Written evidence submitted by Human Rights
Watch
Human Rights Watch thanks the Foreign Affairs
Committee for the opportunity to present evidence on the treatment
of detainees at the US military facility at Guantánamo
Bay, where the continued detention of several hundred men in defiance
of international human rights and humanitarian law has become
a serious embarrassment for the United States and its allies.
1. ABUSE OF
DETAINEES
Human Rights Watch has documented a disturbing
pattern of abuse not only at Guantánamo Bay but also in
US detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a report published
jointly with the Center for Global Rights and Justice and Human
Rights First in April 2006,[1]
Human Rights Watch documented over 330 cases in which US military
and civilian personnel are credibly alleged to have killed or
abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. The
cases involved more than 460 detainees and more than 600 US personnel.
Of these cases the majority have been in Iraq. But at least fifty
cases have been documented at Guantánamo Bay. The research
undertaken for the report also indicated that US authorities have
failed to investigate adequately numerous cases of abuse, including
torture. As of October 2006 only an estimated 55 military personnel
(a fraction of the 600 US personnel involved in abuses) had been
convicted. The Pentagon says there have been more convictions
of US personnel but has not provided further information, despite
repeated requests from Human Rights Watch.
Of those convicted for whom information is available,
only ten received more than a year of custodial sentence. Most
received no prison terms at all. Almost all those convicted have
been enlisted men. No military intelligence personnel have been
convicted (even though it is established that military intelligence
has been involved in detainee abuse). No US military officers
have been held accountable for criminal acts committed by subordinates
under the doctrine of command responsibility. It is worth noting
that all the convictions for detainee abuse documented by Human
Rights Watch relate to cases in Iraq and Afghanistan. As far as
Human Rights Watch has been able to ascertain there have been
no convictions for detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay.
Mohammed al-Qahtani, one of the dozens of Guantánamo
detainees who have alleged mistreatment, says that he was subjected
to weeks of sleep deprivation, isolation and sexual humiliation
in late 2002 and early 2003. Human Rights Watch obtained an unredacted
copy of al-Qahtani's interrogation log, and believes that the
techniques used during al-Qahtani's interrogation were so abusive
that they amounted to torture.
The findings of Human Rights Watch were reinforced
by a May 2006 report by the UN Committee against Torture which
raised concerns about US treatment of detainees and lack of accountability
for torture and abuse. At the very least the evidence gathered
by Human Rights Watch points to a systemic failure by the US administration
to prevent illegal and abusive treatment by US personnel of detainees
in the "war on terror", including those held at Guantánamo
Bay.
2. MILITARY COMMISSIONS
ACT OF
2006
The most important recent development with regard
to the legal status of the Guantánamo detainees (and other
terrorist suspects) and their access to due legal process is the
enactment by Congress of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) in
September 2006. Human Rights Watch finds the MCA very troubling
on several counts.[2]
First it bars detainees from challenging the
legality of their detention via habeas corpus and from
raising claims of torture and other abuses even after they have
been released. Second it includes an overly broad definition of
"unlawful combatant" that could subject civilians who
purposefully provide virtually any form of support to an armed
group (even far from the battlefield) to military detention and
trial. Third it establishes military commissions to try detainees
which violate fair trial rights of detainees, most notably by
permitting the use of evidence obtained through coercion and abusive
interrogation practices. Fourth, although both torture and cruel
and inhuman treatment remain criminalized as war crimes, the MCA
narrows the scope of the offences for which interrogators and
other officials could be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act,
most notably by decriminalizing humiliating and degrading treatment
that does not rise to the level of cruel and inhuman treatment.
3. OBSTACLES
TO RELEASING
OR TRANSFERRING
DETAINEES
Human Rights Watch recognises serious obstacles
to the release of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and has called
on the EU to work with the United States to find solutions. Many
of the detainees cannot be sent to their countries of origin either
because they would not be accepted or because they are at risk
of being tortured. For example there are eleven Chinese Uighurs
at Guantánamo who have been cleared for release but cannot
be sent to China because of the risk of mistreatment. As the United
States seeks to release further detainees from Guantánamo,
more are likely to fall into this category.
However it is important to underline that although
President George W. Bush has said he would like to see the detention
facilities at Guantánamo Bay closed down, the US is building
a new long-term facility at Guantánamo and asserts that
even detainees acquitted by military commissions can still be
held indefinitely as an "enemy combatants". Detainees
who have neither been convicted nor cleared for release will also
remain at Guantánamo. And there is no reason to conclude
that new persons declared to be "enemy combatants" will
not be locked up there in the future.
4. CONCLUSION
The well documented abuses at Guantánamo
Bay and at other US military detention facilities are a stain
on the honour of the United States and serve as a recruiting tool
for Islamist militants around the world. Furthermore the abuses
of detainees in US custody may be used to justify the repressive
methods of states in the Middle East and elsewhere which routinely
practice torture and where years of state repression and human
rights violations have proved fertile sources for armed groups
engaged in terrorism. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred
Nowak has complained that governments around the world now seek
to rebut criticism of how they handle detainees by claiming they
are only following the US example in the "war on terror".[3]
The United Kingdom and its EU partners have
called (unsuccessfully) for the closure of Guantánamo.
But the British government, a key ally of the United States in
Afghanistan and Iraq and a vocal supporter of the broad thrust
of US strategy in the "war on terror" has been at best
muted in its criticism of detainee abuse by the US authorities
whether at Guantánamo or elsewhere. It has also failed
to speak out against the practice of "extraordinary rendition"
whereby terrorist suspects in US custody have been delivered by
US government agents to states like Syria and Egypt where torture
is routinely used for purposes of interrogation.
The British government, which claims to be a
leading champion of human rights in general and of the worldwide
ban on torture in particular, should publicly speak out not just
for the closure of Guantánamo Bay, but against the systemic
pattern of abuses that have been committed there and in US detention
facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. It should also, along with
its EU partners and the United States, devise humane solutions
to the dilemma of what to do with the detainees in Guantánamo
who should be released but who have nowhere safe to go, such as
by offering asylum for such persons within the EU, including in
the United Kingdom.
3 November 2006
1 Human Rights Watch, et al., By the Numbers: Findings
of the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project, April 2006,
http://hrw.org/reports/2006/ct0406/ Back
2
For a fuller analysis see Q and A: Military Commissions Act
of 2006 http://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/qna1006/ Back
3
NEED Title of article, Associated Press, 24 October 2006. Back
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