End the Systematic Violation of Human Rights and of Sovereignty!

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Britain’s Sordid History and the Torture of Iraqi Civilians:
End the Systematic Violation of Human Rights and of Sovereignty!

Torture and Disinformation

UK Forces Taught Torture Methods

The Crimes at Abu Ghraib Are Not the Worst

"Stress and Duress:" Drawing the Line Between Interrogation and Torture

Anti-Terrorism and Human Rights

Public Meeting: Anti-Terrorism Laws – Then And Now

Following revelations in the media and elsewhere, government ministers have been vigorously defending the record of Britain’s armed forces in Iraq and, while refusing to make any distinction between the general conduct of British and US forces in Iraq, they have strenuously denied that British armed forces routinely engage in mistreatment or torture.

The common response of the government to the allegations of torture and mistreatment by Britain’s armed forces that have been made in reports by such organisation as Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross, has been that if and when such violations of human rights occur, they are simply "the unauthorised actions of a very few", immediately investigated, curtailed and abhorred. As the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, explained in Parliament this week, "we regret the shadow that has been cast across the excellent work being undertaken, under very difficult circumstances, to establish security and to rebuild Iraq." But it is now common knowledge that British forces involved in "intelligence" work are routinely trained in the torture techniques being used in Iraq.

The government continually attempts to assert that the main role of the armed forces in Iraq and elsewhere is a humanitarian one that is carried out with "compassion and sensitivity" and fully in accordance with "international humanitarian law". But the brutal slaughter of over 11,000 civilians in over a year by the Anglo-American forces starkly reveals the true nature of the invasion. The fact remains that the armed forces carry out the policy of the British government, which is jointly with the Bush administration the de jure occupying power. The bombing of Iraq for over a decade before that has been in violation of international law and was itself a form of both physical and psychological torture of the civilian population of that country.

However, the claim is constantly made that somehow Britain’s armed forces are incapable of the barbarous acts that may attributed both to their enemies and allies alike. It is not that the forces are culpable and the government "does not know". Britain is repeating its colonial wars in all of which torture was routinely used. During the military occupation of the north of Ireland, for example, British governments routinely used such barbaric methods, a fact which in 1976 led to the government being found guilty of using "torture, inhuman and degrading treatment" by the European Court of Human Rights.

The widespread use of torture was also commonplace in Britain’s colonial wars in Africa. In Kenya for example the atrocities perpetrated in the Hola and other prison camps where 70,000 were incarcerated provoked national and worldwide outrage. Such barbarism and the "competitions in killing" organised in British military units, prompted members of the armed forces to speak out in protest at what were referred to as "Gestapo methods" being employed to torture and kill Africans who were struggling for the independence of their country.

In British occupied India in the 19th century there was an officially stated "belief in the general existence of torture for revenue purposes", that is to say the extortion of money from the Indian population. At that time one correspondent wrote "there is no army in Europe or America with so much brutality as the British. Plundering, violence, massacre – things that everywhere else are strictly and completely banished – are a time-honoured privilege, a vested right of the British soldier."

These acts of torture are inseparable from the colonialist logic that justifies its occupation and annexation of countries with the pretext of "liberating" its peoples. In its despicable twisting and squirming, the government is demonstrating that it has no right to claim the attribute of being "civilised". The acts of torture, whether by the British or US forces, show that the occupying powers have no concern for upholding international law or human rights. The working class and people must organise to put an end to this foreign policy of which a central feature is the violation of sovereignty and of human rights.

The United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession; punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions". Torture, under all circumstances, is outlawed by the above Convention and by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions.

Recent revelations of the activities of the US and British armies in Iraq offer overwhelming evidence that both have been engaged in the systematic use of torture against the Iraqi people as part of their drive to consolidate their illegal occupation of that country. Confronted with this grim reality, even as Bush and Blair were declaring that the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq had "freed the Iraqi people from the torture chambers of Saddam Hussein", the occupiers have resorted to disinformation and spin as a means of escaping their responsibilities for these gross crimes.

The systematic torture of people in Iraq is now routinely referred to in the media as "abuse of Iraqi prisoners". The intention is to lessen the gravity of the crime in the minds of the public who abhor torture and reject torturers. Individual testimonies of Iraqis who equate the treatment they received in the prisons of the former government in Iraq to those at the hands of the occupiers are disregarded. According to the spin, "Saddam Hussein practised torture" while the Anglo-Americans only practise "abuse".

