliver a letter to the former Chief of Military Intelligence in Iraq. Both have served time for Fort Benning "School of the Americas" protests. They were arraigned April 3 and are awaiting trial in June. From the group Pace e Bene and Redwood City Catholic Worker House respectively, the two are seasoned advocates of non-violence. According to the California Catholic Daily:

Vitale and Kelly were among 120 protesters at Ft. Huachuca. They claim U.S. military intelligence teaches torture interrogation techniques at Ft. Huachuca -- the same techniques used at Abu Ghraib and, allegedly, at Guantanamo.

It was at Ft. Huachuca that Vietnam-era manuals advocating torture techniques were translated into Spanish for use at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia -- a center that, critics have long said, has trained police and military officers who tortured and killed political enemies of repressive Latin American governments.

In November, Vitale and Kelly were arrested for kneeling to pray on the road leading to Ft. Huachuca’s gate. They face federal and state charges for refusing to follow police orders and for trespass. The priests attempted to speak to enlisted soldiers and to deliver a letter to Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast. “Nothing justifies the inhumane treatment of our fellow brothers and sisters,” said the priests’ letter. “Torture is a useless and unreliable tool that leads to an accepted practice of terrorization and the rationalization of wrongdoing.”

Fast had been chief of intelligence in Iraq, responsible for overseeing Abu Ghraib at the time of the tortures there. Exonerated of wrongdoing by military investigators, she was given command of the military intelligence center, located at Ft. Huachuca, in 2005.

Both Vitale and Kelly have been imprisoned before for anti-war and anti-torture civil disobedience. Vitale served time in 2002 and 2006 for protests at Ft. Benning and, in 2003, for obstructing traffic in San Francisco and blocking the entrance to the British Consulate there in protest of the Iraq War. Kelly has served time for attempting to disarm nuclear weapons delivery systems.

“I believe it is a way to raise consciousness,” Vitale told the San Francisco Faith in 2003. “I’m a strong a believer in something Martin Luther King called the ‘theology of stepping off the curb,’ as when he went to Selma and places like that. It’s putting your body there in a non-violent way.”

If convicted in June, Vitale and Kelly could be sentenced to up to ten months in prison.

It is a small victory that the priests will remain free during the pre-trial period. Here is the text of the letter they attempted to deliver to Major General Barbara Fast:

To: Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast -
We are here today as concerned U.S. people, veterans and clergy, to speak with enlisted personnel about the illegality and immorality of torture according to international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions.

We condemn torture as a dehumanization of both prisoners and interrogators, resulting in humiliation, disability and even death. In addition to the hundreds of detainees who have died, we are also concerned about U.S. military personnel. Alyssa Peterson committed suicide after participating in the torture of Iraqi prisoners. Lynndie England and others have been imprisoned for their illegal activities.

We are here today at Ft. Huachuca in solidarity with tens of thousands of people at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Ft. Benning, Georgia (formerly known as the School of the Americas) to say that the training of torturers must immediately stop. Nothing justifies the inhumane treatment of our fellow brothers and sisters. Torture by U.S. military personnel has reached alarming proportions and has horrified people around the world.

We are convinced that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is unconstitutional. We totally reject its conclusions. Torture is a useless and unreliable tool that leads to an accepted practice of terrorization and the rationalization of wrongdoing.

We are here today to repent and clearly state that because of our sense of moral and human decency we condemn torture. NOT IN OUR NAME.

Signed this 19th day of November, 2006 -

Louis Vitale,OFM
Steve Kelly, SJ

Biographical data on Vitale and Kelly:

Fr. Louie Vitale is a member of Pace e Bene, whose mission is "to develop the spirituality and practice of active nonviolence as a way of living and being and as a process for cultural transformation." Fr. Vitale is also a co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience, a faith-based organization that has opposed nuclear weapons testing for a quarter of a century. Fr. Vitale recently served six months in jail following his arrest at the Ft. Benning vigil in November, 2005, and was ejected from congressional hearings in September after speaking out against the Military Commissions Act.

Fr. Steve Kelly is a member of the Redwood City Catholic Worker community and has served time in federal prison for the nonviolent direct disarmament of nuclear weapon delivery systems. In December, 2005, Kelly served as chaplain for Witness to Torture, a delegation of over two dozen U.S. anti-torture activists who defied the U.S. embargo of Cuba with a peaceful march through that nation to the gates of the Guantanamo Bay navel base and prison camp.

Hypocrisy: shock and awe on the body

2007-04-14T08:04:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest madams operating an "escort service" for Washington DC professionals is being tried for tax evasion and running an illegal prostitution business. Before federal judges could gag order on Deborah Jeane Palfrey, she pulled the biggest name from her "46 pounds" of paper phone records. Regular customer: ultra conservative Harlan K. Ullman, who coined the term "shock and awe" in 1996 and saw his dream come true in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq. Ullman is at the think-tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Besides the obvious irony of the inventor of this theory of "domination" regularly needed to pay for sex, it behooves us to remind of the connection between the shock and theory, torture and sexual domination. William Plaff wrote in the International Herald Tribune, back in 2004:

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bush administration is not torturing prisoners because it is useful but because of its symbolism. It originally was intended to be a form of what later, in the attack on Iraq, came to be called "shock and awe." It was meant as intimidation. We will do these terrible things to demonstrate that nothing will stop us from conquering our enemies. We are indifferent to world opinion. We will stop at nothing. [...]Destroying cities and torturing prisoners are things you do when you are losing the real war, the war your enemies are fighting. They are signals of moral bankruptcy. They destroy the confidence and respect of your friends, and reinforce the credibility of the enemy.

Diane Christian reminds us of Rumsfeld and Bush's supposed inability to look at the Abu Ghraib photos, and the US media's puritanical need to censor the images:

But the Abu Ghraib images are not easily repackaged. They're pornographic not just obscene and while our warwagers are excellent at evading and repackaging violence they're stopped cold by sex. The scenes we've seen so far are full of Iraqi genitals and hooded faces and grinning American soldiers.

President Bush finds them sickening and unAmerican; Rumsfeld labels them disgusting and can not imagine that any officer could order such a thing. The six indicted are characterized as bad apples and degenerate and not real American soldiers. But the pictures seem deliberately and even proudly posed.

Interestingly, as these pictures are broadcast in the US they are usually blurred so that we don't see genitals. This is in the interest of our sensibilities for our general culture doesn't look publically at genitals except in works of art. Most of Muslim culture doesn't even allow naked genitals in art. Islamic miniatures of Adam and Eve (Christian artists' favorites for requiring nudes) usually show them modestly covered. Commentators on the prison images speak of how shamed a Muslim man is to be made naked. A boyish US female soldier in one picture grins and points to the genital of a bound captive; in another she holds a naked prisoner on a leash. In other pictures the prisoners are forced into real and simulated sexual acts. There are more and worse terrible pictures and video as yet unpublished.

'Sadistic' Rumsfeld said shaking his head with disbelief and contempt. He doesn't learn from the pictures, much as the President never has doubts. 'They are not us, they are evil, they are unAmerican,' they say. But the problem is not sadism-getting sexual pleasure from inflicting pain. The problem is inhumanity-torturing, murdering, raping human beings. The problem is not sex titillation but violence. Torture is a legitimate child of war-if I am willing to kill you, why should I stop at mutilating, humiliating and torturing you, the enemy, the evil one? Why can I not bend you to my will, make you talk, take away your manhood or rape your womb? I can. But I must be sober steadfast chaste in style lest I betray enjoying your pain.

What I believe about the morality of sexwork/prostitution/escorts is essentially irrelevant. Based on their own standards alone, recently we have enough proof that the neoconservative movement is hypocritical to its core.

AP Photographer still in prison 1 year later

2007-04-13T04:17:00.000-07:00

Bilal Hussein, an AP photographer who was detained last April by American forces in Ramadi is still in American custody at Camp Cropper one year later. US spokesmen claim Hussein is "still a security threat."

The US military has provided no credible evidence to this effect, claim Hussein's lawyers. Quoting the AP:

Dozens of journalists - mostly Iraqis - have been detained by U.S. troops or Iraqi security forces during the war, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Most were released without a trial after short periods, and Hussein is the only one currently being held on such a long-term basis, according to CPJ executive director Joel Simon.

"It's unfathomable to me why, after an entire year, there has been no progress in terms of the legal process moving ahead," Simon said. "If the U.S. government is affirming that they need time to develop evidence ... a year is plenty of time."

Hussein, 35, is allowed one-hour visits from family members once a month. His attorney and AP colleagues also are allowed to see him.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, in a written response Tuesday to AP inquiries, said the case against Hussein has been reviewed four times - most recently in November - by three separate entities in Iraq, among them a review board that includes representatives of the Iraqi government and the U.S.-led coalition.

"Each of these independent, objective, fact-finding reviews considered all available evidence and determined Hussein represented an imperative threat to security and recommended continued detention," Whitman said.

Gardephe dismissed the idea that such hearings constitute due process. He pointed out that Hussein was not present and had no legal representative at those reviews, and had no chance to confront any witnesses against him or call witnesses on his own behalf.

AP executives went public with news about Hussein's detention in September after months of behind-the-scenes negotiations. They said the news cooperative's review of Hussein's work for the AP found no inappropriate contact with insurgents.

Afghanistan to release US "vigilante"

2007-04-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

The Afghan government has granted amnesty to Jack Idema, the last "mysterious" ex-special forces caught on a vigilante mission in Afghanistan. Idema, if readers will recall, was detained after having been charged with kidnapping and running a private prison. He claimed at the time he was working for the Pentagon, which the Defense Department vigorously denied. They later admitted having "taken" a man that Idema handed over to them.

According to BBC, NATO was even fooled by Idema and his friends Edward Caraballo and Brent Bennett, who had uniforms and allegedly special passports and visas.

Idema claimed the FBI was out to get him, and sued the US government in 2005 to secure his release. His case was moving through the court system in the US when word came from Kabul earlier this month that he would be released.

Captured in 2004, Idema claims he was tortured by US and Afghan captors, and it is known that he lived through a rebellion in Policharki prison, a notorious facility in Kabul. According to AP:

Idema's lawyer, John E. Tiffany, said the U.S. government coordinated Idema's amnesty to avoid having to respond to the allegations of torture and government misconduct.

"The Aghan government doesn't do anything unless the United States government tells them to do it," Tiffany said. "They got caught with their pants down. Finally, a federal judge with courage and intellect said, 'Hey, wait a minute. Let's look at this."

"They would like nothing more than never having to respond," Tiffany said. "If they have to respond to a laundry list of areas that the judge very clearly laid out, you put yourself of great risk of taking positions that will be exposed as lies."

Government attorneys said that's not the case. The State Department learned that Idema's amnesty was final on March 15, nearly a week before Sullivan's order, according to court documents.

Idema was captured in 2004 along with fellow Americans Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo. Idema and Bennett a former U.S. soldiers. Caraballo was an investigative journalist. Bennett and Caraballo have since been released.

Tiffany said Tuesday he did not know whether Idema has been freed. An Afghan official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said Idema remains in Policharki, the main prison in Kabul.

The Justice Department said in court documents that Idema was holding up his own release by refusing to leave Afghanistan without Bennett's dog.

More material here.

Cropper as insurgent recruitment center

2007-04-08T04:49:00.000-07:00

The LA Times reports that islamic militants are recruiting and operating within Camp Cropper, one of two large US prison camps in Iraq. Camp Cropper's population has swelled to 18,000 with the "surge" operations of 2006-7. The Iraqi government's Human Rights Liaison to the US prisons claims he has warned the US of these growing problems for over a year now. Militants have attempted to control life in the camps, stoked tensions between Sunni and Shite detainees, and have brutally killed suspected informers in the Camp. The Times story quotes a handful of ex-prisoners, and the Iraqi government's Human Rights Liaison. From the Times' Ned Parker:

Extremists conducted regular indoctrination lectures, and in some cases destroyed televisions supplied by the Americans for use with educational videos, banned listening to music on radios, forbade smoking and stoked tensions between Sunni and Shiite detainees, they said.

Iraqis swept up in security operations and held indefinitely while the Americans try to determine whether they have any links to the insurgency are susceptible to the extremists' message, former detainees said.

Their accounts of life in Camp Cropper, the main U.S. detention center at the Baghdad airport, indicate that three years after the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison, the U.S. is still struggling to find a balance in the way it runs its detention system.

Prisons have long served as an incubator for radicals, and mass roundups by the U.S. military after the 2003 invasion are now blamed for antagonizing Iraq's Sunni Arab population and feeding the insurgency.

[...]

U.S. military officials acknowledge that they are battling militants for the hearts and minds of detainees, but deny accusations that they have lost control inside the prisons, or that detainees are treated harshly. They say they have instituted counterinsurgency and educational programs, and are gearing up to launch a more direct effort to confront extremists next month.

Iraqi officials also struggle with a crowded system where prisoners can languish as long as two years before getting a trial. But they say the Americans have allowed militants to flourish in their facilities.

"It looks like a terrorist academy now," said Saad Sultan, the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry's liaison to U.S. and Iraqi prisons. "There's a huge number of these students. They study how they can kill in their camps. And we protect them, feed them, give them medical care.

"The Americans have no solution to this problem," he said. "This has been going on for a year or two, we have been telling them."

A former detainee at Camp Cropper, where Hussein and other high-profile prisoners have been held, said he once watched Sunni militants attack a former police officer they suspected of being an informer. He said six men, their faces hidden by towels, gathered around the victim in a dormitory at 2 a.m.

Two kept a lookout for U.S. soldiers while one man swung a sock stuffed with rocks at the inmate's head, he said. The man tried to get up, but another pressed him down with a foot to the chest. The attackers pummeled his head, spattering themselves with his blood, until he lost consciousness.

Other prisoners then dragged the victim to the front of the hall, where the U.S. guards would find him.

[...]

Abu Tiba said he felt caught between the militants and the Americans.

"It was a psychological war from both the Americans and the religious extremists," he said. "It was terrifying." He said he worried about the U.S. soldiers who shouted at him, and the militants who stowed razor wire to use in fights.

The most powerful figure was a young imam known as Abu Hamza, who they said had pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. The Americans had allowed a dangerous cleric to stay in a barracks with ordinary Sunnis, they said.

"He used to give lectures in the morning and night," Abu Usama said. "Anyone who didn't attend the lectures would have a mark against him."

In his lectures, the young radical denounced the Iraqi government, U.S. soldiers, and the entire political process, he said. He also banned smoking in the hall.

"The problem was the Americans didn't know what was going on. They allowed him to preach because they believed in religious freedom," said Abu Usama, 43. The preacher's core supporters were young men who had been radicalized in the ferment after Hussein's ouster.

"Abu Hamza's followers tried to win people over by offering them money and cars when they got out of camp," he said, adding that he had used the prestige his age gives him to rebuff a recruitment effort from a younger member of his tribe, the powerful Dulaimi clan.

The radicals preyed on men who were being held indefinitely, without knowing whether they would be charged. "You'd spend three months not charged with anything and you were innocent — they could get you," Abu Usama said.

Adnan Nabi, a 42-year-old cleric loyal to radical Muqtada Sadr, presided over the Shiite side of the camp, said another of the ex-detainees, who identified himself as Abu Mustafa. He said Nabi banned listening to music on radios and forbade Shiites from talking to Sunnis.

At prayer services, he said, the cleric urged detainees to join Sadr's Al Mahdi militia, which has fought U.S. forces on several occasions. When the Americans transferred Nabi to Camp Bucca, a riot broke out and U.S. guards had to use rubber bullets and tear gas, he said.

Abu Mustafa said he and the other Shiites slept in shifts to guard each other after word spread that they had worked for a secular political party. They were forced to swear on a copy of the Koran that they had only been gardeners on the grounds of the party headquarters, he said.

"Prison is the best place to organize an army to destroy the country," Abu Usama said. "Even someone who is innocent … they will brainwash him to do whatever they want, including becoming a suicide bomber."

British TV pulls Iraq abuse drama

2007-04-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

Using the unfolding "Iran situation" of the captive British sailors as an excuse, British TV Channel 4 canceled its April 5 airing of the powerful drama "Mark of Cain" about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq by British soldiers. "The Mark of Cain" is a complex portrait of the British military presence in southern Iraq. The story involves three soldiers accused of abusing detainees after suffering losses in an ambush. The soldiers are found out when an angry ex-girlfriend denounces them after seeing trophy photos of the abuse. The soldiers are then put on trial. According to the film's press release:

THE MARK OF CAIN is inspired by real life events Iraq. The now notorious pictures and footage that emerged from the prisons of Iraq, showed British soldiers abusing and humiliating prisoners of war. The revelations rocked the army, an institution that prides itself on ‘fair play.’ It placed the role of the British army in Iraq in danger; appearing as the occupiers they had long sought not to be. It left the position of the British army exposed, leaving them vulnerable to further reprisals. Why did the soldiers behave in this way?

Teamed with the reported lack of essential supplies, it led people to question whether the British army was emotionally and physically equipped for such military action, or is this the way soldiers will be led to behave under such extreme pressure?

So controversial is THE MARK OF CAIN, that the release was postponed until the current trial of the British soldiers is concluded.

The film won the Movies that Matter at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. According to the Festival's site:

“It’s a fictional story, but it was triggered off by a small newspaper story [screen writer] Marchant saw about a young soldier who’d taken his camera to develop at a high street store in 2003,” director Marc Munden says. “The guy processing the film immediately phoned the police because the photos were of prisoners being humiliated. The soldier was totally naïve; he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. So Tony started interviewing returning soldiers and their families. It’s completely fictional, but all the elements that occur in the film have taken place in real life.”

The result is a fierce, angry film that probes the events leading up to the British soldiers’ torture of their terrorist ‘suspects’ (arrested on the flimsiest of evidence following an ambush on the squad that leaves two British soldiers dead), and exposes the way senior officers turned a blind eye to the abuse. “He’s a very committed, political writer – there’s not that many like that any more,” Munden says of Marchant. Asked what he looks for in a screenwriter, Munden says: “You’ve got to be completely in love with what they’re trying to say. But it’s really important that I can stamp some kind of authorship on the film.”

Channel Four claims that the airing of the film depicting abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers could have put the British prisoners in Iran at risk. The Channel has rescheduled the film's airing for May 17.

Flannery O'Connor and Abu Ghraib

2007-04-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

One of a couple of books receiving attention this year about the deeper meanings of the scandal of Abu Ghraib, and the reaction of Americans to it, is "A Good War is Hard to Find," by David Griffith. He was inspired by some of the themes contained in the American fiction writer Flannery O'Connor, who brutally represented some of the deepest hypocrisies and contradictions, or 'discrepancies,' in the American soul. The New York Times reviews the book, and provides the first chapter. Quoting from it:

CATHOLIC WRITER FLANNERY O'CONNOR would have considered the images of the prison scandal grotesque, but not in what she called "the pejorative sense"-of just plain images of ugliness and ignorance. For O'Connor-whose characters are some of the most memorable grotesqueries in American literature-the grotesque makes visible hidden "discrepancies" between character and belief. Such images "connect or combine or embody two points; one is a point in the concrete and the other is a point not visible to the naked eye."

