No War No Torture

Engines of torture when the tubes are forced down a person’s throat who is conscious and refuses them.

The perception by many people in the US, even the relatively small number who are aware of the torture at Guantanamo, is that torture of all kinds by the US has been an aberration since the wars of aggression in this century.

The truth is that torture is practiced in US domestic prisons and was just exported to prisoners taken in US wars.  Only lately, and due to media coverage of the current, but not the only, hunger strike by many of the prisoners at Guantanamo.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Ann Neumann published on 4 May 2013 in Waging Nonviolence:

“The prisoner has lost half his body weight and four teeth to malnutrition. He and his lawyer have gone to court to stop the force-feedings, but a judge ruled against him in March. If I asked you to guess where Coleman is being held, you’d likely say Guantánamo — ‘America’s offshore war-on-terror camp’ — where a mass hunger strike of 100 prisoners has brought the ethics of force-feeding to American newspapers, if not American consciences. Twenty-five of those prisoners are now being manually fed with tubes.

“But William Coleman is not at Guantánamo. He’s in Connecticut. The prison medical staff force-feeding him are on contract from the University of Connecticut, not the U.S. Navy. Guantánamo is not an anomaly. Prisoners — who are on U.S. soil and not an inaccessible island military base — are routinely and systematically force-fed every day.”

You can read the entire article here.

Neumann reiterates the facts about force feeding being torture.  The US is in contravention of international law and of American Medical Association standards.

What can we do to stop barbaric practices of the US government at home and abroad.  What are you doing to stop them?

Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner siad in a report published by Agence France Presse that the UN “‘bases its stance on that of the World Medical Association” which, declared in 1991 that forcible feeding is ‘never ethically acceptable’”.

The World Medical Association states:

“Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied with threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the force feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting.”

The prisoners have reported to their lawyers that they are restrained painfully as well as having thick tubes forced down their noses.

Restraint Chair Used in Forcing Food Down Prisoners’ Noses

“If it’s perceived as torture or inhuman treatment—and it’s the case, it’s painful—then it is prohibited by international law,” said Coville.    See article here.

The US has committed many crimes against these prisoners; this torture is just a continuation of an eleven year history of torture in addition to indefinite imprisonment without charge.  The time may come when this country will have to pay a very high price for these crimes against humanity.

The prisoners at Guantanamo are refusing to eat and many of them are being tortured with violent force feeding in retaliation.  It would not do the US good to have many of them die because of a massive hunger strike.

Shaker Aamer, above, who is one of the strikers, told his lawyer, as reported by the Guardian:

“I cannot give you numbers and names, but people are dying here.”

Obama made a statement today about the need to close Guantanamo, though what he might have in mind instead does not necessarily mean that the prisoners will be freed; indeed, they could end up in maximum security prisons in the US.

The imprisonment of Muslim men, originally 779 of them, most of whom have been freed and almost all of whom never harmed the US or anyone, would be a crime against humanity even if they were not also tortured, which they have been.

As a citizen of the United States, I must decry this and work to stop it.

In response to the ongoing hunger strike by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay torture center and the prisoners’ continuing protest, a raid of the prison by US personnel led to what the US called less than lethal rounds being fired at the prisoners.

No one was killed, but few details are available except that all the prisoners are now confined in single cell maximum security units.

This attack on the prisoners occurred just after the representatives of the International Red Cross left the island.

Read more here.

Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay continue their hunger strike into a third month.

“Criminal defense attorney Marjorie Cohn shares this account by Guantánamo detainee Yousef Al Shehri, detailed in a statement by attorney Julia Tarver:

“Yousef was the second detainee to have an NG [nasal gastric] tube inserted into his nose and pushed all the way down his throat and into his stomach, a procedure which caused him great pain. Yousef was given no anesthesia or sedative for the procedure; instead, two soldiers restrained him – one holding his chin while the other held him back by his hair, and a medical staff member forcefully inserted the tube in his nose and down his throat. Much blood came out of his nose. Yousef said he could not speak for two days after the procedure; he said he felt like a piece of metal was inside of him. He said he could not sleep because of the severe pain.

“When Yousef and others ‘vomited up blood, the soldiers mocked and cursed at them, and taunted them with statements like ‘look what your religion has brought you,’  Tarver wrote.

“She notes that the feeding continued for two weeks and, after pausing for a few days, the guards began to insert larger, thicker tubes— ‘the thickness of a finger.’ According to Tarver, these tubes ‘were viewed by the detainees as objects of torture.’”  Read the full article here.

Adel Bin Ahmed Bin Ibrahim Hkiml, another prisoner on hunger strike for at least 43 days there, is said to have attempted suicide.  What has happened to him is not clear, though his death has not been reported by US officials.  Cori Crider, the legal director of Reprieve, according to an account on Huffington Post that you can read here, says she has not heard from him and that fellow prisoners do not know where he is, much less how he is doing.

More about Adel Hakimi,  a variant on the name of Adel Bin Ahmed Bin Ibrahim Hkiml:

According to Andy Worthington, Adel Hakimi, a Tunisian, went to Pakistan to marry and was living in Jalalabad in Afghanistan which is near Pakistan and close to his wife’s family when the US invaded.  The US claims that he was at a military training camp near there, but there is no evidence that he was and he has always denied any involvement with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

When the US invaded, he tried to get to Pakistan and was seized at the border and sold for bounty as so many people, especially Arabs, who were fleeing the US violence were, eventually arriving in Guantanamo.

Before he went to Pakistan, he had worked in Italy as a chef’s assistant at a number of hotels in Bologna and lived among the Italians whom he said treated him “as a brother”.  This European stay involved him a plan that never materialized to send him to Belgium, where he had been tried in abstentia based on US accusations, which have never been substantiated.

Adel Hakimi was, like so many of these prisoners still languishing in Guantanamo today, cleared for release during the Bush regime, which challenged that decision and the Obama regime continues to refuse to release him.  A hunger strike is the only way these prisoners have to resist.   The US, with disregard for international law and US laws against torture, brutally force feeds them.  More from Andy Worthington about this strike.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee says that violent force feeding of prisoners is torture.  The International Committee of the Red Cross guidelines also state that under no circumstances should doctors participate in force feeding of prisoners because it can be considered torture.

From Lauren McCauley:

“Lawyers representing the hunger striking prisoners say that most of the 166 prisoners being held are participating in the strike which began around February 6. Though the military only acknowledges 42 of those individuals as ‘hunger strikers,’ they reported that, of those, 11 were being force fed, according to detention center spokesman Navy Capt. Robert Durand.”  Read the full account here.

US tax payer money provides the staff, equipment, and all resources of the prison at Guantanamo where these crimes against humanity are committed.  What are we doing to make it clear that we are not complicit in this ongoing torture and indefinite detention of men?  The lawyers I have heard and whose words I have read say again and again that the prisoners are not tried because the US has no case against them. The only just thing to do, then, is release them with reparations and abject apologies to them, their families, and the world.  Fair and just trials of all the US officials who have had any part in this atrocity must also take place in order to hold them accountable.  What are we doing to bring these just actions about?

Once again, many of the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo are on hunger strike.  Having been imprisoned for over eleven years without trial and tortured, with evidence of continuing mistreatment at the torture center in Guantanamo Bay, the only way they have to protest is to refuse food.  In prison, without means of any other kind, they have banded together again to resist in the only way they can.

Here is a link to an article on Andy Worthington’s website and here is another to an article by Lauren McCauley.

Andy Worthington quotes from the letter written by lawyers for the prisoners to the officials in charge  of the prison, which states, “camp authorities have been confiscating detainees’ personal items, including blankets, sheets, towels, mats, razors, toothbrushes, books, family photos, religious CDs, and letters, including legal mail; and restricting their exercise, seemingly without provocation or cause.”   A copy of that letter is available here.

Another section of the lawyers’ letter says:

“As their health has deteriorated, we have received reports of men coughing up blood, being hospitalized, losing consciousness, becoming weak and fatigued, and being moved to Camp V for observation. Detainees have also expressed feeling increased stress, fear, and despair. It is clear that the their health will only worsen unless and until the hunger strike ends, which requires taking immediate steps to address the reasons for their protest.”

Being moved to Camp V for observation is a very bad sign.  It was there that Adnan Latif was “found dead in his cell” though there is supposed to be constant monitoring of the prisoners there.

Let us not forget that the vast majority of the men there have done no harm to anyone, much less anyone in the US.  What would it be like to be rounded up, tortured and imprisoned without charge for eleven years? Many of these men have been cleared for release by various US authorities over the years.  Andy says only thirty-eight of them might be dangerous men.  Ramzi Kassem, the CUNY law professor who represents some of the prisoners and signed the letter cited and linked above, says that the US should either charge all of them or release them.  The US government has said that there is not sufficient evidence to charge them.  It is clear then that the prisoners should be set free.

I for one cry out for their release.  I cry out for the release of all prisoners in US black sites around the world.  I cry out, as well, for indictments of US officials who authorized this and those who continue to imprison the men at Guantanamo and imprison and torture others around the world.

A joint investigation of the Guardian and the BBC led to a documentary released earlier this month that makes the connections between the US military and high government officials with torture in Iraq.  You can see it and read about it here.  It is clear that torture and indefinite imprisonment without charge are now standard US policy.   US tax payers’ money pays these perpetrators of war crimes while they are in office or in the military and the US government protects them when they retire, resign, or complete terms of office.  I cry out against that as well.

“Today, the European court of human rights delivered a measure of justice to [Kaled] el-Masri, [a German national seized by the CIA and tortured]. It vindicated his account of his ill-treatment, and unanimously found that Macedonia [to which he was taken by the CIA for part of his torture] had violated his rights under the European Convention, including by transferring him to US custody in the face of a risk of ill-treatment, and facilitating and failing to prevent his being subjected to CIA ‘capture shock’ at Skopje airport.

“This is the first court to comprehensively and specifically find that the CIA’s rendition techniques amounted to torture. The decision stands in sharp contrast to the abject failure of US courts to deliver justice to victims of US torture and rendition.”

Read about this here  and also  here .

I hope this is the first of many legal condemnations of US torture and crimes against humanity and that the tide of US immunity from legal consequences of its torture will soon be at an end.

Though he recognizes that there is much working against justice any time soon, Andy Worthington writes about other events which show eroding immunity for US torture and crimes against humanity.  He writes:

“While Khaled El-Masri was securing his victory in Strasbourg, another victim of ‘extraordinary rendition’ and torture, Sami al-Saadi, a Libyan and a former opponent of the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, secured an important victory in the UK, when the British government agreed to pay him £2.23 million ($3.5 million) in an out-of-court settlement relating to the key role played by the UK, working with the US and Libya, in kidnapping Mr. al-Saadi and his family and rendering them to Col. Gaddafi, who then imprisoned and tortured him.”

Sami al-Saadi

Worthington continues:

“Again, the US is not directly implicated, but the reverberations from the settlement cannot be wished away by the US, and, it seems, there will be more to come in the case of Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who said of al-Saadi, ‘When my friend Sami al-Saadi was freed from Abu Salim prison on 23 August 2011, he weighed seven stone. He was close to death. It is a miracle he survived his ordeal and is home with his family’”

And Worthington remarks on a third event that shows some change in the status of US torture, the 6000 page report by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  He quotes Senator Dianne Feinstein as follows:

“’The report uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight.’ She also stated, ‘I strongly believe that the creation of long-term, clandestine “black sites” and the use of so-called ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’ were terrible mistakes. The majority of the Committee agrees.’”

Worthington concludes:

“… the best response, while repeatedly highlighting the case of Khaled El-Masri and the shame of rendering political opponents to Col. Gaddafi to secure his support and his oil, will be for President Obama and Congress to make sure that the Senate’s comprehensive torture report is released, and not hidden away, so that the torturers cannot continue to evade accountability for their crimes.

“Without accountability, the toxic virus of torture in America’s body politic will continue to infect the whole country with its poison. It is time for the denial to end.”

How many of us are in denial about the toxic virus of torture in the US?  How can you know you are not in denial about it?  What are you doing to stop it? If you are serious, there are things you can do.  Organizations like World Can’t Wait, organize resistance to US torture.  You can join with others to make your resistance known.  Click here to go to the World Can’t Wait website for information on what you can do to stop the crimes of the US government.

Though it does not say transfer to where, the list was published today of men at Guantanamo who were cleared years ago for release and have languished for almost eleven years at the torture camp and have now been officially (again) “released for transfer.”  See the list here.

Zachary Katznelson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said:

“These men have now spent three years in prison since our military and intelligence agencies all agreed they should be released. Not on the list, of course, is Adnan Latif, who died in his cell earlier this month despite having been repeatedly approved for release from Guantánamo. It is well past time to release and resettle these unfairly imprisoned men.”  Read about Adnan Latif’s death on this blog here and more about him here.

You can read the ACLU press release here.

Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director Vincent Warren issued the following statement:

“Most of the 55 men listed have endured 11 years of indefinite detention without charge or trial, despite the unanimous assessment of every responsible U.S. national security agency that these men could be safely released or transferred. The government’s justification for hiding the identities of these men was always unconvincing, and their names should have been made public three years ago when the Guantanamo Review Task Force made its determinations. Though today’s announcement is long overdue, we welcome the disclosure of this important information which finally dispels the myth that the remaining detainees who are trapped at Guantanamo are too dangerous to be released. [Emphasis mine]

“The list announced today, however, is incomplete, and not appearing on the list is no indication of wrongdoing. It is long past time for the government to release the men it does not intend to prosecute. It should begin by urgently resuming transfers of the 86 men it has already cleared. The government did the right thing today by releasing the partial list of names. It should take the next step of releasing the men themselves.” [Emphasis mine]

You can read the Center for Constitutional Rights complete press release here.

The men at Guantanamo should all be sent home or wherever they want to go.  Even if, as Andy Worthington suggests, there may be 38 dangerous men still at the prison, they have all been tortured and just trails of any of them are impossible.  If the US had cases against any of them, it should have tried them years ago.

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif died in Guantanamo after nearly eleven years of torture.  One of the frailest of the remaining prisoners there, it is a miracle he did not die before.  Whatever the official story is, he was murdered with US tax payers’ money–that includes mine.  I must continue to speak out and resist.

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif’s story is related on this blog Click here.  The signal issues are ones that millions of people in the US should be able to relate to.  He was looking for affordable health care.  He had sustained a serious head injury in an auto accident.  We should understand; unlike the developed nations of the world which have universal health care, the US does not.  Many people here in his situation would look for affordable health care if injured that way, too.  He had heard of a Pakistani doctor practicing in Afghanistan and went there to seek treatment.

The US invaded before he found the doctor.  He was sold by bounty hunters to the US because, being from Yemen, he “looked Arab.”

I have been in a foreign country and very ill.  When I told people there I was sick, no one disbelieved me.  People were helpful.  What would I have done, if instead, I was arrested, suffering greatly, and believed to be lying?  What if nothing I said made any difference and I was thrown in a dungeon and tortured, held without charges for over a decade?

Can we begin to see this from Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif’s perspective?   What do we think we would do if we were one of his guards or interrogators?

Some of the US personnel who have perpetrated the horrors at Guantanamo and Bagram and other black sites, are now filled with remorse that they did not believe people like him.

He should have been freed.  Even more, he should have been offered medical care, not as a prisoner, but as a suffering human being when he was discovered.  He was a casualty of the invasion of Afghanistan, like millions of other civilians who were killed at the time or whose lives have been devastated.  I include among the latter, US military personnel.

We must end US aggression.  No more torture no more war.

No more murders of innocent men in Guantanamo and other US prisons at home and abroad.  No more torture of any prisoners, even those in the US who have been convicted of crimes in US courts.  War and torture are the crimes.

“Then force entered in; might making right; power and its tool, violence, and its most devoted ally, the averted eye.”*

There is so much injustice in US society that to catalogue it all would take pages. Yesterday’s Don’t Suppress OWS event focused on that directed toward the peaceful protestors of the Occupy Movement, who had brought to national attention the staggering economic equality that exists in this country.

All the injustices are connected. The police state at home, the wars and brutality here and abroad, the devastation of the planet, the abrogation of rights, and on and on.

Are you averting your eyes? I know that some people are not. They act in some way to stop the madness that reigns in this society. Some give money to support things like yesterday’s action. If you didn’t, you still can here or go to the event website where on the right hand side there is an address where you can send a check .  If you prefer other organizations or issues, there are lots of places to make a difference with your contribution. Find one and give what you can. Then you will know you are not averting your eyes and allying yourself with violence.

Some people go to the streets. If you haven’t ever done that, you are missing an experience not like any other. Do it now. Then you and others will know you are not averting your eyes and allying yourself with violence.

Some people organize protest at all levels. There is so much work to be done at computer terminals, in meetings, in courtrooms, on the streets. Find an organization and do something to help it. Then you will know that you are not averting your eyes and allying yourself with violence.

Failure to do something, to act, is averting your eyes and allying yourself with violence.

I am profoundly grateful for all the people on this planet who are working wherever they are to stop violence and injustice. I know that we are all connected in a vast web. I call on everyone who has not yet taken action to join us. We have right on our side. We will be able to answer our own consciences when we are asked how we could have lived in this time and allowed these horrors to happen with the true reply that we worked to stop them.

*From Ursula Le Quin’s  The Dispossessed, Harper Voyager 2011,p.256