U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations

'Stress and Duress' Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects Held in Secret Overseas Facilities

By Dana Priest and Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, December 26, 2002; Page A01

Deep inside the forbidden zone at the U.S.-occupied Bagram air base in Afghanistan, around the corner from the detention center and beyond the segregated clandestine military units, sits a cluster of metal shipping containers protected by a triple layer of concertina wire. The containers hold the most valuable prizes in the war on terrorism -- captured al Qaeda operatives and Taliban commanders.

Those who refuse to cooperate inside this secret CIA interrogation center are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, according to intelligence specialists familiar with CIA interrogation methods. At times they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights -- subject to what are known as "stress and duress" techniques.

Those who cooperate are rewarded with creature comforts, interrogators whose methods include feigned friendship, respect, cultural sensitivity and, in some cases, money. Some who do not cooperate are turned over -- "rendered," in official parlance -- to foreign intelligence services whose practice of torture has been documented by the U.S. government and human rights organizations.

In the multifaceted global war on terrorism waged by the Bush administration, one of the most opaque -- yet vital -- fronts is the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects. U.S. officials have said little publicly about the captives' names, numbers or whereabouts, and virtually nothing about interrogation methods. But interviews with several former intelligence officials and 10 current U.S. national security officials -- including several people who witnessed the handling of prisoners -- provide insight into how the U.S. government is prosecuting this part of the war.

The picture that emerges is of a brass-knuckled quest for information, often in concert with allies of dubious human rights reputation, in which the traditional lines between right and wrong, legal and inhumane, are evolving and blurred.

While the U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture, each of the current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary. They expressed confidence that the American public would back their view. The CIA, which has primary responsibility for interrogations, declined to comment.

"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."

The off-limits patch of ground at Bagram is one of a number of secret detention centers overseas where U.S. due process does not apply, according to several U.S. and European national security officials, where the CIA undertakes or manages the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Another is Diego Garcia, a somewhat horseshoe-shaped island in the Indian Ocean that the United States leases from Britain.

U.S. officials oversee most of the interrogations, especially those of the most senior captives. In some cases, highly trained CIA officers question captives through interpreters. In others, the intelligence agency undertakes a "false flag" operation using fake decor and disguises meant to deceive a captive into thinking he is imprisoned in a country with a reputation for brutality, when, in reality, he is still in CIA hands. Sometimes, female officers conduct interrogations, a psychologically jarring experience for men reared in a conservative Muslim culture where women are never in control.

In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to foreign intelligence services -- notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco -- with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve countries with security services known for using brutal means.

According to U.S. officials, nearly 3,000 suspected al Qaeda members and their supporters have been detained worldwide since Sept. 11, 2001. About 625 are at the U.S. military's confinement facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Some officials estimated that fewer than 100 captives have been rendered to third countries. Thousands have been arrested and held with U.S. assistance in countries known for brutal treatment of prisoners, the officials said.

At a Sept. 26 joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees, Cofer Black, then head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, spoke cryptically about the agency's new forms of "operational flexibility" in dealing with suspected terrorists. "This is a very highly classified area, but I have to say that all you need to know: There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11," Black said. "After 9/11 the gloves come off."

According to one official who has been directly involved in rendering captives into foreign hands, the understanding is, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." Some countries are known to use mind-altering drugs such as sodium pentathol, said other officials involved in the process.

Abu Zubaida, who is believed to be the most important al Qaeda member in detention, was shot in the groin during his apprehension in Pakistan in March. National security officials suggested that Zubaida's painkillers were used selectively in the beginning of his captivity. He is now said to be cooperating, and his information has led to the apprehension of other al Qaeda members.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment earlier this week on CIA or intelligence-related matters. But, he said: "The United States is treating enemy combatants in U.S. government control, wherever held, humanely and in a manner consistent with the principles of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949."

The convention outlined the standards for treatment of prisoners of war. Suspected terrorists in CIA hands have not been accorded POW status.

Other U.S. government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that interrogators deprive some captives of sleep, a practice with ambiguous status in international law.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the authoritative interpreter of the international Convention Against Torture, has ruled that lengthy interrogation may incidentally and legitimately cost a prisoner sleep. But when employed for the purpose of breaking a prisoner's will, sleep deprivation "may in some cases constitute torture."

The State Department's annual human rights report routinely denounces sleep deprivation as an interrogation method. In its 2001 report on Turkey, Israel and Jordan, all U.S. allies, the department listed sleep deprivation among often-used alleged torture techniques.

U.S. officials who defend the renditions say the prisoners are sent to these third countries not because of their coercive questioning techniques, but because of their cultural affinity with the captives. Besides being illegal, they said, torture produces unreliable information from people who are desperate to stop the pain. They look to foreign allies more because their intelligence services can develop a culture of intimacy that Americans cannot. They may use interrogators who speak the captive's Arabic dialect and often use the prospects of shame and the reputation of the captive's family to goad the captive into talking.

'Very Clever Guys'

In a speech on Dec. 11, CIA director George J. Tenet said that interrogations overseas have yielded significant returns recently. He calculated that worldwide efforts to capture or kill terrorists had eliminated about one-third of the al Qaeda leadership. "Almost half of our successes against senior al Qaeda members has come in recent months," he said.

Many of these successes have come as a result of information gained during interrogations. The capture of al Qaeda leaders Ramzi Binalshibh in Pakistan, Omar al-Faruq in Indonesia, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al Darbi in Yemen were all partly the result of information gained during interrogations, according to U.S. intelligence and national security officials. All four remain under CIA control.

Time, rather than technique, has produced the most helpful information, several national security and intelligence officials said. Using its global computer database, the CIA is able to quickly check leads from captives in one country with information divulged by captives in another.

"We know so much more about them now than we did a year ago -- the personalities, how the networks are established, what they think are important targets, how they think we will react," said retired Army general Wayne Downing, the Bush administration's deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism until he resigned in June.

"The interrogations of Abu Zubaida drove me nuts at times," Downing said. "He and some of the others are very clever guys. At times I felt we were in a classic counter-interrogation class: They were telling us what they think we already knew. Then, what they thought we wanted to know. As they did that, they fabricated and weaved in threads that went nowhere. But, even with these ploys, we still get valuable information and they are off the street, unable to plot and coordinate future attacks."

In contrast to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, where military lawyers, news reporters and the Red Cross received occasional access to monitor prisoner conditions and treatment, the CIA's overseas interrogation facilities are off-limits to outsiders, and often even to other government agencies. In addition to Bagram and Diego Garcia, the CIA has other secret detention centers overseas, and often uses the facilities of foreign intelligence services.

Free from the scrutiny of military lawyers steeped in the international laws of war, the CIA and its intelligence service allies have the leeway to exert physically and psychologically aggressive techniques, said national security officials and U.S. and European intelligence officers.

Although no direct evidence of mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody has come to light, the prisoners are denied access to lawyers or organizations, such as the Red Cross, that could independently assess their treatment. Even their names are secret.

This month, the U.S. military announced that it had begun a criminal investigation into the handling of two prisoners who died in U.S. custody at the Bagram base. A base spokesman said autopsies found one of the detainees died of a pulmonary embolism, the other of a heart attack.

Al Qaeda suspects are seldom taken without force, and some suspects have been wounded during their capture. After apprehending suspects, U.S. take-down teams -- a mix of military special forces, FBI agents, CIA case officers and local allies -- aim to disorient and intimidate them on the way to detention facilities.

According to Americans with direct knowledge and others who have witnessed the treatment, captives are often "softened up" by MPs and U.S. Army Special Forces troops who beat them up and confine them in tiny rooms. The alleged terrorists are commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep. The tone of intimidation and fear is the beginning, they said, of a process of piercing a prisoner's resistance.

The take-down teams often "package" prisoners for transport, fitting them with hoods and gags, and binding them to stretchers with duct tape.

Bush administration appointees and career national security officials acknowledged that, as one of them put it, "our guys may kick them around a little bit in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath." Another said U.S. personnel are scrupulous in providing medical care to captives, adding in a deadpan voice, that "pain control [in wounded patients] is a very subjective thing."

'We're Not Aware'

The CIA's participation in the interrogation of rendered terrorist suspects varies from country to country.

"In some cases [involving interrogations in Saudi Arabia], we're able to observe through one-way mirrors the live investigations," said a senior U.S. official involved in Middle East security issues. "In others, we usually get summaries. We will feed questions to their investigators. They're still very much in control."

The official added: "We're not aware of any torture or even physical abuse."

Tenet acknowledged the Saudis' role in his Dec. 11 speech. "The Saudis are proving increasingly important support to our counterterrorism efforts -- from making arrests to sharing debriefing results," he said.