Take Cpl. Graner, for example. His pick-up truck still parked in the driveway of his Uniontown, Pennsylvania home at the time the pictures broke into the news, bears a license plate with the word Jesus and a picture of a cross. There is also a smooth stone in, appropriately enough, a "weed-choked" flower bed in front of his house, painted with a verse from the book of Hosea: "Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to see the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you." [Hoses 10:12 NIV]

This stone is mentioned in most of the early news coverage of the scandal, treated as a bit of profound irony, the kind of coincidence newspaper reporters salivate over. How could a man with this bit of scripture displayed in his "postage-stamp" of a front yard, as one Pittsburgh news weekly described it, commit such atrocious acts? It's an irony the media isn't equipped to engage at any depth.

Such ironies were the stuff of O'Connor's stories. Her characters think of themselves as Christians or otherwise "good people," but their actions or attitudes reveal otherwise. Their pride blinds them to their own flaws, and only violence-usually from an unlikely source-opens their eyes, and offers them a chance at redemption.

Griffiths continues this same passage in an earlier article at Godspy magazine, and I find his viewpoint provocative and different, and I also love O'Connor, so:

For O'Connor, her native American South was the perfect landscape against which to paint her grotesque figures. But to Catholics in the 1950's O'Connor's fascination with bizarre characters from the nation's most Protestant region was unsettling. She addressed their "certain impatience" with her work in 1963 at a speaking engagement at Georgetown University, in a speech titled "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South":

The American Catholic trusts the fictional imagination about as little as he trusts anything. Before it's well on its feet, he's busy looking for heresy in it. The Catholic press is constantly broken out in a rash of articles on the failure of the Catholic novelist. The Catholic novelist is failing to reflect the virtue of hope, failing to show the Church's interest in social justice, failing to show life as positive good, failing to portray our beliefs in a light that will make them desirable to others.

O'Connor accounts for this by accusing the Catholic reader of being "more Manichaean than the Church permits... by separating nature from grace."

"Manichaeism"—or Dualism—was a third-century religion inspired by a Persian, Mani. It claimed the universe was governed by two eternal, separate—and equal—forces: Good and Evil. Dualism has a certain attraction for Christians. In fact, in his Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis said, "I personally think that next to Christianity, Dualism is the manliest and most sensible creed on the market." But, Lewis continued, "It has a catch to it." Lewis, drawing from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, does his usual brilliant job of refuting Dualism, and showing why Christianity is not dualistic—that the one eternal principle in Christianity, God, is good, that everything God made is good, and that evil is merely a perversion of the good:

"And do you now begin to see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel? That is not a mere story for children. It is a real recognition of the fact that evil is a parasite, not an original thing. The powers that enable evil to carry on are power given to it by goodness. All the things which enable a man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things—resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself. That is why dualism, in a strict sense, will not work."

How to account for evil, then? Lewis continues: "God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right." Evil is the pursuit of good things—pleasure, money, power, etc., "by the wrong method."

That's O'Connor territory. Her stories reveal the hidden evil residing in the human heart, the pursuit of good that masks a secret pride.

Some have questioned her preoccupation with the sins of upright, decent people. But there's a significant precedent—in the Gospels. Consider the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector:

"Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.

The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, 'O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.'

But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'

"I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted." [Luke 18:10-14]

The parable seems overly harsh on the Pharisee. But that's only because we've forgotten what pride is. Lewis reminds us: Pride is "the essential vice, the utmost evil... it is the complete anti-God state of mind." Then there's St. Thomas Aquinas: "Pride extinguishes all the virtues and destroys all the powers of the soul, since its rule extends to them all."

Pride sets us against each other, and, most important, against God. To cure us of it, God allows us to sin. Again, St. Thomas: "the gravity of sins of pride is shown by the fact that God allows man to fall into other sins in order to heal him from pride."

For O'Connor, God's providence was realized not despite our sins, but through them. Removing sin from life—or fiction—meant essentially cutting yourself off from the possibility of grace. Life—or literature, becomes either sentimental or obscene, and while "preferring the former, and being more of an authority on the latter," the Catholic reader fails to see their similarity. "He forgets," she continues, that:

sentimentality is an excess, a distortion of sentiment usually in the direction of an overemphasis on innocence and that innocence whenever it is overemphasized in the ordinary human condition, tends by some natural law to become its opposite... Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.

The opposite of innocence? Abu Ghraib, maybe? When we consider the United States, was there ever a country more naively, optimistically moral? But by separating sin from nature, we forever see ourselves as innocent and exceptional—a chosen people ordained by God to rid the earth of evil. Was there ever a greater occasion for pride? Is this the real meaning of the Abu Ghraib photographs? Are these images evidence of the subterranean flaw beneath our benevolent, Christian surface?

For Flannery O'Connor, such contradictions explained Southern literature's tendency toward the violent and grotesque.

The South is struggling mightily to retain her identity against great odds and without knowing always, I believe, quite in what her identity lies. An identity is not made from what passes, from slavery to segregation, but from those qualities that endure because they are related to truth. It is not made from the mean average or the typical but often from the hidden and most extreme.

According to O'Connor, the South was not so much "Christ-Centered" as "Christ-Haunted." She believed that the most challenging images of Christ were pushed aside in the South in favor of more palatable ones, ones that would allow for the continued separation and inequality between the races. However, these sublimated images eventually return as "fierce and instructive" ghosts, to cast menacing shadows across the landscape. These menacing shadows are the raw material of much Southern literature, from the well-mannered, sober Eudora Welty to the drunken tortured genius of Faulkner. And as Susan Sontag pointed out in her New York Times Magazine essay about Abu Ghraib, "The Pictures Are Us," those same ghosts can be seen in the lynching photos of the late 19th and early 20th century.

And so we see America, 2004, also as "Christ-Haunted." Tom Junod's article "Jesus 2004," which appeared in the May issue of Esquire, reports that 80% of Americans believe in Jesus Christ and consider themselves Christian. What differs wildly, however, is exactly who these 80% think they're believing in. Junod's piece reveals there is no consensus, but in general Christ is a good guy, he's there for us when we need him, he's personable, even handsome. Ultimately, Junod's piece suggests the personalization of Jesus, the recasting of Jesus in our own (inevitably disordered) human image. This is a phenomenon O'Connor was witnessing even in the early sixties. Our concept of Christ has, O'Connor wrote, "gone underneath and come out in distorted forms."

Griffith's blog is a good read too.

The Prisoner or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair

2007-03-28T06:38:00.001-07:00

The film had a "limited release" in the US in March after debuting at the SWSX Festival in Austin. I would like to see this in a theater and not on DVD!

Two Iraqi prisons "crammed"

2007-03-28T04:38:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reports today that two Iraqi detention centers designed together to hold just over 100 people are now holding nearly a thousand.

In one of the detention centers, in the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, 705 people were packed into an area built for 75, according to Maan Zeki Khadum, an official with the monitoring group. The other center, on Muthana Air Base, held 272 people in a space designed to hold about 50, he said, and included two women and four boys who were being held in violation of regulations that require juveniles to be separated from adults and males from females.

In an interview, Mr. Khadum said a majority of the detainees at the two detention centers had been picked up while the security plan, which began in mid-February, was being put into effect.

He said the detention system had been suffering from a problem of “fast detention and very slow release, especially for those who are not guilty.” His group includes 17 lawyers and is working under a government committee run by the Shiite politician Ahmad Chalabi.

Drugging the lipless: truth serum

2007-03-24T07:14:00.000-07:00

Ex-commander of Abu Ghraib Janis Karpinski alleged recently in a public appearance that she suspected the US of using sodium pentathol, or the "truth serum" on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This could explain the seemingly exaggerated and meglomaniac confessions he made recently. He was known as breaking all endurance records in the face of various types of torture applied to him.

British spy novelist Frederick Forsyth made even more sweeping allegations in a recent entertaining interview with Der Spiegel. He claimed that the use of truth serum is widespread in the "black sites" in Afghanistan, and that the US can turn prisoner's minds into "tapioca pudding." His new novel The Afghan paints his dark vision of CIA activities in Afghanistan.

The US has refused to confirm or deny the use of sodium pentathol or any other drugs on American "enemy combatant" José Padilla, who has now been declared by a number of psychiatrists not mentally fit to stand trial after his years in secret captivity.

Even though the efficacy of sodium pentathol, which is a barbiturate-type anaesthetic, was in question as early as the 1970s, it seems the CIA persisted in experimentation with it ever since.

The Bush administration seems to be attempting to keep the legal avenues open for the use of truth serums and other forms of torture at the President's discretion. In regards to an anti-torture section of a military spending bill in late 2005, in the President's signing statement, he made it clear he reserved the final word on torture and drugging of prisoners.

Who will come forward and be the "truth serum" whistleblower, à la Joe Darby of Abu Ghraib?

The prison slop (spoils) of war

2007-03-19T06:58:00.001-07:00

Prison food is more important than it sounds. After all, the riots in Abu Ghraib which MPs allege led to the most heinous prisoner abuse were spurred by rotten, infested food served up by contractor American Service Center (ASC), based in Qatar.

One Australian catering firm that succeeded ASC, called Morris Corporation, is back. In 2004, the firm lost a $100 million contract for food provision in US prisons in Iraq in 2004 due to a shady decision and what appears to be corruption by Pentagon darling Halliburton. Cheney's favorite corporation was subcontracting the meal service to Morris and a Kuwaiti partner, who apparently did not appreciate being asked for 3-4% kickbacks as penalties for lateness. (Halliburton was also stealing from the meal-allocated funds.)

Morris later won $20 million in damages from Halliburton after an acrimonious legal battle.

This week, Morris won the $65 million contract to supply meals to the 5,000 prisoners in Camp Cropper.

None of the food will come from Iraq, neither will local Iraqi staff be allowed to prepare the food. The company's chief executive was reached by The Age in Romania, where he was recruiting "third country nationals" to work in Iraq.

Morris Corp chief executive Robert McVicker, who is in Romania on a recruitment drive, said last night the company was "bidding aggressively" for work in Iraq, tendering for contracts totalling more than $200 million.

Mr McVicker said its previous catering deal, in which it was subcontracted by Halliburton, became "messy" because of the company's reliance on a joint venture partner. Its latest contract was with the US military.

As part of the deal, Morris Corp is expected to build accommodation for its workforce of Australians, Americans and other third country nationals, numbering about 250, within Camp Cropper. Its workers would be confined to the compound. "Staff won't leave the facility at all," Mr McVicker said. "That's the nature of working in war zones. You can't wander down to the corner shop and buy an ice-cream …

"Some people who come and work in these places love it. Others arrive, hear a mortar in the distance and want to get straight back onto the plane and go home. That's where the selection process has to be pretty careful."

In it together: Anglos dodging responsibility, spending (and earning) a fortune

2007-03-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

In the UK, the acquittal of two British officers in the killing of Baha Mousa in Basra in 2003 led many to question the use of military trials. The proceedings against a number of officers involved in the death of Mousa all led to acquittals, an apparently cost the British taxpayer over £20 million. The judge who acquitted the men said there was no evidence against the men because there was an obvious, inpenetrable code of silence among those involved. And just today, we learn that 10 British detainees in Basra pulled a quite simple escape.

In Canada, the controversy over the investigation of the "handing over" and disappearance of a Taliban soldier captured on the battlefield to the Afghan Army rages on. Meanwhile, miltary lawyers appointed to defend Canadian Omar Khadr, the only juvenile brought to Guantanamo from Afghanistan, say the cards are stacked against him. The US has used coercion and torture to gather the majority of "admissable evidence." His lawyers also claim the Canadian government is abandonning the now 20-year-old Khadr.

In the US, the beginning of a hearing to determine whether the only officer charged with Abu Ghraib abuses shall face court martial hearings revealed that Sgt Steven Jordan plans to dispute the legality of evidence against him. He claims that investigating Generals Fay and Taguba did not properly inform him of his rights.

Also, Staff Sgt. Ray Girouard was found guilty of negligent homicide in relation to the killings of three prisoners north-west of Baghdad in May 2006. The maximum sentence for this is three years, whereas premeditated murder carries up to life without parole. He was also convicted of covering up the crimes. His attempts to prove he was under orders to "kill at military-age men" and pass responsibility up the military command seemed to have failed. But he raised significant questions about the orders he was given.

Australian Prime Minister's surprise visit to the troops in southern Afghanistan reminds that Australian David Hicks, captured in Afghanistan in 2001, is awaiting his military commission trial. His lawyers are attempting to delay the proceedings, challenging the his very detention in US courts. He will in any case appear in a hearing on March 23, the first time he will have seen his family in 2 1/2 years. Meanwhile, an Australian firm Morris Corporation, won the $65 million contract to supply meals at US Detention facilities in Iraq.

Command responsibility defense in Iraq detainee killings

2007-03-15T02:22:00.000-07:00

The trial of 101st airborne Staff Sgt. Ray Girouard, who is being blamed for ordering the killing of three detainees in Thar-thar, northwest of Baghdad, in May 2006 is already cutting straight to the issue of command responsbility. The LA Times provides coverage of the trial in Ft Campbell, Kentucky. Girouard claims that he had orders to "kill every military-age male" and that he was screamed at by his superior Sgt. Eric Geressy after Girouard reported they had taken prisoners. Here is a video of Geressy talking about a counterinsurgency raid in Samarra. For background, see the site Expose the War Profiteers.

FT. CAMPBELL, KY. — A senior enlisted man testified Wednesday that he had angrily asked over a military radio why his soldiers had not killed several Iraqi men they had taken into custody during a combat sweep in Iraq last May.

Minutes later, three detainees were shot dead. A 101st Airborne Division squad leader, Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, is charged with ordering his soldiers to kill the Iraqis.

"I don't understand why … we have these guys alive!" 1st Sgt. Eric Geressy testified he shouted over the radio shortly before two soldiers in Girouard's squad shot and killed the unarmed Iraqis.

Testifying at Girouard's court-martial, Geressy said he believed the Iraqis had been shooting at his men during a firefight and thus should have been killed. In fact, the men had been detained without incident after a May 9 air assault by Girouard's squad on a marshy island 60 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Geressy's radio comments were significant for Girouard's defense team, which maintains that top commanders gave orders to kill every military-age Iraqi male on the island. A soldier who admitted killing the detainees testified Tuesday that he believed that Girouard, in telling his men to kill the detainees, was responding to Geressy's outburst.

"That's what [Geressy] wanted. That's why I proceeded," Pvt. William B. Hunsaker testified during Tuesday's opening session.

Asked by defense lawyer Anita Gorecki whether killing the detainees was what "higher" — the unit's higher command — wanted, Hunsaker replied, "Yes, ma'am."

Girouard, 24, is the highest-ranking of four squad members charged with murdering the detainees. Hunsaker, 24, and two others have pleaded guilty under agreements that require them to testify for the government.

Hunsaker and Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, 22, testified Tuesday that they killed the detainees after Girouard told them to cut off their plastic zip ties, let them flee and then shoot them. Hunsaker and Clagett have been sentenced to 18 years in prison; they originally faced life without parole if convicted.

US' growing Iraq prison-industrial complex

2007-03-14T01:34:00.000-07:00

It was recently reported that the Pentagon would be calling up 2,200 more MPs to serve in Iraq to accompany the "surge" in troops. Now the Washington Post reports they are making plans to allow for at least a 30% increase in the number of US detainees at Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper. The total number at Camp Bucca is currently over 13,000. Cropper only has 3,300 but expects to grow by 5,000 detainees over the next couple of months.

This would bring the total numbers to over 21,000 -- the highest yet. What is the end game, especially given the growing evidence that the Iraqi justice system abuses, neglects and tortures prionsers?

The story reveals some interesting details. Attempts to build Iraqi capacity within are stymied by bureaucratic and security-related regulations. And none of the food served to the over 16,000 people comes from within Iraq. Also, the prison workforce is comprised of "third-country nationals." Where are they from? What are they paid? What about the insurance and health care? (See the story of TITAN interpreter Mazin Al Nashi.)

The Camp Cropper contract proposal, reviewed by The Washington Post, underscores the detainee increase and offers insight into U.S. detention practices in Iraq -- including a ban against hiring local staffers and an emphasis on meal practices sensitive to local traditions.

According to the food contract, local Iraqis and Iraqi companies are prohibited from preparing and serving food for the detainees. Neither the U.S. government nor Iraqi government "presently has a vetting process which would accommodate Iraqi employees while ensuring adequate security," according to the contract proposal.

Instead, the contactor is to use "expatriates and third-country nationals." Any third-country nationals hired must live in trailers or tents provided by the contractor on a U.S. military base near the food facility. "This was done for the security and safety of the installation and the workers" and at the request of the U.S. military police battalion on the base, Siegfried said.

The Iraqi guards at the facility are employees of Iraq's Ministry of Justice, which supposedly vets them. Nonetheless, while working at the Camp Cropper detention facility, the guards must be matched with U.S. soldiers, escorted by U.S. units as they travel to and from work, and housed in a compound on the base guarded by U.S. forces, Siegfried said.

However, the guards receive some benefits: Their meals on the base include a wider selection of food and "shall consist of 25% larger portions" than detainees' meals, according to the contract.

All food consumed at the Camp Cropper prison must be purchased outside Iraq and convoyed into the country by either U.S. or Iraqi military forces, according to the contract. That is because food vendors must be inspected by U.S. officials and "currently there are no Iraqi-approved sources for food contracts," said Siegfried.

British judge lets off senior officers

2007-03-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

In relation to the Baha Mousa homicide in Basra, it appears that command responsibility weighed into a judge's decision to drop charges against five officers blamed with the abuse that led to the Hotel receptionist's demise in 2003. He said in relation to the 36 hours of abuse that led to Mousa's death, some of the "techniques" were approved by the officer's superiors. Those techniques included "conditioning" the detainees for questioning by putting them in stress positions and requiring them to wear hoods. One wonders is the beatings sustained by Mr. Mousa were also approved.

Another officer, Col Jorge Mendonca also was recently acquitted for responsibility in the Mousa homicide.

Now the big question: will prosecutors move up the chain of command?

Court-martial hearing for Abu Ghraib officer

2007-03-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

The only officer to be charged for offenses relating to the heinous torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2003-4, Lt Col. Steven L Jordan, will face another hearing to decide whether or not he should be court martialed. The military's own Fay Report concluded that he failed to control the situation at Abu Ghraib and failed to adequately train his soldiers. His "Article 32" hearing in October, he claims, was unfair because the presiding officer unfairly admitted written witness statements that were not evidence when ruling.

