U.S. Officials Responsible for Torture Get Promoted, Not Punished, Charge Rights Groups
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WASHINGTON, D.C., Apr 28 (OneWorld) - Rights watchdogs seized on Thursday's anniversary of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal to complain of a lack of accountability for the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody, and to warn that problems which came to light there merely were ''the tip of the iceberg.''
Prisoners in U.S. custody have been tortured and abused at numerous detention facilities around the world, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a new report. It summarized allegations of abuse at U.S. facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba and reiterated its call for investigations of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials who it said may have had roles in the mistreatment. ''Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg,'' said HRW special counsel Reed Brody. ''It's now clear that abuse of detainees has happened all over, from Guantanamo Bay to a lot of third-country dungeons where the United States has sent prisoners. And probably quite a few other places we don't even know about.'' The report cited U.S. government data showing that 108 people have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, including deaths attributed to natural causes, and that 27 deaths have been investigated as criminal homicides involving possible abuse. It said the alleged abuse included beatings, sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme cold in Afghanistan and routine subjection to stress positions and sleep deprivation in Iraq. Former detainees at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have described threats of torture and death, the use of military dogs to intimidate them, and exposure to severe heat and cold, the report said. At least 11 al-Qaeda suspects and likely many more are being held at undisclosed locations with no oversight of their treatment, the report said, adding that other prisoners have been transferred to countries known to practice torture. On Sunday, Human Rights Watch issued a report calling for a criminal investigation of senior U.S. intelligence and military officials it said may have condoned or ignored the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and other locations. The Pentagon has said it had conducted numerous probes of alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere and that dozens of incidents of confirmed prisoner abuse were the work of low-level soldiers and a few inattentive mid-level officers. ''The Department of Defense has demonstrated a record that credible allegations of illegal conduct by U.S. military personnel are taken seriously and investigated,'' it said in a recent statement. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing Rumsfeld over prisoner abuse, assailed the investigations and what it termed continuing secrecy about the treatment of prisoners. ''A year after the release of the photos, top officials have not been held accountable while low-level members of the military have been prosecuted and an unwarranted cloak of secrecy continues to shroud the treatment of prisoners,'' said Anthony Romero, the ACLU executive director. Human Rights First, a group formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights that is suing Rumsfeld with the ACLU, complained that a number of senior officers and defense officials had been promoted rather than punished for their alleged role in promoting, condoning, or ignoring the abuses. ''Those in charge of detention and interrogation operations and policies when the torture at Abu Ghraib first became public have been promoted,'' said Michael Posner, the group's executive director. Alberto Gonzales, for example, helped prepare the administration's case for relaxing interrogation rules and ''was among the first to embrace the no-rules-apply approach to the 'war on terror','' and subsequently advanced to his current job as U.S. attorney general, Human Rights First said. ''The month after the Abu Ghraib photos became public, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, formerly in charge of interrogations at Guantanamo and credited with instituting the use of dogs at Abu Ghraib, was assigned to be senior commander in charge of detention operations in Iraq,'' the group added. Jay Bybee, a former assistant attorney general and the principal author of a memo defining torture so narrowly as to require an act to ''be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,'' was appointed as a judge on the federal appeals court, Human Rights First said. William Haynes, who as Defense Department general counsel recommended over the protests of military lawyers many of the most abusive tactics used at Guantanamo, has been nominated to the federal appeals bench. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who oversaw detention facilities in Iraq and was ''excoriated in Pentagon reports for his role in letting torture continue under his command,'' was named the head of the Army's 5th Corps in Europe, Human Rights First said. Indeed, it added, ''the highest ranking service member successfully prosecuted has been Marine Major Clarke Paulus, who was dismissed from the service without jail time after being convicted for his role in the strangulation death of a non-Abu Ghraib detainee.'' More than 11,000 people are in U.S. detention in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights First said. In Iraq alone, the detainee population has doubled in the past five months, ''rapidly approaching the level it was when the abuses documented in the Abu Ghraib photos occurred.'' |
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