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Red Cross Monitors Barred From Guantánamo
A confidential 2003 manual for operating the Guantánamo detention center shows that military officials had a policy of denying detainees access to independent monitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The manual said one goal was to "exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee," by denying access to the Koran and by preventing visits with Red Cross representatives, who have a long history of monitoring the conditions under which prisoners in international conflicts are held. The document said that even after their initial weeks at Guantánamo, some detainees would not be permitted to see representatives of the International Red Cross, known as the I.C.R.C.
It was permissible, the document said, for some long-term detainees to have "No access. No contact of any kind with the I.C.R.C."
Some legal experts and advocates for detainees said yesterday that the policy might have violated international law, which provides for such monitoring to assure humanitarian treatment and to limit the ability of governments to hold detainees secretly.
The document, a two-inch-thick operations manual, was first posted on Wikileaks, a Web site that encourages posting of leaked materials. Military officials said that the manual appeared genuine but described outdated policies and that all Guantánamo detainees could now see Red Cross monitors. In response to critics' assertions that the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, may have violated international law, a spokesman, Lt. Col. Edward M. Bush III, said, "I am in no position to speculate about what happened in 2003."
Simon Schorno, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the organization was aware that it was not seeing all Guantánamo detainees from 2002, when the detention camp was opened, to 2004. He said the policies outlined in the manual "run counter to the manner in which the I.C.R.C. conducts its detention visits at Guantánamo Bay and around the world."
He added that Red Cross officials worked with American officials "to resolve this issue confidentially, since gaining access to all detainees in full accordance with its standard practice was paramount."
The Red Cross has been critical of Guantánamo, saying publicly in 2003 that keeping detainees indefinitely without allowing them to know their fate was unacceptable and, in confidential reports, that the physical and psychological treatment of detainees amounted to torture.
The manual is a detailed directive of standard operating procedures at Guantánamo intended for use by the hundreds of people involved in running the detention camp. It provides one of the most complete portraits of the rules of the camp in its early days, when it was a largely closed place where detainees were not publicly identified.
In some instances, the manual echoed the arguments then being advanced by Washington officials as they fended off criticism of Guantánamo. The manual described point-by-point instructions for many camp procedures, including feeding and restraining detainees, and forced extraction of inmates from their cells by military troops. It said a major goal was to foster detainees' dependence on their interrogators, in part by isolating them. In a section labeled "psychological deterrence," the manual said military working dogs should be walked in the camp "to demonstrate physical presence to detainees."
The spokesman, Colonel Bush, said yesterday that dogs were no longer used at the detention camp.
Some international law experts said yesterday that they were startled that military officials had put in writing a policy of denying the Red Cross access to prisoners.
"The world recognizes that the I.C.R.C. should get access" to prison camps, said Richard J. Wilson, a law professor at American University who was until recently a lawyer for a Guantánamo detainee.
Deborah N. Pearlstein, a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, said international principles were aimed at preventing governments from "disappearing" opponents. "I.C.R.C. access and the obligation to record and account for detainees is very clear under international law," Ms. Pearlstein said.
The military spokesman, Colonel Bush, said: "All I can tell you is what we do today. And the absolute policy now, today, is that the I.C.R.C. is granted access to everything."
© 2007 The New York Times
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13 Comments so far
Show AllWas it written in German?
What would Hitler do?
They say Guantanamo; I say Aushwitz.
It's wise to keep the ICRC out of your business until you can outsource torture.
Conservative Values = War Crimes
How does a human get un-baptised?
Maybe I missed it, but do I.C.R.C. personnel currently have access to those who are held at Gitmo?
bobh- the article says the ICRC has access now. I doubt if it's access to every prisoner--there still might be "ghost" detainees. And who knows how many prisons the U.S. is running or co-running?
The release of this document confirms what the Red Cross was saying back in '03, and in fact indicates a direct violation of international law by stating a policy of denying ICRC access. The U.S. is a human rights offender.
When you look at some of the people who have come out of Gitmo, brain damaged from years of electroshocks, beatings, hot rooms, cold rooms, high decibel noise, solitary confinement, waterboarding, exposure to attack dogs, repeated over and over and over...for years.
I fear this is the practice ground for the Halliburton Camps and Blackwater when der Cheney/Bush decides to declare martial law and get rid of every thinker, humanitarian and Constitutionalist. If you look carefully at some of the films made of the camps, there is at least one that looks like it may have gas chambers and a crematorium.
"Just take this bar of soap and enter the showers." The world fought like hell to get rid of this sort of thing on the planet. We were leaders in the fight. Now, like Israel, we have learned from the enemy and become like him.
When will we ever learn?
William Glaberson says: Military officials said that the manual appeared genuine but described outdated policies and that all Guantánamo detainees could now see Red Cross monitors.
So, in other words, the "official" position is "we don't do that any more."
How would we feel if it was our parents, grandparents, spouse or children in there? How would it make us feel about Americans? What would we do about it?
Sometimes the answer to the question "What would we do about it?" involves body bags.
Hate begets hate.
And revenge often misses the actual perpetrators and hits those who would never think of doing such a thing.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil: the strategy permits us to abuse human rights on a Pinochetian scale while portraying and--strangely, thinking of ourselves--as a beacon of moral decency and a force for good in the world. Problem is, we are fooling no one but ourselves. The rest of the world is at least disgusted, and in many cases enraged, by our hypocrisy. It's not just Bush, Cheney and Rice, however. It's the Democrats who support and connive, and all of us who allow them to get away with it.
When will we hold accountable the soldiers who "call to duty" at these concentration camps?
Weren't ALL Americans raised to "just say no" to that which is cruel and immoral? Isn't that a foundation that made American culture so exemplified?
How can we "support the troops" and not support the actions of the troops at the same time? It doesn't make sense!
When an American causes another person pain and suffering within US borders, society deplores that person. When an American soldier causes pain and suffering outside of US borders, we glorify them as "heroes". Plainly - I think we are all victims of massive brainwashing. This needs to be corrected. The truth is often painful, but when we face reality with open eyes/minds/hearts we become better people.
Remember, the politicians and the military all take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. The Constitution spells out what the government shall not do in the Bill of Rights. It also says in regard to treaties that when ratified, they become the "Law of the Land." Amongst those treaties which Cheney/BushCo have unilaterally discarded are the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners. The Universal Declaration of human Rights, and on and on and on.
If we cannot get the lawbreakers out of the position of lawmakers, then we no longer have any form of representative government, we have a dictatorship.
This is clearly seen by most of the world's more civilized nations, and by around 70% of the American People, but like with wealth, 1% of the people hold 99% of the power and they wield it unilaterally.
It is all up to us folks, and an uphill battle it is.
What hasn't the Bush Administration done in the last 7 years that isn't illegal or immoral????? It's also illegal to invade a country on such flimsy excuses as Der Fuhrer did. But, he did it anyway. The man has literally no respect at for the laws, countries or the people in them. So I wouldn't hold my breath until anything changes. They could care less what we as American's think let alone the world!