If the presiding officer in this hearing today decides Lt Col. Jordan should face a court martial hearing, it will tentatively be scheduled for July, according to MSNBC.

Study shows "no such thing as torture lite"

2007-03-06T01:09:00.000-08:00

A study, led by a King's College pyschiatrist, that surveyed victims of mental and physical torture victims from the Balkans wars reveals that the impacts for both kinds of abuse are the same over the long-term: post traumatic stress and depression. The study, published in the Archive of General Psychiatry, is being offered for free on the journal's site. According to the LA Times:

The worst physical tortures averaged between 3.2 and 3.9. Falling within the same range were several other forms of mistreatment, including isolation, sham executions, death threats and being pelted with urine or feces.

"Nonphysical stressors during captivity were as distressing and traumatic as stressors involving physical pain," Basoglu said.

The interviews were conducted an average of eight years after the mistreatment.

More than 55% of the subjects were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and 17% were clinically depressed. It made no difference whether the abuse was a clear case of physical torture or forms of psychological manipulation.

What mattered most, Basoglu said, was the degree to which the victim felt a loss of control.

Some ironic advice for wardens in Iraq

2007-03-04T02:37:00.000-08:00

For a rare taste of detention from the warden's side, this op-ed in the LA Times. Carlson served in the Fallouja detention center in much of 2006, and is currently pursuing a Masters in creative writing.

The warden of Fallouja
Taking charge of a detention center in Iraq? Here's what you need to remember. By Mike Carlson

[ 1 ] They're not prisoners, they're "detainees."

It sounds better, as if they're merely inconvenienced rather than shoehorned into cinderblock cells, thumbing their military-issued Korans and waiting to be interrogated. One-third are innocents caught up in sweeps; one-third are jihadists who will slit your throat, and one-third are opportunists who will rat out their neighbors. You will hold them for 14 days, no more, while the interrogators try to figure out who is what. Each gets a CF, for Camp Fallouja, and a four-digit number. No names will be used, mainly because numbers fit more easily onto spreadsheets. They will be forever known as entas. "Enta" means "you" in Arabic, and that's what you call them day after day, meal after meal, port-a-potty call after port-a-potty call. "Enta, ishra mai," you say, and the enta drinks his water, and if you say, "Enta, ishra mai kulak," he drinks all of his water, every drop, and holds the bottle upside down to prove it.

[ 2 ] It's not personal.

The enta who screams "meesta!" every 10 seconds for 48 hours straight isn't doing it to infuriate you, his captor. What it boils down to is that he can't pronounce "mister," and he was carrying that 155-millimeter round in the back of his pickup, and he was going to try to blow you up, and the reason he was picked by the insurgent leaders to haul the shell is that he's soft in the head, which is why he cannot stop screaming "meesta!"

The major who watches NASCAR races on satellite TV in his air-conditioned office at the battalion headquarters while you and your Marines march entas to and from the latrines in 120-degree heat isn't doing it to antagonize you, his subordinate. Frankly, he's just over here for the retirement money, and he didn't want to be in charge of four regional detention facilities in Al Anbar province any more than you wanted to end up as the warden in Fallouja. He wants to keep his head down and forget about the fact that if one, just one, of your Marines snaps and goes Abu Ghraib on a detainee, his pension is out the window.

[ 3 ] You won't fire your weapon in anger.

You'll fire plenty of training rounds. You'll be awakened nightly by outgoing artillery shells being blasted into the ether a mere 400 meters from your tin-can hooch, where you fall asleep to the drone of your air-conditioning unit and the faint yelps from the sergeant-next-door's porn videos.

Your fingers will ache from absently squeezing the grip of your M16A4 during endless nighttime convoys, transporting detainees from Fallouja to Abu Ghraib or Camp Cropper. The only illumination in the back of the truck will come from the red-lens flashlight you pan across the entas to make sure none of them have wormed loose from their flex cuffs and hatched a plot to kill you.

Your truck will stop one night outside Abu Ghraib. You will wait for explosive ordnance techs to clear a suspicious burlap bag. Because there are so many bombs, you never know how long you'll sit exposed on the road. During the second hour, CF-4562 will ask you in perfect English if he can pee. You will escort him to the edge of the road. When he thinks you aren't looking, 4562 will slink away from you and your rifle. You will immediately see through such a feeble escape attempt, and here, outside the site of America's shame, this enta will be one sandal step away from giving you an absolutely justifiable reason to finally click your weapon's selector off of "safe."

You will raise the muzzle slowly with muscles that ache from humping 60 pounds of body armor and ammo and water and Quick-Clot coagulant, but before your thumb moves over the safety, you will automatically say "kiff," Arabic for "stop," because it's been drilled into you as part of the rules of engagement. You will want to shoot, and 4562 will hear that in your voice. He will stop. He will manage a feeble stream of urine before you shoo him back aboard the truck.

[ 4 ] You will be a constant target outside the wire.

A green beam of light will dazzle you through the Cyclops lens of your night-vision goggles as it streaks toward the armored sides of your truck. You will grit your teeth, and the rocket-propelled grenade will hit, and then, by the grace of some malfunction, it will only gouge out a divot from the big green plates, an errant golf swing's worth of metal. You will pan your rifle barrel across the garbage-strewn fields and pockmarked buildings, but you will see nothing, just a stray dog scurrying away from the tiny blast. A feeling of anticlimax will wash over you, of one beer short of the perfect buzz and a throw just wide of the catcher's mitt. You are a Marine and trained to kill, but you can never find any insurgents to shoot.

[ 5 ] You will tell yourself lies about how being shot at will change you.

You won't be able to tell your wife about the near-miss when you call home because you know she'll be worried, and when she worries, she cries, and you cannot, absolutely cannot, have her cry, mainly because it will make you cry, and you're a captain in a crowded phone center surrounded by junior Marines. Your neck will cramp up for two weeks, as if all your fears have been concentrated into a small kernel of misery somewhere north of your shoulder blade. Then, one day, the pain will be gone, and you will walk up to the side of the truck and place your fist inside the divot to remind yourself that it really happened.

[ 6 ] You will screw up.

A sergeant will push one of your female Marines too hard during physical training, and she will turn on the waterworks and accuse him of sexual harassment. You will chew out the sergeant, but later discover that she is simply angry with him for forbidding her to visit her boyfriend in another unit.

You will apologize to the sergeant, but the incident will have cost you some of the platoon's trust, and you will find yourself hating her. She will hate you too, until she goes home early, knocked up by the very same boyfriend she was forbidden to see. You will feel a quick self-righteous high, followed by a prolonged low; your neglect of your own rule — don't take it personally — means you failed her as a leader.

[ 7 ] You will drink water until your urine is clear.

You will drink and drink and keep drinking until you've drained more than 800 bottles of water during your stay in the Iraqi desert.

[ 8 ] Your interpreter will be your greatest hidden ally.

Ali is rotund, aged and bearded, a prototypical Islamic authority figure. He reads the facility rules to all new detainees, his face hidden behind dark glasses and a ball cap. Your understanding of Arabic progresses to the point where you know he's adding regulations. You take him aside, and he explains that he tells the new arrivals that there are snipers in every tower, that trapdoors lurk beyond the borders of each gravel path and that attacking a Marine in the facility would result in a coward's death, voiding the promise of 72 virgins. You allow him to continue.

[ 9 ] You won't abuse any detainees.

Your property room will hold a sniper rifle that killed a Marine and bears the fingerprints of the man inside Cell 4A. Evidence photos will show a bomb crater and bloody boots with shinbones still laced inside, and wires that lead from the crater to the home of CF-7634. As you perform your daily cell checks, you will occasionally want to smash and kick and eye gouge and palm-heel strike. But you won't. You will need to look in the mirror tomorrow when you shave.

[ 10 ] You will get by with 20 words of Arabic.

When your prisoner-release convoy is waved into a field strewn with basketball-sized boulders by an Army lieutenant too new to speak Arabic, that will be just enough to get the entas to stop washing their feet and shouting blessings to Allah and to herd them into the civil affairs compound. Later, an 18-year-old lance corporal will fall asleep at the wheel and swerve off the Fallouja cloverleaf. As the 7-ton rumbles down the embankment, the entas will fling themselves off the truck. One enta will break his arm, and, again, your 20 words will coax him into medical treatment. Through it all — the bungled release, the accident, the medevac — you will not be attacked. Two days later, a similar convoy traveling the exact same route will be blown up by an IED, and the ache in your neck will return for another two weeks.

[ 11 ] After seven months, you will fly home.

On the way back to the U.S., your Marines will be told by Maj. NASCAR that they can drink, and they will — to excess. You will resign yourself to breaking up the inevitable fights, and as you step between two Marines about to swing, you will realize that this has been your purpose. You set limits.

[ 12 ] You will return to civilian life.

You will be jumpy and vaguely unsatisfied, disconnected from the civilians around you who care only about text messages and gas prices and catty e-mails. Navy doctors will find Iraqi sand trapped in the innermost pathways of your ear canals. Your wife now snores, and all her unfamiliar noises combine to drive you from your bed.

On one such night, you will turn on the television news and see that Anna Nicole Smith's death has trumped the coverage of America's 3,118th fatality, 31-year-old Petty Officer 1st Class Gilbert Minjares Jr. You will note that, at 39, Smith was younger than most of the helicopters flying in Iraq. You will turn off the TV and sit in the dark and feel your eyes water as you think about how you took 55 Marines and sailors into a combat zone and brought all 55 back home, and that no one in America besides you and those 55 really cares or understands what you went through.

You processed 1,230 detainees, without a single incident of abuse, while America sat on the couch and watched girls go wild. As far as you know, you killed no one. This used to bother you, because killing is what Marines are trained to do. But now, after viewing documentaries and reports that paint American forces as Redcoat invaders, you take some comfort in the fact that you never pulled the trigger.

Those numbers — 55, 1,230 and 0 — will allow you to sleep tonight, and the next night, and the next. But each night you will insert a mouth guard made of silicone before you go to sleep, because your dentist informs you that you are always, always, always unconsciously grinding your teeth.

Canadians take bold step to curb abuse

2007-03-01T04:11:00.000-08:00

The Canadian Press reported today that Canadian forces in Kandahar will work together with the Afghanistan Independent Commission for Human Rights (AICHR) to ensure that no detainee abuse occurs under Canada's watch.

Earlier allegations of physical abuse of detainees at Kandahar Base in 2006 marred the Canadian force's image in the south of Afghanistan. Official investigations in these are on-going. Concerns over torture in Afghan prisons will also be a focus of the AICHR, which will now be notified when detainees are handed from Canadian to Afghan custody. This makes Canada the only NATO partner with this policy so far.

The Kandahar office of Afghanistan's human rights commission has agreed to act as a watchdog for detainees captured by Canadians to ensure that valid complaints of abuse are investigated, the Canadian Press has learned.

The secret agreement with military commanders papers over concerns raised by human rights groups about the practice of handing captured Taliban prisoners over to Afghan authorities who have a reputation for torture. It could also take some of the fire out of a burning debate over allegations that Canadian troops abused detainees last spring.

"Canadians respect human rights very well," Abdul Quadar Noorzai, the Kandahar manager of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said in an interview. He was eager to trumpet the agreement signed last Friday with Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

"It is one of the greatest acts taken by them and I really appreciate it from the core of my heart," said a beaming Noorzai, who's been working for a year to carve out such an arrangement.

Marc Raider, a spokesman for the Defence Department in Ottawa, confirmed the existence of the agreement and said it builds on a December 2005 technical arrangement signed between Afghanistan's defence minister and Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier.

[...]The negotiations were started almost a year ago when Nader Naderi, commissioner of the Afghan human rights commission based in Kabul, went to Canada and met with the minister of defence.

Noorzai said eventually he would like to see the agreement expanded, or a separate arrangement signed, that would allow the commission to report on civilian shootings by foreign troops.

Over the past month, four Afghan bystanders have been killed in shootings involving Canadian soldiers.

Black sites open til end of '06, says HRW

2007-02-28T07:07:00.000-08:00

A Human Rights Watch report came out this week, recounting the experience of "ghost detainee," Islamic militant Marwan Jabour. The report insinuates that until the US discloses more information about the Black Sites it operated, it is possible that the CIA still holds a number of people in secret custody. This in spite of the Bush administration's declaration last year that "ghost detainees" would be either accounted for or released.

HRW focuses on the Jabour case and demonstrates how inhumane "disappearance" is for families of those taken away.

Jabour was released in November 2006, a full two months after the US claimed the last ghost detainees were accounted for. He had been in custody in Jordan for the early part of 2006.

From the summary

When Marwan Jabour opened his eyes, after a blindfold, a mask, and other coverings were taken off him, he saw soldiers and, on the wall behind them, framed photographs of King Hussein and King Abdullah of Jordan. He was tired and disoriented from his four-hour plane flight and subsequent car trip, but when a guard confirmed that he was being held in Jordan, he felt indescribable relief. In his more than two years of secret detention, nearly all of it in US custody, this was the first time that someone had told him where he was. The date was July 31, 2006.

A few weeks later, in another first, the Jordanians allowed several of Jabour’s family members to visit him. “My father cried the whole time,” Jabour later remembered.

Marwan Jabour was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Lahore, Pakistan, on May 9, 2004. He was detained there briefly, then moved to the capital, Islamabad, where he was held for more than a month in a secret detention facility operated by both Pakistanis and Americans, and finally flown to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prison in what he believes was Afghanistan. During his ordeal, he later told Human Rights Watch, he was tortured, beaten, forced to stay awake for days, and kept naked and chained to a wall for more than a month. Like an unknown number of Arab men arrested in Pakistan since 2001, he was “disappeared” into US custody: held in unacknowledged detention outside of the protection of the law, without court supervision, and without any contact with his family, legal counsel, or the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The details of the abuse he suffered in American custody, which only years ago would have deeply shocked the world, now seem horribly "normal":

Jabour was arrested in Lahore, he believes by the Pakistani intelligence services, and the worst physical abuses he endured took place while he was in their custody. He alleges that they beat him severely, burnt him with a red hot iron, and tied a tight rubber string around his penis, causing enormous pain. On this third day in Pakistani custody, three people he believes were Americans questioned him; the following day he was transferred to a secret facility in Islamabad. This facility had both US and Pakistani personnel, but the Americans seemed to be in charge.

Both in the Lahore facility and in Islamabad, Jabour endured many days of forced sleeplessness and forced standing, with little respite. Twice he collapsed, falling unconscious.

After a month in Islamabad he was flown to a secret prison, which he believes was in Afghanistan, where all of the personnel (except possibly the interpreters) were American. There, he was held completely naked for a month and a half, filmed naked, and interrogated naked. He was chained tightly to the wall of his small cell so he could not stand up, placed in painful stress positions so that he had difficulty breathing, and warned that if he did not cooperate he would be put in a suffocating “dog box.”

As the months went by, some aspects of Jabour’s treatment improved: his clothes were slowly returned; the physical mistreatment ended; he was placed in a larger cell; he got better food. Other aspects, however, changed slowly or not at all. He spent nearly all of his time alone in a windowless cell. He went a year and a half without a glimpse of sunlight. He wore leg irons for a year and a half. Worst of all, he spent more than two years with almost no contact with any human being besides his captors. Although he worried incessantly about his wife and three young daughters, he was not even allowed to send them a letter to reassure them that he was alive.

Getting waterboarded

2007-02-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

In this Current TV video, a willing volunteer who undergoes waterboarding, a torture technique used by the Bush administration. The point is for the public to witness it firsthand.

It will be disturbing for some people.

The Prisoner

2007-02-22T02:30:00.000-08:00

Another documentary on Abu Ghraib, featured in this month's Vanity Fair, is sure to make waves in the US in March. "The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair" is a surreal film about the arrest of journalist Yunis Khayater. His arrest, caught on tape by documentarist Michael Turner who included the footage in his awarding-winning Gunner's Palace. After the release of this documentary, Turner received an email from a "friend" of Yunis' -- Benjamin Thompson, an American who served at Abu Ghraib. He wanted contact Yunis, saying, "I felt that these people were my good friends and that we survived that hell together with support from one another. I truly love these people."

The story has a number of surreal elements, starting with Yunis' arrest for an alleged, far-fetched accusation that the journalist was plotting to kill Tony Blair. He was plunged into the nightmare world of Abu Ghraib where he met Thompson.

Read more in Vanity Fair, visit the film's site, or see the trailer here.

Blunder #3: Prisons and prisoners

2007-02-20T01:56:00.000-08:00

From the Talking Points Memo Cafe (a progressive forum for debate), by Marshall Adame, the former director of the Basra airport, "Six Blunders we made in Iraq we can still fix":

3. Prisoners and Prisons

Problem: From 2003 until today our coalition forces have captured or killed some of the most dangerous people in the world. These people will never have the opportunity to hurt anyone else in Iraq or anywhere. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in the process of combing Iraq for bad guys, field commanders, for one reason or another, and at times indiscriminately, have confined many men and women without any specific charges or reasons that can be remembered or recorded. We have, in essence, deprived many people of their liberty with out any real reason or purpose. As a result the coalition now faces the problem of building more prisons even with the knowledge that a very large percentage of the detainees are most likely not ever going to be charged with a crime and may in fact be not guilty of any crime other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time or having the wrong friend or relative. The possibility here is that we may have separated innocent fathers from their wives and children, sons from their families, daughters from their only source of protection and support and in the process created many more enemies. Consequently the coalition has, without charge or specific reason, confined many innocent people and deprived them, without cause, of the very liberties we came here to preserve. Even in war, the principles of due process, within reason, must be upheld.

The most viable fix: The New Iraqi Prime Minister should announce an immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners that fall into certain categories (not including those captured in hostilities or known to be involved in hostile activities).

Categories: All Handicapped * All prisoners over 50 years old *

All only sons * All women not specifically charged but have been confined for over 60 days * All confined persons under the age of 16 * All detainees in any juvenile facility in Iraq * All females under the age of 18 not specifically charged with a violent crime against Iraqi or Coalition forces.(Not to include the charge of “throwing rocks”) *

All Imams, Sunni and Shia, not specifically charged with a violent crime, conspiracy to commit a violent crime, or aiding and abetting the enemy * All persons confined for misdemeanors or petty theft or confined for the reason of failure to pay a debt.

(The June 2006 announcement by PM Maliki of the planned release of 2,500 detainees in Iraqi and Coalition prison facilities was a great start and better late than never, but the numbers of prisoners remaining is staggering, many of whom still having not been told why they were detained. The Coalition, being responsible for the vast majority of the detainments, should be concentrating on a means to provide the process by which the rest can be either charged and held, or simply released and compensated for having their liberties violated without cause. The planning effort should not be on building new prisons to hold people who will ultimately be released with out charge. This equates to simply leaving the problem to the new government). Any release schedules should not be conditioned on political timing as those recently announced. Depriving anyone of his or her liberty, even for a short time for a political advantage, should be unconscionable to those of us who enjoy protections from that very thing.