But Saudi Arabia is also said to withhold information that might lead the U.S. government to conclusions or policies that the Saudi royal family fears. U.S. teams, for that reason, have sometimes sent Saudi nationals to Egypt instead.

Jordan is a favored country for renditions, several U.S. officials said. The Jordanians are considered "highly professional" interrogators, which some officials said meant that they do not use torture. But the State Department's 2001 human rights report criticized Jordan and its General Intelligence Directorate for arbitrary and unlawful detentions and abuse.

"The most frequently alleged methods of torture include sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes in contorted positions and extended solitary confinement," the 2001 report noted. Jordan also is known to use prisoners' family members to induce suspects to talk.

Another significant destination for rendered suspects is Morocco, whose general intelligence service has sharply stepped up cooperation with the United States. Morocco has a documented history of torture, as well as longstanding ties to the CIA..

The State Department's human rights report says Moroccan law "prohibits torture, and the government claims that the use of torture has been discontinued; however, some members of the security forces still tortured or otherwise abused detainees."

In at least one case, U.S. operatives led the capture and transfer of an al Qaeda suspect to Syria, which for years has been near the top of U.S. lists of human rights violators and sponsors of terrorism. The German government strongly protested the move. The suspect, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, holds joint German and Syrian citizenship. It could not be learned how much of Zammar's interrogation record Syria has provided the CIA.

The Bush administration maintains a legal distance from any mistreatment that occurs overseas, officials said, by denying that torture is the intended result of its rendition policy. American teams, officials said, do no more than assist in the transfer of suspects who are wanted on criminal charges by friendly countries. But five officials acknowledged, as one of them put it, "that sometimes a friendly country can be invited to 'want' someone we grab." Then, other officials said, the foreign government will charge him with a crime of some sort.

One official who has had direct involvement in renditions said he knew they were likely to be tortured. "I . . . do it with my eyes open," he said.

According to present and former officials with firsthand knowledge, the CIA's authoritative Directorate of Operations instructions, drafted in cooperation with the general counsel, tells case officers in the field that they may not engage in, provide advice about or encourage the use of torture by cooperating intelligence services from other countries.

"Based largely on the Central American human rights experience," said Fred Hitz, former CIA inspector general, "we don't do torture, and we can't countenance torture in terms of we can't know of it." But if a country offers information gleaned from interrogations, "we can use the fruits of it."

Bush administration officials said the CIA, in practice, is using a narrow definition of what counts as "knowing" that a suspect has been tortured. "If we're not there in the room, who is to say?" said one official conversant with recent reports of renditions.

The Clinton administration pioneered the use of extraordinary rendition after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But it also pressed allied intelligence services to respect lawful boundaries in interrogations.

After years of fruitless talks in Egypt, President Bill Clinton cut off funding and cooperation with the directorate of Egypt's general intelligence service, whose torture of suspects has been a perennial theme in State Department human rights reports.

"You can be sure," one Bush administration official said, "that we are not spending a lot of time on that now."

Staff writers Bob Woodward, Susan Schmidt and Douglas Farah, and correspondent Peter Finn in Berlin, contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company


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A Year and Holding

The Longer We Wait, The Worse We Look

By Thomas Wilner, Washington Post Sunday, December 22, 2002; Page B01

The Bush administration told us originally that the men in orange jumpsuits being herded into small cells at Guantanamo Bay, chained and blindfolded, were all dangerous terrorists who threatened our national security. It is now clear, however, that at least some of the detainees were taken there by mistake.

The facts surrounding the initial captures are themselves murky. Many of the men were not picked up as a result of any scalpel-like investigation into the terrorist organizations, but rather were turned over to American authorities by Pakistani and Afghani tribesmen in exchange for substantial financial bounties. U.S. officials have acknowledged both publicly and privately that some of the prisoners were simply "in the wrong place at the wrong time." At least four have been released. The remaining captives have been in jail for almost a year now, with no legal process to give them a chance to present their case.

The government has argued that the U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to hear lawsuits involving the detainees because these men are foreigners held at a location outside the United States. But this is not simply a case of legal technicalities. These detentions raise profound questions that ought to be of concern to all Americans -- and the longer the detentions persist, the more troubling the questions become.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, it was understandable that the government had to act swiftly in sweeping up everyone who might possibly have been involved. But the need for haste has passed, and administration officials admit that some are innocent. A formal legal process -- not some sort of internal and secret procedure -- must be instituted to sort out those who were involved in hostile activity against the United States from those who were not.

The availability of an impartial tribunal to review the detentions is fundamental to the rule of law and to American ideals. Our founding fathers recognized that government officials, no matter how well-intentioned, can at times be overzealous, and that the deprivation of an individual's liberty must therefore always be subject to dispassionate and impartial review. We believe in that principle not only because it is fair, but also because it provides the best assurance that the process will achieve the correct results -- punishing the guilty and not the innocent.

Is this basic principle one that we should sacrifice in the war on terror? I think not. I agree with Rep. Dick Armey (R-Tex.). In October, he criticized the Justice Department for its "lack of regard for personal civil liberites in America" and said it makes no sense to save ourselves from international terrorism only to sacrifice these fundamental principles. The same argument applies to the Guantanamo detainees.

Some may ask, however, why foreigners deserve these protections. There are a number of reasons: First, it is right. The rule of law assures the integrity of our processes and of our government's actions. The world's respect for our nation around the world is based not only on our might, but also on our principles. We are supposed to be the good guys who adhere to those ideals. Equally important, we have championed the rule of law and due process rights for individuals around the globe because it is in our self interest. We are all foreigners outside our borders. We want to make sure that our sons and daughters who go abroad cannot be jailed arbitrarily without access to their families and some impartial tribunal. We want to make sure that our soldiers who go into combat are protected not only by their guns, but also by the rules of the Geneva Conventions.

For example, when a U.S. military aircraft was downed in China last year, President Bush immediately demanded, "These U.S. airmen should be allowed to communicate directly with their families." How credibly can we make that demand if we deny those very rights to others? What precedent is set when the United States, the champion of due process and the rule of law, itself disregards those principles?

It is fair to ask whether the war on terrorism has changed the ground rules, requiring us to sacrifice some of our principles in the interest of national security. Clearly, this is a difficult and unusual war. We face a dangerous and amorphous enemy. But we have been in wars before, and we have faced grave threats to our national security before. It would be hard for me to tell my father, who lost two brothers in World War II, that this is a more dangerous war, or to imagine telling the friends I lost in Vietnam that this is a more terrible conflict. In previous wars -- World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War -- we always held the people we captured in accordance with the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions. This war should be no different.

We can do everything we need to do to protect our national security without abandoning the rule of law. But if we fail to abide by it, we undermine our stature in the world community. We endanger our citizens and our troops abroad. And we compromise the very principles we are fighting so hard to defend.

President Bush stated last spring in his commencement address at West Point: "The 20th century ended with a single surviving model of human progress, based on non-negotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state . . . and equal justice. . . ."

Sticking to those principles is most difficult in times of crisis -- and most important.

Thomas Wilner is a Washington attorney representing the families of the 12 Kuwaitis detained at Guantanamo Bay.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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Edited by author 12-29-2002 07:41 PM

US Foreign Interventions and Invasions since Vietnam

Cuba, 1963-today.
US blockades island for 39 years. Numerous assassination attempts against leader. Continued actions condemned by Human Rights Groups and the United Nations General Assembly.


Australia, 1973-75.
CIA interferes and manipulates free election process.


Chile, 1973.
CIA backed coup ousts elected president, installs military Gen. Pinochet. Decades of human rights abuses follow.


Portugal, 1974.
CIA funnels millions to destabilize and sabotage NATO ally.


Angola, 1976-92.
CIA assists South Africa-backed rebels.


Afghanistan, 1979-82.
US supports, arms, trains Mujahadeen rebels including rebel leader Osama bin Laden.


El Salvador, 1980-92.
US aids government condemned for gross human rights violations.


Nicaragua, 1981-92.
US directs and illegally supports contra war, mines harbor. Allows open flow of narcotics into US. US actions condemned by the United Nations World Court.


Chad, 1982.
US supports overthrow of government. CIA supported secret police kill and torture tens of thousands.


Libya, 1982.
USA shoots down two Libyan jets.


Honduras, 1982-90.
US builds bases near borders, supports government that uses Death Squads against it’s citizens.


Lebanon, 1982-84.
US bombs and shells Muslim positions, expels PLO from territory.


Grenada, 1983-84.
US military invades tiny island. 400 Grenadians killed. "Gross violation" of international law condemned by United Nations.


Iraq, 1987-88.
US supports and arms Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in war against Iran.


Iran, 1988.
US shoots down Iranian passenger airliner, killing 290 civilians. Claims it was an "accident."


