Human Rights Groups Criticize Obama Administration Delays on Guantanamo Closure

The following is the text of a letter to President Obama decrying the long delay in the implementation of the Administration's promises to act on closing Guantanamo. In fact, since writing the letter, the Obama administration announced that Paul Lewis would be the Department of Defense Special Envoy for the closure of Guantánamo's prison.

I'd like to know more about Lewis's role as Counsel for the House Armed Services Committee, particularly during the time legislation was being drawn up for the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But I doubt we'll see much investigation by the press into these kinds of appointments.

New Rules

Meanwhile, just today, DoD released a new set of rules concerning the Administration's "Periodic Review Board" (PRB) for Guantanamo. (H/T Jonathan Horowitz) A full analysis of this document awaits, but preliminary assessments by human rights legal experts on Twitter see this new set of rules -- released 30 months after promised by President Obama, and over a year after the mandatory date for action on it -- as akin to the PRB that was established for prisoners at Parwan, Afghanistan. My own reading saw them as not too different from the CSRTs from Bush Administration days.

Back in April, 2012, Human Rights Watch made some recommendations for the new PRBs at Guantananmo. Let's see how Obama and the DoD did:

Access to counsel/personal representative.... We urge you to implement procedures guaranteeing all persons held in US military detention access to a lawyer and a judge. Should you choose not to apply this standard universally such that some persons are assigned only a personal representative (a decision we would oppose), we urge you to make clear that communications between a detainee and the personal representative assigned to his case would be kept confidential in a manner similar to the rules governing attorney-client privilege. We further urge you to make clear that private counsel selected by the detainee in accordance with the Executive Order have access to all relevant inculpatory, exculpatory, and mitigating evidence, including classified evidence, provided they have the appropriate clearances.

From my reading of the new PRB process, only a "uniformed military officer (referred to as a personal representative)" will be assigned to assist detainees. Detainees can obtain their own private attorney "at no expense to the government, to assist the detainee in the review process." Nothing is said about confidentiality, but this is not surprising, as the government has gone out of its way to contaminate the military commissions process with intrusive theft, surveillance, and/or outrageous incompetence that amounts to obstruction of a detainee's right to counsel.

Access to evidence. The Executive Order provides that a detainee will receive an unclassified summary of the evidence against him, but that his personal representative and private counsel may be provided with other evidence; while not explicit, it appears that classified information may not be available to the detainee. In addition, the representative and counsel may, at the discretion of the PRB, be provided with substitutes or summaries of certain information on national security grounds. The ability of the detainee’s representative and/or counsel (but not the detainee himself) to access classified information does not alleviate the inherent unfairness of a system in which a person may be detained on the basis of information to which he cannot meaningfully respond. Should protection of national security truly require the use of some classified information, the implementing guidelines should make clear that the detainee be provided with as much information as possible and that the information be sufficient to allow him to contest the factual allegations against him.

Moreover, the Executive Order does not provide for a mechanism by which the detainee or his representative can challenge the adequacy of the production of the evidence. We urge you to include in the implementing guidelines a mechanism by which such challenges may be raised to an independent, preferably judicial, authority.

The new PRB rules go to some length to explain how classified information can be withheld for "national security" reasons from "personal representatives" and attorneys for the detainee. Yes, though substitutes or summaries of such information will be provided, DoD states,"The PRB will ensure that any such substitutes or summaries of information are sufficient to provide the personal representative or private counsel with a meaningful opportunity to assist the detainee during the review process."

So in the end, a prisoner held for years in indefinite detention, often with "evidence" that comes from "national security," secret sources that cannot be reviewed directly, will have to rely on the "cross-section of the national security community: that is the PRB to determine whether substitute summaries are adequate for defense. The need for "an independent, preferably judicial, authority" to vet such government claims is nowhere to be found in these new set of rules.

There's much more that could likely be said about these new PRB rules. (For instance, the Parwan PRBs allowed for public hearings, but there's nothing in the Guantanamo PRB process that allows for that.) I'll try and post more later here, or check my twitter feed to see links (@jeff_kaye).

Letter to President Obama

The text below is taken from Josh Gerstein's posting at Politico, where he also supplied his own analysis. However, the link there is for the reader's own use, as a copy of the letter was also sent privately to me.

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

RE: More than Four-Month Delay in Meeting Two of Your Key Commitments on Closing Guantanamo and Ending Indefinite Detention

Dear President Obama:

The undersigned human rights, religious, and civil liberties organizations strongly urge your administration to promptly and fully carry out two key commitments you made as steps toward closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and ending indefinite detention. Specifically, we urge you to 1) appoint an envoy in the Defense Department to lead the effort to close Guantanamo, and 2) direct Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to use his existing statutory authority, including any applicable certifications or national security waivers specified by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (“NDAA-FY13”), to transfer cleared detainees from Guantanamo to foreign countries that will respect their human rights. These actions would help to fulfill your renewed promise to end indefinite detention and close the Guantanamo prison.

More than four months have passed since you delivered your May 23, 2013 speech at the National Defense University, in which you recommitted the United States to the goal of closing the Guantanamo prison. Shortly before that speech, at your April 30, 2013 White House press conference, you committed the United States to ending indefinite detention at Guantanamo, stating: “the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.” You reiterated your commitment to closing the Guantanamo prison last month, in your speech at the United Nations. We greatly appreciate these important statements of a renewed commitment.

However, despite your personal commitment and engagement, the population at Guantanamo over the past four months has been reduced by only two detainees, moving only from 166 to 164. Of the detainees who remain, 84 were cleared for transfer by national security officials more than four years ago.

We are particularly concerned that two of your specific commitments have not yet been met:

Lengthy Delay in Appointment of a Senior Envoy at the Department of Defense: In your National Defense University speech, you stated, “I’m appointing a new senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries.” The White House clarified later that same day that there would be separate envoys for State and Defense. While Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Clifford Sloan as the envoy for State in June, Secretary Hagel has yet to appoint an envoy at the Defense Department. The problems caused by the lack of an envoy at the Defense Department have been compounded by the recent departure of the Pentagon head of Detainee Affairs and the absence of a permanent General Counsel. Vacancies in these critical positions have resulted in a leadership void within the Defense Department, which has delayed decisions and actions needed to reduce the population at Guantanamo by transferring cleared detainees to foreign countries that will respect their human rights.

Delays in Transferring Detainees out of Guantanamo Due to Internal Administration Disagreements on Scope of Existing Statutory Authority: In the National Defense University speech, you also stated, “To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries.” Many of our groups wrote to you on April 11, 2013 to urge you to use your existing statutory authority to “transfer the remaining detained men to their home countries or other countries for resettlement, or to charge them in a court that comports with fair trial standards.” Your press conference and speech more than four months ago expressed your determination to do so.

Despite your order to fully use existing authority to transfer cleared detainees, some administration officials have an exceedingly cramped view of that authority. As a result, after more than four months only two detainees have been transferred out of the 166 men who were held at Guantanamo on the day of your speech.

While we recognize that transfer restrictions in the NDAA-FY13 had needlessly complicated some transfers, the NDAA-FY13, if it again becomes applicable, includes a waiver that provides that the Secretary of Defense can waive the most onerous certification requirements if the government has taken steps to substantially mitigate risk. Particularly for the 84 men who have long been cleared for transfer, there is no reason why the Departments of Defense and State cannot work swiftly towards transferring all of them to foreign countries that will respect their human rights.

The Chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have expressed their frustration with the overly narrow view of the NDAA-FY13 transfer provisions taken by some administration officials. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin wrote to the White House Counsel, on May 6, 2013, explaining that “more than a year ago, I successfully fought for a national security waiver that provides a clear route for the transfer of detainees to third countries in appropriate cases, i.e., to make sure the certification requirements do not constitute an effective prohibition.” Similarly, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon wrote in the Washington Post on May 2, 2013 that the certification requirements were not a prohibition. The Senate Armed Services Committee itself, in its committee report for the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2014, wrote, “the committee emphasizes that the certification requirements [in the NDAA-FY13] were never intended to constitute an absolute prohibition on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to countries other than the United States.” Other senior members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have made similar comments.

