The Human Rights Blog: Iraq - War & Occupation Archives

On the execution of Saddam Hussein

I am against the death penalty. This may not seem as much of a revelation to you, after all, I am a human rights activist and human rights activists are supposed to be against the death penalty, but this was a revelation to me. For years, I've argued that the state has the power to put to death those who have committed the most egregious crimes, under the same theory of self defense that allows individuals (and police) to kill when their lives are in danger and nations to go to war to defend their national hegemony. I have quarreled with mechanisms and the reach of the death penalty in the US - unlike Scalia, I do believe that the innocent must not be executed -, but I've strongly supported the death penalty for both serial killers and mass murderers. In my book, nobody deserved to be put to death more than dictators responsible for the torture, disappearance and deaths of thousands, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands, or - like in the case of Pol Pot - even millions.

But I realized last night, as the hour of Saddam's execution came closer, that I was greeting his death with sadness rather than jubilation. Part of it, clearly, has to do with the fact that he did not enjoy a fair trial. His first trial judge resigned due to government interference with the trial, three of his lawyers were shot, and the surviving ones went on strike to protest the lack of protection due to them. They were followed by court-appointed attorneys with little knowledge of international law. We all know that Saddam was guilty, but if you are not going to respect the basic norms of due process, why bother at all with setting up a kangaroo court?

Another part of my sadness is due to the fact that most of Saddam's victims were denied justice. He was tried - and sentenced to death - for ordering a relatively small massacre of Shias in 1982. He never had to face justice for the torture, disappearances and deaths of hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis. In that sense, his death doesn't seem to me that different from that of Pinochet's (or so many Argentine military leaders) of natural causes. The happiness about their demise is bittered by the fact that they did not face justice for all their crimes.

And the suspicious part of me wonders about the haste to execute him. Like Robert Frisk, below, I wonder if the point of executing Saddam now, was to assure that American responsibility for collaborating with his regime in the commission of crimes against humanity was not exposed and that Saddam would not be able to testify against Americans about their support of his regime. After all, such support might very well be considered a crime against humanity under international law as well.

That said, unlike Frisk below, I don't think it's fair to compare Hussein's crimes to those committed by Bush et al. In the human rights arena, countries often excuse their actions by pointing out to the horrible actions of their neighbors, their accusers or even their victims. Americans and their allies have committed uncountable crimes of war and crimes against humanity in our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but to talk about those crimes in this context feels like a minimization of the atrocities committed by Hussein and his regime. We may be very bad guys, but Hussein was very bad too.

Beyond all this, I think I'm sad because I've come to the conclusion that the death penalty is simply wrong. States are too unwise, too corrupted, too political to give them the ultimate power to chose between the life and death of their subjects - and the appreciation of life has to encompass the appreciation of the life of even the worst human beings.

Below I copy an article by Robert Fisk on the execution of Hussein. Despite what I said above, I agree with much of what he has to say. I also copy the UN's response to the execution of Hussein.

--

UN AGAINST DEATH PENALTY BUT UNDERSTANDS DESIRE FOR JUSTICE IN HUSSEIN CASE -- ENVOY
New York, Dec 30 2006 2:00PM
Reacting to the imposition of the death sentence against Saddam Hussein, who ruled Iraq with terror for nearly a quarter of a century until his ouster in 2003, the senior United Nations envoy there voiced understanding about the desire for justice among many people but reiterated the world body's longstanding opposition to capital punishment.

"The United Nations stands firmly against impunity, and understands the desire for justice felt by the many Iraqis," Special Representative Ashraf Qazi said through a spokesman.

"Based on the principle of respect for the right to life, however, the United Nations remains opposed to capital punishment, even in the case of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide."

--
The Independent(UK)

Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America

Published: 30 December 2006

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of
that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope -
than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold
hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over
his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day"
for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death
sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans
- on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of
greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many
millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that
will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative
laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other
guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not
Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of
thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead
- because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian
Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage
of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have
tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have
even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we
are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse
of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime
he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who
sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and
the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial,
forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against
him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this
massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our
culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells
and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion
sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the
Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished"
- who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come,
no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable
and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and
Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.

"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its
course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced
his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for
Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for
mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their
last hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over
the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the
noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the
Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at
our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their
tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's
executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later
transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and
killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead
relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted
artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken
directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have
even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished
his days in power writing romantic novels.

It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York
Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion:
Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique
definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic
attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.

But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered
from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the
hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end.
But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of
his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the
would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the
ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his
jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his
death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and
time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed
an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all
his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this
shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new
"Crusaders".

When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops
increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again.
Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the
West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime.
Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a
thought. So many crimes avenged.