Libya, 1989.
US bombs capitol Tripoli killing 55 civilians. Calls it "collateral damage."


Philippines, 1989.
US supports corrupt govt of Ferdinand Marcos against citizen uprising.


Panama, 1989.
US invades with 27,000 soldiers. Kills 3000+ Panamanians, kidnaps it’s own installed drug-dealing leader and CIA asset. Illegal US actions condemned by nearly unanimous United Nations and Organization of American States.


Kuwait, 1991.
US invades Middle East, contradicting its position by intervening in inter-Arab affairs. Returns Kuwaiti Monarchy accused of human right abuses to throne.


Iraq, 1990. today.
US randomly bombs civilian areas. Blockades Iraqi ports, allows no humanitarian or medical aid. est. 10,000 Iraqi’s starve/die monthly as result.


Bulgaria, 1991.
CIA funnels millions to destabilize one of the first freely elected governments.


Somalia, 1992-94.
US sends in humanitarian aid. Becomes involved in civil war, takes sides attacking one Mogadishu faction. Kills 500+ Somalis.


Peru, 1992-01.
US provides military support, millions of dollars to corrupt Fujimori government. Drug kingpin Vladimir Montesino on CIA payroll while serving as Intelligence Chief. Involved directly in shooting down missionary aircraft, killing American woman and her infant child.


Colombia, 1992-present.
US supports Colombian military, heavily involved in drug trafficking. 1,640 pounds of cocaine lands in Ft. Lauderdale Florida hidden inside Colombian Air Force cargo plane. Nearly 20,000 people killed by US supported military and para-military so far.


Bosnia, 1993.
US naval blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.


Haiti, 1994.
US blockades island government, CIA supports military coup to remove elected President Aristide, then forcibly re-installs Aristide as President after he agrees to US conditions of rule.


Sudan, 1998.
US bombs Aspirin Factory in Khartoum killing civilians.


Afghanistan, 1998.
US missiles kill 28 civilians


Yugoslavia, 1999.
US laser-guided bombs destroy Chinese Embassy in Belgrade killing three Chinese journalists.


Afghanistan, 2001- ?

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Many Pakistanis with no Qaeda links at Guantanamo

From Khalid Hasan for the Daily Times

WASHINGTON: Dozens of prisoners, including Pakistanis, being held at Guantanamo Bay have "no meaningful connection to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and were sent to the maximum-security facility over the objections of intelligence officers in Afghanistan who had recommended them for release."

A report in the Los Angeles Times Sunday, quoting military officials with "direct knowledge of the matter", states that at least 59 detainees, nearly 10 percent of those being held, were "deemed to be of no intelligence value after repeated interrogations in Afghanistan." All were placed on "recommended for repatriation' lists well before they were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, a facility intended to hold "the most hardened terrorists and Taliban suspects."

Dozens of the detainees, the report notes, are Afghan and Pakistani nationals described in classified intelligence reports as "farmers, taxi drivers, cobblers and laborers. Some were low-level fighters conscripted by the Taliban in the weeks before the collapse of the ruling Afghan regime." None of the 59 met US screening criteria for determining which prisoners should be sent to Guantanamo Bay, military sources said. But all were transferred anyway, sources said, for "reasons that continue to baffle and frustrate intelligence officers nearly a year after the first group of detainees arrived at the facility."

A Pakistani team led by Tariq Farooq Mirza of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was invited to visit Guantanamo Bay this summer but failed to persuade the US administration to release those who had by now been established as being non-al Qaeda. However, barring one 70 year old Pakistani, no one had been released. The team which was allowed to interview a number of Pakistani prisoners reported to the government that there were very few among the 56 or so Pakistanis who would fit the description "al Qaeda fighters of terrorists." Pakistan has not pressed the US government too hard, since it is keen not to risk

Washington's, particularly Pentagon's annoyance.One officer said, "There are a lot of guilty [people] in there, but there's a lot of farmers in there too." The sources' accounts point to a previously undisclosed struggle within the military over the handling of the detainees. Even senior commanders were said to be troubled by the problems. Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey, the operational commander at Guantanamo Bay until October, traveled to Afghanistan in the spring to complain that too many "Mickey Mouse" detainees were being sent to the already crowded facility, sources said.

Another report appearing in the Washington Post Sunday said that a large number of those now being held at Guantanamo were handed over to the American forces by Afghan and Pakistani tribesmen in exchange for money. This should make nonsense of the myth that in that part of the world, honour and tradition demand that someone who has sought refuge is protected at all costs.

One of the reasons the Guantanamo Bay prisoners are not being released and not being allowed direct access to a lawyer is that no one wants to be "the guy who released the 21st hijacker," according to an officer. "While that concern remains a legitimate one, the fact that dozens of the detainees are still in custody a year or more after their capture has become a source of deep concern to military officers engaged in the war on terrorism around the globe. Many fear that detaining innocents, and providing no legal mechanism for appeal, can only breed distrust and animosity toward the US -- not only in the home countries and governments of the prisoners but also among the inmates," the report points out.One military interrogator at Guantanamo is quoted by the Los Angeles Times said, "We're basically condemning these guys to long-term imprisonment," said a military official who was a senior interrogator at Guantanamo Bay. If they weren't terrorists before, they certainly could be now."

The Afghan and Pakistani governments have raised the issue with Washington. A Pakistani embassy official, who declined to be identified told the newspaper that his government is convinced that many of the 58 Pakistanis known to be in custody "probably joined the Taliban but didn't know how to spell Al Qaeda."One prisoner was transferred because he was Arab by birth and had once fought for the Taliban, thereby meeting two key screening criteria. But before the war he had sustained such a massive head injury that he could utter little more than his name and was known by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay as "half-head Bob."

The report said, "others were grabbed by Pakistani soldiers patrolling the Afghan border who collected bounties for prisoners, sources said. One such prisoner was captured at a restaurant near the border where he claimed to have lived and worked for 20 years. 'He had the mental capacity to put flatbread in an oven and that was the extent of his intellect,' the interrogator said. 'He never got trained on a rifle, never got pressed into service. But he was Arab by birth so he was picked up and sent away.'

According to classified Pentagon guidelines, Guantanamo Bay was meant to be a long-term detention facility for Al Qaeda operatives, Taliban leaders, "foreign" fighters and "any others who may pose a threat to US interests, may have intelligence value, or may be of interest for US prosecution." But from the beginning, prisoners who didn't meet those criteria were sent, sources said. In some cases, militarypolice seemed to have more influence over flight lists than intelligence officers, lobbying commanders to ship out troublesome detainees. "Other detainees seemed to get caught up in the military's bureaucratic machinery. In many cases, low-value prisoners caught early in the war were placed at the bottom of prioritized lists. But as planeloads of prisoners were sent to Cuba, names at the bottoms of the lists drifted to the top, and some started showing up on flight manifests," the report added.

Once they appeared on the manifests, sources told the newspaper, removing them proved almost impossible. Doing so required senior intelligence officers in Kuwait or Afghanistan to work through thickets of military red tape. It also required them to trust the judgment of junior intelligence officers, something they were loath to do, given the stakes. Through much of the war, the decisions were made far from the battlefield, by commanders in Kuwait or back in the United States. Intelligence officers in Afghanistan became increasingly dismayed at the number of low-level detainees on the manifests.

To call attention to the problem, some officers began circulating lists of prisoners they believed were being improperly placed on Guantanamo Bay flight manifests. The lists were seen by senior intelligence officers in Afghanistan, Kuwait and the United States. One of the lists covers 49 Afghans and 10 Pakistanis who were being held at Kandahar Air Base until the Afghan facility was shut down in June, prompting their transfer to Guantanamo Bay, sources said. The prisoners ranged in age from 16 to 50, most with little or no education. None was deemed to have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The report said, "Among the Pakistanis on the list was a 16-year-old who traveled to Afghanistan at the start of the war to help the Taliban, but quickly had second thoughts and was captured by the Northern Alliance while trying to flee. 'He showed no signs of deception,' interrogators noted. 'He never fought for the Taliban.' Another Pakistani, a 33-year-old taxi driver, was captured near Mazar-i-Sharif. 'The fact that the detainee's taxi car broke down was a deciding factor for him to leave home and fight the Jihad,' according to his file. 'Detainee is a low-level fighter with no tactical intelligence. Recommend repatriation.' These detainees would almost certainly have been repatriated had they not been captured early in the war, before screening systems were overhauled to make releasing low-level prisoners easier, sources said."

