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USA: Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the war on terror'

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terror"." For example, the Human Resource Exploitation training manual of 1983 states the subject should be “immediately blindfolded and handcuffed" upon arrest and “isolation, both physical and psychological must be maintained from the moment of apprehension". The subject should remain blindfolded and handcuffed, the manual asserts, during "the entire processing" of the detainee after arrival at the detention facility. After this the "subject is completely stripped and told to take a shower. Blindfold remains in place while showering and guard watches throughout". Ilooding, stripping, isolation and the cruel and excessive use of handcuffs and shackles have all been used against detainees in US custody during the "war on terror".

The 1983 CIA manual instructs that:

"the manner and timing of arrest should be planned to achieve surprise and the maximum amount of mental discomfort. He should therefore be arrested at a moment when he least expects it and when his mental and physical resistance is at its lowest. Ideally in the early hours of the morning [the 1963 manual states that the “the next best time is in the evening']. When arrested at this time, most subjects experience intense feelings of shock, insecurity, and psychological stress and for the most part have great difficulty adjusting to the situation."

The practice of shock arrests has emerged in US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In its February 2004 report on its concerns about abuses by Coalition forces in Iraq, the ICRC stated that it had found a “consistent pattern" of "brutality" at the time of arrest.

“Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property. They arrested suspects, tying their hands [behind their] back with flexicuffs. hooding them, and taking them away. Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people. Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles. Individuals were often led away in whatever they happened to be wearing at the time of arrest sometimes in pyjamas or underwear · and were denied the opportunity to gather a few essential belongings, such as clothing, hygiene items, medicine or eyeglasses."

Sheik Abdul Sattar, a 71-year-old man, was arrested on 25 April 2004. According to reports, he was watching television in the early hours of the morning when US soldiers entered his house. Sheik Abdul Sattar, a frail man, was pushed to the ground, had a bag put over his head and his hands tightly cuffed behind him, and was dragged along the ground, suffering bruises and a twisted ankle. 332

331 The manuals are available at: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSALBB/NSALBB122/index.hun. In its 1973 Report on Torture. Amnesty International noted evidence of the torture of prisoners in a South Vietnamese interrogation centre run with the advice and support of the CIA.

332 Pervasive abuse alleged by freed detainees, Red Cross. Los Angeles Times, 18 May 2004.

USA: Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the 'war on terror'

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A US soldier told the Fay investigation into Abu Ghraib that he had been asked by a civilian contract interrogator for ideas to get detainees to talk. The soldier "related several stories about the use of dogs as an inducement, suggesting [the contractor] talk to the [military police guards] about the possibilities." The soldier also suggested that the contractor could photograph detainees being ill-treated so he could use the pictures to frighten other detainees. He added that detainees are most susceptible during the initial hours after capture:

"The prisoners are captured by soldiers, taken from their familiar surroundings, blindfolded and put into a truck and brought to this place (Abu Ghraib); and then they are pushed down a hall with guards barking orders and thrown into a cell, naked: and that not knowing what was going to happen or what the guards might do caused them extreme fear."

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"Control of the source's environment", states the CIA's Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation manual of July 1963, "permits the interrogator to determine his diet, sleep pattern, and other fundamentals. Manipulating these into irregularities, so that the subject becomes disorientated, is very likely to create feelings of fear and helplessness". It concludes that "the principal coercive techniques are arrest, detention, the deprivation of sensory stimuli, threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and hypnosis, and drugs". The 1983 manual, drawing heavily on its 1963 predecessor, discusses "coercive techniques” under the headings of "debility (physical weakness)", "dependency" and "dread (intense fear and anxiety)". The manual offers the interrogator a checklist, including: "Is solitary confinement to be used? Does the place of confinement permit the elimination of sensory stimuli? Are threats to be used? Are coercive techniques to be used?" These CIA manuals are officially no longer policy, but two decades on, similar questions have been answered in the affirmative during the “war on terror".