But we will have got away with it.

Posted by marga at 10:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Horror: Web Postings from Iraqis

Nov. 28, 2006 (Pensito Review delivered by Newstex) --

Cries of desperation: As if we needed more examples of the chaos our
government has wrought in Iraq, here are some truly chilling Web postings from
inside the country. I have (possibly unwisely -- hello Washington goons!) been
monitoring several related Web sites: Electronic Intifada, Electronic Iraq and
Electronic Lebanon.

These sites provide rare insight (if they are real, and they certainly seem
so, but check them out for yourself) into the situation on the ground in Iraq,
Lebanon and other Middle Eastern hotspots, as well as news and analysis not
filtered through the Western press. From Healing Iraq, a weblog purportedly by
an Iraqi dentist named Zeyad, comes the following harrowing posts to Iraqi
message boards by people at today's Ground Zero. They constitute a sampling of
how average people are trying to survive an increasingly untenuous situation for
Iraqi citizens:

"To grasp how dire the situation in Baghdad has become over the last few
days, here is a sampling of posts on Iraqi message boards where people ask for
instructions on how to defend their neighborhoods from marauding militiamen:

Ali - Khadhraa district:
Please inform us about the areas that are expected to be targeted, so we can be
prepared. Also please inform us on the necessary steps we should take to protect
our families and ourselves.

Ibn Al-Iraq - Jihad district:
Salam Aleikum. I live in the Jihad district. A group from the Mahdi Army tagged
Sunni residences and collected their weapons today. God is witness to what I
say.

Mustafa - Ghazaliya district:
We have been under mortar fire for two days. It is 10:50 p.m. now and we can
hear heavy gunfire and an attack against mosques in the area. May God save us
all from the injustice of aggressors.

A Mujahid for Allah - Al-Rashid district:
In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful.
They want a war, so be it. We are up to it, God willing.
My brothers, heed these recommendations:
1- Prepare weapons and ammunition.
2- To avoid their mortar fire, do not gather in large numbers at one place in
your areas.
3- Spread out in small groups, and assign a commander to each.
4- Always take cover behind a barrier (anything that can protect you from enemy
fire).
5- If there is an attack against your area, try not to waste your fire (make
maximum benefit from the ammunition you have available).
6- Assign duties to your brothers.
7- Maintain communication with other groups in your area so you can respond to
any breach of the area by the attackers.
8- Have courage and patience when you face them. They are cowards and will be
defeated.

Remember that your brothers, the Mujahideen, will be with you in your fight
against the murderous criminals. May God save us and save Iraq.

The son of Anbar - Baghdad:
Dear brothers, the Khadhraa and Jami'a districts are in need of ammunition.
Please come to our aid.

Ali - Ghazaliya district:
Groups from the evil Mahdi Army are preparing to enter Ghazaliya from the
direction of the Centre Street and near the Muhajireen mosque, but residents are
in control of most of the streets, despite assistance from the National Guard
[for the Mahdi Army] and their cover for the mortar attacks from the Security
Street. A woman was injured there from their damn mortars.

Abu Al-Hassan Al-Samarra'I - Baghdad:
To the Mujahideen brothers in all areas, attack them and let the initiative be
yours so that you can relieve the pressure from other districts. Have no mercy
for them. Be careful of their spies in your areas.

Anonymous - Jihad district:
Urgent. Please intervene to save the Jihad district from another massacre.
Interior Ministry commandoes have been transporting fighters and mercenaries
from the militias with their buses to their headquarters in the district. They
are estimated to be around 500 mercenaries, fully armed with medium and light
weapons. And now some of them are taking attack positions in preparation for a
new massacre in the district. The buses have not stopped arriving, even though
terrified residents have called the police and governmental officials.

Abu Mohammed - Baghdad:
I recommend to my brothers the following:
1- Trust in God, and defend your family, your possessions and your honour.
Whoever is killed is a martyr for God.
2- Never surrender, because in that case they will kill us after maiming and
torturing us. We should fight to the last breath.
3- Ensure surveillance for every area, especially main streets and entry
points, and maintain communication to follow the movement of vehicles used by
militias. Attack them wisely without wasting ammunition.
4 - Prepare ambushes for these militias on the streets they are expected to
pass. Finish them off and take their weapons.

Remember that those militias are former looters, thieves and shoe shiners.
Do not make such a big deal of them because, by God, they are lowly animals.

Ahmed Al-Janabi - Baghdad:
Salam Aleikum. I'm a resident of Yarmouk and I can hear gunfire from the Four
Streets area as if in warning of an attack of sorts. God knows. Please come to
our aid if the situation worsens.