Every person in these release categories and never charged should be released with a letter of assurance that they are not considered criminal or enemies of Iraq, $500US or $15US per everyday of confinement (which ever is greater) and assured transportation home. They should not necessarily be required to sign any renouncement of violence since the only violence having occurred may have been our violence against them in the process of arrest and detainment. They should be asked to sign an acknowledgement that they may have been detained wrongly due to unpredictable circumstances brought on by the hostilities occurring in Iraq and that they understand that the county if Iraq does not classify them as having a criminal record of any kind as a result of their arrest and confinement.

(Two of my soldier sons came to Iraq and one was wounded during a battle in Baqubah. I would like them to believe we all serve for the preservation of very specific principles and rules of behavior regarding other human beings, even during war. We do not herald our principles of liberty because we are strong, rather we are strong because of our belief and respect for these principles. If we sacrifice the very principles of inalienable rights that define who we are, then we sacrifice our right to defend the helpless. We will have surrendered our banner of hope and liberty).

Two years, electric tasers, no charges

2007-02-17T15:54:00.000-08:00

The New York Times' Michael Moss and Souad Mekhennet report on one common Iraq detainee's experience during two years in detention at Camp Bucca:

DAMASCUS, Syria — In the early hours of Jan. 6, Laith al-Ani stood in a jail near the Baghdad airport waiting to be released by the American military after two years and three months in captivity.

He struggled to quell his hope. Other prisoners had gotten as far as the gate only to be brought back inside, he said, and he feared that would happen to him as punishment for letting his family discuss his case with a reporter.

But as the morning light grew, the American guards moved Mr. Ani, a 31-year-old father of two young children, methodically toward freedom. They swapped his yellow prison suit for street clothes, he said. They snipped off his white plastic identification bracelet. They scanned his irises into their database.

Then, shortly before 9 a.m., Mr. Ani said, he was brought to a table for one last step. He was handed a form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described how he had been treated:

“I didn’t go through any abuse during detention,” read the first option, in Arabic.

“I have gone through abuse during detention,” read the second.

In the room, he said, stood three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as speaking out of turn.

“Even the translator told me to sign the first answer,” said Mr. Ani, who gave a copy of his form to The New York Times. “I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he raised his hands,” as if to say, Who knows?

“I thought if I don’t sign the first one I am not going to get out of this place.”

Shoving the memories of his detention aside, he checked the first box and minutes later was running through a cold rain to his waiting parents. “My heart was beating so hard,” he said. “You can’t believe how I cried.”

His mother, Intisar al-Ani, raised her arms in the air, palms up, praising God. “It was like my soul going out, from my happiness,” she recalled. “I hugged him hard, afraid the Americans would take him away again.”

Just three weeks earlier, his last letter home — with its poetic yearnings and a sketch of a caged pink heart — appeared in The Times in one of a series of articles on Iraq’s troubled detention and justice system.

After his release from the American-run jail, Camp Bucca, Mr. Ani and other former detainees described the sprawling complex of barracks in the southern desert near Kuwait as a bleak place where guards casually used their stun guns and exposed prisoners to long periods of extreme heat and cold; where prisoners fought among themselves and extremist elements tried to radicalize others; and where detainees often responded to the harsh conditions with hunger strikes and, at times, violent protests.

Through it all, Mr. Ani was never actually charged with a crime; he said he was questioned only once during his more than two years at the camp.

[...]

Mr. Ani said the electric prods were first used on him on the way to Camp Bucca. “I was talking to someone next to me and they used it,” he said, describing the device as black plastic with a yellow tip and two iron prongs. He said the prods were commonly used on him and other detainees as punishment.

“The whole body starts to shake and hurt,” he said. “And you lose consciousness for a couple of seconds. One time they used it on my tongue. One guard held me from the left and another on my back and another used it against my tongue and for four or five days I couldn’t eat.”

In a separate interview, the insurgent from Samarra said such a device had been used on him for speaking out of turn. Ahmed Majid al-Ghanem, 50, a former Baath Party official who was also freed from Camp Bucca and is now living in Syria, said in a separate interview that he witnessed the electric prods being used as punishment on other detainees.

The Times interviewed Mr. Ani at his apartment in Damascus, the Syrian capital, where he sat on a couch with his parents, wife and children. When he demonstrated how he had been held for the electric prod, his 4-year-old daughter, Al Budur, mimicked his actions.

Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a detention system spokesman, said: “Every use of less than lethal force, to include use of Tasers, is formally reported by facility leadership, ensuring soldiers are in accordance with proper use. Touching a Taser to someone’s tongue is not one of the approved uses.”

Italy indicts CIA agents

2007-02-17T14:21:00.000-08:00

An Italian judge has indicted 26 Americans related to the abduction of an Egyptian born cleric (Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr) who was kidnapped in Milan in 2003 and eventually "rendered" to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured over the course of his 4 year imprisonment. Most of the indicted are CIA officers, and one is an Airforce pilot. The New York Times believes it is very unlikely any will ever stand trial.

Cryptome provides us with the arrest warrant, for those who would like to name names. Ex-CIA Milan bureau chief Robert Seldon Lady is apparently on the lamb and Italian authorities seized his house in Italy to pay for court costs last month.

2007-02-16T06:51:00.000-08:00

Rory Kennedy's documentary "The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib," which debuted at Sundance Film Festival in January, will be airing on HBO in North America next week starting February 22.

Sundance produced a promo piece, with interviews with Kennedy. The film features ex-military intel Sgt. Sam Provance, who has been ostracized for speaking out to the media after reading the Taguba Report.

For schedules, please follow this link to the HBO website.

"Haunted by Fallujah"

2007-02-15T02:49:00.000-08:00

Today the Dallas Morning News published an amazing op-ed (originally published in the Washington Post), by a former Army interrogator, which I will include here in full. The amazement is at first because the author "Fair" which seems to be a pseudonym seems so repentant for the torture he committed.

But a different kind of amazement follows when a certain diligent blogger uncovered evidence that suggests this "Eric Fair" (which reeks of irony and strangely reminds of Eric Blair, George Orwell's real name) was in fact a contractor for CACI. Blogger kilabe reveals that "Eric Fair" is mentioned in a class action suit by ex-detainees against employees of contractors CACI and Titan. Meaning his stays in Iraq were in fact "voluntary" in that he could have resigned at any time, whereas members of the Armed Forces would have had a harder time not following orders, or leaving their posts.

Haunted by Fallujah

I cannot escape the depths I sunk to as an interrogator in Iraq, says ERIC FAIR. Nor can I keep them to myself any longer.

12:00 AM CST on Thursday, February 15, 2007

Aman with no face stares at me from the corner of a room. He pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He begins to cry. It is a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realize the screams are mine.

That dream, along with a host of other nightmares, has plagued me since my return from Iraq in summer 2004. Though the man in this particular nightmare has no face, I know who he is. I assisted in his interrogation at a detention facility in Fallujah. I was one of two civilian interrogators assigned to the division interrogation facility of the 82nd Airborne Division. The man was suspected to be an associate of Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, the Baath Party leader in Anbar province who had been captured two months earlier.

The lead interrogator had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later, the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.

I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.

American authorities continue to insist that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-run detention system. That insistence, however, stands in sharp contrast to my experiences as an interrogator in Iraq.

I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking.

Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked. My memories are evidence that those tactics were terribly wrong.

While I was appalled by the conduct of my friends and colleagues, I lacked the courage to challenge the status quo. That was a failure of character and in many ways made me complicit in what went on. I'm ashamed of that failure, but as time passes, and as the memories of what I saw in Iraq continue to infect my every thought, I'm becoming more ashamed of my silence.

Some may suggest there is no reason to revive the story of abuse in Iraq. But history suggests we should examine such missteps carefully. Oppressive prison environments have created some of the most determined opponents. The British learned that lesson from Napoleon, the French from Ho Chi Minh. The world is learning that lesson again from Ayman al-Zawahiri. What will be the legacy of abusive prisons in Iraq?

We have failed to properly address the abuse of Iraqi detainees. Men like me have refused to tell our stories, and our leaders have refused to own up to myriad mistakes. Regardless of how many young Americans we send to war, or how many militia members we kill, or how many Iraqis we train, or how much money we spend on reconstruction, we will not escape the damage we have done to the people of Iraq in our prisons.

I am desperate to get on with my life and erase the memories of my experiences in Iraq. But those memories and experiences do not belong to me. They belong to history. If we're doomed to repeat the history we forget, what will be the consequences of the history we never knew? The citizens and the leadership of this country have an obligation to revisit what took place in the interrogation booths of Iraq. The story of Abu Ghraib isn't over. In many ways, we have yet to open the book.

Eric Fair served in the Army from 1995 to 2000 as an Arabic linguist and worked in Iraq as a contract interrogator in early 2004. His e-mail address is erictfair@ comcast.net.

Ex-CIA contractor gets 8 years

2007-02-15T02:05:00.000-08:00

David Passaro, ex-Navy and CIA contractor, received an 8 year sentence for felony assault against Afghan prisoner Abdul Wali who was killed in June 2003.

Prosecutors argued that Abdul Wali pleaded to be shot to end his pain.

Passaro admitted that he "did not show Wali the compassion he deserved." From ABC News:

In a letter to the judge, the former governor of Afghanistan's Kunar province, Said Fazel Akbar, said the prisoner's death did "tremendous damage" to the credibility of the American-led coalition there and was used as propaganda by al Qaeda and Taliban forces.

"The distrust of the Americans increased, the security and reconstruction efforts of Afghanistan were dealt a blow, and the only people to gain from Dave Passaro's actions were al Qaeda and their partners," he wrote.

British clear officer in Basra abuse case

2007-02-15T01:40:00.000-08:00

Colonel Jorge Mendonca, the highest ranking officer to be charged in relation to abuse allegations in a Basra detention center, was cleared on criminal charges relating to the death of a hotel employee Baha Mousa in 2003, who "who was attacked over a 36-hour period while handcuffed and hooded and suffered 93 separate injuries."

Robert Fisk wrote on this homicide for the Independent. An anonymous survivor recounted to him:

One of the detainees was to recount to The Independent an appalling story of cruelty: "We were put in a big room with our hands tied and with bags over our heads.

"But I could see through some holes in my hood. Soldiers would come in, ordinary soldiers, not officers--mostly with their heads shaved, but in uniform--and they would kick us, picking on one after the other.

"They were kick-boxing us in the chest and between the legs and in the back. We were crying and screaming. They set on Baha especially and he kept crying that he couldn't breath in the hood. He kept asking them to take the bag off and said he was suffocating.

"But they laughed at him and kicked him more. One of them said: 'Stop screaming and you will be able to breathe more easily'

"Baha was so scared. Then they increased the kicking on him and he collapsed on the floor. None of us could stand or sit because it was too painful.''

Other subordinates were also cleared in relation to manslaughter charges. Yet others are still being tried for abuse-related crimes.

More from the Guardian:

The court martial, being held at Bulford in Wiltshire, has heard how in September 2003, 10 civilians were arrested by members of the QLR during a raid at a hotel in Basra, southern Iraq. Handcuffed, hooded with sacks and deprived of sleep, they were forced to maintain a "stress position" - backs to the wall, knees bent and arms outstretched. If they dropped their arms they were punished with beatings.

[Corporal Donald] Payne, who was in charge of the guarding of the prisoners, was said to be at the centre of the ill treatment. At the start of the trial he made history when he became the first British soldier to admit a war crime. But he denied the manslaughter of Mr Mousa, 26.

Two other soldiers, Kingsman Darren Fallon and Lance Corporal Wayne Crowcroft, were also accused of inhumanly treating prisoners - a war crime. A third, Sergeant Kelvin Stacey, was said to have kicked and punched an Iraqi prisoner. But the case against them centred on the claims of a colleague who was attacked as a "fantasist" in court.

The case against Col Mendonca was that he should have known what was going on and ought to have acted to stop it. But the judge, Mr Justice McKinnon, yesterday directed the board hearing the courts martial to find Col Mendonca, Kingsman Fallon, Lance Corp Crowcroft and Sgt Stacey not guilty. He directed them to acquit Payne of manslaughter and of intending to pervert the course of justice. Mr Justice McKinnon told the board there was "no evidence" fit to put before them on which they could convict the men.

The Scotsman, which claims the court martial tribunal cost the British taxpayer £20 million, reports:

Before his court martial, Colonel Jorge Mendonca MBE, the decorated former commander of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, was widely considered to be destined for the very top of the army.

Fellow officers speak of his exemplary leadership of the QLR during its extremely difficult tour to win "hearts and minds" in Basra following the Coalition Forces' invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The 43-year-old infantry commander's attention to detail and his gallantry in the Gulf, for which he won a DSO (Distinguished Service Order), won him plaudits both in the ranks and the officers' mess.

No avoiding trial for officer charged in Ghraib

2007-02-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

The defense of reservist Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan attempted to get the charges against him in relation to the abuses at Abu Ghraib dropped, on the basis that the government waited too long before charging him. The judge rejected these arguments, which followed his arraignment on January 30. Jordan, who was the only officer to face trial in relation to the torture at Abu Ghraib, is charged with lying to investigators, cruelty and maltreatment, disobeying orders, and dereliction of duty. At Abu Ghraib he was an interrogator in his capacity as military intelligence. He was mentioned in the Taguba report as "directly or indirectly responsible" for the abuses at the prison. He faces 22 years prison time.

Tennesse town rallies for accused murderer

2007-02-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

The hometown of 24 year-old Staff Sargeant Ray Girouard is rallying to his defense, reports the AP. Through church fundraising the townspeople of Sweetwater have raised a total of $18,000 to pay for his defense on murder charges for the killings of bound detainees in Samarra on May 9, 2006.

The other three charged in connection with the murders pled guilty, two received 18 years and one receiving nine months. All three pointed the finger at Girouard.

Sgt. Girouard claimed at his arraignment (Article 32 hearing) that he was given orders to kill all "military-aged males" by his brigade commander Michael Steele.

The 24-year-old staff sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division, was one of four soldiers charged with murdering three Iraqi detainees last year.

"Anybody that knows Raymond knows his character, and this is not Raymond,'' said his grandfather, 64-year-old Ron Bentley.

The other soldiers have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors; Girouard, the squad leader, is in a military jail in Charleston, S.C., awaiting a court-martial next month at Fort Campbell.

The soldiers initially told investigators they shot the detainees during a May 9 raid in Samarra because they were attempting to flee and because commanders had given them orders to kill all military-age men. But two of the soldiers now say Girouard ordered them to cut the detainees free and shoot them as they fled. One soldier also said Girouard cut him to make it look as if there was a struggle.

Political firestorm in Ottawa over allegations

2007-02-07T07:11:00.000-08:00

The Canadian press certainly jumped on the allegations of detainee abuse by Canadian troops at Kandahar Base in spring 2006. The headline from the Globe and Mail says it all:

Full inquiry ordered into treatment of detainees

Defence Minister vows findings will be made public: 'This is not Somalia'; Military officials will scour Afghanistan looking for 3 men who had been held by soldiers

Canadian CNews gauged the reaction of Afghans to these latest allegations:

Allegations that Afghan detainees were abused after they were captured by Canadians came as no surprise Tuesday to Kandahar residents who have mixed feelings about the soldiers from Canada.

Residents remember shooting incidents that have killed at least two Afghans over the past year and injured several others, many of them motorists or motorcyclists who failed to obey Canadian orders to stop. The latest reports of alleged abuse touched a raw nerve in Kandahar, even though the suspects involved were believed to be Taliban insurgents.

"They promised to do reconstruction," Afadullah, 30, an auto mechanic with a shop near the city's gate, said about the Canadians through a translator.

"If (the Canadians) cannot co-operate with us, they should go home and then the Americans should send somebody else."

But others in Kandahar were prepared to give Canadians the benefit of the doubt. They urged patience while the allegation is being checked out.

"Canadians are better than Americans; more humble," said Abdul Khan, a taxi driver.

"They can be forgiven as long as they promise to stop shooting at civilians."

Alleged recent Canadian detainee abuse, Kandahar

2007-02-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

It appears that the US forces are not the only ones accused of beating three detainees in Afghanistan. The alleged incidents occurred in April 2006, at Kandahar base. There have been prior incidents of abuse at Kandahar.

A Canadian Law Professor at University of Ottawa, Amir Attaran, requested documents relating to the incident under Canada's Access to Information Act.

From CBC News:

Attaran said he received three documents from the Department of National Defence, hand-written reports from Canadian military police in Kandahar. The documents show three men were brought to military police by a single interrogator in one day and all had a pattern of injuries to their faces, heads and upper bodies, he told CBC Tuesday.

"It seems to me that if one interrogator has brought in three people in a single day with very similar injuries, this is something that merits investigation," he said.

Attaran sent the information to the Military Police Complaints Commission, a civilian-run body that investigates complaints.

Commission head Peter Tinsley informed Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier and the head of the military police, Capt. Steve Moore, of the allegations, said a report Tuesday in the Globe and Mail.

Attaran said he doesn't know all the details surrounding the incident because DND has refused to provide all the documents he has requested, including a photo of one of the men.

"Only yesterday, because this was about to break in the press, did the DND agree to conduct an internal investigation. An inquiry of this kind should be open to the public," he said.

A group of Canadian soldiers captured the Afghans near a small town about 50 kilometres west of Kandahar, where more than 2,000 Canadians are serving. The men were taken to the medical centre on the Kandahar base.

A military report says the man with the most serious injuries — bruises and cuts to his arm, back and chest — was injured when his hands were tied behind his back.

The military initially said "appropriate force" was used against the man, who it said was a bomb-maker.

One of the detainees was described in military reports as "non-compliant," while a second was described as "extremely belligerent," taking four men to subdue him.

Khadr, only juvenile at Guantanamo, charged

2007-02-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was imprisoned at age 15 in Afghanistan in 2002, has been charged with murder after waiting more than four years in Guantanamo Bay. Although charges were made against Khadr last year, they were dropped after the Supreme Court found the planned tribunals unconstitutional.

Although Khadr has appeared in court a couple of times, no new photos of him have been made available, so the photo of him at age 15 is the only one available. It looks like a school photo.

From Canadian CBC news:

Khadr, who was born in Toronto and lived for years in various southern Ontario communities, was arrested in Afghanistan in July 2002. The U.S. military alleges that he killed an American medic in a grenade attack, which wounded several other American soldiers.

Khadr has been held ever since in Guantanamo. His lawyers and human rights groups say he has been abused in the prison.

The charges against Khadr, the Australian and the Yemeni are not considered formal until they are approved by a U.S. Defence Department legal adviser and an official who oversees the trials.

The process should take two weeks, said Davis. He said the trials will not begin until at least the spring.

