Lost in the System
What has happened to Bush=92s secret prisoners?
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian
We shouldn=92t be surprised to hear that George Bush dined with a group
of historians on Sunday night(1). The president has spent much of his
second term pleading with history. But however hard he lobbies the
gatekeepers of memory, he will surely be judged the worst president
the United States has ever had.
Even if historians were somehow to forget the illegal war, the
mangling of international law, the tra****ng of the environment and
social welfare, the banking crisis, the transfer of wealth from poor
to rich, one image is stamped indelibly on this presidency: the
trussed automata in orange jumpsuits. It ****trays a superpower
prepared to dehumanise its prisoners, to wrap, blind and deafen them,
to reduce them to mannequins in a place as stark and industrial as a
chicken-packing plant. Worse, the government was proud of what it had
done. It was parading its impunity. It wanted us to know that nothing
would stand in its way: its power was both sovereign and
unaccountable.
Three days before Bush arrived in Britain, the US Supreme Court ruled
that the inmates at Guantanamo Bay were entitled to contest their
detention in the civilian courts. This is the third time the supreme
court has ruled against the prison camp, but on this occasion Bush
cannot change the law: the court has ruled that the prisoners=92 rights
are constitutional.
Symbolically the decision could scarcely be more im****tant.
Practically it could scarcely be less. The Department of Defense can
transfer its prisoners to an oubliette in another country, where the
Constitution=92s writ does not run. The public atrocity of Guantanamo
Bay has provided a useful distraction from something even worse: the
sprawling system of secret detention camps the US runs around the
world.
We don=92t, of course, know much about this programme. Bush first
acknowledged it in September 2006. =93Of the thousands of terrorists
captured across the world, only about 770 have ever been sent to
Guantanamo.=94(2) Other suspects, he said, were being =93held secretly=94
b=
y
the CIA. =93Many specifics of this program, including where these
detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot
be divulged.=94 He went on to claim that all the secret prisoners had
now been transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
Several lines of evidence suggest that this claim was false. The CIA
appears to have overseen or controlled, and in some cases still to be
running, black sites in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Macedonia,
Kosovo, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq,
Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand and possibly Diego
Garcia(3,4,5,6). The US currently appears to be using ****ps as secret
prisons(7). In just two years the CIA ran 283 flights - which the
Council of Europe believes were used for trans****ting secret prisoners
- out of Germany alone(8). It admits that it possesses 7000 do***ents
about its ghost detention programme(9). Are we really to believe that
all this was done for the 14 men transferred to Guantanamo Bay? In
Iraq, the US now admits to holding 22,000 prisoners without charge in
its own facilities(10), some of whom are known to be kept away from
the Red Cross and other visitors(11).
Apart from those moved to Cuba, hardly anyone, so far, has come out of
this system. At the end of last year, salon.com interviewed Mohamed
Bashmilah, who was arrested and tortured by Jordanian police, handed
to the Americans, then flown to an unknown country in autumn 2003, and
held secretly by the CIA until he was transferred to Yemeni custody in
May 2005(12). He re****ts that he was kept in a cell about the size of
a transit van throughout the 19 months of his confinement, without any
human contact except during interrogation. The lights and a source of
white noise were left on permanently. Driven mad by isolation and
sensory deprivation, he tried to kill himself several times.
Eventually, when it became obvious even to the CIA that he had nothing
to do with terrorism, he was handed over to the Yemeni government, who
held him for another year until he was released without charge.
Lawyers for some of the men transferred to Guantanamo Bay claim that,
while in secret detention, their clients were left hanging from the
ceiling by their wrists, beaten with electric cables, yanked around on
a dog=92s leash, chained ****d in a freezing cell and doused with cold
water. =93The CIA worked people day and night for months,=94 one prisoner
re****ts. =93Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their
heads against the walls and doors, screaming their heads off.=94(13)
Could it be worse than this? Yes. In 2003, a US official admitted to
the Sunday Telegraph that the CIA was detaining and interrogating
children. Discussing two boys aged seven and nine held in secret
detention by the CIA, the official explained, =93we are handling them
with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children, but we need
to know as much about their father=92s recent activities as possible. We
have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the
best of care.=94(14) According to another prisoner, the boys had already
been tortured by Pakistani guards(15). A former CIA official told the
New Yorker that =93every single plan [in the secret detention programme]
is drawn up by interrogators, and then submitted for approval to the
highest possible level - meaning the director of the CIA. Any change
in the plan - even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added -
was signed off by the CIA director.=94(16)
Never mind detention without trial; this is detention without
acknowledgement. When men and women disappear into this system,
neither they nor their families know where they are. The Red Cross
cannot reach them; they are beyond the scope of the law. They have
been disappeared in the Latin American sense of that word.
