Legal and Humane Frameworks for Opposing Torture

April 23, 2012

Torture on Trial: Legal and Humane Frameworks for Opposing Torture

by David Swanson Published in a May / Jun 2012 Humanist http://thehumanist.org/may-june-2012/torture-on-trial-legal-and-humane-frameworks-for-opposing-torture/

Cases come in by a thousands from all over a world. A male was beaten and whipped. A lady was beaten and raped. A child was hooded with 3 dull silt bags in 100-degree feverishness all day, starved, beaten, and kept in highlight positions. Alleged suicide victims had their hands tied behind their backs, had boot prints on their heads, or incited out to have been electrocuted. There are woe victims lonesome with cigarette burns, and woe victims with no visible injuries. They need a consultant assistance of doctors and lawyers to heal, to win asylum, and to emanate any arrange of accountability in courts of law.

I’ve participated in countless pacifist protests of torture, including congressional lobbying, panels and seminars, online petition writing, bird-dogging of politicians and judges and professors. I’ve met victims and told their stories and reviewed their books. But we had never spent a day with a crowd of lawyers and doctors who bargain with a medical and court struggles outset out of woe cases, not until I attended a contention in Feb during American University in Washington, DC, entitled “Forensic Evidence in a Fight Against Torture.”

The doctors, lawyers, and others attending and vocalization during a contention were from the United States and many other countries. It was not mislaid on them that they were addressing something conflicting from a “natural” disaster. In their open comments and private discussions we found concept agreement that woe has gained dramatically greater, world-wide open acceptance during a past decade, and that a United States has been the personality in constrained that larger acceptance. While Juan Mendez, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, forked his finger during Hollywood cinema and TV shows in that harsh interrogation techniques attain in assisting crime solvers, several experts exclusively told me that by extenuation legal immunity to torturers, a United States has led by example.

It competence be tough to remember that a small decade ago torture was roughly zodiacally cursed here, and had been almost zodiacally cursed in a Western universe for centuries (racist exceptions for labour excluded). By 2004, 43 percent of U.S. respondents to a Pew Research Center survey were observant that woe was mostly or sometimes justified to benefit pivotal information. By 2009, 49 percent said so. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that public support for woe increasing in a United States from 27 percent in 2004 to 42 percent in 2010. AP-GfK polling found U.S. open support for woe during 38 percent in 2005, increasing to 52 percent by 2009.

That was a multitude I left behind as we entered a contention bedrooms of AU’s Washington College of Law to join an general gathering of professionals who still noticed woe as a immorality it had been counsel by a authors of a Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, that enclosed an comprehensive anathema on “cruel and surprising punishment.”

In extended historical terms, many forms of assault are being separated or are diminishing significantly in frequency, in a United States and abroad. But a flipside of noticing that there is nothing “inevitable” or “natural” about cannibalism or infanticide or a blazing of witches, or—for that matter—fist fights, spanking, child abuse, wedding abuse, or cruelty to animals, is that trends divided from such practices can simply be reversed. We competence be vital through such a annulment on torture.

Some of a woe cases discussed during a contention concerned U.S. victims; many did not. Some concerned governments that accept support from the United States, such as that of Bahrain. So a United States is incompetent to disciple conflicting woe from a persuasive position to governments it opposes, not only because of a possess control though also since of a conduct of governments it supports, including a governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. This problem was reliable for me by various contention attendees, including U.S. government grant recipients and some sovereign employees.

Our government helps account support of woe victims, both through a Office of Refugee Resettlement and by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), both of which emanate grants to support a victims of woe by any government other than a United States. The United Nations, partially saved by a United States, provides grants without that limitation. we spoke with participants during the conference who worked during centers in a United States helping woe victims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Fiji, and other countries. There is a National Consortium of Torture Treatment Programs that was holding a possess meetings in DC around a same time. While these groups were new to me, we had worked in a past with the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition, an organization that seems to overpass a opening between treating victims and addressing a base problem of torture acceptance by domestic mobilization.

Examination of how particular cases of woe are being addressed suggests another trend of new years. Even as woe has been gaining acceptance, a nonprofit formidable of diagnosis centers and non-governmental organizations has been building the tools with that to some-more expertly diagnose, document, and testify on torture, and to support a victims. While in the United States best-selling books by former boss George W. Bush and former clamp boss Dick Cheney contain passages in that both plainly acknowledge to sanctioning the waterboarding prisoners, countless other nations have been codifying a procedures of a “Istanbul Protocol: Manual on a Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,” published by a United Nations in 2004. This conference, in fact, was a perfection of a three-year project saved by a European Union.

While both of these trends—the acceptance of woe and a growth of a professional complement of response to it—lead to greater public recognition of torture, they have conflicting effects in terms of a volume of woe that occurs. It’s not clear whether woe is on a arise or is disappearing in practice, but we listened during a contention many stories of systematic state woe and clever support thereof, and many stories of support supposing to victims including assisting them to obtain asylum. we didn’t hear any stories of tip government officials being reason severely accountable for torture.

The probable disproportion to that order is Hosni Mubarak, a former boss of Egypt dismissed by nonviolent criticism in 2011. Speaking during a conference, Mostafa Hussein of a El Nadim Center for Psychological Treatment and Rehabilitation in Egypt told a story of Khaled Mohamed Saeed, a immature male who was beaten to genocide by Egyptian tip military in Jun 2010. The military lied about the means of death, though photos of their victim’s horribly disfigured remains went viral online, and open pressure grew. Experts from a International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) constructed a report. (The IRCT was a unite of a contention we attended.) Eventually two low-ranking military officers were given seven-year prison sentences, an outcome widely seen as deficient after decades of evenly torturing thousands. Saeed was seen as a martyr, and a ensuing snub was channeled into a transformation that took over Tahrir Square in Cairo in January 2011 and gathering Mubarak out of power. Protesters painted Saeed’s mural on a wall of a Ministry of the Interior.

But Hussein told me that a public prosecutor hasn’t changed, and persecution hasn’t been dismantled. Although activists entered a Ministry of the Interior in Mar 2011, he said, they brought divided really few documents, destroying many more. Omar Suleiman, a former head of Egyptian intelligence, is out of bureau and being sued by an Australian who says Suleiman oversaw his torture in Egypt on interest of a United States before to shipping him to a U.S. apprehension stay during Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Suleiman is also indicted of carrying achieved a pivotal service for a United States by torturing Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi until he pronounced that Saddam Hussein was tied to al Qaeda, a statement al-Libi after recanted and that conflicts absurdly with a facts. Will Suleiman be brought to justice? Mostafa Hussein wasn’t holding his breath. “Only a faces have changed,” he pronounced of a new Egyptian government.

After Tunisia and Egypt, a Arab Spring of 2011 emerged in a little Persian Gulf republic of Bahrain, a dependency of a United States and Saudi Arabia, and a pier where a U.S. Navy keeps a Fifth Fleet. Bahrain has hired U.S. military arch John Timoney, who made his name by infiltrating and brutalizing nonviolent protesters in Miami and Philadelphia, to lead a crackdown on protesters in Bahrain. On a weekend of a conference on woe in DC, U.S. friends and allies of cave were being tear-gassed, beaten, and arrested in a streets of Bahrain. Speaking during a contention was Dr. Ala’a Shehabi, a British-born Bahraini polite rights activist, economist, writer, and a first member of a Bahrain Rehabilitation and Anti-Violence Organization (BRAVO) determined in January 2012.

Shehabi pronounced that, according to a Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry determined by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, 3,000 protesters have been arrested in the past year, 500 of whom are still in prison. 4,500 people have mislaid jobs. There has been systemic extreme force and torture, with over sixty documented deaths, according to Shehabi. The commission’s news finds that woe has been used evenly as a counsel supervision policy both for constrained confessions and for atonement and punishment. The news also found a enlightenment of parole and recommended prosecutions. But, pronounced Shehabi, there hasn’t been a singular conviction, and woe continues, including at a National Security Agency, a groundwork of that the commissioners were not available to enter. The judicial system in Bahrain still allows forced confessions as evidence and dismisses all allegations of torture.

A forensic alloy from Turkey, operative for a IRCT, also attended a conference. She had constructed consultant opinions on torture cases in Bahrain that disproved claims finished by the government, that customarily blames a deaths and scars of torture on responses to “resisting arrest.” This is dangerous work in Bahrain, where doctors and lawyers who try to assistance are themselves targeted. Thus far, fifty doctors have been prosecuted for treating protesters. Some doctors, having mislaid their jobs and been tortured themselves, are helping out during a reconstruction center. However, Bahraini doctors are not authorised to study, be protected in, or practice debate medicine. That’s a pursuit for the government. Not one clergyman has been found peaceful and able to assist. And usually a handful of lawyers are putting up a invulnerability for those charged with crimes for nonviolent demonstrations.

The male sitting subsequent to me during the discussion of Bahrain incited out to be Mohammed Isa Al-Tajer, a counsel now representing over 150 protesters in Bahrain. He was himself detained for three and a half months, tortured, and kept in solitary confinement final year. When he was arrested on Apr 15, 2011, a supervision also seized his computers, documents, mobile phones, and bureau keys, compromising his clients’ confidentiality. He still faces charges.

At a conclusion of a contention of all-too-similar woe practices in Mexico and Zimbabwe, someone asked about a value of offering trainings for military in a mandate of the Istanbul Protocol. Exactly 0 people in a room expressed a faith that such trainings would have most value in these countries. One chairman voiced a opinion that it would be of larger value to get these nations to sanction a optional protocol to a Convention Against Torture, that would allow monitoring of inquire sites. Others responded to this with accounts of tip sites and even ad hoc torture sites, that in Zimbabwe have even enclosed hospitals. Several people sexually announced that a usually thing that would indeed work to stop a woe would be to end impunity and reason people accountable, generally the most absolute individuals. Ala’a Shehabi pronounced that what was indispensable was elemental bureaucratic change from dictatorship to democracy.

Of course, a supervision can call itself a democracy while treating woe as a legal policy option. On a Monday following a conference, the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, filed a statute conflicting a postulant seeking asylum who claimed that he would expected be tortured if sent back to India. Regardless of a merits of that ruling, it was finished by Judge Jay Bybee, who had been allocated to his position by President George W. Bush after obediently signing off on memos legitimizing woe in a U.S. Department of Justice.

The haven routine was a major topic during a conference. Doctors and lawyers from Germany, New Zealand, and a United States described their experiences providing consultant reports and testimony for asylum seekers. Roger Haines from New Zealand provided evidence that consultant debate reports detailing ingested substances, lesions found on a body, bone fissures or fractures indicating blunt force trauma, and so onward can make a disproportion in receiving asylum. He also remarkable that an expectancy has now grown that weighs against applicants lacking such reports. One instance he cited was a case from Canada motionless conflicting a applicant by the Convention Against Torture cabinet in 2010. This male had been arrested and tortured in 1995 in Uzbekistan, Haines said. He fled to a United Arab Emirates and afterwards to Germany, where his ask for haven was rejected. He tried to find haven in Norway, regulating a fake name, and was rejected. He afterwards attempted Canada in Sep 2001 and was rejected “on credit grounds.” Canada forked out that he had no medical news from Uzbekistan. The CAT committee also deserted his claim, indicating out that he had no medical news from 1995 in Uzbekistan or from 2001 in Canada. Haines forked out that torturers don’t usually provide medical reports with their services and that a report from 6 years after competence not have shown anything at all.

The law is that many woe victims don’t have visible injuries. Mental injuries can be examined by experts, whose testimony can during slightest advise a likelihood that someone has been tortured or not. Their testimony can also support judges and officials in bargain why torture victims competence have problem coherently retelling their whole experience.

Mendez, a U.N. Special Rapporteur, described woe as prevalent and widespread: ”Some time ago we guess extermination was around the corner.” But, he added, no one thinks that now. Instead, he pronounced it will take most some-more work and imagination to eradicate it. Mendez afterwards proceeded to disagree for an inclusive clarification of a actions to be abolished. In Mendez’s view, unique capture and genocide quarrel (for any period of time) accommodate a threshold of both “cruel, inhuman, or spiritless treatment” and torture, both of which are illegal. The United States has tens of thousands of people in unique confinement, and still allows the death penalty. Mendez believes unique capture for over fifteen days should be positively forbidden. (Incidentally, following a contention Mendez rigourously indicted a U.S. government of cruel, inhumane, and spiritless treatment towards Bradley Manning, a U.S. infantryman who was reason in solitary capture for roughly a year on guess of being a vital source for WikiLeaks.)

Mendez argued for greater educational efforts by debate scientists. ”In daily life,” he said, “we speak about woe though the details. But it is a sum that make a disproportion to our moral sense.” He also due debate scholarship as an alternative to oppressive inquire in a charge of solving crimes, a dignified and authorised though also some-more effective alternative. That competence be a doctrine that even Hollywood is learning to accept as it proliferates crime-solving dramas with debate scientist heroes.

Mendez deserted a notion that woe can work. Of course, some confessions will be true, he said, though others won’t be, either in the imaginary ticking time-bomb unfolding or otherwise. Meanwhile, he added, societies compensate a complicated cost for engaging in torture, deleterious innocents and their families but also a institutions that do a torturing.

Let me end on something of a certain note.

It comes from the remarks of Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers in a UK. He has acted in poignant new tellurian rights cases in the UK, including those of Al Skeini, Al-Jedda, and that of Rose Gentle, who sued Prime Minister Tony Blair for a genocide of her son as a infantryman in Iraq. Shiner represents a family of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi male kicked and beaten to genocide while in British control in 2003. The UK, Shiner explained, has done all in Iraq that a United States has, including hooding prisoners. But a UK legal system allows woe cases to be brought to court.

Shiner and his colleagues argued that hooding qualifies as cruel, inhumane, or spiritless treatment, that it had been criminialized by the Ministry of Defense, and that all such policies of modern scar-free woe (hooding, highlight positions, and deprivation of food, water, or sleep) had been criminialized by the UK in 1972. But British infantry were hooding Iraqis, including Baha Mousa, with mixed silt bags in extreme heat for many hours. In Baha Mousa’s box and each other case known, Shiner said, a hooding was total with other exacerbating factors formulating medical risk. In this case, as well, a IRCT helped out with a matter indicating to numerous medical risks from hooding, including asphyxia and heat-related problems. Hooding also distances a torturer and thereby exacerbates torture, creates marker of the torturer by a plant some-more difficult, and spreads as a practice when photos are released, as in a box of the images of U.S. Army woe from Abu Ghraib jail brought to open courtesy in 2004.

So, because was hooding standard practice in Iraq? Shiner answered his possess question: The invasion was illegal. It was an advance along with the United States. The United States does not respect international law. And annals were not being kept.

Shiner and his colleagues compelled a supervision of a UK to hold an endless exploration on a box of Baha Mousa, which released a news in Sep 2011. On Oct 3, 2011, the High Court ruled on another box brought by Shiner, that of Alaa’ Nassif Jassim al-Bazzouni. The justice ruled that hooding is always cruel, inhumane, or spiritless treatment. Shiner welcomed a decision, observant it means no UK forces anywhere competence be compared with hooding and that any UK troop who thinks another state is hooding is compulsory to report it.

I discussed a Baha Mousa box with a Professor Vivienne Nathanson, who was attending the conference from a British Medical Association. She pointed out that a alloy and a clergyman had witnessed hooding and beating though had finished nothing, and that a news had recommended prosecution. “Sins of repudiation need to be prosecuted,” she said, as a day’s meetings wrapped up and a universe went about a business.

Video of the conference is during http://www.wcl.american.edu/secle/video.cfm.

Reports and other materials are posted during http://auw.cl/sp12fet.

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David Swanson is a author of War Is A Lie and Daybreak: Undoing a Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.

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