[Media-watch] politicians knew about torture

[Sigi D]

Dear Media Watch friends,
an article in the 'International Herald Tribune
online' from March 2003 described clearly how
prisoners were being treated by American and other
interrogators:
"Routine techniques include covering suspects' heads
with black hoods for hours at a time and forcing them
to stand or kneel in uncomfortable positions in
extreme cold or heat, American and other officials
familiar with interrogations said. In some cases,
American officials said, women are used as
interrogators to try to humiliate men unaccustomed to
dealing with women in positions of authority."
Enclosed the article. 
So politicians knew what was going on. 
Best, have a nice weekend
Sigi
http://www.iht.com/articles/89194.html
A dark jail for Qaeda suspects 
Don Van Natta/NYT New York Times 
Monday, March 10, 2003 Captives are deprived of sleep
and sometimes chilled
 
CAIRO This article was reported by Raymond Bonner, Don
Van Natta Jr. and Amy Waldman and written by Van
Natta. The New York Times
The capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed provides the
American authorities with their best opportunity yet
to prevent attacks by Al Qaeda and track down Osama
bin Laden. But the detention also presents a tactical
and moral challenge when it comes to the interrogation
techniques used to obtain vital information.
Senior American officials said physical torture would
not be used against Mohammed, regarded as the
operations chief of Al Qaeda and mastermind of the
Sept. 11 attacks.
They said his interrogation would rely on what they
consider acceptable techniques like sleep and light
deprivation and the temporary withholding of food,
water, access to sunlight and medical attention.
American officials acknowledged that such techniques
were recently applied as part of the interrogation of
Abu Zubaydah, the highest-ranking Al Qaeda operative
in custody until the capture of Mohammed on March 1.
Painkillers were withheld from Zubaydah, who was shot
several times during his capture.
But the urgency of obtaining information about
potential attacks and the opaque nature of the way
interrogations are carried out can blur the line
between accepted and unaccepted actions, several
American officials said.
Routine techniques include covering suspects' heads
with black hoods for hours at a time and forcing them
to stand or kneel in uncomfortable positions in
extreme cold or heat, American and other officials
familiar with interrogations said. Questioners may
also feign friendship and respect to elicit
information.
In some cases, American officials said, women are used
as interrogators to try to humiliate men unaccustomed
to dealing with women in positions of authority.
Interrogations of important Al Qaeda operatives like
Mohammed occur at isolated locations intentionally
outside the jurisdiction of American law. Some places
have been kept secret, but American officials
acknowledged that the CIA has interrogation centers at
the U.S. air base at Bagram in Afghanistan and at a
base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Al Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi Binalshibh, a
suspect in the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks, were
initially taken to a secret CIA installation in
Thailand but have since been moved, American officials
said.
Intelligence officials also acknowledged that some
suspects had been turned over to security services in
countries known to employ torture. There have also
been isolated, if persistent, reports of beatings in
some American-operated centers. American military
officials in Afghanistan are investigating the deaths
of two prisoners at Bagram in December.
American officials have guarded the interrogation
results. But George Tenet, the director of central
intelligence, said in December that suspects
interrogated overseas had produced important
information.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld have said that American techniques
adhere to international accords that ban the use of
torture and that "all appropriate measures" are
employed in interrogations.
Rights advocates and lawyers for prisoners' rights
have accused the United States of quietly embracing
torture as an acceptable means of getting information
in the global anti-terrorism campaign.
"They don't have a policy on torture," said Holly
Burkhalter, the U.S. director of Physicians for Human
Rights, one of five groups pressing the Pentagon for
assurances that detainees are not being tortured.
"There is no specific policy that eschews torture."
Critics also assert that transferring Al Qaeda
suspects to countries where torture is believed to be
common - like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia -
violates American law and the 1984 international
convention against torture, which bans such transfers.
Some American and other officials subscribe to a view,
held by a number of outside experts, that physical
coercion is largely ineffective. The officials say the
most effective interrogation methods involve a mix of
psychological disorientation, physical deprivation and
ingratiating acts, all of which can take weeks or
months.
"Pain alone will often make people numb and
unresponsive," said Magnus Ranstorp, deputy director
of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political
Violence at St. Andrews University in Scotland. "You
have to engage people to get into their minds and
learn what is there."
About 3,000 Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects have been
detained since the autumn of 2001. Some have since
been freed. The largest known group, about 650, is
being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. American officials
said the detainees at Guantanamo and similar
military-run centers were not regarded as having
valuable information.
Senior Al Qaeda members, however, are interrogated by
specially trained CIA officers and interpreters. FBI
agents submit questions but do not generally take
part, American officials said.
Omar Faruq, a confidant of bin Laden's and one of Al
Qaeda's senior operatives in Southeast Asia, was
captured last June by Indonesian agents acting on a
tip from the CIA. Agents familiar with the case said a
black hood was dropped over his head and he was loaded
onto a CIA aircraft.
When he arrived at his destination several hours
later, the hood was removed. On the wall in front of
him were the seals of the New York City Police and
Fire Departments, a Western official said.
It was, said a former senior CIA officer who took part
in similar sessions, a mind game called false flag,
intended to leave the captive disoriented, isolated
and vulnerable. Sometimes the decor is faked to make
it seem as though the suspect has been taken to a
country with a reputation for brutal interrogation.
In this case, officials said, Faruq was in the CIA
interrogation center at the Bagram air base. American
officials were convinced that he knew a lot about
pending attacks and the Al Qaeda network in Southeast
Asia, which bin Laden sent him to set up in 1998. The
details of the interrogation are unknown, though one
intelligence official briefed on the sessions said
Faruq initially had provided useless scraps of
information.
What is known is that the questioning was prolonged,
extending day and night for weeks. It is likely,