Do I need to explain that this treatment breaks just about every
article in the Geneva Conventions? Do I need to tell you that -
without charges, trials, lawyers, scrutiny or even recognition - it is
just as likely to net the innocent as the guilty? In 2006, George Bush
maintained that =93these aren=92t common criminals, or bystanders
accidentally swept up on the battlefield - we have in place a rigorous
process to ensure those held at Guantanamo Bay belong at
Guantanamo.=94(17) But a new and detailed investigation by the McClatchy
newspaper group has found that many of them were indeed either common
criminals or bystanders, or men sold to the authorities in order to
settle a feud(18). Who knows how many innocent people are going out of
their minds in the CIA=92s secret prisons today?
Along with its innocent victims, the US government has locked itself
into this system. As the Justice Department has argued, these
prisoners cannot be released in case they describe the =93alternative
interrogation methods=94 (the euphemism it uses for torture) the CIA
used on them, which could =93reasonably be expected to cause extremely
grave damage.=94(19) Like almost everything Bush has done, this
programme promises to backfire. George Bush will be remembered not
only for the lives he has broken, but also for sma****ng everything he
claimed to defend.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/17/lost-in-the-system/
References:
1. Sam Coates and Tom Baldwin, 16th June 2008. Leading historians
offer President Bush food for thought on writing legacy. The Times.
2. The White House, 6th September 2006. President Discusses Creation
of Military Commissions to Try Suspected Terrorists.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html
3. Dick Marty, 22nd January 2006. Alleged secret detentions in Council
of Europe member states. Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights,
Council of Europe.
http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=3D/CommitteeDocs/2=
006/20060124_Jdoc032006_E.htm
4. Amnesty International, 1st January 2006. =93Rendition=94 and secret
detention:
A global system of human rights violations.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/POL30/003/2006/en/dom-POL300032006e=
n.html
5. Reprieve and Cageprisoners, 22 March 2007. Mass Rendition,
Incommunicado Detention and Possible Torture of Foreign Nationals in
Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.
http://www.reprieve.org.uk/do***ents/070321HOA=
renditionre****tfinal.pdf
6. Dana Priest, 2nd November 2005. CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret
Prisons. Wa****ngton Post.
7. Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, 2nd June 2008. US
accused of holding terror suspects on prison ****ps. The Guardian.
8. Dick Marty, ibid.
9. The Center for Constitutional Rights, 23rd April 2008. CIA
Acknowledges It Has More than 7,000 Do***ents Relating to Secret
Detention Program, Rendition, and Torture
http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/cia-foia-do***ents
10. Jim Michaels, 28th May 2008. Military retools detainee releases.
USA Today.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-05-19-detainees-milit=
ary_N.htm
11. Amnesty International, 6th March 2006. Iraq: Beyond Abu Ghraib:
Detention and torture in Iraq.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE14=
/001/2006
12. Mark Benjamin, 14th December 2007. Inside the CIA=92s notorious
=93black sites=94. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/14/bashmilah/
13. Jane Mayer, 13th August 2007. The Black Sites.
http://www.newyorker.com/re****ting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer
14. Olga Craig, 10th March 2003. We have your sons: CIA. Sunday
Telegraph.
15. Amnesty International et al, 7th June 2007. Off the Record: US
Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the =93War on Terror=94.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/093/2007/en/dom-AMR510932007e=
n.html
16. Jane Mayer, ibid.
17. The White House, ibid.
18. Tom Lasseter, 15th June 2008. America=92s prison for terrorists
often held the wrong men.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38773.=
html
19. Jane Mayer, ibid.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/17/lost-in-the-system/
|