There was also a confusing command structure that hampered information sharing. Guantanamo Bay was controlled by the US Southern Command, whose territory includes South America, even though the war on Al Qaeda was principally the purview of the US Central Command.In the last nine months, only five prisoners have been released from a population that totals about 625 and represents 43 nations. The first prisoner released, in April, was so mentally unstable he was known by interrogators as Wild Bill. Four others were released at the end of October, including three Afghans and one Pakistani. Among them were one low-level Taliban conscript and two men who appeared to be in their 70s and said they had never served the Taliban.

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CIA Interrogation Under Fire

Human Rights Groups Say Techniques Could Be Torture

By Alan Cooperman

Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 28, 2002; Page A09
  
A leading human rights group said yesterday that the CIA's method of interrogating al Qaeda detainees could constitute torture and result in the prosecution of U.S. officials by courts around the world.

Human Rights Watch, based in New York, sent a letter to President Bush calling for an investigation of the "stress and duress" techniques allegedly used by the CIA on some captives at the U.S.-held Bagram air base in Afghanistan and other facilities overseas.

Those techniques, described in a front-page article in Thursday's Washington Post, include keeping prisoners "standing or kneeling for hours" while hooded or wearing spray-painted goggles, holding them in "awkward, painful positions" and depriving them of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights.

In the letter to Bush, Human Rights Watch's executive director, Kenneth Roth, said those methods "would place the United States in violation of some of the most fundamental prohibitions of international human rights law."

The letter warned that torture and other "grave breaches" of the 1949 Geneva Conventions "are subject to universal jurisdiction, meaning that they can be prosecuted in any national criminal court."

Human Rights Watch also objected to the alleged U.S. practice of turning over some captives for interrogation by countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Morocco, which have been criticized by the State Department for using torture.

"It is a violation of international law not only to use torture directly, but also to be complicit in torture committed by other governments," the letter said. It called on Bush to issue a statement clarifying that U.S. policy does not condone torture, to take immediate steps to stop such acts, and to prosecute the individuals who ordered and carried them out.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday that "we are not aware we have received the letter." He added, however, that "we believe we are in full compliance with domestic and international law, including domestic and international law dealing with torture." Wherever U.S. forces are holding combatants, they are being held "humanely, in a manner consistent with the third Geneva Convention," McClellan said.

Ruth Wedgwood, a professor of law at Yale University, said it is debatable whether the CIA techniques constitute torture under the U.N.'s definition, which is the intentional infliction of "severe pain or suffering" to obtain information.

Wedgwood she was "somewhat skeptical" of the description of what goes on at Bagram air base. "The guys like to talk tough, so you have to be careful that this is not professional swagger," she said.

Moreover, she said, some of the alleged conditions, such as lights burning 24 hours a day, are typical of civilian jails. As for holding prisoners in "awkward, painful positions," she said, it depends on exactly what that means. "If it's hanging someone from their wrists, absolutely not -- that's prohibited," she said. "But if it's keeping someone in handcuffs or temporarily hooded during transport, maybe yes -- as a legal matter, there could be legitimate reasons for that."

But Diane F. Orentlicher, a professor of international law at American University, said she believes the CIA techniques are a clear violation of international law. She noted that the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 1978 that the use by British forces in North Ireland of five similar techniques -- hooding, forced standing, deprivation of sleep, subjection to noise and deprivation of food and drink -- were not torture.

But, Orentlicher said, the European court found that such methods were "inhuman and degrading," and therefore illegal under various treaties. "One way or the other, it's clearly prohibited," she said.

Staff writer Dana Milbank in Waco, Tex., contributed to this report.

Published on Saturday, December 28, 2002 by the Washington Post

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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Green Party "Terrorists"

Frederick Sweet, Intervention Magazine

January 6, 2003

Writing about his no-fly nightmare in the Fairfield County Weekly, art dealer Doug Stuber, who had run Ralph Nader's Green Party presidential campaign in North Carolina in 2000, was pulled out of a boarding line and grounded. He was about to make an important trip to Prague to gather artists for Henry James Art in Raleigh, N.C., when he was told (with ticket in hand) that he was not allowed to fly out that day.

Asking "why not?" he was told at Raleigh-Durham airport that because of the sniper attacks, no Greens were allowed to fly overseas on that day. The next morning he returned, and instead of paying $670 round trip, was forced into a $2,600 "same day" air fare. But it's what happened to Stuber during the next 24 hours that is even more disturbing.

Stuber arrived at the airport at 6 a.m. and his first flight wasn't due outuntil nearly six hours later. He had plenty of time. At exactly 10:52 in the morning, just before boarding was to begin, he was approached by police officer Stanley (the same policeman who ushered him out of the airport the day before), who said that he "wanted to talk" to him. Stuber went with the police officer, but reminded him that no one had said he couldn't fly, and that his flight was about to leave.

Officer Stanley took Stuber into a room and questioned him for an hour. Around noon, Stanley had introduced him to two Secret Service agents. The agents took full eye-open pictures of Stuber with a digital camera. Then they asked him details about his family, where he lived, who he ever knew, what the Greens are up to, and other questions.

At one point during his interrogation, Stuber asked if they really believed the Greens were equal to al Qaeda. Then they showed him a Justice Department document that actually shows the Greens as likely terrorists -- just as likely as al Qaeda members. Stuber was released just before 1 PM, so he still had time to catch the later flight.

The agents walked Stuber to the Delta counter and asked that he be given tickets for the flight so that he could make his connections. The airline official promptly printed tickets, which relieved Stuber, who assumed that the Secret Service hadn't stopped him from flying. Wrong! By the time Stuber was about to board, officer Stanley once again ushered him out the door and told him: "Just go to Greensboro, where they don't know you, and be totally quiet about politics, and you can make it to Europe that way."

In Greensboro, after Stuber showed his passport he was told that he could not fly overseas or domestically. Undeterred, he next traveled an hour-and-a-half to Charlotte. In Charlotte, the same thing happened. Then Stuber drove three hours to his home after 43 hours of trying to catch a flight.

Stuber said he could only conclude that the Greens, whose values include nonviolence, social justice, etc., are now labeled terrorists by the Ashcroft-led Justice Department.

Questions about how one gets on a no-fly list creates questions about how to get off it. This is a classic Catch-22 situation. The Transportation Security Agency says it compiles the list from names provided by other agencies, but it has no procedure for correcting a problem. Aggrieved parties would have to go to the agency that first reported their names. But for security reasons, the TSA won't disclose which agency put someone on the no-fly list.

Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

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Tech writer iced for expressing opinion
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco, sfindymedia.org 29/03/2003
Much-loved computer columnist Henry Norr has been suspended by the Hearst Corporation - owners of The San Francisco Chronicle - for expressing political views on his day off.

Along with two thousand other citizens, including the former head of the Pacific Stock Exchange, Norr was arrested in San Francisco last week as he was protesting the US-British invasion of Iraq. He emailed the paper to say he would be late the next day. But the cowardly Chronicle insisted on calling creating a time card dispute, and Norr is currently suspended without pay.

"This is a bogus, after-the-fact cover for an act of political retaliation and an attempt to intimidate other employees," Norr wrote in an email to Jim Romensko.

That his employer should take on the role of policing what employees do in their own time is a remarkable act of corporate coercion.

Norr doesn't even do political reporting. "I write about things like (e-mail) spam," he told Reuters.

Don't be so modest, Henry. His Monday tech column Tech 21 is a rare beast: the former MacWeek editor completely eschews the kind of gushing, techno-utopioan advertorials that are now the norm for mainstream publications in favor of a gentle and wise, and hugely-well-informed skepticism. He also breaks stories. In other words, he one of the paper's best assets.

But the punishment lasts for a "minimum" of two weeks.

Norr's shabby treatment highlights one of the absurdities of the US media: it requires its staff to behave like eunuchs. This strange hangover from the days of the Puritan ducking stool baffles visitors, but keeps a mini-industry of "Journalism Schools" and ethics committees busy.

Which is why, after the long editorial filleting process of removing anything that might cause offense to anyone has been completed, you end up with newspapers that don't have any news in them.

"Total objectivity is an illusion," Norr eloquently explained yesterday. "Everybody has views on important issues, at least most people do."

"Objectivity" - a word you only hear in the USA - isn't just an illusion, it's a metaphysical impossibility. Although your tolerance for "objectivity" is bound to be highly selective. Clear Channel Communications - which dominates commercial radio in the USA - recently sponsored pro-Invasion rallies and yesterday a Fox News Channel anchor opened a news segment with the words "800 Iraqis ... and we pasted them!" But you know that these voices are human, they may be slanted, that owners exert influence, but hey - you're grown up adults. Take your pick.

"The best journalism comes from people who are engaged in the world around them," added Norr, who are not just blinkered scribes who sit there at the keyboard and write stories, but people who have passions and feelings and engagement."

The ducking stool treatment meted out to Norr by the Hearst Corporation, which owns the Comical, has already rung alarm bells in the Macintosh community, where where Norr is widely respected:-

"Punishing him at work for expressing a political view on what he thought was his own time is a dangerous way to proceed in a democracy," writes Applelinks' John Farr.

Yesterday, San Francisco citizens made their own protest at their city paper's anodyne coverage of the Invasion - no pictures of civilian casualties, but lots of light, "color" pieces from embedded correspondents - by dumping fake blood at the newspaper's offices.

Reporters without Borders, an international organization which tries to measure coercion against the free press, ranks the USA at17th in its estimation of press freedom - behind Costa Rica. ®

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Oregon Law Would Jail War Protesters as Terrorists
By Lee Douglas Yahoo News April 2, 2003
PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - An Oregon anti-terrorism bill would jail street-blocking protesters for at least 25 years in a thinly veiled effort to discourage anti-war demonstrations, critics say.

The bill has met strong opposition but lawmakers still expect a debate on the definition of terrorism and the value of free speech before a vote by the state senate judiciary committee, whose Chairman, Republican Senator John Minnis, wrote the proposed legislation.

Dubbed Senate Bill 742, it identifies a terrorist as a person who "plans or participates in an act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt" business, transportation, schools, government, or free assembly.

The bill's few public supporters say police need stronger laws to break up protests that have created havoc in cities like Portland, where thousands of people have marched and demonstrated against war in Iraq since last fall.

"We need some additional tools to control protests that shut down the city," said Lars Larson, a conservative radio talk show host who has aggressively stumped for the bill.

Larson said protesters should be protected by free speech laws, but not given free reign to hold up ambulances or frighten people out of their daily routines, adding that police and the court system could be trusted to see the difference.

"Right now a group of people can get together and go downtown and block a freeway," Larson said. "You need a tool to deal with that."

The bill contains automatic sentences of 25 years to life for the crime of terrorism.

Critics of the bill say its language is so vague it erodes basic freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism under an extremely broad definition.

"Under the original version (terrorism) meant essentially a food fight," said Andrea Meyer of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which opposes the bill.

Police unions and minority groups also oppose the bill for fear it could have a chilling effect on relations between police and poor people, minorities, children and "vulnerable" populations.

Legislators say the bill stands little chance of passage.

"I just don't think this bill is ever going to get out of committee," said Democratic Senator Vicki Walker, one of four members on the six-person panel who have said they oppose the legislation.

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Children held at Camp Xray, US admits
ABC News April 22, 2003
The US military has revealed it is holding juveniles at its high-security prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, known as Camp Xray.

The commander of the joint task force at Guantanamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller, says more than one child under the age of 16 is at the detention centre.

However, Maj Gen Miller has revealed little more about their welfare.

Maj Gen Miller says the US is holding "juvenile enemy combatants" at the centre, confirming rumours of children being held.

He has refused to reveal how many there are, their exact ages or their countries of origin.

He says they are being well cared for and are kept in facilities separate to adult prisoners.

The children are still being interrogated and will continue to be held at Guantanamo.

About 660 prisoners are in the camp.

They have not been tried or convicted of any offence but are being held as part of what the US calls its war on terror.

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Ashcroft Rules on Immigrants' Detention
By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer Yahoo News April 24, 2003
WASHINGTON - Most illegal immigrants can be jailed indefinitely without bond when national security risks exist, Attorney General John Ashcroft has declared in a legal opinion. Immigration advocates are calling that an abuse of power in the name of fighting terrorism.

The order means such aliens will not be released on bond while their cases are being decided by immigration judges if the government can show national security issues are involved.

"Such national security considerations clearly constitute a reasonable foundation for the exercise of my discretion to deny release on bond," Ashcroft said in the 19-page opinion, which was signed last Friday.

The opinion was requested by the Homeland Security Department, which now enforces most immigration laws, after the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld a judge's decision to release Haitian asylum-seeker David Joseph on $2,500 bond.

Cheryl Little, executive director of Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said Ashcroft's opinion is the latest in a string of government decisions "manipulating our very serious national security concerns to justify targeting nationals of Haiti." Advocates for Latino and Muslim immigrants made similar comments on behalf of their constituencies.

Ashcroft's opinion says the attorney general has broad discretion in determining the status of would-be immigrants.

Immigration advocates have been troubled by Ashcroft's continued influence over immigration policy after most of the nation's immigration apparatus was transferred to the Homeland Security Department March 1. Since then, Ashcroft has given the FBI, U.S. Marshals and local police authority to arrest people on immigration violations.

"As disturbing as this decision is, it's really not that surprising, because Ashcroft has managed to keep his finger in all the immigration-related pies and ensured he can exert his authority shoulder-to-shoulder with (Homeland Security Secretary) Tom Ridge," said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum.

In the David Joseph case, which prompted Ashcroft's legal opinion, the immigration judge and appeals board concluded they did not have authority to deny bond based on the national security concerns cited by the government, which has sought to detain more illegal immigrants since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Joseph was among the 216 Haitians who arrived in Miami by boat on Oct. 29, then leaped from the craft into Biscayne Bay and ran along a major causeway. The scene was captured live on television.

Little, whose group represented Joseph, said the appellate ruling questioned the Bush administration's decision to detain all Haitians.

A total 100 Haitians who arrived on the same boat as Joseph had been granted bond by judges. Ashcroft's decision also will affect them "and then some," Little said.

"It's a very sweeping decision. The attorney general has designated it as precedent setting, meaning it could apply to all previous decisions made regarding bond," she said.

Several federal agencies have opposed the release of the Haitians on bond, arguing it could trigger a wave of immigrants attempting to reach U.S. shores. That would overtax the strained Coast Guard, Border Patrol and other agencies and interfere with their anti-terrorism activities, the government said.

In addition, the State Department has warned that Haiti has become a staging point for non-Haitians considered security threats, including Pakistanis and Palestinians, to enter the United States.

The National Coalition for Haitian Rights said it will fight to overturn Ashcroft's order. Dina Paul Parks, the New York-based coalition's executive director, said the decision further erodes immigrants' legal rights.

"If you were lucky enough to get a sympathetic judge you could potentially get released on bond. Now even that prospect is taken away," she said.

Ashcroft's decision applies to all illegal immigrants except Cubans, who by law automatically are permitted to stay in the United States if they reach its shores.

Associated Press Writer Curt Anderson contributed to this report.

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Pentagon to release child prisoners
Oliver Burkeman in Washington The Guardian May 06, 2003
Children held at Guantanamo Bay are expected to leave the American detention camp in the near future as part of what may be the biggest single release of prisoners since it was established, US military officials said last night.
But they rejected reports that the Pentagon was succumbing to international pressure after protests greeted news that the juveniles were in detention - or to a complaint from Colin Powell, the secretary of state, that US policy at the camp was straining relationships with allies.

Between one and two dozen inmates, mostly Afghans, will be released in the near future, according to unnamed military officials.

One official said he believed juveniles would be among them, though it was not clear whether that number would include all three of the boys aged 13 to 15 whose presence at Guantanamo caused outrage when it was revealed last month. It was also unclear whether they would be freed, or transferred to detention in their home nations.

Since the camp received its first detainees in early 2002, only 23 have been released, including inmates who were elderly or mentally ill.

The planned release, which Pentagon officials said would not be confirmed publicly until after it had happened, may well be the largest so far. The camp's 660 detainees are being held indefinitely, have no access to lawyers and have not been charged.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, has said the under-16s are "not children" and could be dangerous.

Signs that the defence department is reviewing individual cases follow an increase in criticism not only from outside the Bush administration, but also from within.

Mr Powell warned Mr Rumsfeld in a letter that eight allies had complained about their citizens being held there. He was reported as saying that mishandling of the prisoners was damaging global cooperation in combating terrorism.

Mr Powell "is wondering about due process," a state department official said yesterday on condition of anonymity. "There are questions about these prisoners, and [Mr Powell] is aware of them."

But the Pentagon denied that the releases were connected to the letter, saying they had been planned "for some time", and Mr Rumsfeld sought to present the two departments as united.

He said: "What Colin and I have been concerned about ... is that it's taking so long."

Olara Otunnu, the UN's special representative for the rights of children in war, told the Guardian it was imperative that all prisoners at Guantanamo below the age of 18 be "released as fast as possible for them to be reunited with their families".

Of the expected release, he said: "My hope is that top of the list will be the persons below the age of 18 ... if they are accused of committing any crime, they can obviously be tried, they can be investigated - but instead of sentencing to detention or jail, you put them through a programme of rehabilitation and correction."

But a release of all minors at the camp seemed far from imminent.

A Canadian government official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Guardian he thought it "highly unlikely" that the released inmates would include Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who entered the camp at 15 after being captured by US forces in Afghanistan. Amnesty International welcomed news of the release.

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Report assails roundup of immigrants after 9/11
Harsh treatment of prisoners is outlined
By Eric Lichtblau/NYT (NYT) The International Herald Tribune Tuesday, June 3, 2003
WASHINGTON: The Justice Department's roundup of hundreds of illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11 attacks was plagued with "significant problems" that forced many people with no connection to terrorism to languish in prison in harsh conditions, according to an internal report released Monday.

The long-awaited report from the Justice Department's inspector-general concluded that officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, particularly in New York City, "made little attempt to distinguish" between illegal residents who had possible ties to terrorism and those swept up "coincidentally" in the investigation.

The report represented a high-level validation of the concerns voiced by civil rights groups about the broad net that the authorities have cast in prosecuting the campaign against terrorism, but Justice Department officials said they believed they had acted within the confines of the law.

"We make no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from further terrorist attacks," said Barbara Comstock, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

More than 760 illegal immigrants were imprisoned in the weeks and months after the attacks, as authorities traced thousands of leads and sought to prevent a follow-up attack. Most of those people have been deported, and none have been charged as terrorists.

The Justice Department has fought to maintain the secrecy of the round-up operation, and the report by the inspector general offers the most detailed portrait to date of who was imprisoned, the delays many faced in being charged or getting a lawyer, and the abuse that some prisoners faced.

The report showed, for instance, that some 75 percent of the illegal immigrants were from New York or New Jersey, many were Pakistanis, and most were arrested within three months of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The report found that immigrants arrested in New York City and housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn faced "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" from some guards and "unduly harsh" detention policies. Eight-four inmates there held in terrorism investigations were subjected to 23-hour "lockdown," the report found.

Immigration officials sometimes did not notify prisoners of the formal charges against them for more than a month, a break from their stated goal of 72 hours, the report said. The delays hindered the prisoners' ability to understand why they were being held, get lawyers and request a bond hearing.

In addition, investigators found that the FBI moved slowly to determine whether a suspect was in fact linked to terrorism. While very few suspects have been linked to terrorist suspicions, it took the FBI an average of 80 days to clear prisoners for removal.

Civil rights groups said they hoped the report would pressure the Justice Department to change its procedures.

"Immigrants weren't the enemy," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "But the war on terror quickly became a war on immigrants. The inspector general's findings confirm our long-held view that civil liberties and the rights of immigrants were trampled in the aftermath of 9/11." The New York Times

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Edited by author 06-17-2003 07:39 PM
Inmates Released from Guantánamo Tell Tales of Despair
By CARLOTTA GALL with NEIL A. LEWIS New York Times June 16, 2003
KABUL, Afghanistan, June 16 — Afghans and Pakistanis who were detained for many months by the American military at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba before being released without charges are describing the conditions as so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves.

According to accounts in the last three months from some of the 32 Afghans and three Pakistanis in the weeks since their release, it was above all the uncertainty of their fate, combined with confinement in very small cells, sometimes only with Arabic speakers, that caused inmates to attempt suicide. One Pakistani interviewed this month said he tried to kill himself four times in 18 months.

An Afghan prisoner who spent 14 months at the camp, at the American naval base at Guantánamo, described in April what he called the uncertainty and fear. "Some were saying this is a prison for 150 years," said Suleiman Shah, 30, a former Taliban fighter from Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan.

None of those interviewed complained of physical mistreatment. But the men said that for the first few months, they were kept in small wire-mesh cells, about 6 1/2 feet by 8 feet , in blocks of 10 or 20. The cells were covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides to the elements.

"We slept, ate, prayed and went to the toilet in that small space," Mr. Shah said. Each man had two blankets and a prayer mat and slept and ate on the ground, he said.

The prisoners were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower. "After four and a half months we complained and people stopped eating, so they said we could shower for five minutes and exercise once a week," Mr. Shah said. After that, he said, prisoners got to exercise for 10 minutes a week, walking around the inside of a cage 30 feet long.

In interviews at their homes, weeks after being released, he and the freed Pakistani detainee talked of what they said was the overwhelming feeling of injustice among the approximately 680 men detained indefinitely at Guantánamo Bay.

"I was trying to kill myself," said Shah Muhammad, 20, a Pakistani who was captured in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, handed over to American soldiers and flown to Guantánamo in January 2002. "I tried four times, because I was disgusted with my life.

"It is against Islam to commit suicide," he continued, "but it was very difficult to live there. A lot of people did it. They treated me as guilty, but I was innocent."

In the 18 months since the detention camp opened, there have been 28 suicide attempts by 18 individuals, with most of those attempts made this year, Capt. Warren Neary, a spokesman at the detention camp, said today. None of the prisoners have killed themselves, but one man has suffered severe brain damage, according to his lawyer.

The prisoners come from more than 40 countries, and include more than 50 Pakistanis, about 150 Saudis and three teenagers under 16, a majority of them captured in Afghanistan, said Dr. Najeef bin Mohamad Ahmed al-Nauimi, a former justice minister in Qatar, who is representing nearly 100 of the detainees.

Dr. Nauimi represents many of the Saudis, and American lawyers represent about 14 prisoners from Kuwait. There are also 83 Yemenis, he said, and a sprinkling of others, including Canadians, Britons, Algerians and Australians, and one Swede.

Since January 2002, at least 32 Afghan prisoners and three Pakistanis have been released from Guantánamo Bay. Five Saudis were recently handed over to the Saudi authorities. Yasser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi, was moved from the camp to a military brig in Norfolk, Va., in April 2002. Captain Neary said 41 people had been released in all, but he could not give a more exact description.

At the same time, the military is preparing to place about 10 of the prisoners before a military tribunal soon, officials said this month.

Mr. Muhammad, who spent 18 months in Cuba before his release, said that "when they first took us there they would not let us talk, or stand or walk around the cell.

"At the beginning it was very hard to bear," he added. "There was no call to prayer, and there was no shade. In the afternoon the sun came in from the side."

Under the current routine, a majority of the prisoners remain in their cells but for two 15-minute periods a week, in which they walk around the cage and take a shower. In addition, the call to prayer is played over the prison's loudspeakers five times a day, according to Capt. Youseff Yee, the Muslim chaplain who oversees the religious needs of the Guantánamo prisoners.

Conditions improved after the first few months, and prisoners were moved to newly built cells with running water and a bed, Mr. Shah said. Interrogation was sporadic and it varied in length and intensity. Sometimes they were questioned after 10 days, or 20 days, and then not for several months, prisoners said.

But it was the uncertainty and fear that they would be there forever that drove many of them to despair, prisoners said.

"All of the people were worried about how long we would be there for," Mr. Shah said. "People were becoming mad because they were saying: `When will they release us? They should take us to the high court.' Many stopped eating."

One Taliban fighter from the southern province of Helmand, who only uses one name, Rustam, said in May that he was driven to trying to hang himself because he was in a block of Arabs and Uzbeks he described as "crazy."

"There were some very strange people, they were hitting their heads on the wall, insulting the soldiers, and that is why I hated it," said Rustam, who is 22, in an interview in an Afghan prison in Kabul. "I think they were really crazy people, and that's why I kept asking to be taken out for questioning."

When he tried to hang himself, Rustam said, the guards found him quickly. "They untied me and said `Don't do this,' " he said. "They gave me medicine, but it was no good. They put me under supervision and moved me to another place."

Mr. Muhammad, one of three Pakistani prisoners to be released at the end of April, said he first tried to hang himself because for months on end he was surrounded by Arabs and could not speak their language.

"It was difficult not talking to anyone for so long," he said. "It was because of the jail. They put me in a block full of Arabs, they were only letting us out for a very short time, and it was very difficult. I could feel myself going down."

After 11 months in the prison camp, he tied his bedsheet to a ceiling wire and hanged himself from it at 4 o'clock one afternoon. "I don't know what happened," he said. "They took me to the hospital. I was unconscious for two days."

Only after that suicide attempt, Mr. Muhammad said, did his American keepers tell him that he was only being held for questioning, and that one day he would go home. Tranquilizers were prescribed, he said, but he stopped taking the tablets after a while and attempted suicide again.

Then the doctors gave Mr. Muhammad a powerful injection that he said left him unable to control his head or his mouth or eat properly for weeks. Although he refused to have the injection, the military medical personnel gave it to him by force, he said. He made two further attempts to kill himself that he said were more protest actions at the conditions.

"We needed more blankets, but they would not listen," he said. "And I kept asking them to take me to the Afghan and Pakistani side. All the time I was with Arabs. I did not speak my own language for months." Mr. Muhammad also threatened to kill himself again if he was given another injection. He remained on tablets until his release, he said.

