Ex-Prisoners Allege Rights Abuses by U.S. Military

["Alain St-Amour" <alainstamour@xxxxxxxx>]

http://tinyurl.com/kilz

Ex-Prisoners Allege Rights Abuses by U.S. Military
By Tania Branigan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Prisoners released from the military camps at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram 
air base in Afghanistan have said in a series of interviews with Amnesty 
International that they were subjected to human rights abuses.

The accounts, which provide some of the most detailed information so far on 
alleged violations, include claims that people were forcibly injected, denied 
sleep and forced to stand or kneel for hours in painful positions. These 
charges are included in a new report from the human rights organization, which 
is reviewing 23 months of U.S. actions in the war on terror.

Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to 
comment yesterday, saying he had not seen the report. NSC spokesmen have 
challenged previous claims of ill treatment, saying that the United States 
treats enemy combatants humanely.

About 700 prisoners have been kept at Guantanamo Bay, most captured in 
Afghanistan after the war in 2001. About 60 men have since been released. Many 
had been transferred there through the base at Bagram, north of Kabul, which 
still holds an unknown number of prisoners. The United States has designated 
the prisoners "enemy combatants" and has refused them access to lawyers or 
relatives. Earlier this year, it scheduled six detainees to face military 
tribunals, but three of those prosecutions have been suspended pending the 
completion of negotiations with the defendants' governments in Britain and 
Australia.

The report, "Threat of a Bad Example," concludes that conditions at the bases 
may be coercive in the context of repeated interrogations and calls for the 
Bush administration to treat detainees humanely, provide legal counsel and 
charge them promptly with recognizable criminal offenses -- or release them.

In the report, one Afghan detainee, Alif Khan, recalled being given two 
injections, producing "a kind of unconsciousness," for his transfer from Bagram.

Another, Sayed Abassin, said that while at Bagram, he was awakened by guards, 
denied adequate food and forced to stand or kneel for hours.

A third man, Muhammad Naim Farooq, said fellow detainees at Guantanamo had wept 
because of pain from handcuffs. He also said that two men who had attempted 
suicide were punished with solitary confinement.

"These interviews with former prisoners are damning and add to the poor record 
of the Bush administration with regard to human rights over the past 23 
months," said Alexandra Arriaga, director of government relations for Amnesty 
International USA.

"The record is shameful: hooding, blindfolding and shackling of prisoners, 
together with arbitrary arrests, prolonged incommunicado detention, ill 
treatment and interrogations without legal counsel," she said.

After several months of controversy over tactics in dealing with prisoners, the 
Bush administration pledged two months ago that the United States would not 
torture terrorism suspects or subject them to cruel, inhumane or degrading 
treatment or punishment to extract information.

Arriaga said it was impossible to independently judge conditions at the camps, 
as the organization had been denied entry.

Allegations of serious mistreatment have centered on Bagram. In interviews with 
The Washington Post last year, members of the U.S. national security apparatus 
said "stress and duress" techniques had been used there.

Concern for detainees mounted earlier this year when pathologists at Bagram 
called the deaths of two Afghan prisoners after interrogation homicides and 
blamed blunt-force injuries in addition to other causes. The U.S. military is 
still investigating the deaths.

Jamie Fellner, U.S. program director for Human Rights Watch, said it has been 
"extremely difficult to know" if the United States is treating people humanely 
during interrogations. "No one has been allowed to talk to detainees. These 
[accounts] are the beginning of the first insight into their experiences," she 
said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11440-2003Aug18?language=printer