experts say, that the proceedings followed a pattern,
with Faruq left naked most of the time, his hands and
feet bound. While international law requires prisoners
to be allowed eight hours' sleep a day, interrogators
do not necessarily let them sleep for eight
consecutive hours.
Faruq may also have been hooked up to sensors, then
asked questions to which interrogators knew the
answers, so they could gauge his truthfulness,
officials said.
The Western intelligence official described Faruq's
interrogation as "not quite torture, but about as
close as you can get."
Over a three-month period, the official said, the
suspect was fed very little, while being subjected to
sleep and light deprivation, prolonged isolation and
room temperatures that varied from 100 degrees to 10
degrees Fahrenheit (38 to -12 centigrade). In the end
he began to cooperate.
Faruq began to tell of plans to drive explosives-laden
trucks into American diplomatic centers. A day later,
embassies in Indonesia and more than a dozen other
countries in Southeast Asia were closed, officials
said. He also provided detailed information about
people involved in those operations and other plots,
writing out lengthy descriptions. He held out longer
than Zubaydah, who American officials said began to
cooperate after two months of interrogation.
Breaking Mohammed may prove tougher because he is a
hardened veteran, experts said.
The secret CIA center at Bagram where Faruq probably
remains is near the two-story detention center where
lower-level suspects are being held. Both sites are
off limits, even to most military personnel. The only
descriptions of life inside have come from released
detainees.
American officials at the base say that all detainees
are treated according to international law and are
held under humane conditions. Still, the Americans
expressed reluctance to describe details of the
conditions because, as Colonel Roger King, spokesman
for the American-led force in Afghanistan, put it:
"Every detail we give you about how we run the
facility provides information to the enemy about how
to be more successful in resisting if captured."
But he did provide some information that both
complemented and contradicted the descriptions given
by former detainees.
In a typical prison, where punishment is the aim,
routine governs life. At Bagram, where eliciting
information is the goal, the opposite is true.
Disorientation is a tool of interrogation and
therefore a way of life. To that end, the building -
an unremarkable hangar - is lighted 24 hours a day,
making sleep almost impossible, said Mohammed Shah, an
Afghan farmer who was held there for 18 days.
King said it was legitimate to use lights, noise and
vision restriction, and to alter, without warning, the
time between meals, to blur a detainee's sense of
time. He said sleep deprivation was "probably within
the lexicon."
Prisoners are watched, moved and, according to some,
manhandled by military police officials. Most
detainees live on the hangar's bottom floor, a large
area divided with wire mesh into group cells holding 8
to 10 prisoners each. Some are kept on the top floor
in isolation cells.
Former detainees have given disparate accounts of
their treatment, with the harshest tales, predictably,
emerging from the isolation cells. Those who have
probably been subjected to the most thorough
interrogations, and the greatest duress, have probably
not been released.
King said that an American military pathologist had
determined that the deaths of two prisoners in
December were homicides and that the circumstances
were still under investigation.
Two former prisoners said they had been forced to
stand with their hands chained to the ceiling and
their feet shackled in the isolation cells. One said
he was kept naked except when he was taken to
interrogation room or the bathroom. Shah, who was
never in an isolation cell, said neither his hands nor
feet were ever tied, but that he had seen prisoners
with chains around their ankles.
King said that the building was heated and that the
prisoners were fed a balanced diet under which most
gained weight. Shah said he had received plentiful
food - bread, biscuits, rice and meat - three times a
day. The center holds fewer than 100 people, so
detainees are regularly released or transported
elsewhere to make room for more. Most probably spend
two to three months there, King said.
Shah said his interrogators used the threat of moving
him to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to try to force
cooperation, warning him conditions there would not be
as pleasant. In the prison there, U.S. military
officials said, the population, now relatively steady
at about 650, was sorted into varying categories of
dangerousness, a change from the early days when
prisoners were treated equally, each isolated in an
individual cell.
This month the military command opened a new
medium-security section called Camp Four where
selected prisoners live in dormitory-style housing,
congregate, shower regularly, play board games and are
able to write more frequent letters to family members.
About 20 prisoners moved in last week, and when
construction is completed as many as 200 prisoners
could be housed there.
Still, there are signs of deep psychological distress
among the prison population. There have been 20
reported suicide attempts involving the prisoners, an
extraordinarily high number compared with other prison
populations, said Dr. Terry Kupers, an Oakland
psychiatrist who is an authority on mental health in
prisons. Another suicide attempt took place Friday,
The Associated Press reported Sunday.
Except for those promoted to Camp Four, the regime for
most prisoners has been isolation in single cells.
They are permitted out of the cells twice a week, for
15 minutes each time, to shower and exercise in the
yard. They are not permitted to speak to others.
Lieutenant Commander Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon
spokeswoman, said guards were trained to recognize
signs of deep depression and had managed to prevent
any suicides.
Far less is known about the conditions for the
suspected Al Qaeda members who have been turned over
to other governments, either after the United States
finished with them or as part of the interrogation
procedure. Even the numbers and locations are a
mystery. American and foreign intelligence officials
have acknowledged that suspects have been sent to
Jordan, Syria and Egypt. In addition, Moroccan
intelligence officials have questioned suspects and
shared information with their American counterparts.
In one case in Morocco, lawyers for three Saudis and
seven Moroccans accused of plotting to blow up
American and British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar
last summer said their clients had been tortured.
Moroccan officials denied that physical torture was
used but acknowledged using sleep and light
deprivation and serial teams of interrogators.
"I am allowed to use all means in my possession," a
senior Moroccan intelligence official said. "You have
to fight all his resistance at all levels and show him
that he is wrong, that his ideology is wrong and is
not connected to religion. We break them, yes." 
 Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune 



	
	
		
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