🙂
|
Use the black navigation bar to log in or create your account. |
rsine69
Citizen
Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 380
Karma: 13 (+14/-1)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
Prisoners Captured on Battlefields, Pulled From Beds, Grabbed Off Streets
By PATRICK QUINN, AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Sept. 18) - In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The U.S. government has contended it can hold detainees until the "war on terror" ends -- as it determines.
Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.
"It was hard to believe I'd get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release, without charge, last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell."
Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.
Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.
Defenders of the system, which has only grown since soldiers' photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked the world, say it's an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action.
Every U.S. detainee in Iraq "is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations in Iraq.
But dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human rights activists, lawyers and scholars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.
Building for the Long Term
Reports of extreme physical and mental abuse, symbolized by the notorious Abu Ghraib prison photos of 2004, have abated as the Pentagon has rejected torture-like treatment of the inmates. Most recently, on Sept. 6, the Pentagon issued a new interrogation manual banning forced nakedness, hooding, stress positions and other abusive techniques.
The same day, President Bush said the CIA's secret outposts in the prison network had been emptied, and 14 terror suspects from them sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to face trial in military tribunals. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the tribunal system, however, and the White House and Congress are now wrestling over the legal structure of such trials.
Living conditions for detainees may be improving as well. The U.S. military cites the toilets of Bagram, Afghanistan: In a cavernous old building at that air base, hundreds of detainees in their communal cages now have indoor plumbing and privacy screens, instead of exposed chamber pots.
Whatever the progress, small or significant, grim realities persist.
Human rights groups count dozens of detainee deaths for which no one has been punished or that were never explained. The secret prisons _ unknown in number and location _ remain available for future detainees. The new manual banning torture doesn't cover CIA interrogators. And thousands of people still languish in a limbo, deprived of one of common law's oldest rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are imprisoned.
"If you, God forbid, are an innocent Afghan who gets sold down the river by some warlord rival, you can end up at Bagram and you have absolutely no way of clearing your name," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch in New York. "You can't have a lawyer present evidence, or do anything organized to get yourself out of there."
The U.S. government has contended it can hold detainees until the "war on terror" ends _ as it determines.
"I don't think we've gotten to the question of how long," said retired admiral John D. Hutson, former top lawyer for the U.S. Navy. "When we get up to 'forever,' I think it will be tested" in court, he said.
The Navy is planning long-term at Guantanamo. This fall it expects to open a new, $30-million maximum-security wing at its prison complex there, a concrete-and-steel structure replacing more temporary camps.
In Iraq, Army jailers are a step ahead. Last month they opened a $60-million, state-of-the-art detention center at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad's airport. The Army oversees about 13,000 prisoners in Iraq at Cropper, Camp Bucca in the southern desert, and Fort Suse in the Kurdish north.
Neither prisoners of war nor criminal defendants, they are just "security detainees" held "for imperative reasons of security," spokesman Curry said, using language from an annex to a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the U.S. presence here.
Questions of Law, Sovereignty
President Bush laid out the U.S. position in a speech Sept. 6.
"These are enemy combatants who are waging war on our nation," he said. "We have a right under the laws of war, and we have an obligation to the American people, to detain these enemies and stop them from rejoining the battle."
But others say there's no need to hold these thousands outside of the rules for prisoners of war established by the Geneva Conventions.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared last March that the extent of arbitrary detention here is "not consistent with provisions of international law governing internment on imperative reasons of security."
Meanwhile, officials of Nouri al-Maliki's 4-month-old Iraqi government say the U.S. detention system violates Iraq's national rights.
"As long as sovereignty has transferred to Iraqi hands, the Americans have no right to detain any Iraqi person," said Fadhil al-Sharaa, an aide to the prime minister. "The detention should be conducted only with the permission of the Iraqi judiciary."
At the Justice Ministry, Deputy Minister Busho Ibrahim told AP it has been "a daily request" that the detainees be brought under Iraqi authority.
There's no guarantee the Americans' 13,000 detainees would fare better under control of the Iraqi government, which U.N. officials say holds 15,000 prisoners.
But little has changed because of these requests. When the Americans formally turned over Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi control on Sept. 2, it was empty but its 3,000 prisoners remained in U.S. custody, shifted to Camp Cropper.