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What has without doubt been authorized are the detention conditions in Guantánamo Bay. Under the heading “cell block planning", the CIA's 1983 training manual instructs that "cells should be about 3 metres long and 2 metres wide". In Camp Delta in Guantánamo Bay. where hundreds of detainees have been kept virtually incommunicado for over two years, the cells are even smaller (approximately 2 metres by 2.45 metres). The manual continues: "window should be set high in the wall with the capability of blocking out light (this allows the 'questioner' to be able to disrupt the subject's sense of time, day and night)"; "heat, air and light should be externally controlled". In Camp Echo, in Guantánamo, where detainees awaiting trial by military commission have been held in solitary confinement for months and months on end, the cells they were put into are reportedly windowless.

333 Fay report, page 63, supra, note 15.

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In turn these categories stem from the 1950s post-Korean War research of Albert Biderman, whose 'chart of coercion' lists various interrogation methods now familiar in the "war on terror”. The techniques include: isolation, darkness or bright light, barren environment, restricted movement, monotonous food, exploitation of wounds, sleep deprivation, prolonged constraint, prolonged interrogation, overexertion, threats of death, rewards for partial compliance, insults and taunts, demeaning punishments, and denial of privacy. See Report on Torture, Amnesty International, 1973.

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USA: Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the 'war on terror'

In May 2004, Amnesty International raised allegations that a Chinese government delegation had visited Guantánamo in September 2002 and participated in interrogations of Chinese ethnic Uighur detainees held there. It is alleged that during this time, the detainees were subjected to intimidation and threats, and to interrogation techniques such as environmental (temperature) manipulation, forced sitting for many hours, and sleep deprivation, some of which is alleged to have been on the instruction of the Chinese delegation. Asked about these allegations, Army General James T. Hill would only confirm that various government delegations "have come and they have talked to their detainees", but stated that "we don't talk about what countries come" to Guantánamo. He said that foreign government delegations talk to their nationals "following our rules and under our direct supervision". 336

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Given the allegations of released detainees and the contents of government documents now in the public domain, General Hill's response raises the question: what do US officials mean when they refer to "our rules" of interrogation?

Upon declassification, the CIA's 1983 Human Resource Exploitation manual was hand-edited to alter passages on "coercive techniques". The apparently hasty hand-editing betrays a recognition by officialdom that torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are wrong. For example, the sentence "While we do not stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware of them and the proper way to use them", was changed to "While we deplore the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware of them so that you may avoid them." Similarly “coercive techniques always require prior IIQs approval" became "coercive techniques constitute an impropriety and violate policy.”

1.4 Slippery slope: Undermining public morality

Every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these riglus and freedoms. Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

On 13 May 2004, at a hearing before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, the following exchange took place between Senator Jack Reed and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz:

Senator: [T]he rules that we were shown by General Alexander and others which would allow, with his permission, to keep someone in a squatting position and presumably naked, with their arms up, for 45 minutes... Mr Secretary, do you think crouching naked for 45 minutes is humane?

Deputy Secretary: Not naked, absolutely not.

335 Amnesty International Urgent Action. Further information on UA 356/03. AI Index: AMR
51/090/2004, 25 May 2004. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510902004.
336 Department of Defense briefing, 3 June 2004.

USA: Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the 'war on terror'

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Senator: So if he's dressed up, that's fine. But this also has other environmental
manipulation. Let me put it this way. Seventy-two hours without regular sleep,
sensory deprivation, which would be a bag over your head for 72 hours
do you
think that's humane, putting a and that's what it is, a bag over your head for 72

hours is that humane?

Deputy Secretary: Let me come back to what you said the work...

Senator: No, no. Answer the question, Mr Secretary. Is that humane?

Deputy Secretary: I don't know whether it means a bag over your head for 72 hours,
Senator. I don't know.

Senator: Mr Secretary, you're dissembling, non-responsive. Anybody would say
putting a bag over someone's head for 72 hours, which is...

Deputy Secretary: I believe it's not humane.

Members of an administration that has discussed how to push the boundaries of acceptable interrogation techniques and of how agents could avoid criminal liability for torture might display a reticence to call torture by its name. Official equivocation over the question of torture and ill-treatment may betray a willingness to tolerate unacceptable conduct on the spectrum of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

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As of October 2004, Amnesty International was not aware of President Bush or any official in his cabinet referring to what happened in Abu Ghraib as torture or a war crime, preferring the term "abuse". In his statement on 26 June 2004 reaffirming the USA's "commitment to the worldwide elimination of torture", President Bush referred to "the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib".: The following day, Secretary Rumsfeld said that “everything we know thus far suggests that what was taking place in the photographs was abuse”. At a Pentagon briefing on 4 May 2004, in one of several statements apparently downplaying the allegations, he stated that his "impression is that what has been charged so far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture".

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The reports of the various reviews and investigations into detention operations have maintained this position. On 24 August 2004, John Schlesinger, Chairperson of the Secretary Rumsfeld-appointed Independent Panel to review Department of Defense detention

337 Visiting Abu Ghraib, General Richard Myers followed a speech by the Secretary of Defense with his own comments, including: “Well, I think the Secretary covered the abuse situations, so I'm going to let that go. I think that was covered adequately.” He then added to the assembled military and press: "I have great confidence that, hopefully, you haven't been tortured by any of the testimony [in hearings on the Abu Ghraib scandal before congressional committees] we've been involved in the last several days" (emphasis added). Department of Defence news transcript, 13 May 2004.

338 President's Statement on the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, 26 June 2004. 339 Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld interview with David Frost (BBC TV). Department of Defense news transcript, 27 June 2004. A US army interrogator who has reportedly served in Afghanistan and Guantánamo has said that "nothing seen in the pictures constitutes the torture of a detained person." How Expert Gets Detainees To Talk. The Capital Times (Wisconsin), 17 August 2004.

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operations, said that "there is a problem in defining torture. We did not find cases of torture, however". The following day, Major General George Fay admitted in a press conference what had not been put in writing in his report on Abu Ghraib. Asked whether any of what the investigation had found in Abu Ghraib amounted to torture, he replied:

"Torture is a subjective term, but in my use of the word torture, I would consider these things to be abusive in nature. Torture sometimes is used to define something in order to get information. There were very few instances where in fact you could say that was torture. It's a harsh word, and in some instances, unfortunately, I think it was appropriate here. There were a few instances when torture was being used."341

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On the question of torture, Secretary Rumsfeld has suggested that "headline writers and people dramatize things". This is apparently standard Pentagon thinking. The final report of the Working Group on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism, completed a year before the Abu Ghraib revelations, contains the following conclusion: "Should information regarding the use of more aggressive techniques than have been used traditionally by US forces become public, it is likely to be exaggerated or distorted in the US and international media accounts". The report recommended the preparation of a “press plan" to anticipate and address potential public inquiries and misunderstandings regarding appropriate interrogation techniques.'

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In June 2004, an ABC News/Washington Post opinion poll reportedly found that 35 per cent of the US population felt torture was acceptable in some circumstances. In an opinion poll conducted in the USA in May, only a third of those polled said that they would define what happened in Abu Ghraib prison as torture." Would they describe such treatment as torture if it was happening closer to home rather than to distant foreign nationals long demonized by US leaders, or indeed if those same leaders would describe it as such? Onc well-known radio commentator, Rush Limbaugh, who has an audience of over 20 million, characterized the torture at Abu Ghraib as soldiers "having a good time" and needing "to blow some steam off". He has noted that "the closer you get to 9/11 the more everybody was willing to speak out about [the need for torture in the 'war on terror'], but now 9/11 is in the past and we're doing this in Iraq. And look, we all know what war is... and we are in a war for our way of life, and so that's why I say just keep all this in perspective".

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340 Press Conference with Schlesinger panel, 24 August 2004, supra, note 67.

341 Special Defense Department Briefing on results of investigation of military intelligence activities at Abu Ghraib prison facility. Department of Defense News Transcript. 25 August 2004.

342 Defense Department regular briefing, 17 June 2004.

343

Pentagon Working Group Report. Page 69-70, supra, note 56.

344 Cited in: The hidden history of CIA torture: America's road to Abu Ghraib. By Alfred W. McCoy.

2004. http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1975.

345

Torture and physical abuse: what Americans will allow. Washington Post, 27 May 2004. The report cites a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.

346

Rush: MPs just ‘blowing off steam'. CBS News.com, 6 May 2004.

347 Liberals were for torture after 9/11. Radio Transcript, 10 May 2004.

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