The chief prosecutor said it made sense to start with charges against Khadr, who is the only Canadian at Guantanamo, and the other two men.

"Those three have been around for a while, and they were prepared and ready to go," he said.

Khadr and nine other prisoners were previously charged with various offenses, but the charges were dropped in June 2006, when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened.

The court ruled that President George W. Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered the initial military tribunals at Guantanamo. The court also said the tribunal rules violated international and U.S. laws.

U.S. Congress passed a new bill authorizing new military hearings, with new rules, and Bush signed it into law in October 2006. Some of the rules have drawn criticisms from activists because they allow for the use of hearsay and coerced evidence.

The military plans to charge 60 to 80 Guantanamo prisoners under the new system.

Khadr has been accused of training with al-Qaeda.

His father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was reportedly a close associate of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The elder Khadr, who moved his family from Canada to Afghanistan in the 1980s, was killed in a gun battle in Pakistan in 2003.

Along with Khadr, Australian David Hicks was also charged. His legal team accused the US Military of harassing them and attempting to undermine them by announcing the charges the day they had left the prison.

Video: US indifferent to Iraqi detainee beatings

2007-01-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

British public channel 4 aired a video which reveals deplorable but not surprising behavior by US Army trainers on patrol with Iraqi military. In a Sunni neighborhood the largely Sh'ia unit beats and roughly abuses detainees in broad dailylight, cramming them into the truck of a Humvee. The US trainers hang back and do not intervene. One shudders to think what happens in Iraqi detention facilities.

The Army claims the unit involved has since been disciplined. Needless to say this and other hard-hitting reporting from Iraq does not make it US TV screens.

'Probable cause' for assault in Gardez

2007-01-26T07:15:00.001-08:00

The Criminal Investigation Command of the Army has admitted that probable cause for assault in a Gardez US Special Forces compound in March 2003. The Army investigators refuse to confirm the assault investigation relates to the beating death of Afghan Army recruit, 18-year old Jamal Naseer, but the place and date correspond to his death.

The LA Times broke the story in 2004. Stories by Kevin Sack and Craig Pyes of the LA Times in September 2006 painted a grim picture of what was really happening at the Special Forces base in Gardez. Here is the latest from the LA Times:

A number of other Afghans who were taken prisoner along with Naseer have said they were severely beaten and otherwise abused while being held at the base by soldiers with the 20th Special Forces Group, an Alabama-based National Guard unit.

Concurrently, the Army investigators determined there was not probable cause to charge anyone in the separate case of an Afghan detainee who died in the custody of the same 20th Special Forces Group team, known as ODA 2021. That detainee, an unarmed woodcutter named Wakil Mohammed, was shot in the face by a soldier during a search of the village of Wazi after a fierce firefight, also in March 2003, according to Afghan witnesses interviewed by The Times.

Grey, the CID spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement that "the case involving Wazi was unfounded." That term is used, he said, "when there is not probable cause to believe that the offense occurred … considering the quality and quantity of all available evidence."

In March 2005, however, CID announced it had found probable cause in the Wazi case to recommend charges of murder against one member of the 20th Special Forces Group and of dereliction of duty against another soldier for not reporting Mohammed's death. Those referrals, known as "listings," have since been rescinded, but Grey declined to say what had changed.

Details of Mohammed's death were revealed in a two-part series about ODA 2021 that was published in The Times in September.

Grey said both investigations were closed by CID on Jan. 11. "If any new credible information becomes available, CID stands ready to reopen the investigation," he said.

The deaths of Naseer and Mohammed were never reported to higher authorities, according to both the battalion and group commanders who oversaw the 20th Group's operations in Afghanistan. That distinguished them from scores of other questionable deaths of detainees in U.S. custody in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Times account last fall cited numerous Afghan witnesses who saw Naseer immediately before and after his death and said he appeared to have been badly beaten. It quoted one Special Forces member as saying the team held a meeting after the detainee died to coordinate stories should an investigation arise.

"Everybody on the team had knowledge of it," the soldier said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "You just don't talk about that stuff in the Special Forces community. What happens downrange stays downrange."

Other detainees arrested with Naseer also showed signs of severe beating that were noted in local doctors' reports after their release from the base. One of those detainees was a man with one leg.

The commander of the Special Forces team at the time of both deaths was Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth C. Waller, a full-time National Guardsman who continues to work at 20th Group headquarters in Birmingham. Grey would not say whether Waller, who is now 36, is among those implicated in the CID investigation.

Officials with 20th Group said today that Waller, despite the ongoing case involving his unit, is currently deployed to East Africa, as is Col. Leonard Kiser, the 20th Group's current commanding officer. Neither was available for comment.

While the Special Forces team in Gardez consisted mostly of Alabama National Guardsmen, it also included several members from other groups.

One of them, Sgt. 1st Class Michael E. MacMillan, an intelligence analyst with the 7th Special Forces Group at Ft. Bragg, was depicted by other team members as being heavily involved in the interrogation of detainees at the base.

EU report on CIA flights

2007-01-24T09:22:00.000-08:00

An EU temporary commission convened to investigate the "extraordinary rendition" flights and their numerous stops in European countries approved the final version of its report, for eventual discussion in a plenary session of Parliament.

photo by Trevor Paglen

The report states that the governments of Poland, UK, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Germany and six others were aware of these flights, and of their irregular and suspicious nature.

The report concluded there was not adequate evidence to support the claim that the CIA operated a secret prison in Poland. The Council of Europe has dated information about its investigations available here.

The report is likely to be endorsed by the Parliament next month.

Highlights from Military Commissions Manual

2007-01-20T04:24:00.000-08:00

It is intended to ensure that alien unlawful enemy combatants who are suspected of war crimes and certain other offenses are prosecuted before regularly constituted courts affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people. This Manual will have an historic impact for our military and for our country.

Published January 18, the Manual sets pretty high expectations, and its "historic impact" is already perceptible. The Manual has ignited polemic in right-wing civil liberties circles and with Democrats in Congress alike.

(24) “Unlawful Enemy Combatant” means:
(A) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces);
or
(B) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.
(C) “Co-belligerent” means any State or armed force joining and directly engaged with the United States in hostilities or directly supporting hostilities against a common
enemy.

The "MCA" applies "in all places", are we to take from this that the Commissions can be conducted anywhere in the world, and with a seeming universal jurisdiction against "unlawful enemy combatants":

(a) Nature of jurisdiction of military commissions.
(1) The jurisdiction of a military commission is entirely penal or disciplinary.
(2) The M.C.A. applies in all places.
(3) The jurisdiction of a military commission with respect to offenses under the M.C.A. is not affected by the place where the military commission sits. The jurisdiction of a military commission with respect to military government or the law of war is not affected by the place where the military commission sits except as otherwise expressly required by this Manual or applicable rule of international law.

After over five years of waiting "unlawful alien enemy combatants" have the right to know what they are being held for, as long as is "practicable" (whatever that means):

Rule 308. Notification to accused of charges
Upon the swearing of the charges and specifications, the accused shall be informed of the charges against him as soon as practicable. Such charges shall be in English and, if appropriate, in another language that the accused understands.

No non-US citizens may represent the accused as civilian defense counsel, and they must have security clearances at the level of "Secret":

(2) Role of detailed defense counsel when civilian counsel has been hired. When the accused has civilian defense counsel, the detailed counsel is “associate counsel” unless excused from the case (see R.M.C. 506(b)).
(3) Qualifications of civilian defense counsel. Civilian defense counsel who represent an accused in a military commission shall:
(A) Be a member of the bar of a Federal court or of the bar of the highest court of a State, the District of Columbia, or U.S. possession; and
(B) Be a United States citizen; and
(C) Not have been the subject of disqualifying action by a bar or other competent authority; and
(D) Have obtained or be eligible to obtain a security clearance at the level of Secret or higher, as required; and
(E) Have signed the agreement prescribed by the Secretary

Secrecy, all in the name of "national security" (and presumably to protect military and administration officials from embarrassment):

(f) National security privilege. Classified information shall be protected and is privileged from disclosure if disclosure would be detrimental to the national security. This rule applies to all stages of proceedings in military commissions, including the discovery phase. Pursuant to 10 U.S.C. §§ 949d(f) and 949j(c), the military judge may issue a protective order to limit the distribution or disclosure to the defense of classified evidence, including the sources, methods or
activities by which the United States acquired the evidence.
(1) To withhold disclosure of information otherwise subject to discovery under this rule, the military judge must find that the privilege is properly claimed under Mil. Comm. R. Evid. 505.
(2) Once such a finding is made, the military judge shall authorize, to the extent practicable:
(A) the deletion of specified items of classified information from documents made available to the defense;
(B) the substitution of a portion or summary of the information for such classified documents;
(C) the substitution of a statement admitting relevant facts that the classified information would tend to prove.

For those whose minds have been turned to mush by years of solitary confinement and torture (i.e. José Padilla), they can take heart in this provision:

Rule 909. Capacity of the accused to stand trial by military commission
(a) In general. No person may be brought to trial by military commission if that person is presently suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him or her mentally incompetent to the extent that he or she is unable to understand the nature of the proceedings against him or her or to conduct or cooperate intelligently in the defense of the case.

The convicted have only two years to get a new trial if new evidence is found to support their innocence:

Rule 1210. New trial
(a) In general. At any time within two years after approval by the convening authority of a military commission sentence, the accused may petition the convening authority for a new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence or fraud on the military commission. A petition may not be submitted after the death of the accused. A petition for a new trial of the facts may not be submitted on the basis of newly discovered evidence when the accused was found guilty of the relevant offense pursuant to a guilty plea.

Statements resulting from coercion, as long as they are before December 30, 2005, the date the Detainee Treatment Act, will be admissible as evidence. Torture remains defined as by the Gonzales-Yoo definition, "severe mental or physical suffering":

Rule 304. Confessions, admissions, and other statements
(a) General rules.
(1) A statement obtained by use of torture shall not be admitted into evidence against any party or witness, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.
(2) A statement alleged to be the product of coercion may only be admitted as provided in section (c) below.
(3) A statement produced by torture or otherwise not admissible under section (c) may not be received in evidence against an accused who made the statement if the accused makes a timely motion to suppress or an objection to the evidence under this rule.

Discussion
[...]
(b) Definitions. As used in these rules:
[...]
(3) Torture. For the purpose of determining whether a statement must be excluded under section (a) of this rule, “torture” is defined as an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incident to lawful sanctions) upon another person within the actor’s custody or physical control. “Severe mental pain or suffering” is defined as the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from:
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality.

Discussion
See 18 U.S.C. § 2340.
(4) Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
(c) Statements allegedly produced by coercion. When the degree of coercion inherent in the production of a statement offered by either party is disputed, such statement may only be admitted in accordance with this section.

(1) As to statements obtained before December 30, 2005, the military judge may admit the statement only if the military judge finds that (A) the totality of the circumstances renders the statement reliable and possessing sufficient probative value; and (B) the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence.
(2) As to statements obtained on or after December 30, 2005, the military judge may admit the statement only if the military judge finds that (A) the totality of the circumstances renders the statement reliable and possessing sufficient probative value; (B) the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence; and (C) the interrogation methods used to obtain the statement do not amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Discussion
The Detainee Treatment Act, or “D.T.A.,” enacted on December 30, 2005, provides that no individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, as defined by reference to the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, regardless of the nationality or location of the individual. Therefore, the M.C.A. requires military judges in military commissions to treat allegedly coerced statements differently, depending on whether the statement was made before or after December 30, 2005. See 10 U.S.C. § 948r(c), (d). For statements made on or after that date, the military judge may admit an allegedly coerced statement only if the judge determines that the statement is reliable and possessing sufficient probative value, that the interests of justice would best be served by admitting the statement, and that the interrogation methods used to obtain the statement did not amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment prohibited by the D.T.A. If a party moves to suppress or object to the admission of a proffered statement made before December 30, 2005, the military judge may admit the statement if the judge determines that the statement is reliable and possessing sufficient probative value, and that the interests of justice would best be served by admitting the statement. In evaluating whether the statement is reliable and whether the admission of the statement is consistent with the interests of justice, the military judge may consider all relevant circumstances, including the facts and circumstances surrounding the alleged coercion, as well as whether other evidence tends to corroborate or bring into question the reliability of the proffered statement.

And finally here is the much-commented section which allows for the admission of hearsay as evidence:

Rule 802. Hearsay rule
Hearsay may be admitted on the same terms as any other form of evidence except as provided by these rules or by any Act of Congress applicable in trials by military commissions.

Discussion
The M.C.A. recognizes that hearsay evidence shall be admitted on the same terms as other evidence because many witnesses in a military commission prosecution are likely to be foreign nationals who are not amenable to process, and other witnesses may be unavailable because of military necessity, incarceration, injury, or death. Because hearsay is admissible on the same terms as other evidence, the proponent still has the burden of demonstrating that the evidence is admissible under Mil. Comm. R. Evid. 401 and 403.

Beyond Guantanamo

2007-01-15T06:59:00.000-08:00

We are glad to see that the anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo has mobilized people around the world to protest.

As the world focuses its energies on Guantanamo, points out spy novelist Frederick Forsyth, the US still has a free hand to kidnap people across the world, through its "extraordinary rendition", and increase secrecy of its various other hidden facilities across the globe, including those in Afghanistan.

President Bush claimed last year that the US has shut down its "secret prisons", but this is an absurd claim, given that the very nature of a "secret" prison does not allow for checking or confirmation. And what is to stop the US from opening newer, more secret prisons, and using this "closure" as a ruse?

How will the public ever really know what happened, for example, in the "Salt Pit" secret prison in Afghanistan, or on Diego Garcia, the small island atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean owned by the British?

In order to shed more light on these issues, we would like to draw attention to two projects:

Cage Prisoner's latest work on compiling a list of secret facilities across the world. Their preliminary report details over 120 secret detention facilities. The list includes every continent minus Australia. The map is basic but gives an idea of the extent of the network of secrecy.

Artist/Geographer Trevor Paglen's projects related to militarism, secrecy and specifically rendition are exceptional. After getting an MFA, he enrolled in a Geography PhD at UC-Berkeley, where he has compiled a fascinating body of "surveillance" of the US government's secret military activities. First he began using spectral photography to take legal landscape photos remote North American military bases. His newest projects are related to the extraordinary rendition activities of the CIA. In one installation he calls "Missing Persons" he has put together a list of bogus signatures signed by fake companies the CIA created to transport kidnapped prisoners.

He was also involved in the project called "CIA Rendition Flights 2001-2006", which consisted of a gigantic billboard-sized mapping of all of the kidnapping by the CIA since the "War on Terror" "began" in 2001.

18 year sentence for Iraq detainee murders

2007-01-12T03:00:00.000-08:00

In what is one of the longest sentences handed down for abuses/homicides in Iraq and Afghanistan, a military tribunal in Kentucky decided that Spc. William Hunsaker should serve 18 years in prison for the murder of three Iraqi detainees in Thar Thar in May 2006. Three restrained, cuffed men were shot in the head at the canal in Thar Thar, Samarra Iraq on May 9. Four members of the 101st airborne division faced charges for these murders, and after pressure by prosecutors, one by one they broke their pact to cover-up the killings.

Hunsaker pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder and obstruction of justice to military prosecutors.

He accused his superior, Sgt Raymond Girouard, who awaits trial, with ordering the executions. Some reports claim that commanding officers gave a "kill all military-age men" order that day in May 2006. One of these is Colonel Michael Steele who is known for his connection to the infamous Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu in 1991.

Another Sergeant Lemuel Lemus is implicated in the cover-up of the killings but has not been charged.

According to a New York Times article of July 2006:

For more than a month after the killings, Sgt. Lemuel Lemus stuck to his story. ‘Proper escalation of force was used,’ he told an investigator, describing how members of his unit shot and killed three Iraqi prisoners who had lashed out at their captors and tried to escape after a raid northwest of Baghdad on May 9. Then, on June 15, Sergeant Lemus offered a new and much darker account.

In a lengthy sworn statement, he said he had witnessed a deliberate plot by his fellow soldiers to kill the three handcuffed Iraqis and a cover-up in which one soldier cut another to bolster their story. The squad leader threatened to kill anyone who talked. Later, one guilt-stricken soldier complained of nightmares and ‘couldn’t stop talking’ about what happened, Sergeant Lemus said.

[…] When investigators asked why he did not try to stop the other soldiers from carrying out the killings, Sergeant Lemus - who has not been charged in the case - said simply that he was afraid of being called a coward. He stayed quiet, he said, because of 'peer pressure, and I have to be loyal to the squad.'

The Irony

2007-01-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

The New York Times' John Burns rightly proclaimed the events of the last couple of days in Iraq, the lynching-like hanging of Saddam Hussein, "Shakespearian."

The ultimate irony to me is that those being "blamed" with the ethical violations of filming the event and making sectarian jeers at Mr Hussein in his last moments are the lowly guards.

A la Abu Ghraib, the grunts take the blame for the utter lack of judgement and misfunctioning of their government from the top down.

Apparently there were roughly 15 people viewing the moment. Two were VIPs or "government officials", according to media reports, the only to be allowed to carry cel phones. So the VIPs were the only with the opportunity to film this. According to the Guardian:

Sami al-Askeri, a Shiite lawmaker who also advises al-Maliki, said two "Justice Ministry guards were being questioned. The investigation committee is interrogating the men. If it is found that any official was involved he will face legal measures.''

Iraqi prison troubles from North to South

2006-12-26T08:38:00.000-08:00

Two rather disturbing stories flew under the global radar in the past couple of days.

First, the story by the New York Times' C. J. Chivers, alleging that hundreds of detainees under the Kurdish government's authority are living in a legal black hole conceivably worse than Guantanamo. HRW claims that up to 2,500 people are being held by the security services of two ruling parties in the region.

The Kurdish prison population has swelled to include at least several hundred suspected insurgents, and yet there is no legal system to sort out their fates. So the inmates wait, a population for which there is no plan.

The Kurdish government that holds the prisoners says they are dangerous, and points out that the population includes men who have attended terrorist or guerrilla training in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it also concedes to being stymied, with a small budget, limited prison space and little legal precedent to look back on.

“We have not had trials for them,” said Brig. Sarkawt Hassan Jalal, the director of security in the Sulaimaniya region. “We have no counterterrorism law, and any law we would pass would not affect them because it would not be retroactive.”

The four visible cells here, spaces of about 7 yards by 8 yards, each were packed with 30 men. The men shared a toilet on the floor outside the cells, in a hall. The group seethes. One inmate shouted at two journalists through the bars. “Stop your hatred toward Islam!” he said. “Otherwise we will kill you!”

Speaking from a law enforcement perspective, Mr. Jalal said the close quarters and evident anger had made many of the inmates more radical, and that the prison serves as an insurgents’ nest.

