Janice Anderson - War Crimes and Atrocities

To date, the only organization that has been allowed full access to the camp is the International Red Cross. There has been constant pressure from organizations around the world to have the prison camp closed down as more and more allegations of torture come to light. One inmate, who had been on hunger strike, complained of being force-fed through nasal tubes and that he had been the constant victim of unfair interrogation techniques, including solidary confinement and exposure to extreme temperatures, noise and light. There are also reports that many of the inmates have suffered from mental breakdowns, and Amnesty International described the camp as ‘the gulag of our times’.

There have been no new inmates since September 2004, but the department of defence has fought against the closure of the camp, stating that ‘many of the detainees are still dangerous and would attack the USA if they were released’. The status of inmates is reviewed each year through a system of military administrative review boards, which recommends whether the detainee should remain in captivity or is eligible for release. Finally on 17 October, 2006, a law was passed that set the standard for the interrogation and prosecution of foreign terror suspects, but although many reports have been issued regarding the alleged mistreatment of prisoners at Guatanamo Bay no one has ever been prosecuted.

Many of the practices developed by the USA since 11 September, 2001, in relation to detainees captured in the ‘global war on terror’ appear designed to evade judicial or other scrutiny. The prime example of this is the creation of offshore prisons, the most well known of which is at Guantanamo Bay. It is thought that the US authorities deliberately chose Guantanamo as a detention centre in an attempt to put the detainees beyond the jurisdiction of the US courts and consequently courts in other parts of the world as well.

It is evident that prisoners held under the label of ‘terrorism’ need to be treated more humanely as anti-Americanism in nations all over the world has surged to an all time high. The atrocities that have occurred at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have done more harm than good in cementing relationships between the USA and Muslim-speaking countries, or indeed in lessening the threat of attack from terrorists.

Since the terror attacks on New York on 11 September, 2001, there have been many allegations regarding the CIA’s secret detention of terror suspects. The fact that they have used European countries as regular stopping places for their transfer to other countries has become a major political issue between the USA and Europe. According to the media, US president, George W. Bush, signed a document as the result of an inquiry that gave the CIA the authority to either kill or capture any al-Qaeda members anywhere in the world. Since the signing, the Bush administration has done everything in its power to keep the CIA operations a secret, thereby avoiding any legal implications.

To avoid scrutiny, the CIA has been transferring detainees to countries in the Middle East known to practise torture as a matter of routine. Captured al-Qaeda suspects have been taken from US custody to other countries, such as Syria, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, where they were tortured or otherwise mistreated. This practice is called ‘rendition’, which, in law, literally means the ‘surrender’ or ‘handing over’ of persons or property, particularly from one jurisdiction to another. Although the practice of rendition is not new, the way the CIA are apprehending suspected terrorists but not bringing them before a court of law, is. What is disturbing about this latest ‘tool’ in the fight against terrorism is that not only have innocent citizens been detained, but many detainees have also simply ‘disappeared’ while in US custody. It is alleged that the CIA have conducted more than 1,000 secret flights over European territory since 2001, many of which were used to transfer terror suspects.

According to a former CIA agent, he told reporters:

If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.

Rendition is not the same as deportation. Under US immigration laws a person may be deported for a variety of reasons, including charges of terrorism. Rendition, however, is a covert operation in which an innocent person can be forcibly removed to another country or state where he has committed no crime. Under rendition, the person handing over the suspect is knowingly passing his ‘package’ to a country who is far less scrupulous about human rights than the country from which they are being transferred. As the practice has grown, the CIA is finding it harder and harder to keep it under cover, and criticism of the rendition system has grown. Under the current law, rendition is strictly prohibited if the rendered person is subjected to any kind of torture, and human rights groups are working on legal challenges to try and stop the practice from continuing.

Rendition was developed by the CIA back in the 1990s for the purpose of tracking down and disrupting the militant Islamic organizations in the Middle East, in particular al-Qaeda. For fear of jeopardizing their own intelligence methods, the CIA wanted to avoid the normal procedure of trying suspects under US law and came up with the alternative of transferring them to Egypt. In Egypt they would be handed over to the Mukhabarat (Arabic for ‘intelligence’), which was well known for its brutality. This arrangement suited both countries as the Egyptians had been trying to track down Islamic extremists, some of whom were Egyptian, and for the USA, because torture is illegal under US and international law.

The first person to be the subject of rendition was Talaat Fouad Qassem, one of Egypt’s most wanted terrorists. He was arrested in Zagreb by the CIA in September 1995, with the cooperation of the Croatian police. He was taken on board a US ship somewhere on the Adriatic Sea, interrogated by US agents and then returned to Egypt. He has never been heard of or seen since and is believed to have been executed without having been given a trial.

Another operation that has come to light took place in Albania in the summer of 1998. Five Egyptians were known to be in contact with Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri and, over the course of several months, four militants along with Shawki Salama Attiya were captured by Albanian security forces, who collaborated with the CIA. The five men were flown to Cairo – where they were interrogated using harsh torture methods. On his release Attiya said that he had electric shocks applied to his genitals, that he was kept in a cell that was filled with dirty water and that he had been hung up by his limbs for hours on end.

Despite the fact that they are being constantly questioned about the practice of rendition, the CIA and the White House strongly resist any in-depth investigation. They refuse to release any information about the suspects that have been detained in other parts of the world.

Another variation, which has become known as ‘reverse rendition’, is when US agents abduct suspects on foreign soil, or assumed custody of detainees from other countries, in transfers that completely bypass any legal process or human rights protections. Some of the victims of reverse rendition have later turned up in Guantanamo, but the most sinister and least well-documented cases are those of the detainees who have simply ‘disappeared’ after being detained by the USA or turned over to US custody.