The statutory waiver authority created enough flexibility in the certification requirements that there should have been far more than two detainees transferred during the more than four months since your speech. Your order to fully use your existing authority to transfer cleared detainees “to the greatest extent possible” appears to have been largely thwarted by some administration officials applying exceedingly narrow interpretations of that authority, and of the certification requirements. Their interpretations defy a plain reading of the statute and cut against the stated intent of both its authors and the Senate committee of jurisdiction.

While we join your administration in strongly supporting statutory changes to the transfer provisions, which are included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014, as reported by the Senate Armed Services Committee, there is no reason to wait for a change in the law. Enactment of the transfer provisions in the Senate bill is important because it will restore much more of your authority to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo, but you already have significant transfer authority under the NDAA-FY13, if the provision again becomes applicable.

A number of countries are clearly interested in receiving transferred detainees, and have the ability to reintegrate detainees back into society. Unless a detainee objects to a transfer based on a fear of denial of human rights, including a fear of treatment that would violate the Convention Against Torture, the United States should transfer detainees to these countries. In fact, the list of governments seeking the return of their citizens is long, and includes important allies of the United States. Leaders of these countries - including British Prime Minister David Cameron - have made public statements to that effect. In addition to these calls, your lifting of the moratorium on transfers of Yemeni detainees should allow for transfer of the majority of already cleared detainees. There is no reason for further delay in the transfer overseas of many of the detainees.

In both your press conference and speech more than four months ago, you eloquently and forcefully argued why the United States must prioritize the work to close the Guantanamo prison and end indefinite detention, and you set out some concrete steps toward that end, including the two steps discussed in this letter. We strongly support you in your commitment to close the Guantanamo prison and end indefinite detention. It is in this effort to support you that we want to make clear our concern that the more than four-month delay in your administration carrying out two key steps could jeopardize your ability to close the Guantanamo prison and end indefinite detention during your presidency.

Thank you for attention to these concerns.

Sincerely,
American Civil Liberties Union
Amnesty International USA
Appeal for Justice
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for the Victims of Torture
Constitution Project
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Defending Dissent Foundation
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Human Rights Watch
International Justice Network
Japanese American Citizens League
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
National Religious Campaign Against Torture
Presbyterian Church (USA)
Physicians for Human Rights
Win Without War

"Confess or be ready to die": UN Report Pummels US Ally Afghanistan on Torture

The UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) has released its October 2011 report on "Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghanistan" (PDF). Ten years after the US invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, and ostensibly dismantle the Al Qaeda forces linked to the 9/11 attacks, the regime in place is not only hopelessly corrupt and unable to provide security for its citizens, Afghan security forces in the National Security Directorate (NDS) have been charged by UNAMA with "systematically" torturing "detainees for the purpose of obtaining confessions and information" at a number of provincial facilities.

The report alleges that fully 46 percent of prisoners held by security forces, and approximately one-third held by Afghan national police (ANP), are tortured. Furthermore, "[n]early all detainees tortured by NDS officials reported the abuse took place during interrogations and was aimed at obtaining a confession or information." Until last month, the U.S. routinely turned prisoners over to Afghan security forces, while NATO stopped turning over prisoners to a number of different Afghan facilities last July.

Controversies over allied forces releasing prisoners to Afghan security, where they reliably knew they would be tortured, have simmered for years now. As Marcy Wheeler highlighted in an article on the UN report today, according to UNAMA, "The US has not yet put in place a monitoring programme to track detainees it hands over to Afghan authorities."

Turning prisoners over to forces or governments that are known to commit gross human rights violations, such as torture or murder of detainees, is a violation of international law, and of the US-signed Convention Against Torture treaty.

Torture of Children

Ten percent of the prisoners examined were minors. Nearly two-thirds of the children held by the NDS and ANP (62 percent) were tortured.

UNAMA's report was statistically derived from a random sampling. Issues of possible falsification of torture evidence is addressed in the report, and the evidence was found to be credible. (Actually, the Executive Summary says the allegations have not been judged on their credibility. But the Methodology section of the report states, "In a number of cases, UNAMA interviewers observed injuries, marks and scars that appeared to be consistent with torture and ill‐treatment or bandages and medical treatment for such injuries as well as instruments of torture described by detainees such as rubber hoses." The report adds that "UNAMA rigorously analysed patterns of allegations in the aggregate and at specific facilities which permitted conclusions to be drawn about abusive practices at specific facilities and suggested fabricated accounts were uncommon..."

UNAMA statisticians calculated the margin of error for the different samples they used ranged from approximately 5 to 9 percent.

Torture for Confessions

A major conclusion from the report is that much of the torture was specifically aimed at obtaining confessions from prisoners during torture. UNAMA notes, "Confessions are rarely examined at trial and rarely challenged by the judge or defence counsel as having been coerced." Hence, there's very little to constrict government prosecutors in using torture to get their confessions, and confessions are "[i]n most cases... the sole form of evidence or corroboration submitted to courts to support prosecutions." There are few procedural safeguards for defendant prisoners, and what few there are are routinely ignored.

The following is testimony from one prisoner cited specifically in the report, Detainee 371 at Kandahar, interviewed last May:

After two days [in a National Directorate of Security (NDS) facility in Kandahar] they transferred me to NDS headquarters [in Kandahar]. I spent one night on their veranda. On the following day, an official called me to their interrogation room. He asked if I knew the name of his office. I said it was “Khad” [Dari term for the former NDS]. “You should confess what you have done in the past as Taliban; even stones confess here,” he said. He kept insisting that I confess for the first two days. I did not confess. After two days he tied my hands on my back and start beating me with an electric wire. He also used his hands to beat me. He used his hands to beat me on my back and used electric wire to beat me on my legs and hands. I did not confess even though he was beating me very hard. During the night on the same day, another official came and interrogated me. He said “Confess or be ready to die. I will kill you.” I asked him to bring evidence against me instead of threatening to kill me. He again brought the electric wire and beat me hard on my hands. The interrogation and beating lasted for three to four hours in the night. The NDS officials abused me two more times. They asked me if I knew any Taliban commander in Kandahar. I said I did not know. During the last interrogation, they forced me to sign a paper. I did not know what they had written. They did not allow me to read it.

According to the report, forms of torture included "routine blindfolding and hooding [i.e., sensory deprivation] and denial of access to medical care," in addition to "suspension (being hung by the wrists from chains or other devices attached to the wall, ceiling, iron bars or other fixtures for lengthy periods) and beatings, especially with rubber hoses, electric cables or wires or wooden sticks and most frequently on the soles of the feet. Electric shock, twisting and wrenching of detainees’ genitals, stress positions including forced standing, removal of toenails and threatened sexual abuse..."

Alibiing the Afghan Government

Strangely, after describing the "systematic" use of torture by Afghan security and police forces, UNAMA declares the Afghan government innocent of use of torture as government policy. The report cites the fact that the NDS cooperated with the investigation, concluding "the use of torture is not a de facto institutional policy directed or ordered by the highest levels of NDS leadership or the Government. This together with the fact that NDS cooperated with UNAMA’s detention observation programme suggests that reform is both possible and desired by elements within the NDS."

This is a surprising assertion, and of course, the international press has highlighted this supposed reassurance about the Afghan government in its coverage of the report's conclusions. The cooperation of the NDS appears to have been equivocal at best. For one thing, as the report concedes, the NDS refused to allow UNAMA to visit its national counter-terrorism facility in Kabul, or interview prisoners there. Known as Department 90, it is where "high-value" prisoners are held. Information on Department 90 prisoners was gathered from those held elsewhere who previously had been held at the NDS Kabul facility.

Twenty-six of 28 prisoners who were determined to have been held at Department 90 were tortured, leading to a near 100 percent probability of being tortured there. One prisoner told UNAMA investigators, "When they took me to [Department] 90, I did not know where I had been taken. . . After two days, I learned that I was in 90 from my cellmates. There is so much beating at 90 that people call it Hell." Five of the six children interviewed who had been held at Department 90 were tortured.

The Afghan government has long promised they would clean up their act regarding abuse of prisoners, and US agencies have covered up for them in the past. A 2006 RAND study, prepared for George Soros's Open Society Institute, that torture and extrajudicial killings were in decline by Afghan authorities, and that US assistance had "somewhat improved" human rights practices by Afghan police. (RAND has a very stringent warning about quoting its material, or even providing links, but here's the link the New York Times gave in its article on the UNAMA report.)

One can only conclude that the US government has been more than supportive of the torture policies within Afghanistan, only withdrawing funds when it was politically expedient to do so. Most of the stories on the UNAMA report have noted UNAMA's mention of the so-called "Leahy law." According to UNAMA, "legal provisions in the US Foreign Appropriations Act and Defence Appropriations Act prohibit the US from providing funding, weapons or training to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence that such unit has committed gross human rights violations, unless the Secretary of State determines the concerned government is taking effective remedial measures" (emphasis added).

None of the press results and analysis thus far has noted this escape from accountability clause, wherein the Secretary of State can decide a foreign government -- say, Afghanistan -- which has committed "gross human rights violations," is sincerely doing the best it can to address the issue. Indeed, parts of the UNAMA report appear to be written to allow just such an interpretation by the Obama/Clinton-led State Department.

So while the Americans and their allies in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have as of last month, "in response to the findings in this report, "stopped transferring detainees to certain installations as a precautionary measure," the report also notes that a return to the previous transfer policy "would presumably require the US to resume transfer of detainees only when the Government of Afghanistan implements appropriate remedial measures that include bringing to justice NDS and ANP officials responsible for torture and ill‐treatment."

But this doesn't speak to the funding or arming of the Afghan security and police forces. Indeed, by indicating that portions of the government, including the NDS, are sympathetic and trying to change the abuse/torture situation, it would appear that ammunition is being provided to Secretary Clinton to conclude that a good faith effort is being made, and bypass the provisions of the Leahy Law. This would seem to be the point in concluding the torture is not "institutional," and that "reform is both possible and desired by elements within the NDS."

But anyone reading this report could hardly come to this politically convenient conclusion. In fact, senior NDS officials admitted "they have investigated only two claims of torture in recent years, neither of which led to charges being pursued against the accused NDS official." Nor would NDS officials "provide UNAMA with any information on any other disciplinary or criminal action against NDS officials for torture and abuse." This doesn't sound like desired elements for reform to me.

Ten years after US and foreign forces invaded Afghanistan and installed a puppet regime, all the while jockeying for alliances among various warlord forces, has not improved the human rights situation in Afghanistan. Surely the Taliban and the various warlords cannot be counted upon to provide such improvement either. But there is one big difference. The Taliban are not foreign invaders. While such foreign invaders occupy the country, killing civilians and giving political and military support to a torture regime, no progress from within Afghanistan can take place.

Originally posted at FDL's The Dissenter

John Pilger Protests Banning of his Film at Lannan Foundation Event

In an infuriating display of censorship, the Lannan Foundation has cancelled at the last minute, and with no explanation, an appearance at their Santa Fe, New Mexico series of events by award-winning journalist John Pilger, whose new film exposes the media spin on how the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been reported. Pilger's new film, "The War You Don't See," was supposed to be screened at the event, according to Pilger.

I can only guess that someone got to the Lannan Foundation, or that they blanched at criticisms that might mean some uncomfortable moments for their various speakers. We don't really know. Recent speakers at Lannan-sponsored "readings and conversations" include Center for Constitutional Rights' Michael Ratner, journalist Chris Hedges, blogger Glenn Greenwald, and NPR correspondent Maria Hinojosa.

Part One of "The War You Don't See"

The Lannan Foundation states that it "recognizes the profound and often unquantifiable value of the creative process and is willing to take risks and make substantial investments in ambitious and experimental thinking. Understanding that globalization threatens all cultures and ecosystems, the Foundation is particularly interested in projects that encourage freedom of inquiry, imagination, and expression."

Read John Pilger's Open Letter, reproduced below, and you be the judge.

An open letter to Noam Chomsky and the general public.

Dear Noam

I am writing to you and a number of other friends mostly in the US to alert you to the extraordinary banning of my film on war and media, 'The War You Don't See', and the abrupt cancellation of a major event at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe in which David Barsamian and I were to discuss free speech, US foreign policy and censorship in the media.

Lannan invited me and David over a year ago and welcomed my proposal that they also host the US premiere of 'The War You Don't See', in which US and British broadcasters describe the often hidden part played by the media in the promotion of war, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. The film has been widely acclaimed in the UK and Australia; the trailer and reviews are on my website www.johnpilger.com

The banning and cancellation, which have shocked David and me, are on the personal orders of Patrick Lannan, whose wealth funds the Lannan Foundation as a liberal centre of discussion of politics and the arts. Some of you will have been there and will know the Lannan Foundation as a valuable supporter of liberal causes. Indeed, I was invited in 2002 to present a Lannan award to the broadcaster Amy Goodman.

What is deeply disturbing about the ban is that it happened so suddenly and inexplicably: 48 hours before David Barsamian and I were both due to depart for Santa Fe I received a brief email with a 'sorry for the inconvenience' from a Lannan official who had been telling me just a few days earlier what a 'great honour' it was to have the US premiere of my film at Lannan, with myself in attendance.

I urge you to visit the Lannan website www.lannan.org Good people like Michael Ratner, Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald are shown as participants in discussion about freedom of speech. I am there, too, but my name is the only one with a line through it and the word, 'Cancelled'.

Neither David Barsamian nor I have been given a word of explanation. All my messages to Lannan have gone unanswered; my calls calls are not returned; my flights were cancelled summarily. At the urging of the New Mexican newspaper, Patrick Lannan has issued a one-sentence statement offering his regrets to the Lannan-supporting 'community' in Santa Fe. Again, he gives no reason for the ban. I have spoken to the manager of the Santa Fe cinema where 'The War You Don't See' was to be screened. He received a late-night call. Again, no reason for the ban was forthcoming, giving him barely time to cancel advertising in The New Mexican, which was forced to drop a major feature.

There is a compelling symbol of our extraordinary times in all of this. A rich and powerful individual and organisation, espousing freedom of speech, has moved ruthlessly and unaccountably to crush it.

With warm regards

John Pilger

Guantanamo Psychologist Led Rendition and Imprisonment of Afghan Boys, Complaint Charges

Originally posted at Truthout

Four Ohio residents filed court papers last week seeking to compel the Ohio State Psychology Board to investigate Dr. Larry James, a retired Army colonel and former chief psychologist for the intelligence command at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, who oversaw the brutal torture of detainees, including children.

The motion was filed by Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas on behalf of the four residents, which includes a psychologist, a veteran, a minister and a long-time mental health advocate.

Earlier this year, the psychology board had dismissed a complaint first filed by the same Ohio residents last July, stating, "It has been determined that we are unable to proceed to formal action in this matter."

The original complaint, filed with the Ohio Board of Psychology, was supported by over a thousand pages of documentation, including reports from the US military, the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency and statements from survivors and witnesses. But the board did not provide a rationale as to why it was unable to probe the allegations leveled against James.

James was head of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT), which was made up of psychologists and other mental health professionals who assisted interrogators at the prison facility during the first half of 2003. From 2004 to 2006, he served as chief of psychology at the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq, and in 2007 he returned to Guantanamo. He retired in 2008.

James is currently dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He was licensed to practice psychology in Ohio in 2008.

According to the complaint, during James' tenure at Guantanamo, "boys and men were systematically abused" and were subjected to "rape and death threats" and torture techniques such as "forced nudity; sleep deprivation; extreme isolation; short-shackling into stress positions; and physical assault."

Moreover, the complaint states that James supervised the forceful and arbitrary detention of three Afghan boys, "transported thousands of miles away from their families and denied them access to counsel."

James did not return an email request for comment.

In their verified complaint filed with the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, seeking a writ to compel the Ohio Board of Psychology "to proceed to 'formal action' against Dr. Larry C. James," the complainants quote an affidavit by former American Psychological Association (APA) Practice Directorate Chief, Dr. Bryant Welch, that the allegations in the complaint, "if true, represent the most serious ethical breaches I have seen in my thirty-five years as a psychologist. They also have the most far reaching implications for the profession of psychology of any ethical or licensing issue I have yet encountered."

IHRC's earlier complaint (PDF link) was damning.

He was accused of numerous instances of professional misconduct and violations of the law, including failure to protect his clients from harm, exploitation of those with whom he worked, failure to protect detainees' confidentiality and failure "to represent honestly his own conduct, experience and the results of his services."

Indeed, in "Fixing Hell," a book James published in 2008 about his experiences at Guantanamo and at the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq, he claimed that he was "righting the wrongs" at both prisons and that there "have been no incidents of abuse at Guantanamo Bay by either an interrogator or psychologist reported since my arrival in Cuba in January 2003."

Ironically, in his book, James wrote of at least two incidents of such abuse during his 2003 tenure, which as the IHRC complaint explains, he failed to report to proper authorities.

A fair amount of James' narrative about his time at Guantanamo concerns his actions after his commander, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, put him in charge of three young teenage prisoners, all younger than age 16 and one perhaps as young as 12 years old, in February 2003. James was in charge of rendering the boys from Bagram, Afghanistan, where they were then held, arranging their Guantanamo housing and attending and supervising their interrogations. James wrote that the boys were "very traumatized" upon arrival at Guantanamo. While he presents his treatment of these children as a "case study" for his "softer" style of interrogation - "exactly the kind of prisoners I needed to test my philosophy on interrogation" - a closer, more nuanced look presents a very different picture.

"Teenage Terrorists"

The story of these young detainees had previously been documented in news reports and is also retold in the IHRC complaint, which redacts the boys' personal information, something James failed to do in his book.

While James doesn't mention the fact in his book, there were at least a dozen underage, minor children or teenagers held at Guantanamo. US authorities in Iraq and Afghanistan have allegedly held thousands of other juveniles. The IHRC complaint refers to torture and abuse suffered by two of the Guantanamo minors, Omar Khadr and Mohammed Jawad, during the period James was chief psychologist. These teens, as well as all the others but the three held at Camp Iguana, the special camp built to hold them at the Guantanamo base, were kept with the adult prisoners at Camp Delta and other sites at the prison.

According to James, when he arrived at Bagram to pick up his new prisoners, he found them looking "not only terrified but also disheveled and lost." Nevertheless, he believed them to be "far from innocent," "teenage terrorists." "These juveniles were not sweet kids," James wrote.

Yet, he also found that the trauma they endured was very real. James wrote that the boys were "victims of rape, illiterate, one certainly had PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]"; they were, according to James, "the most fragile - psychologically, medically and academically - children I had ever met."

James glosses over in his book the circumstances of the 20-hour flight from Bagram that brought the children to Guantanamo. But news reports published after the children were released in January 2004 provides more detail about their time held by US forces in Afghanistan and their subsequent transport to Guantanamo.

In his book, James states that all three children "had been captured while fighting in a combatant role against US forces in Afghanistan." But James failed to provide any evidence to support such an assertion, which is contrary to reports the boys made themselves. According to a report published a Guardian UK article, two of the boys were caught while US forces were "looking for a local commander, Mansoor Rahman Saiful, who had fought against the Taliban for years, but joined the radical Islamists when America attacked Afghanistan."

Naqibullah, age 13, "a local imam's son, said he stumbled into the raid while cycling from a friend's house," and was interrogated daily about his knowledge of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

"I told them, 'I don't know these people and I am too young to give anything to anyone without my father's authority.'" After two weeks, Naqibullah said, he was asked whether he had any objection to being taken to "another place."

"I said, 'What can I do? You will take me wherever you want to.'" That night, bound, blindfolded and fitted into orange overalls, he was loaded on to a cargo plane and flown non-stop to Cuba. Naqibullah's first 10 days in Guantanamo were the worst of his life, he said.

According to a March 2004 story by The New York Times, another child prisoner, Asadullah, age 12 or 13, believed to be the youngest of the prisoners, said he was interrogated daily for several months while held in Afghanistan. The beatings he endured in the first five days of his captivity still bothered him when he arrived in Guantanamo.

As with Naqibullah, the third child prisoner, Mohammed Ismail Agha, age 13, told a foreign journalist, as reported in The Washington Post in February 2004, that he had been arrested because a friend with whom he was looking for work was supposedly identified as a Taliban. He spent a month and a half at Bagram before being "warned that if he did not confess he would be sent to a terrible and distant place called Guantanamo."

Agha was subjected to sleep deprivation and stress positions during his time at Bagram in an effort to get him to make a confession.

"It was a very bad place. Whenever I started to fall asleep, they would kick on my door and yell at me to wake up," he said. "When they were trying to get me to confess, they made me stand partway, with my knees bent, for one or two hours. Sometimes I couldn't bear it any more and I fell down, but they made me stand that way some more."

Agha's story of his rendition is similar to that of Naqibullah. He was "put on a plane with other prisoners, chained by the wrists and ankles, with a hood placed over his head."

"It was hard to breathe," he said.

Supervising the transport back to Guantanamo on the large C-17 transport plane, complete with medical team, military police and Air Force Special Forces shooters, was Col. Larry James. The former chief psychologist never states whether he reported the treatment received by these child prisoners at Bagram to any authority.

"I Prayed to God, I Asked, 'Where Is My Son?'"

While James and the Guantanamo authorities apparently did try to make the boys' treatment much improved over that of prisoners in the rest of the camp, including at least eight or nine other teens held at roughly the same time, the young prisoners were not entirely grateful.

According to the Guardian report, "The boys played football every day and sometimes basketball and volleyball with their guards." But Asadullah told his interviewer, "I was very sad because I missed my family so much.... I was always asking, 'When can I go home? What day? What month?' They said, 'You'll go home soon,' but they never said when."

According to a February 2004 story in the UK Telegraph, Ismail Agha (who is reported as 15 in this article) said, "At first I was unhappy ... For two or three days [after I arrived in Cuba] I was confused but later the Americans were so nice to me. They gave me good food with fruit and water for ablutions and prayer."

Ex-Gitmo Official Told Not to Discuss Policy on Antimalarial Drug Used on Detainees

by Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, reposted from Truthout

Military officials were instructed not to publicly discuss a decision made in January 2002 to presumptively treat all Guantanamo detainees with a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug that has been directly linked to suicide, hallucinations, seizures and other severe neuropsychological side effects, according to a retired Navy captain who signed the policy directive.

Capt. Albert J. Shimkus, the former commanding officer and chief surgeon for both of the Naval Hospital at Guantanamo Bay and Joint Task Force 160, which administered health care to detainees, defended the unprecedented practice, first reported by Truthout earlier this month, to administer 1250 mg of the drug mefloquine to all "war on terror" detainees transferred to the prison facility within the first 24 hours after their arrival, regardless of whether they had malaria or not.

The 1250 mg dosage is what is used to treat individuals who have malaria and is five times higher than the prophylactic dose given to individuals to prevent the disease. One tropical disease expert has said there is absolutely no "medical justification" to support the military's decision to presumptively treat all Guantanamo detainees for malaria with high doses of mefloquine.

Mefloquine is also known by its brand name Lariam. It was researched by the US Army in the 1970s during the Vietnam War and licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1989. Since its introduction, it has been directly linked to serious adverse effects, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, confusion, bizarre dreams, nausea, vomiting, sores, hallucinations and homicidal and suicidal thoughts.