Secondly, the UK's destruction of an Iraqi police station and jail in Basra, based on supposed intelligence that rogue police were torturing detainees and that some were likely to be unlawfully executed. BBC's footage was quite powerful indeed. The move by the British started with a midnight raid of the facility and evacuation of the facility. And by daylight, it was demolished. These moves were taken, according to British military spokesmen, at the orders of the Iraqi Prime Minister. Members of the Basra Provincial Council say that they will cease cooperation with the British forces.

Virtual Abu Ghraib

2006-12-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

The last post ended with a video which raised our interest in the world of video games and online games.

A quick search yielded a free site that claims allow players to "reenact" major moments of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars online. Wired Magazine called these "the mother of all video games."

The most shocking was clearly an episode called "Abu Ghraib MP" which is set up to "wage an assault" on the prison. I gather the idea is to blast away as many 'misbehaving' inmates as possible.

Others including ambush on "Desert Town" in Iraq, calling in "Air Strikes" to obliterate opposition in Afghanistan, and "Bad Neighborhood" which is a simulation of Sadr City.

There is no premium in these games of apprehending or capturing prisoners alive, with the one exception of the Osama episodes.

Interrogation and detention on Youtube

2006-12-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

A review of the available material on YouTube yields some interesting additions to the growing body of material on this topic.

An October 2006 Sky News interview with former army interrogator Tony Lagouranis is worth a listen.

An undated speech by Janis Karpinski on Abu Ghraib's early days paints a pathetic picture of its admininstration.

Also from CCR (the Center for Constitutional Rights), Prof. Scott Horton, Adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia University on command responsibility and the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Bush press secretary Tony Snow on detainees in October: "They don't wanna be torturing people, they don't wanna be setting a bad example."

MSNBC's Olberman on the impact of the Military Commissions Act on Habeas Corpus.

Clips from a British documentary "simulation" of Guantanamo Bay with willing volunteers.

A trailer of the docudrama "Outlawed" provided by Amnesty International.

NOW's interview with British national Moazzam Begg, who was picked up in Pakistan and sent to Guantanamo.

What claims to be video of a Canadian raid on a Taliban compound in Helmand Province.

In this clip from the same source, but in Kandahar province, we can see Canadian troops along side Afghani troops. All in a village setting.

Another amateur video, this time of the Dutch forces in Uruzgan supposedly of in 2005 being ambushed with a really bad "soundtrack."

A British news crew that went unembedded in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in early 2006 made this report, which included a hair-raising encounter with Taliban and Afghan police. The police are beating the Talib prisoners with automatic weapons.

I cannot tell if this is a parody of hunters and videogamers, but this video reveals attitudes of a certain segment of the population in America towards Afghans and Iraqis. It is disturbing.

Ex-minister walks out of prison

2006-12-20T09:25:00.000-08:00

While 13,000 people remain in detention by the American military in Iraq, the vast majority waiting to be processed and tried for crimes, it seems that influential Iraqis held in the Iraqi system can escape prison quite easily.

An ex-minister (also a US citizen) convicted of corruption in October, fled his detention facility this past week, by simply walking out the door arm-in-arm with "foreign" (read: Iranian) security agents. Even more outrageous is that he is currently in touch with US Consular officials. Earlier this year, Saddam's nephew, convicted of bomb-making also walked out of prison aided by a police officer.

Yet more proof that the Iraqi government and security services are so compromised at this point, it is hard to see how any form of "fair" government or minimal democracy can emerge.

No. 343: American's ordeal at Camp Cropper

2006-12-18T06:42:00.000-08:00

The Times just published a story on Donald Vance, ex-Navyman working for security contractor in Iraq, who eventually came to denounce the firm's suspect activity to the FBI. He was imprisoned in April 15, 2006, only to be released on July 20. More Kafkaesque than actual Kafka.

He kept notes in his military-issue Bible, at the suggestion of the Camp Cropper psychologist who encouraged him to treat the imprisonment as a "mission" or a "game".

His story is chilling and provokes the question, "if this is how they can treat an American citizen, what about everybody else?"

Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel were permitted at their hearings only because they were Americans, Lieutenant Fracasso said. The cases of all other detainees are reviewed without the detainees present, she said. In both types of cases, defense lawyers are not allowed to attend because the hearings are not criminal proceedings, she said.

Lieutenant Fracasso said that currently there were three Americans in military custody in Iraq. The military does not identify detainees.

Year in Review

2006-12-18T06:37:00.000-08:00

As this blog was dormant for much of the year, here we provide a detention/interrogation year in review:

January

Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen held at Guantanamo Bay who was a minor when he was detained by US forces in Afghanistan, was arraigned by a military tribunal.

General Geoffrey Miller testifies before Congress regarding the use of dogs on detainees in Abu Ghraib.

February

The final soldier charged with involvement of in the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar was acquitted by US Military Courts.

Human Rights First concludes that 34 prisoners had died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, and that 8-12 were tortured to death.

Federal judge David Trager throws out the suit by a Canadian who was sent to Syria to be tortured. (In 2002, Canadian citizen Maher Arar, born in Syria was passing through a New York airport, detained and subsequently "rendered" to Syria and tortured)

Prisoners riot at Policharki Jail in Afghanistan, demanding retrials.

March

Times exposes alleged abuses by the secret task force "6-26" in Iraq.

Army Sargeant Michael J. Smith is found guilty on 6 of 13 counts of abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, for the use of dogs on detainees. He gets 6 months jail time, when the maximum sentence would have been 8 years.

April

AP Photographer Bilal Hussein is imprisoned in Ramadi. The US claims he was apprehended with two other militants, surrounded by bombs making material. Journalist defense groups try in vain to get more information on his case.

New data released by the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project alleges that over 600 military and contractors may have been involved in detainee abuse in Iraq. Only 40 members of the armed services have been sentenced to jailtime, and one civilian.

May

A federal judge dismisses the civil law suit against the American government brought by Khaled El-Masri, a German Lebanese-born man who was abducted by the CIA while on vacation in Macedonia in 2003. The rationale: the suit would endanger the US' national security.

June

Limited theatrical release of Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo in the US.

July

Iranian-American filmmaker Cyrus Kar filed suit with the US government over his detention in 2005.

September

America turns Abu Ghraib, empty, over to Iraqi control. Its prisoners were moved to Camp Cropper.

President Bush claims the CIA's secret prisons across the world have been emptied.

A new Army manual for interrogation is published, banning hooding, forced nakedness and other stress positions.

AP goes public with their photographer's detention in Ramadi in April, calling for the US to either charge or release him.

October

President Bush signs the Military Commissions Act into law, according to many legal experts, denying habeas corpus rights to non-US citizens and legal aliens in the US. There is debate as to whether it denies habeas rights to American citizens. The Times calls it "a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy".

Afghanistan's Reconciliation Commission visits Bagram in a bid to get more prisoners released. The number of detainees is thought to be around 500 at the time.

The US (apparently) bombs militants in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, killing 80 people in Pakistan's tribal area. Many were civilians.

HRW questions NATO's move towards reliance on "close air support" and bombing of civilian regions, and suggests they create a mechanism to compensate civilians affected by bombing.

November

ICG releases a report called "Countering Afghanistan’s Insurgency: No Quick Fixes" suggesting that priority be given to rule of law and fixing the judiciary.

The European Commission concludes that many EU countries were aware of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" flights.

December

The US releases 26 detainees from Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Around 475 are believed to remain.

An ex-Navyman and security contractor in Baghdad reveals to the Times he was kept prisoner for 3 months at Camp Cropper after attemping to blow the whistle on suspicious activities by his firm. He claims he received "less legal council than Saddam."

Pakistan announces it detained over 500 Taleban and handed 400 of them over to the Afghan government.

It's not easy being unembedded in Uruzgan

2006-12-18T04:19:00.001-08:00

A number of Dutch journalists have been reporting from Uruzgan province since their force arrived earlier this year as part of the NATO force "stabilizing" Afghanistan. Only one, it seems, was willing to go it alone and report unembedded from the province. Arnold Karskens, quite a war-reporting legend in Holland, was allegedly mistreated by Dutch forces in his most recent trip to Uruzgan in which he remained unembedded.

Gov/Warlord Jan Mohammed, photo by Karskens

While reporting for Dutch newspapers and TV (in Dutch unfortunately) he was "sent back" at one roadblock on a public road. This from Spinwatch

Karskens was refused entry to the Dutch military base near Tarin Kowt, even though the commander of the base had earlier declared publicly that they would not distinguish between 'embedded' and free journalists. According to another journalist present in the military base who wrote about it in the Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool, soldiers guarding the entrance of the base had instructions not to let Karskens in "unless one of his legs is shot off".

About this blog

2006-12-06T07:16:00.000-08:00

We have not been able to maintain the blog from March-December 2006. We have republished it at this site, and hope that it will serve as a record and resource. If you have not already seen it, or if you would like to view it again, please take a moment to watch Taliban Country, the film which inspired this site.

Taliban Country was featured in a number of film festivals in 2004-5, and aired in six countries. It continues to be a reference and interest has not abated. It has only become more relevant in recent months with the recognized resurgence of the Taliban and the escalating war with NATO in Southern Afghanistan.

For queries regarding purchase, please contact Journeyman Films.

"Return of the Taliban"

2006-12-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

This frontline report is focused on the border area with Pakistan. It contains some chilling information about how the Taliban has reinforced itself there, and how the US has taken to controversial assassinations using unmanned drones, creating more enemies in Pakistan. Featured is the case of abducted and assassinated journalist Hayatullah Khan, whose photographs served as evidence of the American assassination of suspected Al-Qaeda militant Abu Hamza.

"Taliban Rising"

2006-12-04T07:45:00.000-08:00

This film is a brief (highly pessimistic) interview with The Nation's Christian Parenti, who claims many of his westernized friends in Afghanistan have started to make increasingly sympathetic statements towards the Taliban.

The article provides deeper insight. Many of these same issues he brings up existed three years ago already, and are examined in Taliban Country, such as the impact of searches of residential compounds.

He describes the "Iraqization" of the insurgency in Afghanistan and provides a portrait of life in the southern part of the country.

CBS Cameraman to be tried

2006-03-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

The most under-reported story of the day from Iraq was the news that CBS Cameraman, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, held for nearly a year without charge, will be prosecuted in Baghdad court shortly. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Hussein was picked up by US forces near Mosul in April 2005. While the charges and evidence against him remain secret, the US military has gone out of its way to paint him as guilty until proven innocent. US officials suspect him of having prior knowledge of the attacks he filmed, claim that he tested positive for explosive residue. (If that is enough to convict a war correspondent, one wonders how we would ever get any news from war zones.)

Bigger Fish to Try

2006-03-23T09:27:00.000-08:00

So dog handler Sgt. Smith gets six months in jail for his use of his unmuzzled black German shepherd against detainees at Abu Ghraib. He will also be demoted and fined. It's a start, but in light of evidence brought out in the trial, it does not seem fair to punish only Sgt. Smith. As the New York Times's Eric Schmitt points out, Col. Thomas Pappas and General Geoffrey Miller were directed implicated in the use of dogs in Abu Ghraib. And they are not about to stand trial, Schmitt tries to explain why:

Some military experts said one reason there had not been attempts to pursue charges up the military chain of command was that the military does not have anything tantamount to a district attorney's office, run by commanders with the authority to go after the cases.

"The real question is, who is the independent prosecutor who is liberated to pursue these cases," said Eugene Fidell, a specialist in military law. "There is no central prosecution office run by commanders. So you don't have a D.A. thinking, I'm going to follow this wherever it leads." [...]

Sergeant Smith, who was convicted Tuesday for abusing detainees in Iraq with his black Belgian shepherd, had said he was merely following interrogation procedures approved by the chief intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas M. Pappas. In turn, Colonel Pappas had said he had been following guidance from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander of the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who in September 2003 visited Iraq to discuss ways to "set the conditions" for enhancing prison interrogations, as well as from superiors in Baghdad. [...]

But in Sergeant Smith's trial, General Miller was never called to testify. Colonel Pappas acknowledged that he had mistakenly authorized a one-time use of muzzled dogs to keep prisoners in order outside their cells, but he said that he had no idea that dog handlers were using unmuzzled dogs to terrorize detainees as part of the interrogation process. Colonel Pappas had previously been reprimanded and relieved of his command, but was permitted to testify under a grant of immunity. [...]

The trial of a second dog handler, Sgt. Santos A. Cardona, is scheduled to begin on May 22, and it may offer another occasion for defense lawyers to try to direct blame at higher levels. Sergeant Cardona's lawyer, Harvey Volzer, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that his defense would include information not revealed in Sergeant Smith's trial. Mr. Volzer said he would seek to have Mr. Rumsfeld, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of American forces in the Mideast, and General Sanchez all testify at Sergeant Cardona's trial.

So there is hope that more scrutiny will be placed on the command structure, both in Congress and in military courts.

Guantanamo film US release for early summer

2006-03-20T14:50:00.000-08:00

The Road to Guantanamo, director Michael Winterbottom's film about three Britons' ordeal from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay is set to be released by a North American distributor in the US in early summer. Roadside Film's recent releases have included Supersize Me and What the Bleep do we Know?

The film will premiere in the US later this month at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Task Force 6-26 and the Black Room

2006-03-19T03:09:00.000-08:00

The New York Times seems to have momentarily redeemed itself from the monumental screw-up of incorrectly reporting a famous Abu Ghraib detainee's identity last week.

Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall detail the abuses by the infamous Task Force 6-26, a Special Forces group operating in Iraq since the invasion in 2003.

The allegations include the repeated use of detainees as paintball targets, at a secret detention facility near Baghdad airport called Camp Nama. The slogan of the group was apparently "No blood, no foul" implying that troops believed they could not be prosecuted for injuries to detainees which involved no spilling of blood.

Made up of members of the Delta Force, based at Fr. Bragg, the Navy Seal's Team 6, and the Army's Rangers, Task Force 6-26 was originally formed in 2003 as "Task Force 121" (which eventually inspired a bizarre fantasy videogame.)

TF 6-26's members have "special" privileges, they are allowed to grow beards and wear civilian clothing. The role of civilian interrogators and interpreters in the TF is unclear.

The CIA, FBI and even Army officials had warned as early as August 2003 that the situation at Camp Nama was out of control, yet no real action was taken by the Pentagon until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004. (See the memo above.)

The Times story is worth reading, as it brings more evidence and more specific allegations to light regarding the operation of the mysterious TF 6-26, its invented rituals and methods.

The abuses at Camp Nama continued despite warnings beginning in August 2003 from an Army investigator and American intelligence and law enforcement officials in Iraq. The C.I.A. was concerned enough to bar its personnel from Camp Nama that August.

It is difficult to compare the conditions at the camp with those at Abu Ghraib because so little is known about the secret compound, which was off limits even to the Red Cross. The abuses appeared to have been unsanctioned, but some of them seemed to have been well known throughout the camp. [...]

Task Force 6-26 had a singular focus: capture or kill Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant operating in Iraq. "Anytime there was even the smell of Zarqawi nearby, they would go out and use any means possible to get information from a detainee," one official said.

Defense Department personnel briefed on the unit's operations said the harsh treatment extended beyond Camp Nama to small field outposts in Baghdad, Falluja, Balad, Ramadi and Kirkuk. These stations were often nestled within the alleys of a city in nondescript buildings with suburban-size yards where helicopters could land to drop off or pick up detainees.

At the outposts, some detainees were stripped naked and had cold water thrown on them to cause the sensation of drowning, said Defense Department personnel who served with the unit.

In January 2004, the task force captured the son of one of Mr. Hussein's bodyguards in Tikrit. The man told Army investigators that he was forced to strip and that he was punched in the spine until he fainted, put in front of an air-conditioner while cold water was poured on him and kicked in the stomach until he vomited. Army investigators were forced to close their inquiry in June 2005 after they said task force members used battlefield pseudonyms that made it impossible to identify and locate the soldiers involved. The unit also asserted that 70 percent of its computer files had been lost.

Despite the task force's access to a wide range of intelligence, its raids were often dry holes, yielding little if any intelligence and alienating ordinary Iraqis, Defense Department personnel said. Prisoners deemed no threat to American troops were often driven deep into the Iraqi desert at night and released, sometimes given $100 or more in American money for their trouble.

Back at Camp Nama, the task force leaders established a ritual for departing personnel who did a good job, Pentagon officials said. The commanders presented them with two unusual mementos: a detainee hood and a souvenir piece of tile from the medical screening room that once held Mr. Hussein.

US court: green light for CIA renditions

2006-03-15T09:22:00.000-08:00

This week the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff analyzes the decision of a federal judge to throw out a suit by a Canadian citizen, alleging the US sent him illegally to be tortured in Syria.

In 2002, Maher Arar, who was born in Syria, was stopped while in transit through the US home to Canada. After being held incommunicado, he was "extraordinarily rendered" by the US to Jordan and then Syria, a country that State Department alleges tortures people regularly. In Syria, Arar was tortured and held in solitary confinement for nearly a year.

The Voice calls Judge David Trager's decision last month to throw out Arar's civil suit "startling" and "ominous." The suit was seeking damages from former US Attorney General John Ashcroft.

According to the Voice article, Trager's decision is a green light for the government to continue the CIA "extraordinary renditions." The conditions placed on detainee treatment by Congress last year do NOT apply to the CIA. Trager, unsurprisingly, is one of a large crop of Bush administration appointees.

The Trager decision tramples on the concept of "judicial review" of the Legislative and Executive branches of government. In his decision he writes the other branches of government decide where judicial oversight is appropriate.

What about the separation of powers? Ah, said Trager, "the coordinate branches of our government [executive and legislative] are those in whom the Constitution imposes responsibility for our foreign affairs and national security. Those branches have the responsibility to determine whether judicial oversight is appropriate."

Gee, I thought that the checks and balances of our constitutional system depend on the independence of the federal judiciary, which itself decides to exercise judicial review.

Judge Trager went further to protect the Bush administration's juggernaut conduct of foreign policy: "One need not have much imagination to contemplate the negative effect on our relations with Canada if discovery were to proceed in this case, and were it to turn out that certain high Canadian officials had, despite public denials, acquiesced in Arar's removal to Syria."

"More generally," Trager went on, "governments that do not wish to acknowledge publicly that they are assisting us would certainly hesitate to do so if our judicial discovery process could compromise them."

But judge, the Canadian government itself is now actively involved in an inquiry to discover, among other things, what happened to Arar, and how. And in Europe, there is a fierce controversy over whether governments there have been covertly involved in facilitating the CIA's kidnapping of terror suspects from other lands.

Is it the job of a federal judge here to protect other governments from embarrassment and eventual punishment by their own courts for helping the United States commit crimes?