Abdul Rahman Abdul Qadir - Karkh district:
Salam Aleikum. Over 40 vehicles with Mahdi Army militiamen have gathered near
the Dora police station. They started arriving at 7 p.m., and at 7:45 p.m. we
could see about 40 vehicles preparing to attack Dora.

Abdul Rahman - Iraq:
Please keep these steps in mind:
1- Deploy snipers on the rooftops of buildings that lie close to the main entry
points for each area.
2- Prepare positions for medium weapons at a distance from the entry point, and
make pincers with sniper and PKC fire. When you choose a position, make sure you
can retreat to alternate positions from it, in case the enemy overruns the area
(do not choose a building that is not adjacent to another, or use ropes to
quickly slide down the building).
3- RPG carriers should maintain their positions on side streets and take cover
behind barriers. Do not fire just for the sake of it (attack the first and last
vehicle).
4- Create heavy fire density to force the enemy to take cover, and then
eliminate them by sniper fire.
5- Provide hand grenades and distribute them to the Mujahideen.
6- Fighters with light weapons should always change positions, fire from
different angles and not stay at one place.
7- Prepare and plant roadside bombs on the entrance to every area.
8- Bomb the gathering locations for the army of filthy Muqtada.
9- Prepare a special group to deal with any breach, and it should be armed with
RPGs, PKC machine guns and KIA vehicles.
10- Plan ambushes and lure the enemy by using bait vehicles that they chase to
be dragged into the killing zone.

Iraqiya - Dora district:
Urgent. Dora has been breached. There was an attack by the ragtag militias
against residences, and we can now hear women screaming. They are raiding the Tu'ma district, which is inhabited by the Jubour tribes. There is also an attack
against the Arqam mosque.

Ali - Dora district:
Elements of the Interior Ministry commandos are attacking Dora (the Mechanic,
Tu'ma, Sahha and Asia districts). But do not fear, for we are engaging them. Our
battle cry is "They came for death, no one brought them."

Ahmed - Jamila district:
Barbaric groups of the Antichrist [Mahdi] Army, and the Iranians that are with
them, have killed dozens of Sunni youth at the Jamila district in the exact spot
of the car bombing, in a mass execution orgy in front of people. This was
broadcast on Sharqiya TV by an anonymous security source. The honourable Shi
'ites from east of the [Army] Canal have told us that these groups are moving
freely, and that they are preparing for a wide-scale assault on Sunni districts.
Be prepared to confront the infidels.

Abdul Rahman - Iraq:
For the brothers who have not used weapons before, please take this advice:
1- Check your weapon if you have not used it before. You can ask your neighbour
to teach you how to attach the magazine and to load and fire. Do not be ashamed
that it would be said you don't know how to use a weapon, as many people have
not had a chance to.
2- Choose the appropriate spot on your roof that can provide you with cover and
make it hard for the enemy to target you.
3- It is best if every two families gather in one house when the alarm of an
attack is raised to keep spirits high.
4- When you shoot, try to make it intermittent so you do not waste your
ammunition. Be patient until more fighters arrive and your neighbours start
shooting too.
5- You may feel fear upon using a weapon for the first time or that something
bad would happen to you, but think of your family and what awaits them if you
are hesitant. Keep your honour and your children in front of your eye, and
remember that they have burnt children with kerosene.
6- Make sure that you have an extra magazine because in the midst of action you
may take away your weapon and forget your extra magazine. It is preferred that
you tape two magazines together. Ask your neighbours how to do that. Practice
with it several times.
7- Fear of using weapons will disappear with the first shot. Do not hesitate to
pull the trigger and concentrate on hitting the enemy.

Omar Al-Rawi - Baghdad:
Salam Aleikum. Mosques in the Adhamiya and Khadhraa areas have started chanting
"Allahu Akbar" and reciting Quran through their loudspeakers to encourage
residents to confront the Safavid militias.

Ibn Al-Mansour - Mansour district:
Residents of Mansour, large groups of armed militiamen have been seen heading
from the Washash and Iskan districts to attack Mansour. Prepare to defend
yourselves and your neighbours, Sunni and Shia, from the attack of the
treacherous Mahdi Army militias.

Al-Anbari - Baghdad:
Several mortar shells have hit the Jami'a and Khadhraa districts after the
evening prayers. And there is news that militias are now gathering to prepare
for the attack against these districts. Additionally, there are groups of the
Antichrist [Mahdi] Army in the Safarat district preparing to attack the Qudhat
district."

Posted by marga at 10:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Scholars at Risk calls for action against murders of Iraqi professors

Scholars at Risk calls for letters demanding urgent government actions in response to the ongoing murders of professors in Iraq, including the recent murders in separate incidents of Baghdad University Professor Issam al-Rawi, Department of Geology, and Professor Jassim al-Asadi, Dean at the School of Administration and Economics.

Scholars at Risk (SAR) is an international network of universities and colleges dedicated to promoting academic freedom and defending threatened scholars and universities worldwide.

In issuing this release, Scholars at Risk joins many international academic organizations, including the Middle East Studies Association, the American Association of University Professors, and the Network for Education and Academic Rights, in demanding that Iraqi and international officers in Iraq make every effort to investigate thoroughly attacks on academics and universities and to provide improved security to the Iraqi higher education sector and its constituents.

According to published news reports, Professor al-Rawi, head of the University Professors' Union, was shot outside of his home on October 30, 2006 by unknown gunmen and three days later on November 2 Professor Jassim al-Asadi, a dean at the university was shot along with his wife and son while driving in northern Baghdad. Professor al-Rawi was from the Sunni community and Professor al-Asadi was from the Shiite community. It is believed that Professor al-Asadi’s murder was in retaliation for the death of Professor al-Rawi.

The killings are merely the latest examples of a campaign of violence currently undermining Iraq’s higher education sector. According to international monitors and the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education itself, hundreds of Iraqi academics have been killed and thousands forced to flea the country because of fears of kidnapping and assassination. Scholars at Risk is gravely concerned for the well being of Iraqi institutions and scholars still in Iraq, as well as those fleeing into exile. Recognizing the vital role that the higher education sector must play in building any better future for Iraq and its people, Scholars at Risk joins in calls for letters, emails and faxes respectfully calling on Iraqi and relevant international authorities to:

- investigate the circumstances of the deaths of Professor al-Rawi, Professor Jassim al-Asadi and other murdered professors;

- make the results and procedures of those investigation public as soon as possible;

- make every effort to identify the individuals responsible and bring them to justice in accordance with Iraqi law and internationally recognized fair trial principles;

- make a firm commitment to protecting Iraq’s higher education institutions, including the physical space of the universities as well as their administrators, faculties, staff and students, including efforts to insulate higher education institutions from sectarian politics and violence; and

- provide open, firm and public support for principles of freedom of thought, free exchange of ideas, and academic freedom as central to the mission of higher education and to the role of higher education institutions in society and in a better future for Iraq.

Please send letters, emails and faxes to:

Honorable Nuri Kamal al-Maliki
Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq
c/o The Embassy of Iraq
1801 P Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036 USA
Fax: (202) 462-5066

Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie
The Embassy of Iraq
1801 P Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036 USA
Fax: (202) 462-5066

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520 USA

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad
US Ambassador to Iraq
Embassy of the United States
APO AE 09316
Baghdad, Iraq USA

H.E. Dr. Salah Al-Shaikhly
Ambassador of The Republic of Iraq
Embassy of Iraq in London
9 Holland Villas Road
London
W14 8BP, UK

The Honorable Dominic Asquith CMG
Her Majesty's Ambassador to the Republic of Iraq
c/o Iraq Policy Unit
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London
SW1A 2AH, UK

Please send copies to:

Scholars at Risk
c/o New York University
194 Mercer Street, Rm 410
New York, New York 10012
1-212-995-4402 (fax)
scholarsatrisk@nyu.edu

Posted by marga at 2:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

AP: U.S. War Prisons Legal Vacuum for 14,000

September 17,2006 | BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

"It was hard to believe I'd get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release -- without charge -- last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell."

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

Defenders of the system, which has only grown since soldiers' photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked the world, say it's an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action.

Every U.S. detainee in Iraq "is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations in Iraq.

But dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human rights activists, lawyers and scholars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.

Building for the Long Term

Reports of extreme physical and mental abuse, symbolized by the notorious Abu Ghraib prison photos of 2004, have abated as the Pentagon has rejected torture-like treatment of the inmates. Most recently, on Sept. 6, the Pentagon issued a new interrogation manual banning forced nakedness, hooding, stress positions and other abusive techniques.

The same day, President Bush said the CIA's secret outposts in the prison network had been emptied, and 14 terror suspects from them sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to face trial in military tribunals. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the tribunal system, however, and the White House and Congress are now wrestling over the legal structure of such trials.

Living conditions for detainees may be improving as well. The U.S. military cites the toilets of Bagram, Afghanistan: In a cavernous old building at that air base, hundreds of detainees in their communal cages now have indoor plumbing and privacy screens, instead of exposed chamber pots.

Whatever the progress, small or significant, grim realities persist.

Human rights groups count dozens of detainee deaths for which no one has been punished or that were never explained. The secret prisons -- unknown in number and location -- remain available for future detainees. The new manual banning torture doesn't cover CIA interrogators. And thousands of people still languish in a limbo, deprived of one of common law's oldest rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are imprisoned.

"If you, God forbid, are an innocent Afghan who gets sold down the river by some warlord rival, you can end up at Bagram and you have absolutely no way of clearing your name," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch in New York. "You can't have a lawyer present evidence, or do anything organized to get yourself out of there."

The U.S. government has contended it can hold detainees until the "war on terror" ends -- as it determines.

"I don't think we've gotten to the question of how long," said retired admiral John D. Hutson, former top lawyer for the U.S. Navy. "When we get up to 'forever,' I think it will be tested" in court, he said.

The Navy is planning long-term at Guantanamo. This fall it expects to open a new, $30-million maximum-security wing at its prison complex there, a concrete-and-steel structure replacing more temporary camps.

In Iraq, Army jailers are a step ahead. Last month they opened a $60-million, state-of-the-art detention center at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad's airport. The Army oversees about 13,000 prisoners in Iraq at Cropper, Camp Bucca in the southern desert, and Fort Suse in the Kurdish north.

Neither prisoners of war nor criminal defendants, they are just "security detainees" held "for imperative reasons of security," spokesman Curry said, using language from an annex to a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the U.S. presence here.

Questions of Law, Sovereignty

President Bush laid out the U.S. position in a speech Sept. 6.

"These are enemy combatants who are waging war on our nation," he said. "We have a right under the laws of war, and we have an obligation to the American people, to detain these enemies and stop them from rejoining the battle."

But others say there's no need to hold these thousands outside of the rules for prisoners of war established by the Geneva Conventions.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared last March that the extent of arbitrary detention here is "not consistent with provisions of international law governing internment on imperative reasons of security."

Meanwhile, officials of Nouri al-Maliki's 4-month-old Iraqi government say the U.S. detention system violates Iraq's national rights.

"As long as sovereignty has transferred to Iraqi hands, the Americans have no right to detain any Iraqi person," said Fadhil al-Sharaa, an aide to the prime minister. "The detention should be conducted only with the permission of the Iraqi judiciary."

At the Justice Ministry, Deputy Minister Busho Ibrahim told AP it has been "a daily request" that the detainees be brought under Iraqi authority.

There's no guarantee the Americans' 13,000 detainees would fare better under control of the Iraqi government, which U.N. officials say holds 15,000 prisoners.

But little has changed because of these requests. When the Americans formally turned over Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi control on Sept. 2, it was empty but its 3,000 prisoners remained in U.S. custody, shifted to Camp Cropper.

Life in Custody

The cases of U.S.-detained Iraqis are reviewed by a committee of U.S. military and Iraqi government officials. The panel recommends criminal charges against some, release for others. As of Sept. 9, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq had put 1,445 on trial, convicting 1,252. In the last week of August, for example, 38 were sentenced on charges ranging from illegal weapons possession to murder, for the shooting of a U.S. Marine.

Almost 18,700 have been released since June 2004, the U.S. command says, not including many more who were held and then freed by local military units and never shipped to major prisons.

Some who were released, no longer considered a threat, later joined or rejoined the insurgency.

The review process is too slow, say U.N. officials. Until they are released, often families don't know where their men are -- the prisoners are usually men -- or even whether they're in American hands.

Ex-detainee Mouayad Yasin Hassan, 31, seized in April 2004 as a suspected Sunni Muslim insurgent, said he wasn't allowed to obtain a lawyer or contact his family during 13 months at Abu Ghraib and Bucca, where he was interrogated incessantly. When he asked why he was in prison, he said, the answer was, "We keep you for security reasons."

Another released prisoner, Waleed Abdul Karim, 26, recounted how his guards would wield their absolute authority.

"Tell us about the ones who attack Americans in your neighborhood," he quoted an interrogator as saying, "or I will keep you in prison for another 50 years."

As with others, Karim's confinement may simply have strengthened support for the anti-U.S. resistance. "I will hate Americans for the rest of my life," he said.

As bleak and hidden as the Iraq lockups are, the Afghan situation is even less known. Accounts of abuse and deaths emerged in 2002-2004, but if Abu Ghraib-like photos from Bagram exist, none have leaked out. The U.S. military is believed holding about 500 detainees -- most Afghans, but also apparently Arabs, Pakistanis and Central Asians.

The United States plans to cede control of its Afghan detainees by early next year, five years after invading Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaida's base and bring down the Taliban government. Meanwhile, the prisoners of Bagram exist in a legal vacuum like that elsewhere in the U.S. detention network.

"There's been a silence about Bagram, and much less political discussion about it," said Richard Bennett, chief U.N. human rights officer in Afghanistan.

Freed detainees tell how in cages of 16 inmates they are forbidden to speak to each other. They wear the same orange jumpsuits and shaven heads as the terrorist suspects at Guantanamo, but lack even the scant legal rights granted inmates at that Cuba base. In some cases, they have been held without charge for three to four years, rights workers say.

Guantanamo received its first prisoners from Afghanistan -- chained, wearing blacked-out goggles -- in January 2002. A total of 770 detainees were sent there. Its population today of Afghans, Arabs and others, stands at 455.

Described as the most dangerous of America's "war on terror" prisoners, only 10 of the Guantanamo inmates have been charged with crimes. Charges are expected against 14 other al-Qaida suspects flown in to Guantanamo from secret prisons on Sept. 4.

Plans for their trials are on hold, however, because of a Supreme Court ruling in June against the Bush administration's plan for military tribunals.

The court held the tribunals were not authorized by the U.S. Congress and violated the Geneva Conventions by abrogating prisoners' rights. In a sometimes contentious debate, the White House and Congress are trying to agree on a new, acceptable trial plan.

Since the court decision, and after four years of confusing claims that terrorist suspects were so-called "unlawful combatants" unprotected by international law, the Bush administration has taken steps recognizing that the Geneva Conventions' legal and human rights do extend to imprisoned al-Qaida militants. At the same time, however, the new White House proposal on tribunals retains such controversial features as denying defendants access to some evidence against them.

In his Sept. 6 speech, Bush acknowledged for the first time the existence of the CIA's secret prisons, believed established at military bases or safehouses in such places as Egypt, Indonesia and eastern Europe. That network, uncovered by journalists, had been condemned by U.N. authorities and investigated by the Council of Europe.

The clandestine jails are now empty, Bush announced, but will remain a future option for CIA detentions and interrogation.

Louise Arbour, U.N. human rights chief, is urging Bush to abolish the CIA prisons altogether, as ripe for "abusive conduct." The CIA's techniques for extracting information from prisoners still remain secret, she noted.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government's willingness to resort to "extraordinary rendition," transferring suspects to other nations where they might be tortured, appears unchanged.

Prosecutions and Memories

The exposure of sadistic abuse, torture and death at Abu Ghraib two years ago touched off a flood of courts-martial of mostly lower-ranking U.S. soldiers. Overall, about 800 investigations of alleged detainee mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to action against more than 250 service personnel, including 89 convicted at courts-martial, U.S. diplomats told the United Nations in May.

Critics protest that penalties have been too soft and too little has been done, particularly in tracing inhumane interrogation methods from the far-flung islands of the overseas prison system back to policies set by high-ranking officials.

In only 14 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings of detainees, the New York-based Human Rights First reports. The stiffest sentence in a torture-related death has been five months in jail. The group reported last February that in almost half of 98 detainee deaths, the cause was either never announced or reported as undetermined.

Looking back, the United States overreacted in its treatment of detainees after Sept. 11, said Anne-Marie Slaughter, a noted American scholar of international law.

It was understandable, the Princeton University dean said, but now "we have to restore a balance between security and rights that is consistent with who we are and consistent with our security needs."

Otherwise, she said, "history will look back and say that we took a dangerous and deeply wrong turn."

Back here in Baghdad, at the Alawi bus station, a gritty, noisy hub far from the meeting rooms of Washington and Geneva, women gather with fading hopes whenever a new prisoner release is announced.

As she watched one recent day for a bus from distant Camp Bucca, one mother wept and told her story.

"The Americans arrested my son, my brother and his friend," said Zahraa Alyat, 42. "The Americans arrested them October 16, 2005. They left together and I don't know anything about them."

The bus pulled up. A few dozen men stepped off, some blindfolded, some bound, none with any luggage, none with familiar faces.

As the distraught women straggled away once more, one ex-prisoner, 18-year-old Bilal Kadhim Muhssin, spotted U.S. troops nearby.

"Americans," he muttered in fear. "Oh, my God, don't say that name," and he bolted for a city bus, and freedom.

--__

EDITOR'S NOTE -- The Associated Press staff in Baghdad and AP writers Andrew Selsky in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Matthew Pennington in Kabul, Afghanistan; Anne Plummer Flaherty in Washington, and Charles J. Hanley in New York contributed to this report.

Posted by marga at 9:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In Memoriam: Tom Fox

American peace activist Tom Fox has been killed. His body has been found.

Tom Fox was a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams and had been working with Iraqi human rights organizations. He was kidnapped along with other 3 activists last November. He was 54 years old and had two children.

Tom was realistic about the dangers he faced working in Iraq. He left instructions that in case of being taken hostage, ransom should not be paid for his freedom. He also asked that his abductors not be vilified but that their actions be understood. But as he said "Too many are willing to die for war and too few are willing to die for peace."

Tom Fox's courage and dedication awes me personally. I didn't know him but as a human rights activist I mourn his death.

I'm adding to this entree the press release issued by Christian Peacemaker Teams

Statement, Christian Peacemaker Teams, 10 March 2006

In grief we tremble before God who wraps us with compassion. The death of our beloved colleague and friend pierces us with pain. Tom Fox's body was found in Baghdad yesterday.

Christian Peacemaker Teams extends our deep and heartfelt condolences to the family and community of Tom Fox, with whom we have traveled so closely in these days of crisis.

We mourn the loss of Tom Fox who combined a lightness of spirit, a firm opposition to all oppression, and the recognition of God in everyone.

We renew our plea for the safe release of Harmeet Sooden, Jim Loney and Norman Kember. Each of our teammates has responded to Jesus' prophetic call to live out a nonviolent alternative to the cycle of violence and revenge.

In response to Tom's passing, we ask that everyone set aside inclinations to vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done. In Tom's own words: "We reject violence to punish anyone. We ask that there be no retaliation on relatives or property. We forgive those who consider us their enemies. We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening nonviolently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation."

Even as we grieve the loss of our beloved colleague, we stand in the light of his strong witness to the power of love and the courage of nonviolence. That light reveals the way out of fear and grief and war.

Through these days of crisis, Christian Peacemaker Teams has been surrounded and upheld by a great outpouring of compassion: messages of support, acts of mercy, prayers, and public actions offered by the most senior religious councils and by school children, by political leaders and by those organizing for justice and human rights, by friends in distant nations and by strangers near at hand. These words and actions sustain us. While one of our teammates is lost to us, the strength of this outpouring is not lost to God's movement for just peace among all peoples.

At the forefront of that support are strong and courageous actions from Muslim brothers and sisters throughout the world for which we are profoundly grateful. Their graciousness inspires us to continue working for the day when Christians speak up as boldly for the human rights of thousands Iraqis still detained illegally by the United States and United Kingdom.

Such an outpouring of action for justice and peace would be a fitting memorial for Tom. Let us all join our voices on behalf of those who continue to suffer under occupation, whose loved ones have been killed or are missing. In so doing, we may hasten the day when both those who are wrongly detained and those who bear arms will return safely to their homes. In such a peace we will find solace for our grief.

Despite the tragedy of this day, we remain committed to put into practice these words of Jim Loney: "With the waging of war, we will not comply. With the help of God's grace, we will struggle for justice. With God's abiding kindness, we will love even our enemies." We continue in hope for Jim, Harmeet and Norman's safe return home safe.

Christian Peacemaker Teams has been present in Iraq since October 2002, providing first-hand, independent reports from the region, working with detainees of both United States and Iraqi forces, and training others in non-violent intervention and human rights documentation. Christian Peacemaker Teams is a violence reduction program. Teams of trained peacemakers work in areas of lethal conflict around the world.

For more information and to learn on ways to support the hostages still held in Iraq, visit the website of the Christian Peacemaker Teams at: http://www.cpt.org

Posted by marga at 1:04 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Baghdad official who exposed executions flees

Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq has disclosed.

"The vast majority of bodies showed signs of summary execution - many with their hands tied behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms and leg joints broken by electric drills," said John Pace, the Maltese UN official. The killings had been happening long before the bloodshed after last week's bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra.

Mr Pace, whose contract in Iraq ended last month, said many killings were carried out by Shia militias linked to the industry ministry run by Bayan Jabr, a leading figure in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).

Mr Pace said records, supported by photographs, came from Baghdad's forensic institute, which passed them to the UN. The Baghdad morgue has been receiving 700 or more bodies a month. The figures peaked at 1,100 last July - many showing signs of torture.

Reports of government-sponsored death squads have sparked fear among many prominent Iraqis, prompting a rise in the number leaving the country. Mr Pace said the morgue's director had received death threats after he reported the murders. "He's out of the country now," said Mr Pace, adding that the attribution of the killings to government-linked militias did not come from Dr Bakir.

"There are other sources for that. Some militias are integrated with the police and wear police uniforms," he said. "The Badr brigade [Sciri's armed wing] are in the police and are mainly the ones doing the killing. They're the most notorious."

Some Iraqis accuse the Mahdi army militia, linked to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, of seizing and killing people. But Mr Pace said: "I'm not as sure of the Mahdi army as I am of the others."

Thursday March 2, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1721366,00.html

Posted by marga at 10:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

On hostage taking in Iraq

American soldiers are taking the wives of wanted Iraqis as hostages, hoping their husband will turn themselves in. Not a new story, though new documents comfirming the practice, have brought it to the attention of AP and the national media. In one case, a nursing mother was arrested and taken away from her three young children to be "held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender." She was let go after two days, when a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer, present at the arrest, complained.

It's also not a surprising practice. The American military has for years been training Latin American military at the School of Americas and other more transient institutions. The course work has historically included techniques of "urban warfare" against "subversives." Latin Americans have also served as instructors at such institutions and have informally mixed with American military, facilitating the flow of information on repressive techniques. It's thus no wonder that the techniques used by American Task Forces in Iraq bear a lot of similarity with those used by Argentine Task Groups during the "Dirty War."

According to the Red Cross victims are often arrested after dark, when a group of armed men break into their home, yelling and pushing around everyone inside. Victims are handcuffed and hooded, often punched, kicked and struck with rifles. Sometimes all the adult males present in the house are taken - in Argentina, women were taken almost as often as men.

As in Argentina, victims are often first taken to interim detention centers. Both during their transfer and at the centers they may be beaten or tortured. American torturers are not as keen of picanas, or electric cattle prods, as Argentinians are, preferring more ad hoc torture methods such as forcing victims to lie naked on extremely hot surfaces, physical and mental humillations and beatings. The Iraqi security forces, however, seems to have adopted the use of the picana with gusto.

Most victims are eventually transferred to regular prisons, where their abuse may continue, or freed. While this was the practice early in Argentina, as the "dirty war" progressed they were taken to Secret Detention Centers instead, where they were tortured and eventually killed. The United States has also set up secret detention centers in Iraq and other countries where "ghost detainees," the term used to describe the "disappeared," are held. Following the example of their US counterparts, the Iraqi security forces have already also started to set up secret detention centers.

And taking family members of the person sought as hostages was common practice in Argentina. Sometimes it even worked.

So it shouldn't come to any surprise to anyone, least of all me, that American forces are "fighting" the "war" in Iraq by the book - at least the books used at the School of the Americas. And yet reading about that young mother who was torn away from her six-month-old baby and other little children particularly outrages me, more than that, hurts me. Perhaps it is because I am a nursing mother myself. My little girl just turned one and for the first time she spent a night away from me with her grandparents. It was a happy occasion, a time to take some much-needed alone time with my husband and get the first whole night of sleep I've had in more than a year. And I enjoyed it until my breasts, used to the baby suckling on them throughout the night, got full and became painful. And with the physical pain came the emotional pain of separation. And I knew that my baby was happy and comforted, surrounded by people who loved her and with plenty of bottles of breastmilk for her in the fridge.

It must have been so horrible for that other mother and for those children. She, alone, imprisoned by people who saw her and the children as nothing more than pawns in their sick game, criminals of war who, in denying others their humanity, ultimately lose their own. And I ask myself: Was she able to leave her children with a trusted person? Would there be anyone to comfort them at night when they asked where their mother was taken? What could they be told? And that baby - what did he eat? It may take a nursing mother to realize that many breast-fed babies don't take a bottle, and that if they are exclusively breast-fed, suddenly changing their diet to cow's milk or formula may make them sick, especially at six months. And that mother, alone in that prison, not knowing how her kids were, her breasts getting fuller, the pain only adding to the emotional wretchedness.

It is probably because I am a nursing mother that this affects me so much. It's easy, for me, to identify with the victim in this case. She's not that different, after all. Quite a bit younger, with three kids instead of two, but ultimately a nursing mother like me. And in the current political atmosphere, where the Bush administration spies on private citizens and human rights organizations, denies the fundamental right to habeas corpus and maintains that in waging the war on terror the President is above the law, the idea that one day, not too far away, it could be me is not as preposterous as it once may have seen. If Bush does win this political/legal battle, if indeed he has the right to do anything in the name of the war of terror, I'm pretty sure he will.

Hostage taking is, of course, a crime under international law. It's considered a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions (ratified by the US) and a war crime by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (not ratified by the US). According to the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages "[a]ny person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person ... in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage commits the offence of taking of hostages..."

But those are just words, of course. The cases of Americans facing prosecution for the war crimes or crimes against humanity they've committed are few and far between. Most often, the guilty parties have only received a slap on the wrist. But I think we should not despair. Only last April, thirty years after the start of the "Dirty War" in Argentina, an Argentine Navy Captain, Adolfo Scilingo, was sentenced to 640 years in prison for participating in the commission of crimes against humanity. His crimes were very much like those of the members of American Task forces in Iraq. One day they too will face justice.

Of course, that's of little comfort to the Iraqis who are illegally detained, mistreated, tortured, raped and killed today. And it's of little comfort to me.

Posted by marga at 5:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack