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A Hindrance to U.S. War on Terror, Say Rights Groups
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A Hindrance to U.S. War on Terror, Say Rights Groups
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by Mithre J. Sandrasagra
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NEW YORK - Continued use of the death penalty in the United States is straining its relations with allies and hampering the war on terror, say international human rights and legal experts.
Governments increasingly are refusing to extradite criminal suspects to countries like the United States and China, which impose the death penalty, without first obtaining guarantees that executions will not be carried out.
In response, the George W. Bush administration has resorted to what amounts to kidnapping as a means to side-step international extradition law in its so-called rendition programme (the extra-judicial seizure and transfer of terrorist suspects to detention in third countries), human rights advocates such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said.
"As more and more countries turn their backs on the death penalty -- about 124 countries are now abolitionist in law or practice -- áthe U.S. finds itself increasingly isolated on this fundamental issue," Rob Freer of Amnesty International told IPS.
Continued implementation of the death penalty has eroded U.S. moral authority in the international community, Freer said, adding, "the U.S.'s claim to be the global human rights champion rings a little more hollow with each execution."
The majority of the world's governments, including European nations, Lebanon and Canada, now refuse to extradite criminal suspects to the United States without first obtaining guarantees that the death penalty will not be sought or imposed, according to Amnesty statistics.
In December 2005, Germany refused to extradite Mohammed Ali Hamadi -- who was freed on parole by German authorities after serving 19 years of a life sentence for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airplane -- because he could face the death penalty in the United States on charges of killing a Navy diver in the hijacking. U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales personally asked the German government not to release the terrorist, but was rebuffed.
Hamadi is now in Lebanon, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
Since 1990, an average of three countries each year abolish the death penalty, according to Amnesty's statistics. In contrast, the United States has executed on average one prisoner a week since 1990.
In part because of that dichotomy, the U.S. is having trouble arresting terror suspects abroad, even after the terror attacks of Sep. 11, 2001 in New York and Washington, because of the likelihood of the death penalty being levied.
In November 2001, immediately following the Sep. 11 attacks, Spain refused to extradite eight alleged members of the al-Qaeda network to the United States because there was a risk that they could face the death penalty or trial by special military tribunals.
The British Home Office also confirmed to IPS that nobody would be extradited from Britain to the U.S. without assurances that they would not be executed.
Because countries will not turn over suspects without obtaining assurances the death penalty will not be used, the United States has been forced to circumvent formal extradition procedures, Anjana Malhotra, co-author of Human Rights Watch's recent report "Witness to Abuse: Human Rights Abuse under the Material Witness Law since September 11," told IPS.
The U.S. has resorted to rendition to question suspects in violation of international law, a move which ultimately will hamper prosecution, the report said.
Suspects that could have been prosecuted legally under U.S. and international law can now seek dismissal of their cases because they were questioned illegally, experts say.
"The Bush administration has severely compromised the chances of prosecuting terrorist suspects by holding them illegally, and reportedly subjecting some of them to torture and other mistreatment," said John Sifton, terrorism and counter-terrorism researcher at HRW.
In addition to holding prisoners without charges at Guantánamo Bay, a U.S. naval enclave in Cuba, the United States has also conducted renditions of prisoners to third countries. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly, prohibits arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
This may account for the Bush administration's difficulty in bringing terrorists to justice, Sifton added. One of these suspects, a Yemeni national, was reportedly handed over to U.S. authorities by Pakistani agents on Oct. 26, 2001 in secret and without any formal deportation or extradition proceedings, according to Amnesty International.
The suspect, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, was charged in connection with the bombing of the Navy destroyer USS Cole, in Yemen in October 2000, in which 17 U.S. servicemen were killed and more than 40 others wounded. The whereabouts or legal status of Mohammed are still unknown.
The United States is holding at least 26 such "ghost detainees" at undisclosed locations outside the country, according to HRW. They are being held "indefinitely and incommunicado, without legal rights or access to counsel," said the rights watchdog.
Kidnapping, rendition and torture in opposition to international human rights law has put a strain on U.S. relations with its allies as they negotiate each extradition request. Such was the case earlier this year with Canada.
On Mar. 30, Canada did agree to extradite Abdullah Khadr, a Canadian national, after the U.S. provided assurances that the death penalty would not be on the table.
Khadr is accused of procuring munitions and explosives for al-Qaeda to use against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorneys Office told IPS.
If found guilty of the current charges, Khadr faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. The investigation however continues and further charges may be brought
against him.
"Khadr is still in Canada but he's on his way," the spokesperson said.
Copyright 2006 Boston Globe
Copyright © 2006 IPS-Inter Press Service
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