And what about our own government's criminal accountability? The February 17 New York Law Journal noted that "Judge Trager said that even assuming the government had intended to remove Maher Arar to Syria for torture, the federal judiciary was in no position to hold our government officials liable for damages 'in the absence of explicit direction by Congress . . . even if such conduct violates our treaty obligations or customary international law.' " (Emphasis added.)

British Ex-SAS soldier speaks out

2006-03-14T01:28:00.000-08:00

The Telegraph printed extensive excerpts of an interview with a 28-year old retired SAS soldier, who resigned after his first tour in Iraq. Groomed to be part of the elite SAS counter terrorism contingent, Ben Griffin had already served in Northern Ireland, Macedonia and Afghanistan. In Iraq he served for three months in the SAS G-Squadron, along side the US Army's Delta Force in early 2005.

To quote him:

I saw a lot of things in Baghdad that were illegal or just wrong. I knew, so others must have known, that this was not the way to conduct operations if you wanted to win the hearts and minds of the local population. And if you don't win the hearts and minds of the people, you can't win the war.

If we were on a joint counter-terrorist operation, for example, we would radio back to our headquarters that we were not going to detain certain people because, as far as we were concerned, they were not a threat because they were old men or obviously farmers, but the Americans would say 'no, bring them back'.

The Americans had this catch-all approach to lifting suspects. The tactics were draconian and completely ineffective. The Americans were doing things like chucking farmers into Abu Ghraib [the notorious prison in Baghdad where US troops abused and tortured Iraqi detainees] or handing them over to the Iraqi authorities, knowing full well they were going to be tortured.

The Americans had a well-deserved reputation for being trigger happy. In the three months that I was in Iraq, the soldiers I served with never shot anybody. When you asked the Americans why they killed people, they would say 'we were up against the tough foreign fighters'. I didn't see any foreign fighters in the time I was over there.

I can remember coming in off one operation which took place outside Baghdad, where we had detained some civilians who were clearly not insurgents, they were innocent people. I couldn't understand why we had done this, so I said to my troop commander 'would we have behaved in the same way in the Balkans or Northern Ireland?' He shrugged his shoulders and said 'this is Iraq', and I thought 'and that makes it all right?'

As far as I was concerned that meant that because these people were a different colour or a different religion, they didn't count as much. You can not invade a country pretending to promote democracy and behave like that.

On another operation, Mr Griffin recalls his and other soldiers' frustration at being ordered to detain a group of men living on a farm.

After you have been on a few operations, experience tells you when you are dealing with insurgents or just civilians and we knew the people we had detained were not a threat.

One of them was a disabled man who had a leg missing but the Americans still ordered us to load them on the helicopters and bring them back to their base. A few hours later we were told to return half of them and fly back to the farm in daylight. It was a ridiculous order and we ran the risk of being shot down or ambushed, but we still had to do it. The Americans were risking our lives because they refused to listen to our advice the night before. It was typical of their behaviour.

As far as the Americans were concerned, the Iraqi people were sub-human, untermenschen. You could almost split the Americans into two groups: ones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing Iraqis, and the others who were in Iraq because the Army was going to pay their college fees. They had no understanding or interest in the Arab culture. The Americans would talk to the Iraqis as if they were stupid and these weren't isolated cases, this was from the top down. There might be one or two enlightened officers who understood the situation a bit better but on the whole that was their general attitude. Their attitude fuelled the insurgency. I think the Iraqis detested them.

Detainee No. 155148

2006-03-13T10:06:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reports that Army Sargeant Michael J. Smith, in his court martial hearing for the use of dogs at Abu Ghraib, has submitted as evidence the famous photo of himself scaring a detainee with a black dog.

Sgt. Smith's defense alleges that he was specifically ordered by superiors to use dogs on Detainee 155148, whose real name is Ashraf Abdullah Ahsy. The defense alleges this detainee was marked as a "high value" and that his continued interrogation was declared a "special project" of Military Intelligence at Abu Ghraib.

Sgt. Smith and another dog handler allege that the use of dogs against the detainees was encouraged and approved of by Military Intelligence at the prison.

The Post writes that Col. Thomas Pappas, who ran military intelligence at the prison and was recently granted immunity for his testimony, approved of the use of dogs on certain detainees only days before the infamous photo was taken of Ahsy.

More than other torture techniques like water-boarding, and the use of tight restraints, the question of the use of dogs seems to be the most likely to implicate some of the Pentagon's bigger fish, including Col. Thomas Pappas and General Geoffrey Miller.

Coming to terms with torture

2006-03-11T05:24:00.000-08:00

The man whose haunting image changed the world is now an individual, with a name, a face, and a mission. Ali Shalal Qaissi, the man pictured standing on a box, with a black frock and electrodes attached to his fingers, was imprisoned and tortured in Abu Ghraib prison.

The New York Times' Hassan Fattah caught up with him and tells his important story.

Qaissi, known as "Haj Ali," now uses the famous image of himself on his business cards.

Based in Amman, Jordan, he founded the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons. He now travels the Middle East raising awareness and funds to support prisoners and their families.

One wonders whether the discussion of torture, in Syria and other nations with dubious records, will transcend criticisms of America and inspire a more generalized discussion of rights and liberties. Haj Ali himself displays surprisingly little ill -will towards the United States.

It must be noted that he has been rejected visas for speaking engagements in Italy and Austria. (This is apparently linked to allegations by Iraqi exiles in Germany that Haj Ali was implicated in human rights abuses in his capacity as Mayor during the Saddam era, allegations which Haj Ali denies.)

Today, those photographs, turned into montages and slideshows on Mr. Qaissi's computer, are stark reminders of his experiences in the cellblock. As he scanned through the pictures, each one still instilling shock as it popped on the screen, he would occasionally stop, his voice breaking as he recounted the story behind each photograph. [...]

Financed partly by Arab nongovernmental organizations and private donations, the group's aim is to publicize the cases of prisoners still in custody, and to support prisoners and their families with donations of clothing and food.

Mr. Qaissi has traveled the Arab world with his computer slideshows and presentations, delivering a message that prisoner abuse by Americans and their Iraqi allies continues. He says that as the public face of his movement, he risks retribution from Shiite militias that have entered the Iraqi police forces and have been implicated in prisoner abuse. But that has not stopped him.

Last week, he said, he lectured at the American University in Beirut, on Monday he drove to Damascus to talk to students and officials, and in a few weeks he heads to Libya for more of the same.

Australian held, tortured for 18 mos. in Kurdistan

2006-03-10T01:42:00.000-08:00

The Australian newspaper reported the rather incredible emerging details of the story of Australian Ahmed Jamal, who according to his family disappeared 18 months ago during a trip to the Middle East to search for a wife. Since September 2004, he has apparently been in the custody of the Kurdish Intelligence Agency, the Asayesh.

Australian consular officials only met with Jamal 10 days ago and have confirmed that he was tortured during his year and-a-half in prison. According to The Australian, he is depressed, suffering memory loss and skin rashes, and is still being threatened by prison authorities.

It is unclear how or when he might be released from custody.

Jamal's brother was previously detained in Lebanon on terrorism-related charges. But there appears to be no legal pretext for Ahmed Jamal's continuing detention.

The Australian Foreign Ministry's lack of concern over Jamal has raised criticism from civil liberties groups, who claim that the case of Douglas Wood, the Australian engineer who was kidnapped in Iraq was given much more attention.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in Northern Iraq, remains largely autonomous from the rest of Iraq. Rumors have abounded of kidnappings in Northern Iraq and secret prisons in the cities of Arbil and Suleimaniyah.

Militants hanged; Abu Ghraib to close

2006-03-10T01:27:00.000-08:00

The world media reported yesterday what had been rumored for quite a while -- that the US will definitively close Abu Ghraib prison. The transfer of thousands of prisoners to Camp Cropper detention facilities at the airport in Baghdad will occur when construction of the larger facility there is finished. Currently Saddam Hussein and other "high value" detainees are being held there.

In related news from Iraq, it was also reported yesterday that 13 confessed militants were hanged yesterday by the Iraqi government. It is only the second (judicial) application of the death penalty since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, its application was suspended during the US occupation. The Iraqi government can legally execute people convicted of murder, "endangering national security" and drug distribution. Only one of the hanged was indentified by name. (The first hangings in September 2005 were of "common criminals.") Interestingly, Prime Minister Jalal Talabani is against the death penalty, but allowed his deputies to sign the death warrants.

"Taliban Country" airs in Germany

2006-03-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

The reason-for-being of this blog is a powerful documentary, made in 2004, by Australian filmmaker Carmela Baranowska. Even after two years, it stands alone in its portrayal of remote, central Afghanistan. Journalists still do not spend long in Uruzgan unless "embedded." We have heard from European journalists who recently ventured into this province, but were not able to safely report from there, and returned quickly to Kandahar.

Even Kandahar, according to the Sunday Times Afghanistan correspondent Christina Lamb, is pretty off-limits at night, after a recent wave of murders and suicide bombings there.

Taliban Country airs on Sunday, Monday and possibly Tuesday (please check local listings), on WDR, German television. We hope to hear feedback from Germany, as we did from the Netherlands a couple of months ago.

State Dept Rights Report blames Iraqis

2006-03-09T02:10:00.000-08:00

The State Department, in its yearly survey of Human Rights practices of every country except the United States, has singled out the Iraqi police forces as the most heinous abusers of human rights in Iraq.

The New York Times and others report that the State Department admits that the Iraqi police forces (trained and armed by the US) are widely infiltrated by sectarian militias, and responsible for uncounted extra-judicial kidnappings, torture and killings. The US' treatment of its own prisoners in Iraq, numbering as high as 14,000, is not addressed in the report.

The report also describes the human rights violations in various countries to which the CIA has "rendered" prisoners, including Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Romania, a country which is suspected to have held CIA prisoners in the recent past, is also recognized as having abused prisoners rights.

China released its response to the State Department report, a full documentation of alleged US human rights violations, with an emphasis on the violation of the right to life, and social and economic rights. The Chinese dedicate a special section to violations committed outside of the US.

Not so fast, General Miller

2006-03-09T01:56:00.000-08:00

Salon magazine reported that congressional leaders have requested that General Geoffrey Miller's retirement be delayed until the questions surrounding the "GITMOization" of Abu Ghraib, specifically the use of dogs during interrogation, be answered in military court and (hopefully) in Congress.

General Miller was hoping to make a quiet exit, after last year having invoked the fifth amendment, the right not to self-incriminate, in the case of the two military dog handlers who are on trial for their use of dogs on detainees in Abu Ghraib.

But Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner(R-VA) and senior member Carl Levin (D-MI) have called for Miller's retirement to be "held in abeyance" until the courtmartial of these two defendents has been completed. Sources say that

Miller's active-duty status makes it easier for the Armed Services Committee to compel Miller's testimony if the senators decide to hold new hearings to determine who was ultimately responsible for the mistreatment and, in some cases, torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Bush admin losing western hearts & minds

2006-03-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

Bush's visit to Afghanistan and his Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' visit to Europe seem to have been intended to persuade Europe and the US that everything is going alright in what the US calls the "War on Terror," and that the US still can count on support from key allies.

The French aren't buying it

Yet the visits took place against the backdrop of a prison riot in Kabul, in which at least 6 people were killed, and the release of an Amnesty International report which claims that at least 14,000 are being head in US custody in Iraq for months and months with no due process and that those in Iraqi custody are regularly subject to torture.

Bush's visit to Afghanistan amounted to little more than a photo opportunity and a courtesy call on President Karzai and American troops. Upon his departure, the prison riot raged, and was finally resolved after days of painstaking negotiation. (One of the principal causes for the riot was according to an ICRC spokesman the Afghan government's decision to force prisoners to wear orange jumpsuits -- yes, the ones associated with Guantanamo Bay.)

Having watched Gonzales take questions after a speech at a prestigious London thinktank this morning, we can verify that his "defense" of US detention was extremely flimsy. He was vigorously questioned by a skeptical policymaker and journalist audience. He refused to acknowledge the primacy of international law, or even the European insistence on this point, proposing instead that the Geneva Conventions were becoming obsolete.

When asked whether the use of dogs was still allowed in prisoner interrogation, Gonzales could not come up with a correct answer, which is quite simply that the Pentagon has explicitly banned the use of dogs during interrogation.

(Not surprisingly, Reuters and the AP failed to accurately portray Gonzales' public appearance, merely parroting the points he made during his prepared remarks. Bloomberg was the only news service to relay the full session.)

Ongoing riot at Kabul prison

2006-02-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

For two days a Kabul prison holding up to 2,000 detainees has been taken over by rioting prisoners. The uprising has continued on longer than the 2004 riot in the same prison, called Policharki Jail.

In this uprising, four prisoners have already been killed and at least 38 wounded.

The prison holds an estimated 350 Taliban and/or Al-Qaeda loyalists.

Prisoners are apparently demanding retrials, claiming their original trials were unjust. A representative of the revolting prisoners claims that "2/3 are innocent." Some reports say that Timoor Shah, the man behind the kidnapping of an Italian aid worker.

Government negotiators are attempting to avoid a military-type seige of the prison.

This is the prison which America is planning to "repatriate" about 110 Afghan nationals to from Guantanamo Bay. This prolongued situation will probably give them reasons to delay the transfer.

Xray is 5-star compared to Bagram

2006-02-26T04:21:00.000-08:00

This week Tim Golden of the New York Times detailed the growth of Bagram's detainee population, describing the harsh conditions of the prison compared to Guantanamo Bay. Prisoners are kept in cages similar, according to one tribal elder held there two years, to the cages for animals in the Karachi zoo in Pakistan.

Only the International Red Cross is allowed to visit Bagram, and visits must be planned well in advance. There are no lists of prisoners in the facility. Military documents suggest the number of detainees to be around 600 people, up from only 100 in 2004. These detainees have little hope of ever seeing legal council, although the legality of their detention has yet to be tested in US courts.

From what Golden writes, it appears that many people picked up by the CIA are prisoner at Bagram, and if they were taken to Guantanamo, it would be possible that details of their arrest (or kidnapping) would be heard in a US court.

There is also a connection between the kind of abuses described in Southern Afghanistan in Taliban Country and the large detainee population at Bagram.

Officials said most of the current Bagram detainees were captured during American military operations in Afghanistan, primarily in the country's restive south, beginning in the spring of 2004.

"We ran a couple of large-scale operations in the spring of 2004, during which we captured a large number of enemy combatants," said Maj. Gen. Eric T. Olson, who was the ground commander for American troops in Afghanistan at the time. In subsequent remarks he added, "Our system for releasing detainees whose intelligence value turned out to be negligible did not keep pace with the numbers we were bringing in."

General Olson and other military officials said the growth at Bagram had also been a consequence of the closing of a smaller detention center at Kandahar and efforts by the military around the same time to move detainees more quickly out of "forward operating bases," in the Afghan provinces, where international human rights groups had cited widespread abuses.

A pathetic finale for Habibullah and Dilawar

2006-02-24T04:29:00.000-08:00

As could have been expected, the final soldier on trial in connection with the violent deaths of two Afghans, Habibullah and Dilawar, in 2002 was acquitted today. Dilawar's family has stated that they are unconcerned with military justice in the US, that those responsible will pay before God.

Bumper profits for interrogation contractor

2006-02-23T09:44:00.000-08:00

CACI International Incorporated, the famous contractor to the Pentagon for interrogation in Iraq, reported high profits for the 4th quarter of 2005, mostly on the strength of its intelligence services to the US government. Two contractors of CACI, stationed at Abu Ghraib prison, according to the Taguba Report, "were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses." Neither of these men, named by Taguba, has ever faced any kind of accountability. And the contracts for CACI, they keep flowing.

Left to die in sand and feces, corpse abused

2006-02-22T16:12:00.000-08:00

The new Human Rights First report contains shocking detail of a number of homicides that had not yet been told in the media in such unflinching narrative. One example is Iraqi detainee Nagem Sadoon Hatab, a 52 year-old Iraqi man captured in Nasiriyah in June 2003. Human Rights First says "prosecutors were unable to win conviction on any charges relating to culpability for Hatab’s death." Here is what happened according to them

...a number of Marines beat Hatab, including allegedly “karate-kicking” him while he stood handcuffed and hooded. A day later, Hatab reportedly developed severe diarrhea, and was covered in feces. Once U.S. forces discovered his condition, Hatab was stripped and examined by a medic, who thought that Hatab might be faking sickness. At the base commander’s order, a clerk with no training in handling prisoners dragged Hatab by his neck to an outdoor holding area, to make room for a new prisoner.

The clerk later testified to the ease with which he was able to drag the prisoner: Hatab’s body, covered by sweat and his own feces, slid over the sand. Hatab was then left on the ground, uncovered and exposed in the heat of the sun. He was found dead sometime after midnight. A U.S. Army medical examiner’s autopsy of Hatab found that he had died of strangulation – a victim of homicide. The autopsy also found that six of Hatab’s ribs were broken and his back, buttocks, legs and knees covered with bruises.

The treatment of Hatab’s body did not improve after his death...The U.S. Army Medical Examiner, Colonel Kathleen Ingwersen, who performed the autopsy, reportedly acknowledged that Hatab’s body had undergone decomposition because it was stored in an unrefrigerated drawer before the autopsy. In fact, testimony at a later court martial indicated that a container of Hatab’s internal organs was left exposed on an airport tarmac for hours; in the blistering Iraqi heat, the organs were destroyed. Hatab’s ribcage and part of his larynx were later found in medical labs in Washington, D.C. and Germany, due to what the Medical Examiner, Colonel Ingwersen, described as a “miscommunication” with her assistant. Hatab’s hyoid bone – a U-shaped throat bone located at the base of the tongue – was never found, and Colonel Ingwersen testified that she couldn’t recall whether she removed the bone from the body during the autopsy or not. The bone was a key piece of evidence, because it supported the Army Medical Examiner’s finding that Hatab died of strangulation.

34 homicides; 8-12 tortured to death

2006-02-22T15:50:00.000-08:00

Human Rights First is the first organization to tally up the numbers of detainees died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. In its report, called "Command's Responsibility," the group claims that 98 people have died in custody, 34 due to homicide. Another 11 were deemed suspicious. And 8-12 were tortured to death. BBC provides coverage.

Occasional abuse-reducing, little justice

2006-02-21T01:36:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post writes glowingly of the efforts of a Army leader in Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, to change the US counterinsurgency there. Lt General H R McMaster, a war-historian, emphasized the need for his troops of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment to understand the context they are working, requiring one in ten to learn conversational Arabic, and giving a lengthy reading list to all troops.

The abuse of detainees weighed in as one of the most important issues.

Understanding that the key to counterinsurgency is focusing on the people, not the enemy, he said he changed the standing orders of the regiment to state that in the future, all soldiers would "treat detainees professionally." During the unit's previous tour, a detainee was beaten to death during questioning, and a unit commander carried a baseball bat that he called his "Iraqi beater."

"Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy," McMaster said he told every soldier in his command.