American officials have confirmed that one prisoner who tried to commit suicide remains in the prison hospital with severe brain damage. Dr. Nauimi said the prisoner was Mish al-Hahrbi, a Saudi schoolteacher. He said that the teacher became desperate over not knowing what his future held and that he tried to hang himself. The teacher was resuscitated but is unlikely to recover from a severe hemorrhage, the lawyer said.

Back home with time to ponder their ordeal, the former prisoners now want to demand compensation.

"The Americans said if anyone is innocent, they will get compensation," Mr. Muhammad said. "They held me for 18 months, and so they should give me compensation. They told me I was innocent, but they did not apologize."

Human rights organizations have raised concerns about the conditions at Guantánamo Bay and the unclear legal status of the detainees. The American military has refused to consider them prisoners of war, even though a majority were captured on the battlefield, and does not allow them access to lawyers. No charges have yet been brought against any of the detainees, some of whom have been there for 18 months.

Concerned about their prolonged detention without trial or clear legal status, the head of the International Red Cross, which visits the detainees, urged the Bush administration last month to start legal proceedings for the hundreds of detainees and to institute a number of changes in conditions at the camp.

Cmdr. Brian Grady, the staff psychiatrist at the camp's medical facility, said in a recent interview that most prisoners suffering from depression brought their symptoms with them to Cuba.

"I don't know what the effects of this particular confinement are," he said. "I'd be hesitant to comment." Officials at Guantánamo have generally dismissed the notion that the confinement and uncertainty about the future are specifically to blame.

"I would not particularly say these circumstances are a factor," Commander Grady said.

But Jamie Fellner, director of the United States program for Human Rights Watch, said in an interview that that was highly implausible.

"These conditions of confinement by themselves over a prolonged period are enormously psychologically stressful," she said. "Added to that is the uncertainty as to the future."

Ms. Fellner added that her group had not found any credible reports of physical abuse and that it had investigated several accounts of beatings and such that turned out to be unfounded.

Hospital officials said that about 5 percent of the inmates were suffering from depression and that they were being treated with antidepressants, typically Zoloft.

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'Saddam' strike shows US desperation
By Paul Reynolds BBC News Online world affairs correspondent BBC News June 23, 2003
The reported American attack on a convoy thought to be carrying Saddam Hussein and/or his sons last week would have been legal only if there was substantial evidence indicating their presence, according to Amnesty International.
But if there had just been a hope and there was the risk of killing innocent civilians instead, then it would not be justified, said Amnesty International's Legal Director Claudio Cordone.

Mr Cordone told BBC News Online: "If the convoy really involved Saddam Hussein or other military leaders, it would have been a legitimate target. The war has not ended. President Bush announced the end of 'major combat operations' only. The laws of war still apply.

"But the point is that you have to take all precautions. You are allowed to attack a military target even if civilians are there. But you have to use the principle of proportionality and weigh the value of the target against the risk to civilians. And you have to show that you checked that the target was a military one.

"If Saddam was known to be there, the target would probably have been legitimate, whoever else was. It is a difficult calculation. If you are in doubt, you are required to hold back under the precautionary principle."

Mr Cordone drew a distinction between this reported incident and others, in which lethal force might not be justified.

"There is a difference between this kind of incident and firing on crowds of demonstrators. In situations where you are already in control, you have to use methods of policing not of combat," he said.

Legal definitions

The relevant article of international law is Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Convention 1977.

Article 51 says: "The civilian population shall not be the subject of attack."

Article 57 deals with the precautions which have to be taken. The attackers "should do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects."

The United States has not ratified the additional protocol, but Mr Cordone said that international law regarded the protocol as binding in the custom and conduct of war.

US desperate and determined

The reported convoy attack shows that the United States is becoming increasingly desperate, and determined, in its search for Saddam Hussein.

It badly needs a success right now. American soldiers are being killed. No weapons of mass destruction have been found. Iraq is recovering only slowly.

Hence the risk the Americans were willing to take. The intelligence linking Saddam and Uday and Qusay Hussein to the convoy is thought to have been based on a monitored satellite telephone call.

The possibility of killing totally innocent people must have been taken into account. The prize of getting Saddam Hussein or one of his once powerful sons, it seems, was worth the price others might pay.

A DNA investigation of human remains is said to be under way.

Need for transparency

The unit in charge of the search for Saddam, Task Force 20, is said to have DNA samples of a number of former Iraqi leaders. Establishing the identity of their bodies would not be difficult in that case.

But convincing the world that Saddam was dead would require describing in detail how those samples were acquired and how the matching DNA was examined.

The legacy of doubt left by the intelligence failure on the WMD issue would have to be overcome.

King Abdullah of Jordan compared the sightings of Saddam, who may or may not be dead, to those of someone who is: "It's like Elvis," he told ABC television. "You're getting so many stories, left, right and centre."

But Saddam unaccounted for is a threat.

Which is why Task Force 20 was set up.

It has two main elements. There are intelligence officials from the CIA and the National Security Agency which is the US government's electronic eavesdropping organisation.

Added to them are US special forces who can call on heavy firepower. The attack on the convoy is variously said to have been carried out by an unmanned Predator drone firing a Hellfire missile or a giant AC-130 gunship.

Third attempt

Whatever aircraft was used, this was at least the third specific attack aimed at Saddam Hussein from the air.

The first came on 20 March, just before the war started, when a farm was attacked in the hope that Saddam would be killed and war averted.

Then on 7 April, with Baghdad about to fall, a building where Saddam was thought to be eating was bombed.

The best break for Task Force 20 has been the recent arrest of one of Saddam's closest aides, his secretary and bodyguard, Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti.

He has reportedly told his American interrogators that Saddam Hussein and his sons survived the war.

He has further said that he himself went to Syria with Uday and Qusay Hussein but that they had to return to Iraq after being expelled.

That would fit in with reports at the time that Syria was an intended place of refuge for the Iraqi leadership, despite traditional hostility between the two regimes.

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Britain blasts US on inmates
By Annabel Crabb, Canberra The Age July 09, 2003
As a row erupted between Britain and the United States over proposed military trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees, Prime Minister John Howard yesterday backed Washington, saying the Federal Government was satisfied with arrangements for Australian detainee David Hicks.

But Australian lawyers expressed alarm at the proposed seven-member tribunal system under which Hicks, of Adelaide, is to be tried.

The tribunal is required to have just one member with legal training, the rules of evidence do not apply and Hicks will have no right to confer privately with his lawyers or appeal if found guilty.

According to a military briefing on the US Department of Defence website, there are also no guarantees that Hicks will be released if he is found not guilty.

The Law Council of Australia said its secretary-general, Michael Lavarch, was preparing a submission to Attorney-General Daryl Williams expressing concern that Australians being tried in the US were not being accorded rights comparable to those of Americans.

But Mr Howard said he had been advised by Mr Williams that the proposed treatment of Hicks was satisfactory, as he was being accorded the presumption of innocence and would be granted access to lawyers.

"(The Americans) regard these people as enemy combatants," Mr Howard said. "I mean, bear in mind, the claim is - and he acknowledges it - that he trained with al-Qaeda."

Joe Margulies, an American lawyer representing Hicks and other suspects, told the ABC that the US had not yet indicated the nature of charges against his client. "I certainly don't know, as a fact, that David participated in any of this training," he said.

In London, The Guardian yesterday quoted British Foreign Office Minister Chris Mullin expressing "strong reservations" about what would happen to two British citizens, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi, who are among the six Guantanamo Bay detainees bound for military trials. "If there is any question at all that the death penalty may be sought in these cases, we would raise the strongest possible objections," Mr Mullin said.

Conservatives in Britain's Parliament also criticised the US stance. Former defence minister Nicholas Soames said: "All America's friends, while understanding the very difficult and sensitive issues that surround these matters, nevertheless regret deeply the harm that is being done to America's cause by their behaviour in this matter."

Mr Williams was not available for an interview yesterday. But a spokeswoman, referring to the suggestion that Hicks might not be released if found not guilty, said: "As Mr Hicks has not been charged as yet, we are not going to speculate on what might happen should he be charged and then subsequently found to be innocent or guilty."

The spokeswoman told The Age this week that the death penalty issue had been a major part of the Australian Government's negotiations with the US. "Our expectation is that Mr Hicks or (fellow Australian detainee Mamdouh) Habib would not... be sentenced to death," she said.

It is believed that Canberra has been assured by the US that Australians will be treated like other non-American citizens facing military tribunals. This would mean that any concessions Britain was able to elicit for its citizens would flow to Hicks.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw formally complained about the process to US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the weekend, but Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has no plans to follow suit. "We believe the process will be fair and transparent," his spokesman said yesterday.

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Edited by author 07-09-2003 10:49 PM
The September 11 Detainees:
A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks
 Office of the Inspector General June 2003
For Immediate Release
Contact: Paul K. Martin (202) 514-3435

June 2, 2003 (Washington, D.C.) - Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice, today issued a report examining the treatment of aliens held on immigration charges in connection with the investigation of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Department of Justice (Department) used federal immigration laws to detain aliens in the United States who were suspected of having ties to the attacks or connections to terrorism, or who were encountered during the course of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) investigation into the attacks. In the 11 months after the attacks, 762 aliens were detained in connection with the FBI terrorism investigation for various immigration offenses, including overstaying their visas and entering the country illegally.

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) examined the treatment of these detainees, including their processing, bond decisions related to them, the timing of their removal from the United States or their release from custody, their access to counsel, and their conditions of confinement. The OIG's 198-page report focuses, in particular, on detainees held at the Federal Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York, and at the Passaic County Jail (Passaic) in Paterson, New Jersey, a county facility under contract with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to house federal immigration detainees. We chose these two facilities because they held the majority of September 11 detainees and also were the focus of many complaints of detainee mistreatment.

"While our review recognized the enormous challenges and difficult circumstances confronting the Department in responding to the terrorist attacks, we found significant problems in the way the detainees were handled," said Inspector General Fine.

Among the specific findings in the OIG's report:

Arrest, Charging & Assignment to a Detention Facility:

· The FBI in New York City made little attempt to distinguish between aliens who were subjects of the FBI terrorism investigation (called "PENTTBOM") and those encountered coincidentally to a PENTTBOM lead. The OIG report concluded that, even in the chaotic aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the FBI should have expended more effort attempting to distinguish between aliens who it actually suspected of having a connection to terrorism from those aliens who, while possibly guilty of violating federal immigration law, had no connection to terrorism but simply were encountered in connection with a PENTTBOM lead. [Chapter 4]

· The INS did not consistently serve the September 11 detainees with notice of the charges under which they were being held within the INS's stated goal of 72 hours. The review found that some detainees did not receive these charging documents (called a "Notice to Appear" or NTA) for more than a month after being arrested. This delay affected the detainees' ability to understand why they were being held, obtain legal counsel, and request a bond hearing. [Chapter 3]

· Aliens arrested in the New York City area generally were confined at the MDC, Passaic, or at another INS contract facility in northern New Jersey. While the INS made the ultimate decision where to house the September 11 detainees, it relied primarily on the FBI's assessment of the detainees' possible links to terrorism. FBI agents generally made this assessment without any guidance, and based on the limited information available at the time of the aliens' arrests. Where a September 11 detainee was housed had significant ramifications on the detainee's detention experiences, because a detainee held at the MDC experienced much more restrictive confinement conditions than those held at Passaic. [Chapter 2]

· The Department instituted a policy that all aliens in whom the FBI had an interest in connection with the PENTTBOM investigation required clearance by the FBI of any connection to terrorism before they could be removed or released. Although not communicated in writing, this "hold until cleared" policy was clearly understood and applied throughout the Department. The policy was based on the belief - which turned out to be erroneous - that the FBI's clearance process would proceed quickly. FBI agents responsible for clearance investigations often were assigned other duties and were not able to focus on the detainee cases. The result was that detainees remained in custody - many in extremely restrictive conditions of confinement - for weeks and months with no clearance investigations being conducted. The OIG review found that, instead of taking a few days as anticipated, the FBI clearance process took an average of 80 days, primarily because it was understaffed and not given sufficient priority by the FBI. [Chapter 4]

Bond and Removal Issues

· The Department instituted a "no bond" policy for all September 11 detainees as part of its effort to keep the detainees confined until the FBI could complete its clearance investigations. The OIG review found that the INS raised concerns about this blanket "no bond" policy, particularly when it became clear that the FBI's clearance process was much slower than anticipated and the INS had little information in many individual cases on which to base its continued opposition to bond in immigration hearings. INS officials also were concerned about continuing to hold detainees while the FBI conducted clearance investigations where detainees had received a final removal or voluntary departure order. The OIG review found that the INS and the Department did not timely address conflicting interpretations of federal immigration law about detaining aliens with final orders of removal who wanted and were able to leave the country, but who had not been cleared by the FBI. [Chapter 5]

· In January 2002, when the FBI brought the issue of the extent of the INS's detention authority to the Department's attention, the Department abruptly changed its position as to whether the INS should continue to hold aliens after they had received a final departure or removal order until the FBI had completed the clearance process. After this time, the Department allowed the INS to remove aliens with final orders without FBI clearance. In addition, in many cases the INS failed to review the detainees' custody determination as required by federal regulations. [Chapter 6]

The FBI's initial assessment of the September 11 detainees' possible connections to terrorism and the slow pace of the clearance process had significant ramifications on the detainees' conditions of confinement. Our review found that 84 September 11 detainees were housed at the MDC in Brooklyn under highly restrictive conditions. These conditions included "lock down" for at least 23 hours per day; escort procedures that included a "4-man hold" with handcuffs, leg irons, and heavy chains any time the detainees were moved outside their cells; and a limit of one legal telephone call per week and one social call per month.

Among the OIG review's findings regarding the treatment of detainees held at the MDC and Passaic are:

Conditions of Confinement

· BOP officials imposed a communications blackout for September 11 detainees immediately after the terrorist attacks that lasted several weeks. After the blackout period ended, the MDC's designation of the September 11 detainees as "Witness Security" inmates frustrated efforts by detainees' attorneys, families, and even law enforcement officials, to determine where the detainees were being held. We found that MDC staff frequently - and mistakenly - told people who inquired about a specific September 11 detainee that the detainee was not held at the facility when, in fact, the opposite was true. [Chapter 7]

· The MDC's restrictive and inconsistent policies on telephone access for detainees prevented some detainees from obtaining legal counsel in a timely manner. Most of the September 11 detainees did not have legal representation prior to their detention at the MDC. Consequently, the policy developed by the MDC that permitted detainees one legal call per week - while complying with broad BOP national standards - severely limited the detainees' ability to obtain and consult with legal counsel. In addition, we found that in many instances MDC staff did not ask detainees if they wanted their one legal call each week. We also found that the list of pro bono attorneys provided to the detainees contained inaccurate and outdated information. [Chapter 7]

· With regard to allegations of abuse at the MDC, the evidence indicates a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by some correctional officers at the MDC against some September 11 detainees, particularly during the first months after the attacks and during intake and movement of prisoners. Although the allegations of abuse have been declined for criminal prosecution, the OIG is continuing to investigate these matters administratively. [Chapter 7]

· The OIG review found that certain conditions of confinement at the MDC were unduly harsh, such as subjecting the September 11 detainees to having two lights illuminated in their cells 24 hours a day for several months longer than necessary, even after electricians rewired the cellblock to allow the lights to be turned off individually. We also found that MDC staff failed to inform MDC detainees in a timely manner about the process for filing formal complaints about their treatment. [Chapter 7]

· By contrast, the OIG review found that the detainees confined at Passaic had much different, and significantly less harsh, experiences than the MDC detainees. According to INS data, Passaic housed 400 September 11 detainees from the date of the terrorist attacks through May 30, 2002, the largest number of September 11 detainees held at any single U.S. detention facility. Passaic detainees housed in the general population were treated like "regular" INS detainees who also were held at the facility. Although we received some allegations of physical and verbal abuse, we did not find the evidence indicated a pattern of abuse at Passaic. However, the INS did not conduct sufficient and regular visits to Passaic to ensure the September 11 detainees' conditions of confinement were appropriate. [Chapter 8]

"The Justice Department faced enormous challenges as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and its employees worked with dedication to meet these challenges," Fine said. "The findings of our review should in no way diminish their work. However, while the chaotic situation and the uncertainties surrounding the detainees' connections to terrorism explain some of the problems we found in our review, they do not explain them all," Fine said.

In Chapter 9 of the report, the OIG offers 21 recommendations dealing with issues such as the need to develop uniform arrest and detainee classification policies, methods to improve information sharing among federal agencies on detainee issues, improving the FBI clearance process, clarifying procedures for processing detainee cases, revising BOP procedures for confining aliens arrested on immigration charges who are suspected of having ties to terrorism, and improving oversight of detainees housed in contract facilities.

The OIG completed its report on April 29, 2003, after which time it underwent an extensive review process within the Department, the FBI, and other Department components prior to its public release. Today, the Inspector General is releasing the OIG's full report with only a few words or phrases that contain specific identifying information "redacted" (blacked out) because they are considered Law Enforcement Sensitive by the Department and the FBI.

The full report is available on the OIG's website as a .pdf document at "http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/03-06/full.pdf" or under "Special Reports."

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