Category Archives: Torture

Human Rights First today issued Command’s Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in US Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report examines how many detainees have died in U.S. custody, including the circumstances of their deaths, and the consequences (or lack thereof) for those involved. The report identifies systemic problems surrounding these deaths, notably inadequate training and guidance, command interference, an egregious failures in investigation and prosecute.

Since August 2002, nearly 100 detainees have died while in the hands of U.S. officials in the global ‘war on terror’. According to the U.S. military’s own classifications, 34 of these cases are suspected or confirmed homicides; Human Rights First has identified another 11 in which the facts suggest death as a result of physical abuse or harsh conditions of detention. In close to half the deaths Human Rights First surveyed, the cause of death remains officially undetermined or unannounced. Overall, eight people in U.S. custody were tortured to death.

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Among our key findings:

• Commanders have failed to report deaths of detainees in the custody of their command, reported the deaths only after a period of days and sometimes weeks, or actively interfered in efforts to pursue investigations;

• Investigators have failed to interview key witnesses, collect useable evidence, or maintain evidence that could be used for any subsequent prosecution;

• Record keeping has been inadequate, further undermining chances for effective investigation or appropriate prosecution;

• Overlapping criminal and administrative investigations have compromised chances for accountability;

• Overbroad classification of information and other investigation restrictions have left CIA and Special Forces essentially immune from accountability;

• Agencies have failed to disclose critical information, including the cause or circumstance of death, in close to half the cases examined;

• Effective punishment has been too little and too late.

Command Responsibility is the military doctrine that a “military commander has complete and overall responsibility for all activities within his unit. He alone is responsible for everything his unit does or does not do.” This command responsibility does not, however, extend to criminal responsibility unless the commander knowingly participates in the criminal acts of his men or knowingly fails to intervene and prevent the criminal acts of his men when he had the ability to do so.

In the case of the mistreatment of prisoners, the evidence is mounting of direction from the top, followed by coverup. Meanwhile, the greatest punishment meted out to date to any of soldiers who have been prosecuted is….five months in prison.

(If I’m right that this report does not cover either Guantanamo or secret CIA prisons outside Iraq and Afghanistan, then there are likely more deaths waiting to be entered on the ledger.)

Further to yesterday’s item on Alberto Mora, here are links to Jane Mayer’s article in The New Yorker (these links tend to be perishable), and to the full text of the Mora memo. The Mayer article gives great detail of Mora’s heroic, but unsuccessful, attempts to prevent Cheney’s retainers from dragging us into the muck.

One of the most amazing revelations from the Mayer story is that Mora was part of a working group of DoD lawyers who objected to the torture policy; they were thus removed from the loop. While they thought their objections had stopped the policy going forward, in fact a report approving it was issued in the name of the working group they had been cut out of.

Legal critics within the Administration had been allowed to think that they were engaged in a meaningful process; but their deliberations appeared to have been largely an academic exercise, or, worse, a charade. “It seems that there was a two-track program here,” said Martin Lederman, a former lawyer with the Office of Legal Counsel, who is now a visiting professor at Georgetown. “Otherwise, why would they share the final working-group report with Hill and Miller but not with the lawyers who were its ostensible authors?”

But read the whole Mayer article. Yes, it’s amazing how bad things have gotten. Even so, I refuse to be amazed that good people stood up against it — I’ll just be proud.

Yesterday I quoted from what purports to be a transcript of a debate John Yoo took part in on Dec. 1, organized by the Chicago Foreign Relations Committee, and linked to what purports to be a recording of the talk. The opinions expressed are so crazed that I said, “Let us pray this is a fake.” And I meant it.

Perhaps that prayer is being answered. Or perhaps not. I’ve now heard — but only second hand — from an attendee that in fact no such comments were made at the talk. But this debunking is not, I gather, for attribution. So I don’t know what is going on.

More info if and as soon as I get it.

Leaked fax ‘shows Romania helped CIA interrogators’:

An Egyptian government fax intercepted by Swiss intelligence offers the first “real evidence” that the US interrogated suspected terrorists at secret prisons in Eastern Europe, European politicians said yesterday.

The highly-classified fax, purportedly sent late last year by Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, to its embassy in London, was leaked to a Swiss newspaper on Sunday.

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Egypt has not confirmed the authenticity of the fax. But MEPs described it as “a hugely significant step” when angry Swiss authorities confirmed the leak was based on a communication intercepted by a top secret surveillance system, known as Onyx.

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The Romanian defence ministry “categorically” denied the content of the latest leaked Egyptian fax. According to Swiss media, the fax went on: “There are similar interrogation centres in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and in Bulgaria.”

Via the King of Zembla:

Witness the following exchange, from a Dec. 1 debate between [UC Berkeley Professor John Yoo] and Doug Cassel, posted at Revolution Online:

CASSEL: If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?

YOO: No treaty.

CASSEL: Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo…

YOO: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

(If you doubt the authenticity of the exchange above, as you must if you are sane, streaming audio may be heard heard here; a longer version, including a six-minute Q&A session, is here.)

Let us pray this is a fake. [UPDATE 1/11/06: It might be.] Meanwhile, seems like a question to ask Alito. Surely he wouldn’t say this was something likely to come before the Court? Would he?