The detainee referred to was Sunni tribal leader and Lt. Col. Abdul Jaleel, homicide was caused by "blunt force injuries and asphyxia." His autopsy is available online. Men from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment were charged in connection with the death of Major General Hamed Mowoush but lightly punished with no jail time.

Charges were not even brought against the members of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment soldiers accused of involvement in Jaleel's murder.

Whatever the interpretation of the real impact of McMaster's work, it seems clear that he is one of very few who has attempted to learn from the Pentagon's mistakes.

Abu Ghraib victims' statements

2006-02-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post made available 14 sworn statements by detainees at Abu Ghraib taken in 2004 about their torture there. The photos are disturbing, but somehow the "voice" of these victims is even more so. They were translated to English by Titan Corporation contractors to the Pentagon.

"The Road to Guantanamo"

2006-02-16T01:48:00.000-08:00

Polemical director Michael Winterbottom has debuted his film "The Road to Guantanamo" at the Berlin Film Festival. It is a documentary-fictional recreation (in the same vein of Winterbottom's In This World), following the story of four British muslims, three of whom were picked up in Afghanistan by bounty hunters in 2001 and ended up in Guantanamo for two years.

The four were 20 years old when accompanied a friend to Pakistan for his wedding, subsequently travelling to Kandahar to see Afghanistan. Caught up in the US war, three were apprehended in the desert between Kunduz and Kandahar, fleeing the US offensive in a crowd of Taliban soldiers. One was never heard from again.

photo by James Hill

Accused of being anti-American, Winterbottom says he was merely trying to capture the experience of the men. The film has created great interest in Berlin and is set to open in the UK on March 6. US release dates have not been announced.

Abu Ghraib as "Jihad University"

2006-02-15T15:50:00.000-08:00

This blog has been following the ACLU's legal battle to release ALL of the Abu Ghraib photos for the better part of a year. The new photos released by Australia's Special Broadcasting Service are indeed from the "batch" that was fought over in the courts.

The timing of the leak of these photos could not be worse for the US government.

Early this week, the New York Times quoted an unnamed American officer as saying, "We don't want to be putting everybody caught up in a sweep into 'Jihad University."' The Military is saying privately that Abu Ghraib is dangerously overcrowded.

Dilawar and Habibullah

2006-02-14T08:19:00.000-08:00

The New York Times' Tim Golden continues to write about the failure of the military justice system and the Pentagon to account for the death of two Afghans in US military custody in 2002 within the span of a couple of days. Of the original 27 men recommended to prosecutors by Army investigators on the case, only 6 were convicted or pled guilty. The stiffest punishment handed down has been 5 months in a military prison.

Golden writes, "In the modest Fort Bliss courtrooms where the trials have been held, the two Afghan victims have rarely been evoked, except in autopsy photographs."

The New York Times gets credit for running a number of moving photos relating to the Dilawar case. Photographer Keith Bedford allows us a sad and beautiful window into Dilawar's world, with his online slideshow, resulting from his assignment for the New York Times.

UK troops filmed beating detainees

2006-02-12T02:03:00.000-08:00

A British tabloid released a video of what defense sources claim is 95% likely a number of UK troops beating Iraqi detainees. The video, currently under investigation by the Royal Military Police, is alleged to be a home video filmed by a British Corporal.

The video, quite clear and visible, with a sound recording of "callous commentary" by the camerman, shows a number of what appear to be UK troops dragging out a number of young detainees and delivering headbutts, kicks, baton blows. A number of the bodies are bloodied and unmoving. The Sunday Times writes that the victims "appear to be young rioters" who at times were pleading for mercy.

News of the World quotes the seller of the video, who viewed it in Europe:

"These Iraqis were just kids. Most haven't even got shoes on.

"Those eight soldiers were pumped up and out of control. They're an insult to the thousands of soldiers who have worked so hard in Iraq with courage and dignity for so long.

"They're nothing but a gang of thugs, a disgrace to themselves, their regiment and country."

Rumsfeld's right-handman revealed

2006-02-08T05:05:00.000-08:00

Counterpunch, a blog by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair posted an excerpt from the latter's book Grand Theft Pentagon, detailing the role of Pentagon under-secretary named Stephen Cambone.

St. Clair calls him "Rumsfeld's Enforcer" and details his role in the Gitmoization of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He alleges:

Aside from guarding Rumsfeld from assaults from within the Pentagon, Cambone's main role seems to be cutting through red tape and bothersome codes of conduct, such as the Geneva Conventions, to institute legally questionable policies. Take the treatment of Iraqi prisoners. The orders to soften up Iraqi prisoners for intelligence interrogators (both military and private contractors) came directly from Cambone's office.

Ex-CIA contractor allowed to blame "orders"

2006-02-06T03:21:00.000-08:00

Ex-CIA agent David Passaro, an ex-special forces officer and policeman, who was hired by the CIA as a "contract worker" is being allowed to present evidence in his trial for the death of Abdul Wali, that he was "ordered" to interrogate the prisoner. The district judge of Eastern North Carolina was quoted by the AP as saying "In order to fairly evaluate whether the facts in this case warrant a public authority defense, the court must hear the proof at trial."

To hear and/or read about Abdul Wali's final days, please read this prior blog entry about the testimony of a teenage Afghan-American boy who actually convinced Wali to turn himself in to the Americans.

Dutch interest in 'Taliban Country'

2006-01-23T09:56:00.000-08:00

With the fate of the potential Dutch increased deployment to Afghanistan (and indeed the future of the ruling coalition) in the balance, the Dutch media have covered the impact of the documentary 'Taliban Country'.

Apparently, the film caused a stir with leading members of the smallest party in the ruling coalition, D66, for the footage of warlord-Governor Jan Mohammed and the negative impact that the US' cordon-and-search and detentions were having in unstable Uruzgan province.

Dutch daily Die Verdping Trouw interviewed filmmaker Carmela Baranowska, sharing her thoughts on future military deployments to 'Taliban Country'. In it she says, any military that comes to Afghanistan with an aggressive attitude will find itself mired in a "cycle of violence." Volkskrant, another daily, also featured Taliban Country in January.

Dutch parliament is scheduled to decide on the controversial deployment to Uruzgan on February 5. The other NATO member nations will be watching with anxiety, as both the UK and Canada have claimed their contributions are already maxed out. There has been speculation that the US would get 'stuck' with Uruzgan if the Dutch refuse to deploy troops there.

The weak military investigations into the abuses alleged in 'Taliban Country' concluded that the abuses were 'unsubstantiated'. But strangely, the abuses alleged in the film Taliban Country seem to have come to haunt the US military when it least suspected it.

He let the dogs out?

2006-01-20T10:07:00.000-08:00

General Geoffrey Miller, the official charged with designing Guantanamo as it is known today, and the man who brought the same techniques to Abu Ghraib this week to not incriminate himself by testifying in the trial of dog handlers.

Two handlers based in California will go on trial in the coming months.

There is evidence to suggest that General Miller either loosened the rules surrounding the use of dogs at Abu Ghraib or turned a blind eye to their use during interrogation.

For civilians, the right not to testify if that testimony could incriminate is known as the "invoking the 5th [amendment]". In military justice it is known as invoking Article 31. According to the Reuters story linked to above:

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said he could not recall another general or admiral invoking Article 31 rights.

"You're not supposed to invoke it unless you are, in fact, suspected of an offense," Fidell said, while adding that merely invoking it does not prove Miller is guilty of wrongdoing.

Details of 'sleeping bag technique'

2006-01-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

The terrible details of the death of former-Iraqi Major General Mowhoush have come to light in the trial of Chief Warrant officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. Mowhoush's death is one of the most "high profile" homicides by the US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Welshofer believed that his techique of putting sleeping bags over the heads of detainees, wrapping tape tightly around their torsos, and then sitting on top of the detainees chests was authorized by his higher-ups. He said he believed the directive 'the gloves are off' sanctioned his abusive, and fatal, interrogation technique.

The LA Times reports from Welshofer's trial in Colorado, explaining that none of Welshofer's superiors accept blame for the homicide. (Even though rules from interrogation were changing week to week in September 2003.)

Abuse by secret special ops group

2006-01-13T01:30:00.000-08:00

The ACLU released some documents yesterday (fruit of its ongoing FOIA requests) that shed more light on the behavior of a secretive special forces group called "Task Force 6-26." This group is known to have been used to secretly detain and interrogate "high level" members of the Iraqi resistance.

In July 2004, after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, a document was leaked alluding to TF-6-26, and abuses observed by Defense Intelligence Agency officials.

The documents released yesterday by the ACLU are the first "publicly" available documents confirming the existence of this group. ACLU Attorney Amrit Singh is quoted as saying, "These documents confirm that the torture of detainees and its subsequent cover-up was part of a larger clandestine operation, in all likelihood, authorized by senior government officials."

A memorandum included in the report states that “fake names were used by the 6-26 members” and that the unit claimed to have a computer malfunction which resulted in the loss of 70 percent of their files. The memorandum concludes, “Hell, even if we reopened [the investigation] we wouldn’t get any more information than we already have.”

Detained (&disappeared) at age 15 in Afghanistan

2006-01-11T02:05:00.000-08:00

The story of Omar Khadr, a kid who was captured "on the battlefield" at age 15 in Afghanistan, has been of great interest to Canadians and child-rights activists.

For the past 4 years, the Canadian of Egyptian descent has been encarcerated in Camp Iguana (the juvenile section of Guantantamo) where Americans claim he received preferential treatment due to his young age. When he arrived there at age 16, however, the US refused to treat him as a minor under international law.

The Toronto Star feature on Khadr bends over backwards to achieve balance, interviewing some of the American soldiers who captured the boy after a firefight in Afghanistan. (His father was an Al-Qaeda fundraiser and Bin Laden confidant who was finally killed in 2003.)

The story is worth reading in its entirety.

Khadr faces arraignment by military tribunal today, January 11, after spending almost a fifth of his young life in custody with no notion of his fate.

US negotiates with released insurgents

2006-01-10T01:28:00.000-08:00

After releasing several "high-level" insurgent leaders from the Sunni community late last year, including Sunni Baathist associate of Saddam named Sattam Quaood, the US has entered into negotiation with various militant insurgent leaders. The New York Times/IHT described these negotiations, which US officials refused to call "negotiations" (merely "meetings"):

Abu Amin, an insurgent leader in Yusefiya and a former captain in the Iraqi Army, said the Americans were especially interested in securing the help of some insurgent groups against Al Qaeda.

"Yes, we know with whom they meet," said Amin of the Americans. He said the Americans asked many questions about Al Qaeda. "Do you have a relationship with Al Qaeda? Can you help us attack Al Qaeda? Can you uproot Al Qaeda from Iraq?"

Amin said that in December the Americans had released from prison, Sattam Quaood, a former associate of Saddam Hussein, as a "goodwill gesture" intended to persuade the insurgents to cooperate more fully.

Quaood was released, along with more than 20 other detainees, over the objections of the Shiite-led Iraqi government. Amin said the release was warmly welcomed by some insurgent groups.

"One of the proofs of goodwill of the Americans was to release Sattam al-Qaood," Amin said. "It's like a test for the Americans."

The diplomat said that the release of Quaood had nothing to do with insurgent claims.

"We did not do that with that in mind," he said. "But I've noted in discussions with some Baathist types that this was taken as a goodwill gesture."

In an interview in Jordan, Quaood said he was not aware that his release was part of any deal with insurgents. But he said that on a trip to Anbar Province following his release, he was approached by insurgent leaders who asked him to "please represent them during negotiations with Americans."

Grunts stuck with blame for Bagram deaths

2006-01-09T01:28:00.000-08:00

In a decision that surprised few observers, Captain Christopher Beiring, the only officer charged in connection with the violent deaths at Bagram of two detainees in 2002, was acquitted this week.

The military tribunal decided there was not evidence that Captain Beiring was guilty of dereliction of duty and making a false statement, despite testimony to the contrary:

Maj. Jeff Bovarnick said that after a detainee known as Habibullah died in December 2002 he ordered Beiring to make sure his MPs stopped chaining detainees with their hands above their heads, a common practice that he said was not illegal. He did not think his order was followed, Bovarnick said. "I had 0.0 percent confidence that Captain Beiring had done anything or told anyone about this, so I went over his head," Bovarnick said, referring to a conversation he had with a higher-ranking commander after a second detainee, a man known as Dilawar, died at the Bagram detention center.

Habibullah and Dilawar were two men detained by US forces in 2002, who died due to abuse inflicted by reservist troops controlling detention facilities on Bagram airbase.

Only three low-ranking reservists have been convicted of involvement in the deaths of the two detainees, out of 14 original indictments.

Suicide bombing in Taliban country

2006-01-07T10:33:00.000-08:00

In a tragic day in which over 100 people were killed in Iraq in suicide bombings, a disturbing echo of this tactic was heard in Taliban country, the remote and dangerous province Uruzgan.

In the provincial capital, Tarin Kowt, the American ambassador was visiting the Deputy governor, when a suicide bomber detonated a grenade and himself in a crowd assembled in town. At least ten were killed. The Ambassador was not injured.

Another suicide bombing in Kandahar only a week prior

Uruzgan province has been the site of continued Taliban activity, and the American counter-insurgency (in partnership with Warlord-Governor Jan Mohammed) appears not to have halted the violence, especially over the last months. A number of bloody incidents occured during November and December, taking a number of Afghan police officer's lives, and wounding a number of coalition soldiers.

According to military sources, new Taliban recruits are arriving from Pakistan to replace those killed earlier in the year. Villagers allege in Taliban Country that the US military's hard-handed tactics have forced many to flee for Pakistan, and had turned some in Uruzgan towards militant resistance.

Afghan newspaper Cheragh wrote in its editorial:

The Taleban’s use of the new weapon of suicide attacks raises the question of whether militants are losing their capacity to fight a guerrilla war, or whether they are copying the tactics used by Iraqi insurgents against US forces. (transcribed and translated by IWPR)

It appears that while the Taliban may be limited to guerilla and suicidal tactics, the group not oblivious to the politics behind the 2006 NATO deployment to Afghanistan.

Within the next month, the Dutch parliament will vote on deployment of 1,000 troops to Uruzgan. This suicide bombing was a message not only to the American Ambassador, but to the Dutch government.

Training of Iraqi forces object of scrutiny

2006-01-02T08:19:00.000-08:00

During the past months, various news sources have attempted to portray more fully the difficulties of training Iraqi police and army units. Given the recent statements by US Generals relating to Iraqi-run prison systems, there is still a huge amount of catch-up to be done, even within the least-risky, most sedentary area of the legal-security apparatus. The best coverage has come from The Atlantic's James Fallows, and a recent discussion on PBS' Newshour. Fallows claims that the US did little or nothing effective in the first couple of years of occupation, and only in the past year has training become a priority.

Dutch doubts dog Coalition in Afghanistan

2005-12-30T08:18:00.000-08:00

The Australian reports that the Dutch government's hesistation to deploy forces to troubled Uruzgan province in 2006 as a part of an expanded NATO contingent of the Coalition (ISAF) is causing consternation in Canberra.

Australia is worried that 200 engineers, poised to take over from the US the Provincial Reconstruction Team based in Tarin Kwot (Uruzgan), will be held in limbo waiting for protection. The Dutch are their would-be protectors in that trouble spot.

The Dutch Prime Minister recently stated he will allow Parliament to decide whether the deployment to Uruzgan will go forward, facing dissent from a party in the ruling coalition and opinion polls that show 68% opposition to the increased troop contribution. Issues of concern are almost certain increased casualties, the potential "partner" in Uruzgan a controversial Governor-warlord featured in Taliban Country, and more generally concern with the strategy of conducting a counter-insurgency in remote Afghanistan.

Dutch Defense Minister Henk Kamp stated that Dutch forces would not be "hunting Taliban" (like American forces there).

From the Australian side, the opposition Labor party commented today that no Australian servicemen should go into a "hostile sphere" for reconstruction projects without troop and air support.

The other NATO partners are worried (UK and Canada) that they may have to increase their contributions, something they have sworn they cannot afford.

Bloodbath in Iraqi-run prison

2005-12-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

A tragic incident today at an Iraqi-run prison in the outskirts of Baghdad, resulting in the death of at least 8 people, will undoubtedly reinforce the US military's opinion that Iraqis are not ready to take control of the over 14,000 detainees in US custody.

Even Iraqi Interior Ministry officials were admitting after the violence today that they are under-trained and under-equipped to run an effective prison system.

Detainees at Kadhimiya Base were being transfered to another holding facility when as many as 16 broke free and stormed the armory of the prison. It seems there was a concerted effort to seize weapons and escape.

Four wardens and an interpreter were killed presumably by the detainee gunmen who were able to reach the armory. During the firefight, wardens and US soldiers fired on the crowd of inmates, killing four detainees and wounding many more.

CIA "investigating" worst renditions

2005-12-28T05:59:00.000-08:00

The CIA's Inspector General, who is charged with independently investigating the organization, is looking into about 10 alleged cases of "erroneous rendition" -- i.e. kidnapping and delivering to other governments, coincidentally those that torture.

The US government estimates that up to 150 people have been apprehended all over the world by US government agents and sent to third countries for "interrogation" (often countries where interrogation is synonymous with torture like Jordan and Egypt).

The Inspector General is specifically looking into the cases of Khaled Al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin, and Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian. It is not concidental that one man is suing the US government, and the other has threatened to sue the Australian government.

This CIA investigation is announced shortly after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a public denial of any "rendition" to a country where a detainee would likely be tortured. Isn't it the very same State Department which issues yearly reports on Human Rights in countries like Egypt ("the security forces continued to mistreat and torture prisoners"), Jordan ("reported continuing abuses included police abuse and mistreatment of detainees, allegations of torture"), and Syria ("continuing serious abuses included the use of torture in detention, which at times resulted in death")? And, for the record, the US denies "rendering" any detainees to Syria, but a Canadian citizen Maher Arar is suing the US for his "rendition" to Syria.

The War on Terror: literally, a flying circus

2005-12-27T13:08:00.000-08:00

To help us end the year on a "it's-better-to-laugh-than-to-cry" note, Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) has made a fine contribution. His "prizes" for 2005 were featured in the Guardian today.

To Dick Cheney (who swept the prizes this year), Jones awards the "Abu Ghraib Trophy for Human Rights":

We now come to the Abu Ghraib Trophy for Human Rights, and ... yes, it's another triumph for the VP! Dick Cheney has stood firm against a wicked cabal of Republican senators - John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina - who tried to sneak a clause into the 2005 military spending bill that would outlaw "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" to military prisoners. How can the US champion human rights unless it is allowed unrestrained access to any torture techniques it considers fit, to use against enemies that are both sub-human and have forfeited any rights to be treated as our fellow creatures?

Terry Jones' book War on the War on Terror was published this year in the US by NationBooks. In it he writes, "How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender."