UN Rights Envoy Suspects CIA of Guantanamo Torture
GENEVA - A United Nations investigator said on Thursday he strongly suspected the CIA of using torture on terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, suggesting many were not being prosecuted to keep the abuse from emerging at trial.
On a visit to the U.S. detention centre in Cuba last week, Martin Scheinin, U.N. special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, attended a pre-trial hearing of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver.
Scheinin said U.S. officials had told him that of the roughly 300 detainees currently held at Guantanamo, 80 were expected to face military trials for suspected crimes. Another 80 inmates had been cleared for release, he said.
No decision had been made to either prosecute or release the remaining 150, including many so-called “high value” detainees, he said. Some have been held six years without trial.
“There is not enough evidence that could be presented, even to a military commission chaired by a military judge. Partly there may not be evidence and partly the risk of issues of torture being raised is too high,” Sheinin told a news briefing.
“Bringing them to court would bring to the court’s attention the method through which the evidence, including the confessions, were obtained. So this is one further affirmation of the conclusion that the CIA or others have been involved in methods of interrogation that are incompatible with international law,” he said.
U.S. President George W. Bush insists that the United States does not engage in torture but has refused to disclose what interrogation methods are used at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
In all, 800 people have been held at the Guantanamo prison since it opened in January 2002, Scheinin said. The White House contends the naval base is outside U.S. territory so constitutional protections do not apply.
Scheinin told the U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday that his Guantanamo visit had stoked his concerns about the fairness of trials conducted there. The U.S. delegation rejected his remarks as partly “misleading” and rehashing old criticisms.
INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES
Hamdan’s hearing was held to determine whether he is an enemy combatant who can be tried on war crimes charges in a U.S. military tribunal. He has acknowledged working for bin Laden but denies being a member of al Qaeda or taking part in attacks, including the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
Military prosecutors denied a request by his defence lawyers to call senior al Qaeda suspects as witnesses to testify on Hamdan’s role, according to Scheinin.
“This is illustrative of the tightness of the regime in which the high value detainees are held, which of course gives further suspicion to the inference that they have in their possession information concerning the interrogation techniques used upon them, which must not come into daylight,” he said.
“And therefore their prosecution even before the military commissions is excluded for the time being,” Scheinin added.
The Finnish law professor also voiced concern at the recent revelation that the CIA had destroyed videotapes in 2005 that recorded al Qaeda suspects undergoing waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique, which he said amounted to torture.
“The destruction of video tapes on CIA interrogations is one more argument that supports the contention that the CIA has been involved and continues to be involved in the use of interrogation techniques that violate the absolute prohibition against torture,” he said.
(Editing by Laura MacInnis)
© 2007 Reuters
Dear Secretary General-
Please send help. Our nation has been held hostage since 2001 by a corrupt, warmongering junta that has stolen two elections, repeatedly violated the UN charter, and violated our basic human rights.
Please, please send peace-keepers and relief supplies (ballot machines that work, and spines for the democrats), as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
The citizens of Amerika, currently under occupation by the illegal Bush-Cheney junta.
No doubt he is worried that any such revelations would result in an unmanageable flood of applications for admittance. Besides, it all depends on what the meanings of ‘interrogation’ and ‘United States’ and ‘engage’ and ‘torture’ are. The newspeak definitions would only confuse the peasantry.
Well, yeah.. but only if by “torture” you mean torture.
I hear that Haliburton is hiring at their new factory complex where they “make their own reality” on behalf of the Bush/Cheney junta.
keyinside… my thoughts exactly.
Years ago my father used to be a driver in the Army. He used to drive around 2 star generals. He told me many times he didn’t know anything. Those guys don’t discuss planning with their drivers, and anyone who thinks they do is a moron.
Of course the US government is engaging in torture. That’s a no-brainer. The real question is: what is the UN going to do about it? My guess is exactly nothing.
The U.N.? What is that? The U.N. is a joke! With a vote of 184 nations in favor of lifting the illegal U.S. blockade against Cuba and only 4 votes in favor of continuing the illegal blockade, the blockade remains in place. And to kill any motion that the U.S. doesn’t like it only takes one vote. No wonder that some organizations have taken to blowing up U.N. facilities.
Representative governments and institutions represent the moneyed few first and foremost. Government of, by and for the people is possible. http://nationalinitiative.us/
The House just voted to outlaw waterboarding. Let’s see a headline, CommonDreams!
The Statue of Liberty should be turned upside down so her head is underwater…this would truly represent the USA today.
barely human (2:09 pm) — I haven’t seen any details about just what the House voted on. But it’s a safe bet that it’s just some sort of headline-catching stunt that will prove to have no significance whatever, & will probably be forgotten about by the middle of next week.
Either Bush will veto it, or the Senate will reject it, or it will be diluted & made toothless in some way. It’s safe to bet that the Democrats designed the measure to pander to their base on a short-term basis, but that the moment people stop paying attention, the Dems will cave in and do exactly what Bush wants. And no one will be held accountable.
Just remember, you read it here first!
keyinside: “The citizens of Amerika, currently under occupation by the illegal Bush-Cheney junta.”
Perhaps. But let’s not forget this depressing fact: that over half of Americans polled last week said waterboarding is “acceptable under certain circumstances.” Bush’s approval ratings may be low for various reasons, but torture is not really one of them.
The first military guards returning from Camp X-ray spoke in the local newspaper of Torture ‘lite’ going on in Guantanamo. Torture is torture. It’s right there in the Geneva Treaty that we continue to violate every day. A man or a nation is as good as their word. Have we kept our word?
We all need the UN - which is why the USA has worked so hard to subvert it. Of course CIA agents (and members of the armed forces) do despicable things. They are granted power and live in a culture that says might is right. They are obvious problems - but a far greater one is the fact that so many Americans think they are heroes, and happily watch films and tv series (24, Bones and so on) where thugs who abuse suspects and prisoners are celebrated for their contempt for the law. It isn’t only international law that America despises - ordinary Americans despise any law that protects the poor and disadvantaged. Just watch “Shark”, where the hero routinely breaks the law and commits acts of torture in order to “get” the guilty. Formulaic fiction like this knows what the audience wants to see, and it does not want to see principled protagonists who respect the law. Cowboy tactics and vigilanteism has been sanitised by American culture - so much so that a private army like Blackwater is allowed to operate within America’s boundaries.
this just in: UN suspects cheese of being a dairy product.
New Report! The UN heard of a new concept called Human Rights! but placed any reporting of it at the bottom of their web page because they don’t know what to make of it.
The Democrats actually do something good and the Naderhaterz aren’t here to defend them? What gives?
OldBadgertoo December 14th, 2007 2:30 pm
.. so many Americans think they are heroes,.
I am struggling with this ‘hero’ business.
An act can be ‘heroic’ regardless of it’s morality or ethics. I think it depends on a persons point of view. A ‘heroic’ Crusader is not looked upon as heroic by the slaughtered innocents even though the actions may have been quite extraordinary.
I myself weep for both the slaughtered innocents and the surviving ‘heros’ although I dispise their war crimes. It’s a struggle to seperate the acts from the actors. We need a new world view. Perhaps to see all humanity as one. The violance we do to our neighbor we do to ourself.
CIA…torture?…DUH!
willybill,
dead on. doesn’t it sound like one of those obvious onion articles…
k
How long do any of you think it is going to be before our present Administration is going to announce that there will be only one party in the USA government, rendering voting unnecessary, and that Bush and Cheney will see to our well-being from now on?
If this happens, what are we all prepared to do? Have any of us really thought about that scenario?
I don’t know who makes me more ill. That squeeling, “girly man” Bush or the outrageous lemmings that still support him.
HAZMAT — How close was the vote (this time)?
The remaining Gitmo prisoners, guilty or innocent, are each confined, chained down, in sensory depriving isolation, mentally deteriorating and losing sanity. In another year, it won’t matter what any of them say. They will be mental incompetents unable to separate reality from nightmares. And that was the reason for the construction of that costly new prison. But they’re not being tortured. Not much they aren’t.
Chalk up another article that ONLY appears on Common Dreams and does not get covered by the MSM….
So what if the UN notices Gitmo; they can’t do anything that might offend their largest single contributor.
Maybe in a few years they will get around to trying Bush and Cheney for humanitarian crimes; I doubt it, though.
Its the same old story the UN will not investigate war crimes and Human Rights abuses if they are carried out by members of the security council and their allies.
The UN refused to watch the film Afghan Massacre: The convoy of death which tells of the horrific forced journey undertaken by thousands of prisoners who surrendered to America?s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz November 21, 2001. Bundled into containers, the lucky ones were shot within minutes. The rest suffered an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, clawing at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds. Up to 3,000 now lie buried in a mass grave. It details how the Pentagon lied to the world in order to cover up its role in the greatest atrocity of the entire Afghan War.
The UN has so far failed to investigate the the massacre of approximately 3000 Taleban fighters who had already surrendered to General Dostum’s Northern Alliance troops controlled by US Special Forces during the 2001 invsion of Afghanistan.
Their bodies are to be found in a mass grave in the desert of Dasht-i-Leil but the UN has refused to investigate this on the grounds that it is not safe.
Dasht-i-Leil is not in an area of Afghanistan in which the Taliban are active it is in the the control of General Dostum, Head of the Afghanistan Governments Armed forces.
The Vermont-based Physicians for Human Rights carried out preliminary excavations at the gravesite at Mazar.
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/report-prelimass-afghanistan.html
A UN forensic team exhumed three bodies and concluded that they had died as a result of suffocation.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1229-04.htm
Further investigation have been impeded by Rashid Dostum’s continuing military control over the area and due to intimidation and death of witnesses.
The UN continues to ignore the reports of the
massacre of civilians through the use of banned chemical weapons ie. white phosphorus during the 2004 US seige of Fallujah in Iraq
what chance is there that they will do anything about torture at Guantanamo?
In spite of what this ‘Rapporteur, Entrepreneur, and past-associate of BillHaily and the Comets’ (purportedly a UN ‘Rights-seeker’) may report or speculate regards, I am convinced that Gitmo is the LEAST of our Shames. It is a deliberate and kept-small Red-Herring that serves to draw held-mild criticism and focus away from the MUCH larger and more egregious programs and ‘institutions’ we have scattered-about across the ME/near-ME/E.Europe and in far-flung military-bases and ‘floating-prisons/centers’ once legitimate Naval-vessels — not to mention varied ‘jobbed-out/subcontracted’ torture-chambers, Gulags, and crematorium-camps.
Far from housing the claimed “worst of the worst”, Gitmo was until-recently crowded with only a few-hundred of the least-likely ‘terrorist suspects’ we so casually ‘bought’ in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Virtually none of them were ever really ’suspect’ of almost-anything (mostly hapless-tourists or local ‘undesired-neighbors’). And the treatment (bad as such-was) that they subsequently received at Gitmo hardly ‘holds a candle’ to the HORRORS facing the many-thousands of “the usual suspects” we’ve ensnared into our ‘real’ circus-of-horror&Inquisition elsewhere. Almost all ever-in-Gitmo could immediately have been set-free with NO fears whatsoever from their ‘past-terrorism involvement’ (although their interim-experience may CAUSE such in future — from some of them, or loved-ones ‘now well-inspired’, which may be one actual-intent for this-Charade as a ’self-fulfilling prophesy’ and someday ‘justifying’-Propaganda).
This was becoming ‘common knowledge’, of course; so, a very-few now broken/useless after their interment/torture elsewhere have been transferred to Gitmo (and by-comparison, THEY may actually now view Gitmo as the ‘Resort’ our crasser-’leaders’ have had the temerity to call this particular hell-hole since Day-one). Where these newcomers ‘hail from’ should be the needful focus for folks like Mr. Scheinin — since ‘they’ stand-out as the real exemplars of the disregard post-9/11 America has for ‘Human Rights’.
The Public would be SO ’shocked&awed’ by the sheer-scope and human-depravity of what is REALLY being done “in their name” that all we have heard regards this flea-infested beach-head in Cuba would be ‘quickly forgotten’ and seem as-nothing. Signs over our multitudinous torture-camps should forgo “Work will set you free” in favor of a Dantesque “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here”. [And ‘Yes’, that sadly-applies to the ‘workers’ in them, as well as all ‘guests’]
Damn. I guess we aren’t who we never really were to begin with.
Ladies and gentlemen, our only hope lies in sardonic wit. After all, with the writer’s strike keeping Jon off the air, we have only ourselves to make it all sound so… absurd.
…members’ arrears to the [United Nation’s] Regular Budget topped $661 million, of which the United States alone owed $526 million (80 per cent of the regular budget arrears).
(Source: UN Financial Crisis, Global Policy Forum, 25 February 2007)
Meanwhile, the USA continues to spend over 500 billion per year on it’s military.
#
keyinside December 14th, 2007 1:21 pm
I hear that Haliburton is hiring at their new factory complex where they “make their own reality” on behalf of the Bush/Cheney junta.
==================================
Actually quite unnecessary …. our MSM already doing that since quite a while…
jmacneil: The UN is not a joke. It has just been weakened from within the Security Council by John Bolton, who did all he could to kill the Annan plan for TRUE global security with almost 700 revisions to the plan. Annan would have sought true security by addressing poverty, hunger, lack of health care, hopelessness, and all the other things that humans need to live in peace with themselves and one another. Bush/Cheney’s servant Bolton was sent to force the UN, as far as possible, to seek military solutions only.
Their other attack dog, Senator Norm Coleman, was assigned the task of trying to make the world believe Kofi Annan was responsible for the oil for food scandal, even though Paul Voelcker’s investigation revealed that the corruption lay with corporations from Security Council member countries, including the US.
If you read the UN charter, you will be overcome with gratitude that so many people came together to create a noble organization like the UN. How unfortunate for the whole world that, since January 2001, one of its major member countries has done its best to undermine its effectiveness.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration told a federal judge it was not obligated to preserve videotapes of CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists and urged the court not to look into the tapes’ destruction.
In related news Tony Soprano was pulled over on the New Jersey Turnpike, and told police “Dere is no need fo yuze ta look in my trunk fer nutin.”
TIME, December 24, 2007, p. 20:
“If Congress really wanted to find out more, it could ask the agency for the transcripts and medical files it keeps on its interrogations–or for the audiotape and two videos the CIA says it still has of the questioning of unidentified prisoners requested in a federal court case. The procurement and public airing of such evidence would be one way to test the CIA’s oft-repeated assertions that it never tortures and that all its secret interrogations have been conducted in full compliance with the law.”–By Adam Zagorin
Congress has the power to hold people in prison if they are in contempt of Congress they can also fail to fund or specifically defund any part of government. They don’t want to. They LIKE things the way they are. Congress is in the hands of fascists.
There is no need for Bu$h the inferior and Shotgun Dick to seize the government. Considering the media and all the front runners in both parties are either full supporters or enablers of fascism. Why would they awake the sleepy sheep?
“The Democrats actually do something good and the Naderhaterz aren’t here to defend them? What gives?”
Oh, they’re in the throes of an apoplectic fit due to the fact that their party actually did something. Never fear, they’ll be back.
Bernice,
Excellent post! You’ve succinctly stated why the UN is a great organization AND yet why it appears to be so weak.
When the UN Security Council itself is comprised of revolving memberships so that the Big Five don’t control every single move that the larger body begins to make, that’s when this cooperative body can be an influential force to be reckoned with.
But as things stand now, with the Bush administration having a heavy controlling hand in every single step taken, and that hand has done everything it can to block progress and fairness, the UN ineffectively limps along.
I am glad that some countries in the UN are beginning to speak out about the Bush administration’s illegal torture of prisoners.
canuckchuck December 14th, 2007 2:17 pm
“The Statue of Liberty should be turned upside down so her head is underwater…this would truly represent the USA today.”
Lady “Liberty” was waterboarded a long time ago.
“Once we begin to look at the private aggressor or terrorist in ourselves, and, as a nation, begin to look publicly at our own contribution to creating the hostility of which we find ourselves the target, other kinds of knowing become possible. Then we can begin to look at how the mind deals with differences, and is prone to the creation of enemies, especially when our very existence appears to be threatened. Then we can begin to look beyond mere tolerance to true knowing of the other.
Only the mind that has recognized and integrated or transcended its primitive dualistic habits can begin to identify with the suffering and rage of geographically distant peoples. Only then can we see the aggression and ignorance that underlies our dominance and neglect, and perceive our own role in the creation of victims far from our own shores.” - John E. Mack, MD
GAIL — wonderful quote from Mack; Thank you. Along these same ideas, please consider:
LOVE CURES FEAR here
and Buddhist about real compassion for Rodney King’s perpetrators, see here
This is oldthink, and crimethink. You must doublethink. Torture is doubleplusungood. Nazis tortured. BB untortures crimethinkers. BB plusharshwise interrogate crimethinkers.
OLD BADGER TOO: Your analysis is brilliant, and has taken a message I’ve often relayed in this forum to an enlightened pitch. On a personal note, I am seeing a younger man and because I live in the Bible belt, his family is Christian and Republican. At times I can’t NOT talk about the inequities that the rightwing Christians have fueled, and it’s like talking to a wall. His programming is so dense. He tried to say that our soldiers did good deeds by relating that they were raising money in a “Toys for Tots” program. I wanted to scream at him, “what good are the toys, you imbecile, when the soldiers are murdering those children’s parents, and leaving them without limbs!”
A few nights ago HBO had a movie about skin heads and hate crimes. The lead character played by Ed Norton had a huge Swastika on his chest. At one point his far more liberal and intelligent sister started challenging his prejudicial statements and he got up and attacked her. I was disgusted when I saw my “boyfriend’s” response. He was amused. Blue collar workers (or much of the working class) owns a status not unlike that of 3rd world nations, and my experience is with Latin nations, in which machismo grows in relation to the sense the population is being overpowered by an outside patriarchal/power-based force. When men feel less control over their own destinies, they need to feel superior to someone else. It’s mostly women and minorities, and this hierarchical puppet show has been so ingrained into mass consciousness for so many centuries in so many lands, that it’s taken as real. It sickens me…
I consider it my peace keeping work to bother to deal with people at all where I live. I used to live in the far more liberal (although there are definitely conservative church groups becoming more influential there, too) Florida Keys until property values made that choice impossible. By scaling down costs, I moved into redneck ville and definitely endured a major “redneck moment” this past weekend. He and I are now in a cold front that reciprocally reflects the frosty chill in the air. Love is made difficult in a world where all the most barbaric “values” are inculcated, and this psychological sleight of hand is done so often and so thoroughly that few realize the degree to which they’re being programmed out of their own humanity!
Combining GAIL’S quote from Mack and the message shared by ME ALSO TO: Here we find that if Americans had less a sense of religious impunity and more a realization of the universal LAW of karma, they could not/would not (except in the most extreme cases) be capable of so adroitly torturing other human beings, mirrors of themselves. Father John Dear has written about the level of programming used by the miiliary (marines, I believe) in which killing is trivialized into game-like chant-like rote/robotic behaviors. The co-optation of spiritual TRUTH by religions that treat their flocks like competing teams has done a great disservice to the unity of mankind. ONLY this realization will save us from ourselves, and by that I mean the trifecta of ILLS that now threaten mankind: 1. climate warming (the overt need to work together, a la The Manhattan Project to create and implement other technologies that go more gently on this beloved earth. 2. fiscal sanity: to spread more of the inordinate plentitude around so that we don’t have a small pharaoh cast and angry starving multitudes as virtual slaves waiting at the bottom of the corporate pyramids. 3. War as product transformed into something else. This to me calls for a philosophical shift away from an identification with male-omnipotence seen in the ejaculatory powers of weapons of destruction, to the YIN counterpart that is inherently unifying and Creative. As nations as peoples we have been programmed for centuries to identify with HALF the Divine force, and as a result, our belief systems are as assymetrical as our values, and both are KILLING everything!
The enlightened have incarnated on this planet and founded religions and spiritual programs, but human beings have largely misused the teachings to gain power over one another. Problems like greed and envy will always be part of human nature and the human condition; but to the extent individuals are taught that their true riches com from self-development, that the legacy theirs to take on the voyage into the everlasting continuum is how they grow their consciousness, their understanding, their capacity to add worth to the total human experience rather than what they, at an ego level, can claim in this transitory realm as theirs… we would see very different deployment of human ingenuity applied to these 3 kick ass challenges that we all now face.