The disinformation and spin, however, does not stop there. In fact, it is part of a wider effort to deny responsibility for the systematic torture which the occupiers have been using as an instrument of the occupation ever since they launched their invasion. The downgrading of "torture" to "abuse" is part of this pattern of denial. This denial is also evident in the furore which is being manufactured over the Daily Mirror photos as to whether they are "genuine or hoax", whether the truck in the Daily Mirror photos was ever in Iraq and so on. In this way, the central issue of the systematic use of torture in the pursuit of the aims of an illegal invasion and occupation is bypassed and those ultimately responsible for the torture can escape being called to account. A further twist on the disinformation and spin is the suggestion that "if abuse did take place, it was not systematic" and was the "work of rogue soldiers who will be arrested, tried and punished". With this particular denial, those who bear ultimate responsibility for the torture are attempting to insulate themselves from criminal responsibility and break the links in the chain of command which connect them with those who actually carried out the acts of torture. The latter have already stated that they were acting under orders to do what they did and the International Committee of the Red Cross in its report on Iraq noted that "the use of ill treatment against persons deprived of their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered as a practice tolerated by the Coalition Forces".

The systematic use of torture in Iraq and the use of disinformation and spin to escape criminal responsibility for it flow logically from the nature of the invasion and occupation of that country. It exposes for all to see that occupation is not liberation and that high-sounding and noble phrases cannot cover over the criminal nature of wars of aggression and colonial occupation.

David Leigh, Saturday May 8, 2004, The Guardian

The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources. The techniques devised in the system, called R2I - resistance to interrogation - match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: "It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn't know what they were doing."

He said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands.

"There is a reservoir of knowledge about these interrogation techniques which is retained by former special forces soldiers who are being rehired as private contractors in Iraq. Contractors are bringing in their old friends".

Using sexual jibes and degradation, along with stripping naked, is one of the methods taught on both sides of the Atlantic under the slogan "prolong the shock of capture", he said.

Female guards were used to taunt male prisoners sexually and at British training sessions when female candidates were undergoing resistance training they would be subject to lesbian jibes.

"Most people just laugh that off during mock training exercises, but the whole experience is horrible. Two of my colleagues couldn't cope with the training at the time. One walked out saying 'I've had enough', and the other had a breakdown. It's exceedingly disturbing," said the former Special Boat Squadron officer, who asked that his identity be withheld for security reasons.

Many British and US special forces soldiers learn about the degradation techniques because they are subjected to them to help them resist if captured. They include soldiers from the SAS, SBS, most air pilots, paratroopers and members of pathfinder platoons.

A number of commercial firms which have been supplying interrogators to the US army in Iraq boast of hiring former US special forces soldiers, such as Navy Seals.

"The crucial difference from Iraq is that frontline soldiers who are made to experience R2I techniques themselves develop empathy. They realise the suffering they are causing. But people who haven't undergone this don't realise what they are doing to people. It's a shambles in Iraq".

The British former officer said the dissemination of R2I techniques inside Iraq was all the more dangerous because of the general mood among American troops.

"The feeling among US soldiers I've spoken to in the last week is also that 'the gloves are off'. Many of them still think they are dealing with people responsible for 9/11".

When the interrogation techniques are used on British soldiers for training purposes, they are subject to a strict 48-hour time limit, and a supervisor and a psychologist are always present. It is recognised that in inexperienced hands, prisoners can be plunged into psychosis.

The spectrum of R2I techniques also includes keeping prisoners naked most of the time. This is what the Abu Ghraib photographs show, along with inmates being forced to crawl on a leash; forced to masturbate in front of a female soldier; mimic oral sex with other male prisoners; and form piles of naked, hooded men.

The full battery of methods includes hooding, sleep deprivation, time disorientation and depriving prisoners not only of dignity, but of fundamental human needs, such as warmth, water and food.

The US commander in charge of military jails in Iraq, Major General Geoffrey Miller, has confirmed that a battery of 50-odd special "coercive techniques" can be used against enemy detainees. The general, who previously ran the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, said his main role was to extract as much intelligence as possible.

Interrogation experts at Abu Ghraib prison were there to help make the prison staff "more able to garner intelligence as rapidly as possible".

Sleep deprivation and stripping naked were techniques that could now only be authorised at general officer level, he said.

by Robert Higgs (The Independent Institute, May 10, 2004)

Recent days have been hectic for the Supreme Rulers in Washington DC, President George W Bush and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld have ceased their accustomed swaggering, put on their most sombre faces, and issued one apology after another for the mistreatment of prisoners by US soldiers and mercenaries at Abu Ghraib prison. Although the government has known about these disgusting, sadistic, and idiotic amusements for a long time, Rumsfeld kept a close hold on the information, the better to brush it under the official rug. (We know that the government knew, because the International Committee for the Red Cross, which made several inspections of the prisons in Iraq, confirms that long ago it "told the Americans that what was going on at Abu Ghraib is reprehensible".) Once the photos got out, of course, more than one kind of hell broke loose, and now the government's top dogs all have their tails tucked shamefully between their legs. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham warned reporters after Rumsfeld's Senate interrogation on May 7 that "there's more to come" and "we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges" against US soldiers and civilian employees in Iraq.

Although Bush says that he is sorry for "the terrible and horrible acts", and Rumsfeld says that he takes "full responsibility", the president continues to express confidence in his defence secretary, and the secretary says that he has no intention of stepping down. Which is to say, neither of these men foresees bearing any real personal cost whatsoever, aside from the momentary embarrassment, the political discomposure, and the time expended in spinning the issue for Congress and the public. Meanwhile the administration is working overtime to pin the blame on some low-level patsies so that everybody can get on with campaigning for Bush's re-election.

Although no principle stands higher in military doctrine than that the commander bears full responsibility for the actions of his subordinates, neither of these two top military commanders has the decency to resign – not just on account of the prison disclosures, of course, but also on account of the plethora of actions by which they have abused their constitutional powers and brought everlasting shame upon the United States – and nobody is in a position to dismiss them except the spineless Congress, whose members would sooner cut off their arms and legs than impeach Bush for his war crimes.

And make no mistake: plenty of war crimes have been, and continue to be, committed for which these men, along with many other civilian and military agents of the government, bear full responsibility. After all, in violation of the rule the Allies enforced against the Nazis at the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials, they chose to launch an aggressive, unprovoked, and unnecessary war against the Iraqi people, and during the past year have undertaken to impose US domination on the conquered people by rampant military violence. That many Iraqis have fought back against their occupiers in no way justifies US actions. Everyone has a right of self-defence. What would you do if your country had been occupied by murderous and sadistic foreign troops?

The worst US crimes in Iraq have received far less press than the photos of US soldiers having fun and games with the prisoners at Abu Ghraib – not that the prisoners were anything but terrified by these vile amusements – but the truly terrible crimes have not gone totally unreported, especially in the news media outside the United States.

Last May 11, one of the thousands of such stories somehow made its way into The New York Times. It told how on April 5, 2003, a home in Basra had been hit by a US bomb that exploded and killed 10 members of Abed Hassan Hamoodi's extended family. British military officials said they had received reports that General Ali Hassan al-Majid – the notorious "Chemical Ali" – was in the neighbourhood. Of course, the attack, which demolished a number of houses and killed 23 of their occupants, failed to kill al-Majid. (In the phrase "military intelligence", emphasis should always be placed on the word "military".) But one of the bombs brought an end to most members of Hamoodi's family.

"Ammar Muhammad was not yet two when his grandfather pulled him from the rubble and tried to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but his mouth was full of dust and he died." Seventy-two-year-old Hamoodi declared that he considered the destruction of his home and the killings of his family members to constitute a war crime, and he asked rhetorically: "How would President Bush feel if he had to dig his daughters from out of the rubble?"

How indeed?

US forces have expended thousands of cluster munitions in Iraq, often in heavily populated places. (In the Karbala-Hillah area alone, US teams had destroyed by late August last year more than 31,000 unexploded bomblets "that landed on fields, homes, factories and roads... many were in populated areas on Karbala's outskirts".) The toll among children, whose natural curiosity draws them to the interesting-looking bomblets, has been heavy.

Khalid Tamimi and four other members of his family were walking on a footpath in Baghdad when his brother, seven-year-old Haithem, spotted something interesting, picked it up and examined it, then threw it down. The bomblet's explosion killed Haithem and his nine-year-old cousin, Nora, and seriously wounded Khalid, as well as the children's mothers, Amal and Mayasa.

Last year the whole world learned about Ali Ismail Abbas, the 12-year-old boy who was sleeping in his home in Baghdad when a US missile struck and the explosion tore off both his arms and killed his parents and his brother. His heartrending photo appeared in news media around the world, as did reports of his anguished cries for help in getting his arms back.

Recently, the ferocious US attacks on Fallujah have yielded hundreds of additional casualties among the innocent. There, as in many other places in Iraq, US troops have fired recklessly and without adequate regard for the thousands of civilians they thereby placed in mortal jeopardy. "I'm sitting at the funeral of my only son, who was killed because of the US Marines' harsh manner in dealing with civilians," Abbas Abdullah told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. "They shot him in the head, and he died instantly."

In the White House Rose Garden on April 30, President Bush, displaying his usual keen sensitivity, blustered as he often has on the campaign trail that, because of the US invasion, "there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." The president made this claim even as the whole world's press was featuring photos of the US torture chambers at Abu Ghraib and reporting worse crimes against Iraqi detainees there and elsewhere, including rape and murder.

Moreover, mass graves have been filling up for weeks at Fallujah, for the most part with non-combatants. According to Dahr Jamail's report in The Nation, "two soccer fields in Fallujah have been converted to graveyards." Jamail also reported that "the Americans have bombed one hospital, and, numerous sources told us, were sniping at people who attempted to enter and exit the other major medical facility". Snipers also shot ambulances braving the dangerous streets to bring the wounded to makeshift places of medical assistance.

Along a quiet residential street in Fallujah, nine-year-old Rahad Septi and other children were playing hide-and-seek when the pilot of a US A-10 aircraft dropped a bomb there. Rahad, "little flower" to her father Juma Septi, was killed along with 10 other children, and 12 other children were wounded. Three adults also were killed. Jamal Abbas was driving his taxi when the bomb fell. He found his 11-year-old niece Arij Haki with "the top half of her head... blown off." After half an hour of searching amid the devastation, Abbas found his daughter, 11-year-old Miad Jamal Abbas, "her body bloody and ripped". She died later at the hospital. "There was no military activity in this area," said Saad Ibrahim, whose father Hussein was killed in his nearby shop by the same bomb blast. "There was no shooting. This is not a military camp. These are houses with children playing in the street."

When Daham Kassim, his wife Gufran Ibed Kassim, and their four children tried to escape the hell of US bombing in their neighbourhood in Nasiriyah, they stopped on the outskirts of the city at a military checkpoint, where, without warning, US tank crews blasted their car with machine-gun fire, killing three of the children and wounding all the other occupants of the car. US troops, humanitarian as ever, then took the three survivors of the attack to a field hospital, treated their wounds, and let them rest in beds. On the third night, however, the troops expelled them from the hospital to make room for wounded US soldiers. As Kassim relates the story: "They carried us like dogs, out into the cold, without shelter, or a blanket. It was the days of the sandstorms and freezing at night. And I heard [five-year-old] Zainab crying: 'Papa, Papa, I am cold, I am cold.' Then she went silent. Completely silent.... My arms were broken. I could not lift or hold her.... We had to sit there, and listen to her die."

In Nasiriyah, only Kadem Hashem and his youngest daughter survived when a US missile struck their house. His wife Salima, five of their children, and six other family members who happened to be in the house at the time were killed. Finding a photograph in the debris of his house, Hashem told reporter Ed Vulliamy of The Observer: "This was my middle daughter, Hamadi. I found her burnt to death by that doorway, she had shrunk to about a metre tall." His one surviving daughter, Bedour, described now as "what remains of a beautiful girl", lies on the floor of a relative's house. "She is shrivelled and petrified like a dead cat. Her skin is like scorched parchment folded over her bones. Unable to move, she appears as if in some troubled coma, but opens her eyes, with difficulty, to issue an indecipherable cry like a wounded animal." Hashem dug a mass grave for his family in a nearby holy city. "I collected them all and put them in a single grave at Najaf; my money was burnt, too, and I couldn't afford to bury them separately."

To my knowledge, neither President Bush, nor Vice President Dick Cheney, nor Secretary of State Colin Powell, nor Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld, nor Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, nor Under Secretary of Defence Douglas Feith, nor Richard Perle (who has worked for decades at the highest levels both inside and outside the government to bring about the present horrors in Iraq) – not a single one of them has apologised to any of the victims identified in the foregoing accounts.

What the US government did at Abu Ghraib was bad, but what it did to Ammar Muhammad, to Haithem Tamimi, to Ali Ismail Abbas, to Abbas Abdullah's son, to Rahad Septi, to Arij Haki, to Miad Jamal Abbas, to Zainab Kassim, and to Bedour Hashem was far, far worse.

Their stories are but a very few of the tens of thousands that might be told if more complete information were available to provide the details associated with the gruesome statistics on deaths and injuries among the Iraqi population. Relatively few of the people slain were "terrorists", Baathists, or even insurgents. Most were non-combatants; thousands were women, children, and elderly people. The military euphemism for these deaths is "collateral damage", but they are actually murders. After all, they did not happen by accident; in the circumstances, they were as predictable as the sun's rising in the east. By choosing to engage in the kinds of military actions that made these deaths inevitable, the US government thereby chose to cause these deaths. The claim that they were not intended has no substance whatsoever.

Bush and Rumsfeld have been busy with apologies this past week, to be sure, and the prison hijinks at Abu Ghraib certainly cry out for apologies, as well as for a great deal of additional effort to restrain the sadists and sexual psychopaths among the US troops in Iraq and to bring some measure of justice to those who have been wronged. Yet this whole mess, its powerful symbolism notwithstanding, has constituted a gigantic distraction from the truly monstrous crimes committed, and still being committed daily, by US forces in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein now languishes in US custody; his government has been overthrown; no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, and therefore "disarming" the Iraqis of such weapons proved unnecessary. In short, the declared US mission has long since been accomplished fully. Why then does the US government persist in slaughtering the Iraqi people?

Robert Higgs is a senior fellow in political economy for The Independent Institute and editor of the Institute's quarterly journal The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy. He is also the author of Crisis and Leviathan and the editor of Arms, Politics and the Economy.

By Virginie Ladisch, April 24, 2003, Crimes of War Project
Over one year ago, the author writes about the torture being used in Afghanistan.

Six weeks after the death of two Afghan prisoners in US custody at Bagram air base in Afghanistan was announced, the United States has still not answered the disturbing questions raised about the interrogation methods used on detainees in the campaign against terrorism.

According to information released by the Department of Defence in early March, military pathologists classed the mode of death of the two prisoners as "homicide". A death certificate dated December 13 states that a prisoner known as Dilawar, aged 22, died of "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complication coronary artery disease." The other prisoner, Mullah Habibullah, 30, is said to have died on December 3 of "blunt force injury" in addition to a blood clot. The US Army has launched a criminal investigation into these deaths but has yet to make any arrests, suspensions, or changes to routines inside the detention centre in Bagram.

When asked earlier this month if there had been any changes in the policy or modus operandi at Bagram, Lieutenant Colonel Judy DeSantis at Central Command in Florida replied, "Currently I am not aware of any changes. Until the investigation is over everything continues as normal." Lieutenant Commander Nick Balice also at Central Command told the Crimes of War Project that he expected the investigation to be completed "soon" but said he could not discuss a specific date.

The United States is a party to international humanitarian laws and customary laws that prohibit torture. Torture is specifically prohibited in armed conflict, whether international or internal, against soldiers who have laid down their arms, civilians, or even common criminals. As defined in Additional Protocol I, Article 75 of the Geneva Conventions, "murder; torture of all kinds, whether physical or mental; corporal punishment; and mutilation…are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever, whether committed by civilian or by military agents." Furthermore, using force to obtain information is specifically prohibited in Article 31 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that: "No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties."

Protection against torture is also recognized as a human right during times of peace under the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The United States ratified this convention in October 1994. At the presentation of the US Initial Report to the UN Committee Against Torture in September 1999, Harold Hongju Koh – then Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour – reinforced the government’s commitment to prevent torture in stating, "Torture is [now] prohibited by law throughout the United States. It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. In every instance, torture is a criminal offence. No official of the government, federal, state or local, civilian or military, is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. Nor may any official condone or tolerate torture in any form. No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification for torture."

Nevertheless, since September 11 there are suggestions that US policy regarding the use of force against detainees may be changing. According to a US official supervising the capture of suspected terrorists, as quoted in the Washington Post, "If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job." Referring to an al-Qaeda leader in US custody, anther US official was quoted in the New York Times as saying: "Keep in mind that this is a guy who was not only the mastermind of 9/11, but was also actively involved in plotting future and ongoing terrorist operations. This is a guy who potentially has information about planned terrorist operations that could save American lives. Everyone would understand the wisdom of finding out whatever information we can from him." The use of September 11 as an exception was echoed in a statement made by Cofer Black, former head of CIA Counterterrorist Centre, who said: "There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off."

"Torture Lite"?
A widely-noted article in the Washington Post in December alleged that US agents at the CIA detention centre at Bagram use interrogation techniques known as "stress and duress" tactics or "torture lite". According to the article, prisoners are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, or held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights. Government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that interrogators deprive some captives of sleep, a technique ambiguous under international law.

The arrest of the senior al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March has led to suggestions that he might be harshly interrogated to encourage him to reveal details of any current or future operations that he might have knowledge of. A former member of US navy intelligence said that "torture lite" – sleep deprivation, and placing prisoners in awkward or painful positions for hours at a time – would probably be used.

"Torture lite" is still torture. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has ruled that sleep deprivation "may in some cases constitute torture." The United States itself has also declared sleep deprivation to be a form of torture, as exemplified in the 2001 U.S. State Department report on Turkey, Israel, and Jordan that lists sleep deprivation among alleged torture techniques.

There is no exception in the conventions against torture for a war on terrorism. "Torture is always prohibited under any circumstances," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "U.S. officials who take part in torture, authorize it, or even close their eyes to it, can be prosecuted by courts anywhere in the world." The 1984 Convention for the Prevention of Torture, ratified by the US in 1994, clearly states that: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may by invoked as a justification of torture."

Exporting Prisoners
Some US intelligence agents have claimed, speaking off the record, that they do not themselves use torture but that they do send prisoners to countries such as Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan with security services known to use torture during interrogations.

According to one official, involved in rendering captives into foreign hands, quoted in the Washington Post, "We don’t kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." Sending prisoners to other countries to be tortured does not absolve the US of responsibility. Under the Geneva Conventions and the 1984 Convention against Torture it is illegal to ask another party to torture prisoners and it is illegal for the US to use information gathered as a result of torture.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committees, has suggested that he would consider turning over Mr. Mohammed to countries without restrictions against torture. "I wouldn’t rule it out," Rockefeller told CNN. "I wouldn’t take anything off the table where he is concerned, because this is the man who has killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans over the last 10 years."

Regardless of what Mr. Mohammed is guilty of, the US is legally prohibited from using torture. As Harold Hongju Koh told the New York Times, "If the United States is turning people over to people who might torture them, that is a violation of our obligation under the torture convention, which prevents us from returning people to conditions of torture."

The Pentagon’s Response
In a letter to Human Rights Watch on April 2, the senior lawyer at the Department of Defence, William Haynes, stated, "US policy condemns and prohibits torture. When questioning enemy combatants, US personnel are required to follow this policy and applicable laws prohibiting torture." Haynes also said that, when detainees were transferred to other countries, "US government instructions are to seek and obtain appropriate assurances that such enemy combatants are not tortured."

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, said the government’s statement was "totally inadequate," since it did not address charges that US agents were using cruel or inhuman treatment, or practicing "stress and duress" techniques.

A briefing paper from the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) on Anti-Terrorism and Human Rights by Liz Fekete of the IRR reveals how dangerously far the EU has already gone in undermining domestic legal process and removing human rights in the name of the "war on terror".

It provides a detailed examination of the global system of targeted sanctions, set in motion after the events of September 11, and establishes that the US has come to dominate EU policy on combating terror to the extent that a common EU foreign and security policy has been totally undermined.

In particular:

0. the EU approach to targeted sanctions mirrors that of the US and not the UN
1. EU member states, in acquiescing to a US request to ease the law on extradition of terrorist suspects, have expelled foreign nationals to countries that practise the death penalty and torture – in violation of the principle of non-refoulement

Today, not only organisations but also individuals and charities are finding themselves proscribed as "terrorist" in the UN, the US and the EU. The briefing paper explores a number of cases where individuals and organisations have challenged proscription, including a successful challenge made in Sweden by lawyers for the "Somali three", three persons who appeared on the UN proscribed list. The US refused to give Sweden intelligence on the three for months, and finally faxed over some newspaper stories! The names have been taken off the UN list.

The briefing paper provides:

0. concrete examples of how EU policies undermine the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms;
1. case studies of 21 individuals facing either extradition or expulsion, (which includes the cases of two asylum seekers who, since they were expelled from Sweden to Egypt, have allegedly suffered torture and cruel and degrading treatment);
2. case studies of four organisations, four individuals and four Muslim-run charities which have appeared on terrorist lists in the US or the EU or both.

Author Liz Fekete said, "What we are seeing in Europe, post-September 11, is the creation of a shadow criminal justice system without the traditional safeguards of such a system. The result protects neither the rights of the accused nor the security of society."

Liz Fekete said that anti-terror legislation is being made uniform through UN Security Council Resolution 1373, which establishes a duty on all member states to take measures to counter international terrorism. The UN set up a list of proscribed organisations which was limited to Al-Qaida and the Taleban. The EU list is broader and follows the US list which started in 1996.

Anyone opposed to the foreign, economic, or political interests of the US can be proscribed. There is a specific section for "specially designated terrorists" which is defined to include anyone who disrupts or threatens to disrupt the Middle East peace process!

The US proscribes charities, which is not yet done in the EU. The US has banned organisations doing emergency relief work in places like Palestine and Chechnya. France and Belgium have argued that Hamas could not be on the EU list because it carries out important social work and emergency relief work. Interpal had its assets frozen in Britain under US pressure. After time, the US failed to provide evidence against Interpal, and the charity is running again.

The US has pressured the EU to relax extradition laws. Torture is being redefined. Formerly it was the norm for countries to rule out extradition of persons to countries where torture is used, but now some countries seek "diplomatic assurances" that torture will not be applied to those extradited. Formerly it was also the norm to rule out extradition on the basis of conviction by military or secret tribunals, but this is being relaxed as well.

The authorities are already targeting Muslims, Islamic charities, religious institutions and organisations. This is part of a "racial profiling" programme which seeks to compile a database of information on individuals and organisations. , Liz Fekete said that she believes that monoculturalism (e.g., banning of hijab in French schools) is part of the drive towards "national security".

Public meeting

ANTI-TERRORISM LAWS – THEN AND NOW

Wednesday, 26 May, 7pm
Grand Committee Room, House of Commons

Hosted and chaired by Kevin McNamara MP

Speakers
Gareth Peirce
John McDonnell MP
Caitriona Ruane Sinn Fein MLA and Columbia 3 campaign co-ordinator
Tony Bunyan Statewatch
Liz Fekete author of "Anti-terrorism and human rights" a report recently published by Institute of Race Relations
Mark Muller barrister, vice-chair Bar Human Rights Committee
Dr Siddiqui Leader of the Muslim Parliament
Paul Donovan journalist
Paddy Hill (invited)
Kurdish human rights activist
Ruairi O¹Driscoll acquitted of "terrorism" charges

Are the Muslim community becoming the new Irish? Recently enacted anti-terror laws have been used to label potentially anyone from a Muslim country as a suspected terrorist, just as similar laws were used against Irish people during Britain's war in Northern Ireland. In both cases, counter-terror has aimed to isolate and subdue such communities, while frightening everyone else to accept attacks on civil liberties.

For 30 years of the conflict in Northern Ireland, few in Britain were aware of the ongoing terror imposed on much of the Irish population by the British state.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act passed in 1974 enabled the police to routinely stop thousands of people going in and out via the ports and airports. Others were detained inland on an often spurious basis. When stopped and detained, people did not know whether they would be held for 10 minutes or seven days. The result of this intimidation over the years was to drive Irish people back into their communities, stopping any real engagement with the political issues of Northern Ireland.

Post 9/11, the British state appears to be adopting the same approach to the Muslim community. Draconian laws have been put onto the statute book that surpass even those deployed against the Irish.

This public meeting aims to draw some lessons for how to overcome that isolation and to undermine the state strategy.

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The meeting is called by the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), Wolfe Tone Society and Peace and Justice in East London and supported by Troops Out Movement, Kurdistan Solidarity Committee, Peace in Kurdistan Campaign and others.