Life in Custody
The cases of U.S.-detained Iraqis are reviewed by a committee of U.S. military and Iraqi government officials. The panel recommends criminal charges against some, release for others. As of Sept. 9, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq had put 1,445 on trial, convicting 1,252. In the last week of August, for example, 38 were sentenced on charges ranging from illegal weapons possession to murder, for the shooting of a U.S. Marine.
Almost 18,700 have been released since June 2004, the U.S. command says, not including many more who were held and then freed by local military units and never shipped to major prisons.
Some who were released, no longer considered a threat, later joined or rejoined the insurgency.
The review process is too slow, say U.N. officials. Until they are released, often families don't know where their men are -- the prisoners are usually men -- or even whether they're in American hands.
Ex-detainee Mouayad Yasin Hassan, 31, seized in April 2004 as a suspected Sunni Muslim insurgent, said he wasn't allowed to obtain a lawyer or contact his family during 13 months at Abu Ghraib and Bucca, where he was interrogated incessantly. When he asked why he was in prison, he said, the answer was, "We keep you for security reasons."
Another released prisoner, Waleed Abdul Karim, 26, recounted how his guards would wield their absolute authority.
"Tell us about the ones who attack Americans in your neighborhood," he quoted an interrogator as saying, "or I will keep you in prison for another 50 years."
As with others, Karim's confinement may simply have strengthened support for the anti-U.S. resistance. "I will hate Americans for the rest of my life," he said.
As bleak and hidden as the Iraq lockups are, the Afghan situation is even less known. Accounts of abuse and deaths emerged in 2002-2004, but if Abu Ghraib-like photos from Bagram exist, none have leaked out. The U.S. military is believed holding about 500 detainees -- most Afghans, but also apparently Arabs, Pakistanis and Central Asians.
The United States plans to cede control of its Afghan detainees by early next year, five years after invading Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaida's base and bring down the Taliban government. Meanwhile, the prisoners of Bagram exist in a legal vacuum like that elsewhere in the U.S. detention network.
"There's been a silence about Bagram, and much less political discussion about it," said Richard Bennett, chief U.N. human rights officer in Afghanistan.
Freed detainees tell how in cages of 16 inmates they are forbidden to speak to each other. They wear the same orange jumpsuits and shaven heads as the terrorist suspects at Guantanamo, but lack even the scant legal rights granted inmates at that Cuba base. In some cases, they have been held without charge for three to four years, rights workers say.
Guantanamo received its first prisoners from Afghanistan -- chained, wearing blacked-out goggles -- in January 2002. A total of 770 detainees were sent there. Its population today of Afghans, Arabs and others, stands at 455.
Described as the most dangerous of America's "war on terror" prisoners, only 10 of the Guantanamo inmates have been charged with crimes. Charges are expected against 14 other al-Qaida suspects flown in to Guantanamo from secret prisons on Sept. 4.
Plans for their trials are on hold, however, because of a Supreme Court ruling in June against the Bush administration's plan for military tribunals.
The court held the tribunals were not authorized by the U.S. Congress and violated the Geneva Conventions by abrogating prisoners' rights. In a sometimes contentious debate, the White House and Congress are trying to agree on a new, acceptable trial plan.
Since the court decision, and after four years of confusing claims that terrorist suspects were so-called "unlawful combatants" unprotected by international law, the Bush administration has taken steps recognizing that the Geneva Conventions' legal and human rights do extend to imprisoned al-Qaida militants. At the same time, however, the new White House proposal on tribunals retains such controversial features as denying defendants access to some evidence against them.
In his Sept. 6 speech, Bush acknowledged for the first time the existence of the CIA's secret prisons, believed established at military bases or safehouses in such places as Egypt, Indonesia and eastern Europe. That network, uncovered by journalists, had been condemned by U.N. authorities and investigated by the Council of Europe.
The clandestine jails are now empty, Bush announced, but will remain a future option for CIA detentions and interrogation.
Louise Arbour, U.N. human rights chief, is urging Bush to abolish the CIA prisons altogether, as ripe for "abusive conduct." The CIA's techniques for extracting information from prisoners still remain secret, she noted.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government's willingness to resort to "extraordinary rendition," transferring suspects to other nations where they might be tortured, appears unchanged.
CONTINUED
|
9/18/2006, 2:05 pm
|
Link to this post
PM rsine69
|
rsine69
Citizen
Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 380
Karma: 13 (+14/-1)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
Re: U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
PART 2
Prosecutions and Memories
The exposure of sadistic abuse, torture and death at Abu Ghraib two years ago touched off a flood of courts-martial of mostly lower-ranking U.S. soldiers. Overall, about 800 investigations of alleged detainee mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to action against more than 250 service personnel, including 89 convicted at courts-martial, U.S. diplomats told the United Nations in May.
Critics protest that penalties have been too soft and too little has been done, particularly in tracing inhumane interrogation methods from the far-flung islands of the overseas prison system back to policies set by high-ranking officials.
In only 14 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings of detainees, the New York-based Human Rights First reports. The stiffest sentence in a torture-related death has been five months in jail. The group reported last February that in almost half of 98 detainee deaths, the cause was either never announced or reported as undetermined.
Looking back, the United States overreacted in its treatment of detainees after Sept. 11, said Anne-Marie Slaughter, a noted American scholar of international law.
It was understandable, the Princeton University dean said, but now "we have to restore a balance between security and rights that is consistent with who we are and consistent with our security needs."
Otherwise, she said, "history will look back and say that we took a dangerous and deeply wrong turn."
Back here in Baghdad, at the Alawi bus station, a gritty, noisy hub far from the meeting rooms of Washington and Geneva, women gather with fading hopes whenever a new prisoner release is announced.
As she watched one recent day for a bus from distant Camp Bucca, one mother wept and told her story.
"The Americans arrested my son, my brother and his friend," said Zahraa Alyat, 42. "The Americans arrested them October 16, 2005. They left together and I don't know anything about them."
The bus pulled up. A few dozen men stepped off, some blindfolded, some bound, none with any luggage, none with familiar faces.
As the distraught women straggled away once more, one ex-prisoner, 18-year-old Bilal Kadhim Muhssin, spotted U.S. troops nearby.
"Americans," he muttered in fear. "Oh, my God, don't say that name," and he bolted for a city bus, and freedom.
|
9/18/2006, 2:09 pm
|
Link to this post
PM rsine69
|
Lesigner Girl
Minerva
Head of Runboard staff
Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 9607
Karma: 132 (+147/-15)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
Re: U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
The U.S. government has contended it can hold detainees until the "war on terror" ends -- as it determines.
Yeah, and that will happen when the "war on drugs" ends. There will always be drug dealers, there will always be terrorists, and there will always be people pointing fingers at innocent people calling them terrorists. So I guess their statement means those people -- many of them completely innocent of any wrongdoing -- will die in those prisons.
Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.
I'll revise my statement... most of them completely innocent of any wrongdoing.
But dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human rights activists, lawyers and scholars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.
This has been my position for as long as I can remember. If the class bully continues to beat up on the little guy, the little guy is going to learn self defense and eventually kick the bully's ass. What I don't understand is how people have continued to believe that this arbitrary war is helping the situation, when in reality it only makes things worse for all sides. We kill their men, women and children, they get rightfully pissed, and they join forces against us to protect their friends, family, and neighbors. How can anyone not understand this?
"I don't think we've gotten to the question of how long," said retired admiral John D. Hutson, former top lawyer for the U.S. Navy.
Haven't officials been saying "six months" for several years now?
"These are enemy combatants who are waging war on our nation," he said. "We have a right under the laws of war, and we have an obligation to the American people, to detain these enemies and stop them from rejoining the battle."
Our government waged war on them long before 9/11. We had no right then, and we have no right now. Also, how can anyone "rejoin" the battle if they've never joined in the first place? Apparently, 70-90% of these detainees are innocent.
|
9/19/2006, 3:38 am
|
Link to this post
PM Lesigner Girl
Read Blog
|
praying4patience
I can't reason, so I pick fights.
Registered: 03-2006
Posts: 113
Karma: -5 (+1/-6)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
Re: U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
Apparently, 70-90% of these detainees are innocent.
everyone in prison is innocent.
Do you really want these ppl to come to the United States and be given the benefits of the same rights as a citizen of the United States?
GB!~
p4p
|
10/6/2006, 4:37 am
|
Link to this post
PM praying4patience
Read Blog
|
Lesigner Girl
Minerva
Head of Runboard staff
Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 9607
Karma: 132 (+147/-15)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
Re: U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
Did you even read that article? Considering you made that post 3 minutes after your previous post (worse yet, that was post #4 out of 6 in a row, which all averaged 2 1/4 minutes apart), I would say that's highly unlikely.
We're not talking about the average person in our prison system where authorities are actually expected to have evidence before arresting someone. We are talking about war prisons and detention camps, where people are held for years and tortured for information that they don't even have, simply because they made an overseas phone call to their mother, or happened to sell a backpack to someone without realizing their customer was a suspect (probably also for no good reason). These people are abducted out of their cars, their homes, and off the sidewalks with no real evidence against them, and without due process, and yes, most of them are innocent.
I would recommend you read Baghdad Burning sometime, but I'm sure you'd spend just as much time reading that as you did this article.
Last revised by Lesigner Girl, 10/6/2006, 5:59 am
|
10/6/2006, 5:27 am
|
Link to this post
PM Lesigner Girl
Read Blog
|
praying4patience
I can't reason, so I pick fights.
Registered: 03-2006
Posts: 113
Karma: -5 (+1/-6)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
Re: U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
yep read it. But ppl in prison often say they're innocent.I don't doubt it happpens,but 70 to 90%?Do you think that percentage might be a little high?
How is this determined?
I also went to read Baghdad Burning.I used to read the Baghdad Blogger Salam Pax before the war.
This is a blog from Iraq i prefer to read;
Healing Iraq
It's a little different pov.But yes,i do read these posts. Sometimes will read several times-other times just a quick scim to get the gyst.
GB!~
p4p
|
10/7/2006, 5:50 am
|
Link to this post
PM praying4patience
Read Blog
|
Lesigner Girl
Minerva
Head of Runboard staff
Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 9607
Karma: 132 (+147/-15)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
Re: U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
Please don't take this the wrong way, but yes, I did get the definite impression that you do a lot of skimming. Unfortunately, this can lead to misunderstanding things, such as thinking a payment for board premium is good for a year when they go by page views, not time periods.
It reminds me of some of the customers at the store where I work, who don't take the time to read our sale signs. Sure, they see the price on those signs, but they'll grab pretzels when the sign clearly says salsa, or they don't read the 1/2 inch letters that tell them there's a limit of 2. I once had a customer who threw a fit because his 3(ish) pounds of chicken rang up at about $3, and he thought it was going to cost 99¢. But he was being charged 99¢ — per pound, which is exactly what the sale sign said.
You (and others) really need to slow down and read things, and not just skim over them. It can save you and others a lot of aggravation, plus it can save you money.
Sorry to go off topic, but the whole purpose of this forum is to share information and ideas and try to get to the truth about things. But you can't get to the truth if you don't take the time and effort required to do so.
That said, I'm glad you visit blogs like Baghdad Burning and Healing Iraq. Do you recall Riverbend's story entitled "The Raid"? It's an excellent description of the horrors they go through every day under our occupation.
Back to the original topic of US war prisons, I don't know if 70-90% is an accurate figure or not. It might be, or it might be an off-handed exaggeration of the fact that a lot of innocent people are thrown into those prisons and tortured for no good reason. Do I find 70-90% to be within the realm of possibility? Yes, I do, unfortunately.
|
10/7/2006, 6:27 am
|
Link to this post
PM Lesigner Girl
Read Blog
|
praying4patience
I can't reason, so I pick fights.
Registered: 03-2006
Posts: 113
Karma: -5 (+1/-6)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
Re: U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
i read the info about prem board but by the time the credits ran out i had forgotten about it.
but yes, I did get the definite impression that you do a lot of skimming.
sometimes.But not always LG.
if i do read and the reply seems to indicate a misunderstanding i'll go back and re read to see if there's something that went through the filter the wrong way. lol On the other hand ppl try to commuicate as best as possible on these message boards,but we don't always get across the pov we are really trying to convey.Even intent can be taken the wrong way. I've had ppl think i was angry when i wasn't and vice versa.
Ppl suffered in Iraq long before our occupation.Ppl are suffering in Iraq now more from secterian violence than from anything our occupation is doing to them.The militants and radicals cease and desist-we'll leave.
The Iraqi's are able to take over the responsibility.We'll leave.The United States has never been an occupying power. We helped win WWII and we left. We defeated Japan-we left.
And we helped each of these countries rebuild and reconciled with each of them.We're on good terms with Germany and Japan. I think it's unfair to see the United States with designs of occupation.Maybe the Iraqi's are skeptical and i certainly don't blame them.We have never been in a war where we had designs on property or governance. Maybe if Syria and Iran weren't sending in ppl to destabalize the situation and ppl like Sadr weren't permitted free reign the situation would improve.I hope we do leave in the next 2 yrs,but it doesn't help to demoralize our troops and forget the sacrfice they're making.I saw this happen in VietNam.Maybe it was a horrid unwinnable war,but even after the war when our demoralized troops came home they got spit in the face.We honored the men (and women)who came back from WII but that was a generation that understood patriotism,sacrifice,service to country and something larger than oneself.
Do they resent us being there? I'm sure they do.We would if were in their shoes.We'll leave though LG.
It's a shame about the prison abuse at Abu Gharib(sp).
Thank God someone had the courage to expose it.
Overall though our armed forces are very disciplined and conduct themselves very well.
Their record speaks for itself and the military will be the first to scrutinize what happened to insure it doesn't happen again-or at least make it less possible. Nobody is condoning what happened,but i really take exception to ppl making it sound like it's intrinsic to the military and is common across the board.
GB!~
p4p
|
10/7/2006, 6:24 pm
|
Link to this post
PM praying4patience
Read Blog
|
rsine69
Citizen
Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 380
Karma: 13 (+14/-1)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
Re: U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
QUOTE..."The United States has never been an occupying power."
Tell that to the native american indian.
|
10/7/2006, 10:20 pm
|
Link to this post
PM rsine69
|
Lesigner Girl
Minerva
Head of Runboard staff
Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 9607
Karma: 132 (+147/-15)
|
ReplyQuote
|
|
Re: U.S. War Prisons Become Legal Vacuum for 14,000
The United States has never been an occupying power.
Tell that to the native american indian.
Yeah, somehow I don't think they would believe that comment.
i read the info about prem board but by the time the credits ran out i had forgotten about it.
That makes sense.
Even intent can be taken the wrong way. I've had ppl think i was angry when i wasn't and vice versa.
Yeah, I've seen misunderstandings like that quite a few times.
Ppl suffered in Iraq long before our occupation.
Before our occupation, they were suffering from our sanction bombings, as well as from Hussein. But as terrible as he was to them, I guess he managed to keep the peace better than we have. Is that it?
The militants and radicals cease and desist-we'll leave.
But as long as we're there, innocent people keep getting killed in their attempts to get us to leave, not to mention the number of innocent people we keep killing.
We'll leave.The United States has never been an occupying power. We helped win WWII and we left. We defeated Japan-we left.
We had different reasons for engaging in war, as well as different leadership.
I hope we do leave in the next 2 yrs,but it doesn't help to demoralize our troops and forget the sacrfice they're making.I saw this happen in VietNam.Maybe it was a horrid unwinnable war,but even after the war when our demoralized troops came home they got spit in the face.
I hope we leave sooner.
I hope people don't start spitting in our troops' faces like they did to Vietnam vets. I think most of them believe they are doing the right thing by enlisting and going over there, whether they think they're helping the "war on terror" or helping the Iraqi people. While I don't agree that they should be over there, I don't blame the people who are risking their lives and trying to help.
I never could understand why people treated the Vietnam vets the way they did. A lot of them were drafted and didn't have the choice, but were treated like crap when they came back from that hell anyway.
Do they resent us being there? I'm sure they do.We would if were in their shoes.We'll leave though LG.
They have good reason not to trust us, since we've been dropping bombs on their heads since the first gulf war, and I'm sure reconstruction would go a lot smoother if someone they trust were to take our place.
Their record speaks for itself and the military will be the first to scrutinize what happened to insure it doesn't happen again-or at least make it less possible. Nobody is condoning what happened,but i really take exception to ppl making it sound like it's intrinsic to the military and is common across the board.
But that's the thing, I really do think the higher ups have not only condoned abuse at places like Abu Ghreib, but handed down the orders to do everything in their power to get information out of the inmates, regardless of the laws, and a few of them had a little too much fun with it.
|
10/8/2006, 7:00 am
|
Link to this post
PM Lesigner Girl
Read Blog
|
Add to this discussion
You are not logged in ( login)
|