Although there were two media reports in 2002 that quoted Shimkus saying "war on terror" detainees were given antimalarial medication, neither he nor any other military or Pentagon official ever disclosed to lawmakers or military personnel who raised questions about the efficacy of mefloquine, that mass presumptive treatment was the policy in place at Guantanamo.

"There were certain issues we were advised not to talk about," Shimkus told Truthout in an interview, explaining the reason the policy was never publicly disclosed. He could not recall who told him not to discuss the issue.

Shimkus, who is now an associate professor of national security studies at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, said officials from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Navy Environmental Health Center (NEHC) and the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center at Fort Detrick, Maryland, which is part of the Defense Intelligence Agency, were all involved in the discussions that resulted in the issuance of a January 23, 2002, "Infection Control" Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that called for the mass presumptive treatment of malaria using mefloquine.

[Added 11/12/2016: Standard Operating Procedure Number 37 (In-processing Medical Evaluation) for the same hospital spells out this therapy in more detail: upon arrival to Camp Delta, all detainees must undergo "empiric treatment" for malaria, where this treatment involves the administration of 1250 mg of mefloquine split in two doses: 750 mg at in-processing time, and 500 mg twelve hours later (see also Standard Operating Procedure Number 29 (Nursing)). - See "The Administration of Drugs with Psychotic Side Effects" at Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas.]

Detainees started arriving at Guantanamo two weeks earlier and were held in a detention center known as Camp X-Ray.

The "Infection Control" SOP, which was signed by Shimkus and has not been previously released, says, "detainees are native to a region plagued by a number of infectious diseases. It is estimated that a number of these detainees will carry one or more of these illnesses upon arrival... Empiric therapies will include... mefloquine 1250 mg."

Medical literature usually describes "empiric therapy," or presumptive treatment for malaria, as the administration or self-administration of antimalarial drugs for symptomatic individuals, or occasionally groups of at-risk patients, who do not have access to laboratories or medical facilities and in whom malaria cannot be formally diagnosed.

At Guantanamo, however, all detainees, whether they had symptoms or not, were given laboratory tests to determine if they had malaria, and doctors were accessible "24/7" in the event symptoms started to surface, Shimkus said, calling into question the rationale for mass presumptive treatment.

Shimkus said the NEHC bore the primary responsibility for recommending that mefloquine be administered to all detainees in treatment doses, but there was consensus among the various government agencies about using the drug in this way.

"There was no one that said, 'Captain, this is not the way to go,'" Shimkus said. "I did not do anything in isolation. Any policy would have been approved by a higher authority" up the medical chain of command.

Shimkus could not recall the names of the officials from the various government agencies who agreed with and signed off on the policy. Nor could he identify his immediate medical supervisor, a colonel at United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is responsible for contingency planning and operations in Cuba, who Shimkus said would have also been involved in the decision.

Cuban Government Concerns

Shimkus said one of the reasons that factored into the decision to presumptively treat war on terror detainees with mefloquine was concerns raised by the Cuban government.

In an interview with Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg in February 2002, Shimkus said he and other medical officers stationed at Guantanamo met with Cuban doctors and government officials on February 8, 2002, to "reassure the government that suspected terrorist prisoners are not introducing malaria into" Cuba, "which has been free of the mosquito-borne disease for 50 years."

Rosenberg reported on February 22, 2002, that steps taken to prevent the spread of malaria at Guantanamo included "impregnating the uniforms of both prisoners and troops who handle prisoners with mefloquin [sic] and other agents to kill the parasite ... " The Herald's February 22, 2002, report was the first and only time mefloquine use at Guantanamo has ever been mentioned. But Rosenberg's report did not state that Shimkus had already signed a policy directive authorizing mass presumptive treatment.

Shimkus told Truthout he could not recall specific details of his discussions with the Cubans. He did not respond to follow-up questions about Rosenberg's characterization regarding the use of mefloquine.

Just three days prior to the publication of the Herald's report, Navy Capt. Alan "Jeff" Yund appeared before the Armed Forced Epidemiological Board (AFEB) and was queried about malaria at Guantanamo.

But Yund, the Navy's liaison officer to AFEB, did not disclose that mefloquine was being administered to detainees. He said he believed detainees who were infected with the disease would be treated on a case-by-case basis with a different antimalarial drug known as primaquine, and that other steps would be taken to protect against mosquitoes.

Yund told Truthout via email that he did not refer to mefloquine during the AFEB briefing because, "I do not recall being involved in any consultations regarding the use of mefloquine at Guantanamo and do not recall being aware that it was being used there."

Yund declined to comment further.

Shimkus could not say why Yund was unaware that mefloquine was being used as a form of mass presumptive treatment at Guantanamo.

The use of mefloquine at Guantanamo was not mentioned during numerous other AFEB briefings, particularly one held in May 2003, where concerns were raised by members of the board about the drug's severe neuropsychiatric side effects, which US military personnel who had taken mefloquine in 250 mg prophylactic doses had been complaining about.

Red Flags Raised

Shimkus said he was aware of the alternatives and noted that at one point the antibiotic drug doxycycline and Malarone were under consideration, but the latter had only been approved by the Department of Defense in 2000 and had not been in widespread use yet. Mefloquine, Shimkus said, was considered efficient and effective.

But at an April 16, 2002, meeting of the Interagency Working Group for Antimalarial Chemotherapy, which included Defense Department representatives, participants concluded that study designs on mefloquine were flawed or biased and based on "sensational or [at] best marketed information."

The Working Group, which included representatives from the State Department, the CDC and FDA, stated, "Sufficient evidence exists to raise the question whether the neuropsychiatric adverse events of mefloquine are frequent enough and severe enough to warrant limiting its use..." The group called for additional research, and warned, "Other treatment regimes should be carefully considered before mefloquine is used at the doses required for treatment."

Additionally, in October 2002, William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary for defense, admitted that "recent press articles and scientific studies have raised concerns regarding the adverse effects associated with mefloquine use."

Winkenwerder's admission was made in a letter written in response to questions raised by John McHugh, then chair of the subcommittee on military affairs for the House Armed Services Committee. The letter said, "recent peer-review reports" showing adverse events levels associated with mefloquine are "much higher than previously reported." Winkenwerder told McHugh, now secretary of the Army, that the CDC had initiated a review in 2001, which was then still underway, of all chemoprophylactic drugs, including mefloquine.

Shimkus said he did not believe Winkenwerder was part of the consulting team who signed off on administering treatment doses of mefloquine to detainees. But Shimkus said the policy was "well-known in the [military] medical community." Winkenwerder did not respond to calls for comment.< The use of mefloquine as a mass presumptive treatment at Guantanamo continued until at least July 2005, despite the presence of ongoing warnings. In June 2004, the CDC issued a new set of guidelines on malaria treatment, which warned that mefloquine "is associated with a higher rate of severe neuropsychiatric reactions when used at treatment doses," and recommended that mefloquine be used "only when ... [other] options cannot be used."

As far back as 1990, the CDC warned in a set of recommendations for malaria prevention for travelers that mefloquine should not be used for presumptive self-treatment "because of the frequency of side effects, especially dizziness, which has been associated with therapeutic dosages of mefloquine."

"This was a one time treatment only [for detainees]," Shimkus said. "My focus on mefloquine was specifically for preventing malaria from occurring."

However, other Guantanamo documents obtained by Truthout say that on February 28, 2002, 59 detainees allegedly refused to take medication, including antimalarial drugs, and noted that the "series must start over." It is unclear whether this included readministration of mefloquine, or whether the "series" described included further antimalarial doses of primaquine or cholorquine, also administered to the detainees.

Maj. Remington Nevin, an Army public health physician, who formerly worked at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center and has written extensively about mefloquine, previously told Truthout the decision to administer high doses of the drug, even as a one-time treatment "is, at best, an egregious malpractice."

Nevin added, "many dozens of detainees, possibly hundreds" likely experienced side effects "as severe as those intended through the application of 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'"

Truthout was unable to locate a single malaria expert who was willing to go on the record to defend the government's policy of mass presumptive treatment of the disease using mefloquine or any other antimalarial drug.

Shimkus told Truthout that, "clinically," he could not recall if any detainees experienced any side effects associated with taking mefloquine, but if they did, that data would have been noted in their medical records.

"We have robust medical records," Shimkus said. "If anything occurred that was a cause for concern it would have been documented in their medical records."

But the government has refused to release Guantanamo detainees' medical records to the media or to their attorneys citing, among other reasons, privacy concerns.

As first documented in a separate report on mefloquine use at Guantanamo published earlier this month by Seton Hall University School of Law's Center for Policy and Research, medical files for detainee 693 released by the Defense Department in connection with his alleged suicide at the prison facility in June 2006, contradict Shimkus's assertions. Those records show that two weeks after the detainee was given mefloquine in June 2002, he was interviewed by Guantanamo medical personnel and reported that he was suffering from nightmares, hallucinations, anxiety, auditory and visual hallucinations, sleep loss and suicidal thoughts.

A Guantanamo medical officer who interviewed the detainee, however, did not state that the detainee may have been experiencing mefloquine-related side effects in notes he took evaluating the detainee's condition.

Shimkus dismissed the significance of the medical officer's failure to connect the detainee's psychological state to the possible side effects resulting from mefloquine, stating that the medical officer may have been unaware "the patient had taken [the drug], because there was a lot of turnover of staff at that point."

Scott Allen and Vince Iacopino, medical doctors affiliated with Physicians for Human Rights, a doctors' organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said, "the questionable use of mefloquine for malaria prevention at Guantanamo underscore the need for transparency of detention policies and procedures" at the prison facility.

"Benefits Outweighed Risks"

Shimkus, who is a nurse by training, acknowledged that the mass presumptive treatment of malaria using mefloquin was unprecedented. However, he said the "benefits outweighed the risks."

When asked, Shimkus did not indicate that contraindications for the use of mefloquine, such as pre-existing cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, seizures. or other mental illness, which would have heightened mefloquine's side effects, were ever pursued for the individual detainees. He simply reiterated that the benefits of administering treatment doses of mefloquine outweighed the risks.

Yet, when told that the Defense Department took a radically different approach a decade earlier, when thousands of Haitian refugees housed at Guantanamo were first tested to determine if they had malaria and, only then, were given a treatment dosage of a different medication, chloroquine, if they had the disease, Shimkus said war on terror detainees "were a different cohort of individuals."

"You have to remember that this was in the context of February 2002," Shimkus said. "The detainees came from Afghanistan and other areas that may have been chloroquine resistant."

Moreover, in two articles published in 2002, Shimkus claimed statistics showed that 40 percent of Afghanistan's population was infected with malaria. But according to figures from the World Health Organization, in 2002, the number infected in Afghanistan was about 13 percent.

Shimkus also indicated that malaria cases at Guantanamo could have led to a public health crisis at the base, and reintroduction of malaria into Cuba. Once an outbreak begins, Shimkus told Truthout, one "loses control" of the situation and there is an epidemic.

However, when the CDC examined the influx of tens of thousands of refugees to the United States from hyper-epidemic sub-Saharan Africa, where the falciparum form of malaria kills more than a million people yearly, they concluded that "sustained malaria transmission" in a nonmalarial endemic country, like the US, from this population "would be unlikely."

Still, the CDC called for mass presumptive treatment (with a drug other than mefloquine) of these refugees before they came to the US - mainly because they feared many US doctors wouldn't recognize malaria symptoms - but noted that such mass presumptive treatment from other parts of the world, including Afghanistan, was not recommended, because "the risk and cost of post-arrival presumptive treatment currently outweighs the potential benefits."

Of the more than 700 detainees held at Guantanamo, only four tested positive for malaria, all in January and February 2002.

But Shimkus still defended the mass administration of mefloquine, saying, "One [infection] is too many." Shimkus said he believes he and other military officials "made the right policy decisions based on the information we had to prevent the introduction of malaria" in Cuba and protect the health of the detainees.

Shimkus said after he retired from the military he became involved with the Open Society Institute, funded by the Soros Foundation, and has since taken a role in the work the organization has done to raise awareness about abusive interrogation measures contained in the Army Field Manual.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Judge Denies Guantánamo Prisoner’s Habeas Petition, Ignores Torture in Secret CIA Prisons

Cross-posted, with permission, from Andy Worthington's blog

On September 22, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Reggie B. Walton denied the habeas corpus petition of Tawfiq al-Bihani (described in court documents as Toffiq al-Bihani), a Yemeni who was raised in Saudi Arabia, giving the government its 18th victory out of 56 cases decided, with the other 38 having been won by the prisoners.

However, as in the majority of the cases in which the prisoners have lost, there was nothing in the ruling that could be construed as representing the delivery of justice after the eight and a half years that al-Bihani has spent in US custody, as he has been consigned to indefinite detention in Guantánamo, on an apparently legal basis, despite the fact that there is no evidence that he ever took up arms against anyone, or had any contact with anyone involved in preparing, facilitating or supporting acts of international terrorism.

Moreover, in examining his habeas corpus petition, Judge Walton appeared to remain blissfully unaware that, despite being, at most, a lowly foot soldier, al-Bihani was held in a variety of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan before his transfer to Guantánamo, where he was subjected to torture.

As revealed in the background to al-Bihani’s case, accepted by both al-Bihani and the government, he cut a depressing figure prior to traveling to Afghanistan in the summer of 2000. As Judge Walton explained, “During the time he resided in Saudi Arabia, the petitioner was abusing various drugs, including alcohol, marijuana, hashish, crystal methamphetamine, and depression pills,” Judge Walton also noted, “The petitioner began to ‘increase [his] intake of alcohol and drugs,’ when his fiancee ended their engagement due to her concerns that ‘she would fall out of grace with her father if she married a Yemeni against his wishes.’”

Apparently persuaded to travel to Afghanistan by his brother Mansour, described as “an experienced fighter who fought against the Russians in Chechnya,” and who “had close relationships with senior Chechen fighters and other individuals who were engaged in training men to fight in Chechnya and in other countries,” he traveled to Afghanistan with his brother, where, as Judge Walton concluded, he “received, at a minimum, weapons training” at the al-Farouq training camp, established by the Afghan warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf in the early 1990s, but associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before the 9/11 attacks, and also stayed in Afghan guest houses reportedly associated with al-Qaeda.

In authorizing al-Bihani’s ongoing detention, Judge Walton gave weight to al-Bihani’s admission that he “became, and was part of, al-Qaeda at least during the five months period he was training at al-Farouq,” even though he also noted that his training was far from rigorous. “Although he was enrolled at al-Farouq for approximately five months,” Judge Walton explained, “he only ‘received approximately two months of training,’ because he would train for approximately ‘a week or two weeks’ before feigning illness in order to leave and ‘do hashish or tobacco.’” Judge Walton added that al-Bihani “repeated this cycle several times,” and also explained, “Towards the end of his time at al-Farouq, the trainers at the camp informed him that he was ‘not ready physically because [he] keep[s] leaving and going back, — adding that the trainers reportedly “concluded that he was of ‘no use,’ and ‘they kick[ed him] out of the camp.’”

Personally, I find it troubling that an obviously drug-addled, inconsistent and unreliable recruit can nevertheless be regarded as “part of” al-Qaeda, as it tends to render meaningless the supposed threat posed by al-Qaeda if useless recruits can legitimately be held, even when, as with al-Bihani, they had no knowledge of international terrorism, and not even a demonstrable commitment to al-Qaeda’s military activities in Afghanistan.

Judge Walton, however, seemed unconcerned that there appeared to be no basis for concluding that al-Bihani had ever posed a threat to the United States. Proceeding to an explanation of how he was captured, he explained that, in late 2001, having become separated from his brother Mansour (who was “ill” and was transported to Quetta in “a tractor-trailer truck” for those “who appeared sick or injured”), al-Bihani traveled through Pakistan to Iran, “with a group of other men.” Near Zahedan, he was supposed to be reunited with his brother, and with Hamza al-Qa’eity, who ran a guest house in Kabul described by al-Bihani as “one that jihad fighters used as a transition point.” However, as Judge Walton explained, at “the exact time” that al-Qa’eity arrived to pick him up from the house of an Iranian family, where he was staying, the Iranian police — or intelligence services — “descended on the house and apprehended” him — and, presumably, Hamza al-Qa’eity as well.

The hidden story of ten men rendered from Iran to Afghanistan — including Tawfiq al-Bihani

As I mentioned in the introduction to this article, what Judge Walton appeared not to know — or ignored in his ruling — was the fact that, after al-Bihani was subsequently “flown to Afghanistan” and “transferred to United States custody,” he was held in a variety of secret CIA prisons.

This information is readily accessible, because I explained in my book The Guantánamo Files that al-Bihani was one of ten men seized in Iran who were flown to Afghanistan and then handed over to US forces. One of these men, Aminullah Tukhi, an Afghan released from Guantánamo in December 2007, explained that six Arabs, two Afghans, an Uzbek and a Tajik had been delivered to the Americans, and I was able to identify six of them — Tukhi, Tawfiq al-Bihani, Walid al-Qadasi, a Yemeni transferred to the custody of his home government in April 2004, Wassam al-Ourdoni, a Jordanian released in April 2004, Rafiq Alhami, a Tunisian released in Slovakia in January this year, and Hussein Almerfedi, a Yemeni who won his habeas petition in July this year. Unaccounted for are the other four men mentioned by Aminullah Tukhi — an Arab, an Afghan, the Uzbek and the Tajik — although it seems possible that one of the disappeared was Hamza al-Qa’eity.

Confirmation that al-Bihani was one of the men came from an unexpected source. Abu Yahya al-Libi, one of four prisoners who escaped from Bagram in July 2005, described, in a post on an obscure French language website, which has since disappeared from the Internet, 12 prisoners who were held with him in Bagram, one of whom was Tawfiq al-Bihani. He also explained how all the men had passed through a network of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, where they had endured “hard torture,” and added, in al-Bihani’s case, that he was captured in Iran at the start of 2002, that he had met him in June 2002 in a prison he identified as “Rissat 2,” and that he was taken to another prison in September 2002, after which he never saw him again, and thought that he may have been transferred to Guantánamo.

Al-Libi also explained that Tawfiq al-Bihani thought that his brother Ghaleb, who had also been in Afghanistan, had been killed, but that the Americans had told him that he had been captured — and it later emerged that this was correct. Ghaleb al-Bihani lost his habeas corpus petition in January 2009, on the basis that he was a cook for Arab forces supporting the Taliban, and also had his appeal denied in January this year, consigning him to the same form of court-approved indefinite detention as his brother.

The torture in secret CIA prisons of three men rendered from Iran to Afghanistan

The accounts of three of the men rendered from Iran to Afghanistan are publicly available, and they are, to be blunt, horrific. Al-Ourdoni, a missionary seized with his wife and new-born child, explained after his release that his American captors “put me in jail under circumstances that I can only recall with dread. I lived under unimaginable conditions that cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.” He said that he was first placed in an underground prison for 77 days, and stated, “this room was so dark that we couldn’t distinguish nights and days. There was no window, and we didn’t see the sun once during the whole time.” He added that he was then moved to “prison number three”, where the food was so bad that his weight dropped substantially, and was then held in Bagram for 40 days before being flown to Guantánamo.

In an interview with a UN rapporteur, Walid al-Qadasi provided the following explanation of his treatment, which, like al-Ourdoni’s account, was included in a major UN report on secret detention earlier this year:

He was held in a prison in Kabul. During US custody, officials cut his clothes with scissors, left him naked and took photos of him before giving him Afghan clothes to wear. They then handcuffed his hands behind his back, blindfolded him and started interrogating him. The apparently Egyptian interrogator, accusing him of belonging to al-Qaeda, threatened him with death. He was put in an underground cell measuring approximately two meters by three meters with very small windows. He shared the cell with ten inmates. They had to sleep in shifts due to lack of space and received food only once a day. He spent three months there without ever leaving the cell. After three months, Walid al-Qadasi was transferred to Bagram, where he was interrogated for one month.

In a lawsuit filed in April 2009, Rafiq Alhami stated that, for a year, he was held in three CIA “dark sites,” where “his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers,” and where, at various times, he was “stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in painful stress positions for hours, punched, kicked and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.” Moreover, at Guantánamo, he told a military review board that one of the prisons was the “Dark Prison” near Kabul, which I have previously described as “a medieval torture dungeon with the addition of ear-splittingly loud music and noise, which was pumped into the cells 24 hours a day,” based on accounts by prisoners who were held there, including the British resident Binyam Mohamed, who described his time there as “the worst days of his captivity” — worse than the 18 months in Morocco, where the CIA’s proxy torturers regularly sliced his genitals with a razorblade.

Alhami told his review board that he was tortured for three months in the “Dark Prison,” where, he said, “I was threatened. I was left out all night in the cold … I spent two months with no water, no shoes, in darkness and in the cold. There was darkness and loud music for two months. I was not allowed to pray … These things are documented. You have them.”

The torture of Tawfiq al-Bihani

However while Judge Walton may not have come across my book, or the inclusion of this information in the UN report on secret detention earlier this year, I can’t understand how he would not have known about al-Bihani’s treatment from his lawyer, George M. Clarke III, because, in the book The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison, Outside the Law, published last year, Clarke reproduced a letter from al-Bihani in which he provided a detailed explanation of what had happened to him after he was delivered to Afghanistan from Iran.

In his letter, al-Bihani explained that he was initially held in a vile Afghan prison in Kabul, where he and the other prisoners from Iran were hidden from Red Cross representatives until one of their fellow prisoners informed them of their existence. His first encounters with US agents — he believes they were from the FBI — took place in this prison, and he described his first interrogation as follows:

I was handcuffed behind and they put a hood on my head so that I could not see anything. When I entered the interrogation room, the American guards pushed me down to the ground in a very savage manner. They started to cut my clothing with scissors. They undressed me completely and I was nude. They made me sit on a chair and it was very cold. I was also afraid and terrorized because the guards were aiming their weapons towards me. The interrogator put his personal gun on my forehead threatening to kill me.

Al-Bihani explained that he stayed in this prison for around ten weeks, and was then moved to another prison where he was held in solitary confinement for “approximately five months and ten days.” He added that the guards were Afghan, that they handed out “very bad treatment,” and that “The interrogation was also very savage.” He was then moved to a third prison, which appears to have been the “Dark Prison,” and en route US soldiers “started to hit me and strangle me, they would put a rope around my neck and I was about to die.” This is his description of the “Dark Prison”:

This was absolutely the worst prison. It was a very dark prison and there was no light, no bed or a carpet, the floor was semi cement. The restraints on my feet were very tight; they put me into a cell and kept me hanging tied to the wall for almost ten days. […]

The irritating music 24 hours a day was very loud and hard banging on the door. When I used to go for interrogations, I was unable to walk because of the restraints on my legs and tightness on my feet.  Would fall down to the ground and scream that I cannot walk. They would pick me up from the ground and I would walk with them while they were hitting me on the way to the interrogation until I would bleed from my feet. When I would fall to the ground, they would drag me while I am on the ground. Then they would bring me back to the cell and sprinkle cold water on me. Sometimes they would put a weapon on my head threatening to kill me using some provocative statements which I cannot mention in this letter.

After ten days, they brought me down from the hanging position and made me sit on the floor. Then they tied my hands upwards for approximately one month so that I could not lie down on the floor for comfort, therefore I was unable to sleep except for quarter of an hour every day.

After one month and ten days, they removed all my restraints, however I was unable to rest or sleep because of extreme hunger and cold and the loud irritating music and the banging on the door. I stayed in this prison for approximately two months and a half and I had no idea whether it is day or night as it was extremely dark and oppressive conditions.

After this, al-Bihani was moved to Bagram, where, he said, “the treatment was very bad there as well,” and was then flown to Guantánamo.

A bleak conclusion

Beyond a rather obvious question raised by the accounts above — did Tawfiq al-Bihani confess that he was “part of” al-Qaeda (when he so obviously wasn’t) because of the torture to which he was subjected in Afghanistan? — what this apparently overlooked torture account most vividly and balefully demonstrates is how effortlessly the torture of al-Bihani has become irrelevant to his case.
The exposure of torture has derailed other habeas petitions challenged by the government — in, for example, the cases of Mohamed Jawad and Fouad al-Rabiah (who were subsequently released), Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, an Algerian who is still held, and, less successfully, in the cases of Saeed Hatim and Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman (whose successful petitions are being appealed by the government).

However, in Tawfiq al-Bihani’s case it is difficult to escape the conclusion that, even had Judge Walton known, or chosen to pay attention to these reports, it would not have fundamentally altered his conclusion that this failed recruit was sufficiently involved with al-Qaeda to justify his ongoing detention. That, as I concluded above, already demonstrates that the classification process for determining who may be legally detained is far too loose, but when evidence that al-Bihani was tortured in secret prisons is also removed from the picture, the end result is far bleaker.

Somewhere along the line, questions need to be raised not only regarding the justification for continuing to hold insignificant individuals at Guantánamo who never raised arms against anyone and were not involved in terrorism, but also regarding the ease with which detailed information about the torture of prisoners in a series of secret prisons run by the CIA can be so thoroughly ignored that Judge Walton failed to mention it at all.

Soros' Foundation Links AFM's Appendix M to U.S. Torture in Afghanistan

Cross-posted from The Seminal/Firedoglake

Last week, George Soros's Open Society Foundations (OSF) published an important policy brief, "Confinement Conditions at a U.S. Screening Facility on Bagram Air Base." The report has been widely described in the press, as in this article by AFP:

The US military is mistreating detainees -- and violating its own rules -- at a secret prison in Afghanistan, a US think tank said Friday in a report.

The 16-page report by the Open Society Foundation said Afghans call the secret site "Tor Jail," or "Black Jail," and that consistent accounts from detainees refer to being kept without adequate shelter or food or other basic rights.

The independent investigation by OSF is consistent with news reports of torture and abuse at secret black sites run by JSOC in Afghanistan, including articles by the New York Times and Washington Post. Last May, BBC reported that they received confirmation on the existence of the black site from a Red Cross spokesman, while Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic described the JOSC black site as being "manned by intelligence operatives and interrogators who work for the DIA's Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC)... [performing] interrogations for a sub-unit of Task Force 714, an elite counter-terrorism brigade." The spate of news articles led Physicians for Human Rights to opine last May whether it was "possible that officials were relying on Appendix M of the 2006 Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations (AFM)," noting that the "appendix authorizes the use of two of the tactics — sleep deprivation and isolation — allegedly being applied to detainees."

In an article for The Seminal, also posted last May, I noted that the Chief for Research for the DCHC’s Behavioral Science Program, psychologist Susan Brandon, was a primary organizer of a CIA/American Psychological Assocation/Rand Corporation workshop on "deception" in July 2003. This workshop asked questions about how to use sensory overload techniques and truth drugs to "overwhelm the senses" of prisoners, in order to detect deception. Scott Horton also picked up the connection between Brandon and the torture reports from Afghanistan. In a major investigative report at Truthout last week, Jason Leopold and I reported that changes in a DOD directive on human subjects experimentation protections signed by Paul Wolfowitz in March 2002 were implicated in "a top-secret Special Access Program at the Guantanamo Bay prison, which experimented on ways to glean information from unwilling subjects and to achieve 'deception detection.'"

There is most likely much more to the detention story in Afghanistan than we know thus far, but the new OSF report is a welcome corroboration of most unwelcome and brutal facts about U.S. prisoner abuse and counterinsurgency practice in Afghanistan. But whether it's AFP, AP, Reuters, BBC, or even Aljazeera, with only one exception, no press article on the OSF report indicated that as one of the OSF report's "main findings" the abuse in the Bagram secret prison derives from the use of the Army Field Manual's Appendix M. Appendix M is a portion of AFM dealing with prisoners who are held in other than Prisoner of War status. Appendix M techniques, concentrating on isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation, use of fear techniques, and ambiguous "prohibitions" on "extreme" environmental manipulations, amount to torture and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and they are in use today. Only my fellow psychologist and anti-torture activist, Stephen Soldz, noted this most salient finding of the OSF investigation.

A link to the Army Field Manual, with its Appendix M, can be downloaded in PDF format here.

Jonathan Horowitz, author of the OSF report (PDF), described how he determined the use of Appendix M techniques:

The interviewees consistently described being held in a location where they were interrogated and held in small single person cells that prohibited verbal and visual communication with other detainees. This strongly suggests that the detainees were “screened” and subjected to interrogation methods described in Appendix M of the U.S. Army’s Human Intelligence Collector Operations Field Manual 2-22.3, which allows detaining authorities to physically separate detainees from other detainees and the outside world for the purposes of intelligence gathering—a technique known as “separation.”

Horowitz's mention of Appendix M is not incidental. It is mentioned on fifteen different occasions in the text of the report's 16 pages. OSF is very specific about its concerns regarding the current Army Field Manual on interrogation:

Despite the government’s insistence that Appendix M meets the minimum requirements for the protection of detainees under international law, analysts from the Open Society Foundations have expressed concerns with Field Manual 2-22.3 prior to this research, especially with regard to its authorization of sleep deprivation, refusing to classify stress positions as torture, and the deletion of key policy statements that, prior to the 2006 update of the manual, had informed interrogators that “[e]xperience shows that the use of prohibited techniques is not necessary to gain the cooperation of interrogation sources.”14 As this report demonstrates, additional concerns with the Field Manual 2-22.3 are warranted....

Field Manual 2-22.3 states, “[w]hile using legitimate interrogation techniques, certain applications of approaches and techniques may approach the line between permissible actions and prohibited actions. It may often be difficult to determine where permissible actions end and prohibited actions begin.”

The report notes that the totality of conditions and interrogation abuses at the Tor (or "Black") prison at Bagram call into question whether fair assessment of enemy status can be made by the new-fangled Detainee Review Boards, meaning God knows how many innocent people are being picked up and held as prisoners, awaiting the day that a viable Afghan court system can supposedly try these "insurgents".

The Detainee Review Boards taking place at the DFIP [Detention Facility in Parwan] prohibit the submission of information and evidence obtained through the use of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. If detainees are being held in conditions at an interrogation facility that rises to this level of abuse, the information obtained from those detainees should be rejected by the Detainee Review Boards.

I have been writing on the serious, indeed criminal, problems with the Army Field Manual since the new version was introduced in September 2006. I wrote a major piece on the problems with it for AlterNet in January 2009, and have followed up with reporting at Firedoglake (see here and here, for example; also coverage at this site by Emptywheel/Marcy Wheeler and bmaz).

But this kind of exposure, and the work of others, like Matthew Alexander, Stephen Rickard, Physicians for Human Rights and Center for Constitutional Rights, among other, has not been enough to fix the centrality of the use of Appendix M torture in the general political consciousness of the population. This can be largely attributed to the massive silence by politicians on this issue, and the assurances of the Obama administration that the AFM and Appendix M are safe, legal, and humane. So when a complacent and cowardly press and blogosphere are faced with the truth of the situation emanating from an establishment source such as the Open Society Foundations, what do they do? They ignore the truth.

Such is America in 2010, lost, rudderless, obsessed with trivia, as a monstrous war/intelligence/surveillance apparatus lurches on to either conquest or disaster (or maybe both) in its overseas campaigns, oblivious to how many are killed (the U.S. claims it doesn't keep track of the killed in Afghanistan), maimed, displaced, lives destroyed and national ideals trampled.

It's time the campaign against Appendix M went mainstream.