User:Carwil/Torture

While the United States is a party to international conventions against torture, torture has been practiced within its borders and on its government's behalf outside of its borders. Torture in the United States includes torture within prisons, immigration detention facilities and military compounds. Historically, torture has been practiced as part of the institution of slavery and in warfare. American government officials have participated in torture abroad, maintained interrogation facilities where torture is practiced and trained foreign officials in interrogation methods that include torture.

Legislation and treaties regarding torture

Torture and abuse is strictly illegal and punishable within US territorial bounds. The legality of abuse occurring on foreign soil, outside of usual US territorial jurisdiction, is however somewhat murky. The United States Administration has created a category called unlawful combatants, that have no basis in U. S. or international law, to deprive such persons of protection under the Geneva Convention as prisoners of war, and keeps and interrogates them on foreign soil.

Domestic Legislation

Torture is prohibited under U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2340. The definition of torture used is as follows:

1. "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
2. "severe mental pain or suffering" means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from - (A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (C) the threat of imminent death; or (D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality;

Prohibition under International Law

Torture in all forms is banned by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which the United States participated in drafting. The United States is a party to the following conventions (international treaties) which prohibit torture: the American Convention on Human Rights (signed 1977) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (signed 1977; ratified 1992). It has neither signed nor ratified the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture[1].

UN Convention Against Torture

The United States is a party to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which originated in the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1984, and signed by the President Ronald Reagan on April 18, 1988. Ratification by the Senate took place on October 27, 1990. The Senate put forward a number of reservations including:

• Restricting the definition of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" to the cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution
• Restricting acts of torture to the following list: "(1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality."

The Legalization of Torture in the United States against terror suspects

The US Congress recently passed a pro-torture legislation which for the first time legalizes certain methods of torture and allows the Bush administration to intepret the Third Article of the Geneva Convention [2]. The United States is a party to many treaties that forbid torture and the ill treatment of prisoners of war and other detainees so this legalization of torture is a violation of these treaties. The passing of this legislation has been criticized by many human rights organizations and activists including Amnesty International [3]. The political commentator Michael Slate has noted that the United States is the first nation to openly legalize torture.

Recent practices of torture

Domestic police and prisons

Police brutality in the United States has at times escalated to torture, as in the cases of Abner Louima who was sodomized with a broom by New York police. The Chicago Police Department's Area 2 unit under Commander Jon Burge repeatedly used electroshock, near-suffocation by plastic bags and excessive beating on suspects in the 1970s and 1980s. The City of Chicago's Office of Professional Standards (OPS) concluded that the physical abuse was systematic and, "The type of abuse described was not limited to the usual beating, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture." In September 1997, two former officers from the Adelanto Police Department, San Bernardino County, California, were jailed for two years on federal charges, after pleading guilty to beating a suspect during questioning and forcing another man to lick blood off the floor in 1994.

Police officials have generally described these cases as aberrations or the actions of criminals in police uniform, as New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir described the attack on Louima. Police brutality critics, such as law professor Susan Bandes has argued that such a view is erroneous and, "allows police brutality to flourish in a number of ways, including making it easier to discount individual stories of police brutality, and weakening the case for any kind of systemic reform."

The Supermax facility at the Maine State Prison has been the scene of video-taped forcible extractions that Lance Tapley in the Portland Phoenix wrote "look[ed] like torture." Additionally, audio recordings were made of the torture of Lester Siler in Campbell County, Tennessee.

United States government and torture abroad

Forms of torture and abuse

Certain practices of the United States military, civilian agencies such as the CIA, and private contractors have been condemned both domestically and internationally as torture. A fierce debate regarding non-standard interrogation techniques exists within the US civilian and military intelligence community, with no general consensus as to what practices under what conditions are acceptable.

These practices include: extended forced maintenance of "stress positions" such as standing or squatting; psychological tricks and "mind games"; sensory deprivation; exposure to loud music and noises; extended exposure to flashing lights; prolonged solitary confinement; denigration of religion; withholding of food, drink, or medical care; withholding of hygienic care or toilet facilities; prolonged hooding; forced injections of unknown substances; sleep deprivation; magneto-cranial stimulation resulting in mental confusion; threats of bodily harm; threats of rendition to torture-friendly states or Guantánamo; threats of rape or sodomy; threats of harm to family members; threats of imminent execution; prolonged constraint in contorted positions (including strappado, or "Palestinian hanging"); facial smearing of real or simulated feces, urine, menstrual blood, or semen; sexual humiliation; beatings, often requiring surgery or resulting in permanent physical or mental disability; release or threat of release to attack dogs, both muzzled or un-muzzled; near-suffocation or asphyxiation via multiple detainment hoods, plastic bags, water-soaked towels or blankets, duct tape, or ligatures; gassing and chemical spraying resulting in unconsciousness; confinement in small chambers too small to fully stand or recline; prolonged underwaffler immersion just short of drowning (i.e. dunking); and extended exposure to extreme temperatures below freezing or above 120 °F (48 °C). These practices have resulted in a number of deaths. According to Human Rights First, at least as many as 46 detainees have been tortured to death in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. [4]

Interrogation and prisons in the War on Terror

Main articles: Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, Bagram torture and prisoner abuse, and Criticisms of the War on Terrorism

In 2003 and 2004 there was substantial controversy over the "stress and duress" methods that were used in the U.S.'s War on Terrorism, that had been sanctioned by the U.S. Executive branch of government at Cabinet level . Similar methods in 1978 were ruled by ECHR to be inhuman and degrading treatment, but not torture, when used by the U.K. in the early 1970s in Northern Ireland.

CIA agents have anonymously confirmed to the Washington Post in a December 26, 2002 report that the CIA routinely uses so-called "stress and duress" interrogation techniques (e.g. water boarding), which are claimed by human rights organisations to be acts of torture, in the US-led War on Terrorism. These sources state that CIA and military personnel beat up uncooperative suspects, confine them in cramped quarters, duct tape them to stretchers, and use other restraints which maintain the subject in an awkward and painful position for long periods of time. The phrase 'torture light' has been reported in the media and has been taken to mean acts that would not be legally defined as torture. Techniques similar to "stress and duress" were used by the UK in the early 1970s and were ruled to be "inhuman and degrading treatment" but not torture by the European Court of Human Rights. While this is in no way binding on the United States, it is seen as indicative of the state of international law on what constitutes torture.

The Post article continues that sensory deprivation, through the use of hoods and spraypainted goggles, sleep deprivation, and selective use of painkillers for at least one captive who was shot in the groin during his apprehension are also used. The agents also indicate in the report that the CIA as a matter of course hands suspects over to foreign intelligence services with far fewer qualms about torture for more intensive interrogation. (The act of handing a suspect to another organization or country, where it is foreseeable that torture would occur, is a violation of the Convention against torture; see torture by proxy.) The Post reported that one US official said, "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job." The US Government denies that torture is being conducted in the detention camps at Guantanamo Bay.

Allegations emerged that in the Coalition occupation of Iraq after the second Gulf war, there was extensive use of torture techniques, allegedly supported by American military intelligence agents, in Iraqi jails such as Abu Ghraib and others.

In June 2004, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times obtained copies of legal analyses prepared for the CIA and the Justice Department in 2002 which developed a legal basis for the use of torture by US interrogators if acting under the directive of the President of the United States. The legal definition of torture by the Justice Department tightly narrowed to define as torture only actions which "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death", and argued that actions that inflict any lesser pain, including moderate or fleeting pain, do not necessarily constitute torture. Based on these legal analyses, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later approved in 2003 the use of 24 classified interrogation techniques for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay which after use on one prisoner were withdrawn.

It is the position of the United States government that the legal memoranda constituted only permissible legal research, and did not signify the intent of the United States to use torture which it opposes. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has complained about this prominent newspaper coverage and its implications. However, many influential U.S. thinkers also believe that Rumsfeld himself is a major part of the problem, quote the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert:

... there is also the grotesque and deeply shameful issue that will always be a part of Mr. Rumsfeld's legacy -- the manner in which American troops have treated prisoners under their control in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There is no longer any doubt that large numbers of troops responsible for guarding and interrogating detainees somehow loosed their moorings to humanity, and began behaving as sadists, perverts and criminals.

— Bob Herbert,

Secret detention facilities

Both United States citizens and foreign nationals are occasionally captured outside of the United States and transferred to secret US administered detention facilities, sometimes being held incommunicado for periods of months or years. Overseas detention facilities are known to be or to have been maintained at least in Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Cyprus, Cuba, Diego Garcia, and unspecified South Pacific island nation(s). In addition, individuals are suspected to be or to have been held in temporary or permanent US controlled facilities in Indonesia, El Salvador, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Israel, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Germany, and Scotland. There are also allegations that persons categorized as prisoners of war have been tortured, abused or humiliated; or otherwise have had their rights afforded by the Geneva Convention violated. In 2004 photos showing humiliation and abuse of prisoners leaked from Abu Ghraib prison, causing a political and media scandal in the US.

The detention camps at the US Naval base of Guantánamo Bay, hosting over 500 detainees, have gained notoriety in recent years. As of fall 2006, some detainees have been held for almost five years without charges or trial. Detainees have included American citizens and children as young as 11 year old. Though often criticized for being denied due process, all detainees have received review before Combatant Status Review Tribunals subsequent to US Supreme Court rulings.

Torture in extraordinary rendition

Main article: Extraordinary Rendition

There has been a lack of denial in official circles that America uses third party states to carry out Torture by proxy to obtain intelligence: it is alleged that terror suspects are arbitrarily and illegally arrested, then transferred to other countries to be interrogated and often tortured.

In 2002, Canadian citizen Maher Arar was arrested and deported to Syria, where he claims he was tortured. As of October 2004, Congress is considering "the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" which would empower the Secretary for Homeland Security to deport non-US citizens without review.

US torture manuals

Main article: Torture manuals

The Torture manuals was a nickname for seven training manuals which had excerpts declassified to the public on September 20, 1996 by the Pentagon.

These manuals were prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). The manuals were also distributed by Special Forces Mobile Training teams to military personnel and intelligence schools in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. Both manuals have an entire chapter devoted to "coercive techniques."

References

Sources

• We Are All Torturers Now by Mark Danner New York Times, 6 January 2005 same article on Danner's website
• CIA chief sacked for opposing torture by Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith, The Sunday Times, February 12, 2006

See also