By Jo Baker
LONDON, Jan 7 2016 (IPS)

It is a grim fact that prisoners in most countries suffer from poorer health than non-prisoners, and that their right to health is not always protected. But for certain groups these rights can be even more elusive. Such is the case for women.

Jo Baker

For me, this was starkly illustrated during a visit to the clinic of a large women’s jail in the southern Philippines. Here, a very thin woman lay curled and still on a narrow wooden bench. Her hands were cradling her taut, bloated stomach, her eyes tightly closed. The nurse explained that she was an addict, arrested while heavily pregnant for drug possession (a sentence that keeps the country’s women’s jails lamentably stocked), and that her baby had died days earlier in a government hospital because of a condition related to her drug use, after a complicated labour. Being understaffed and short on medicine and beds in the prison, the best treatment she could offer the woman on her return, as she faced her withdrawal, post-labour pain, grief, separation from family, and possible years awaiting trial, were paracetamol, kind words and a bench. Hers would be a particular and gendered kind of purgatory.

In speaking with imprisoned women and healthcare practitioners across five countries, our research team commonly found harmful responses and barriers to healthcare that existed because the inmates were women. These included women who were imprisoned in Jordan while recovering from brutal gender-based violence (including honour crimes and rape), without adequate treatment or rehabilitation; women who prepared for and recovered from childbirth in dirty rooms with little more than substandard prison rations, water and soap; and women who were isolated and punished because of attempts to self-harm or commit suicide. “One girl used the edge of a seafood shell on her wrists,” recounted an inmate in the Philippines. “They scolded her. If you want to die, go ahead, do it now!”

These responses are of course unlikely to be particular only to these countries.

International standards (including the Bangkok Rules) now recognize that because women commonly face certain risk factors and backgrounds, they require a gender-specific framework for healthcare. More women than men suffer from particular diseases, including HIV, hepatitis and some cancers. They have differing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs, including those relating for example, to birth, abortion and the menopause. They are more susceptible to particular mental health problems. Studies have found self-harm in prison to be up to ten times higher among women than among men, and suicide to also be proportionally higher. This list goes on.

Women (especially those in conflict with the law) are also, crucially, more likely to have been victims of sustained gender-based violence and sexual abuse. Yet prisons, which are increasingly taking in women, are rarely equipped to respond to these forms of trauma. As I was told quietly by one prison healthcare worker, gesturing to a courtyard of around 20 women. “Almost all the women here are mothers, and a lot have maltreatment and molestation in their histories. I can look around and count more than ten women who have been raped. Some have been prostituted by their families. Then drug use comes in and makes it a vicious cycle.”

These and other cultural factors lead to a different sense of shame, which can also work as a barrier to healthcare. For example inmates in Jordan, Zambia and the Philippines told me that they often avoided reporting urinary tract infections and SRH problems to male health staff. Yet some prisons for women don’t employ female doctors, and these issues remain unrecognized, and sometimes debilitating.

My research findings with DIGNITY (see our comparative study here) therefore stress the urgent need for every prison and place of detention to follow a framework for healthcare that is gender-responsive and trauma-informed – one that treats women’s specific health needs, and trains staff accordingly. In just a few facilities did we find gestures towards this.

But not all gender-sensitive health responses are medical. The traditional prison model – designed as a harsh criminal justice response to violent men – remains the basis for many institutions detaining groups that are neither violent, nor male. In the facilities where women told me of harsh disciplinary structures, negative relationships between staff and inmates, and their isolation from caring relationships, they tended to report very low morale, forms of depression, and other signs of serious struggle, such as self harm and hunger strike. This was markedly different in facilities (such the one described here in Albania) that connected the women with the outside community – particularly their children – and gave them tools to cope, learn, communicate and prepare for the future.

Meanwhile, exercise is known to be important to health and morale, and is a right of prisoners under international law (see the Mandela Rules). Yet only in one of five countries, the Philippines, were detained women encouraged and able to exercise every day. In the other countries, exercise and sports facilities of some kind were common only in prisons for men.

Many of our findings on health fell in line with those observed by the former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in her 2013 report on women’s incarceration, and they indicated clear and harmful examples of discrimination. Yet in reviewing issues raised by UN treaty body reports, we found women’s health to largely be a gap: UN experts are not giving this area consideration.

The human rights of these women entitle them to better, and must be championed, internationally and in their own countries. As once said by Dostoevsky, society must be judged by the way that it treats its prisoners. Or rather, and as told to me by one mother and survivor of domestic violence, sentenced to life in a Zambian prison: “If you’ve offended, certain things you must accept. But I don’t deserve to pass through some of these things. I came to prison healthy. I’m not intending to leave sick.”

(End)

Excerpt:

Israeli sniper using live ammunition – Ruger rifle with 0.22 mm calibre bullets – against Palestinian stone throwers. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Mar 27 2015 (IPS)

A Palestinian youth lost his fight for life this week after lying critically injured in Ramallah Hospital for days after Israeli soldiers used live ammunition as a method of crowd control against stone-throwing Palestinians near a Palestinian refugee camp.

“Ali Safi had critical injuries to his kidneys, spinal cord, lungs and spleen,” Dr Sami Naghli, who runs Jelazon refugee camp’s medical relief services, told IPS.

Seventeen-year-old Safi was shot last week by an Israeli sniper armed with a Ruger rifle during clashes between Palestinian youngsters and Israeli soldiers.

The bullet which hit him was a 0.22 inch calibre bullet, which is considered less lethal than ordinary bullets of 5.56 mm calibre.“Many of the wounded have been shot at close range and it appears as if the soldiers are shooting to kill. In my five years as a surgeon, the situation has been getting progressively worse, especially lately” – orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmed Barakat

There has been a recent increase in the use of this kind of bullet against Palestinian demonstrators by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) despite disagreement within the Israeli military about the use of this controversial weapon for riot control when the lives of Israeli soldiers are not endangered.

The head of Israel’s security department in the Operations Directorate stated in 2001 that the Ruger could not be considered a non-lethal weapon and could only be used in circumstances which justified the use of live fire.

Due to the large number of Palestinians injured and killed by 0.22 bullets, the use of this ammunition was suspended during the second Intifada, or uprising, from 2001 to 2008.

However, they are once again being used by the Israelis and the number of Palestinians seriously injured by them is growing, with at least two deaths in the last several months.

“Recent months have seen a dramatic rise in Israeli security forces’ use of live 0.22 inch calibre bullets. The firing of this ammunition is an almost weekly occurrence in the West Bank in sites of protests and clashes,” reported Israeli rights group B’tselem in January.

“Most of those injured have been young Palestinians, including minors. Yet, in the last two months, one Palestinian woman, at least three photographers, and a foreign national who was taking part in a demonstration were also hit by these bullets,” said B’tselem.

The humanitarian organisation has also said it witnessed cases of Israeli soldiers provoking clashes in order to fire live ammunition at protesters.

The reintroduction of this controversial weapon prompted B’tselem to complain to Israel’s Military Attorney General (MAG), who responded confirming that “the Ruger and similar means are not classified by the IDF as means for dispersing demonstrations or public disturbances.”

Dr Naghli told IPS that the Israeli soldiers are also using a kind of bullet which fragments on impact, causing severe trauma and damage to bones, organs and nerves, although he could not confirm if this was a 0.22 or another type.

“During the last three months there have been over 40 wounded from these types of gunshots,” said Naghli.

Over the last few weeks, IPS has witnessed Israeli snipers firing repeatedly at Palestinians during several clashes in the West Bank when stones thrown landed at a distance away from the soldiers presenting no danger.

IPS also visited some of the wounded in Ramallah Hospital and spoke to orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmed Barakat who was treating them.

“Many of the wounded have been shot at close range and it appears as if the soldiers are shooting to kill. In my five years as a surgeon, the situation has been getting progressively worse, especially lately,” Dr Barakat told IPS.

In a related development, the IDF has also temporarily suspended the use of attack dogs when arresting Palestinians, most accused of stone-throwing.

This follows a video, which went viral and caused an outcry, of 16-year-old Hamzeh Abu Hashem, 16, of Beit Ummar near Hebron in the southern West Bank, being savaged by two dogs as soldiers arrest him.

A subsequent IDF investigation found that while the use of dogs in confrontations “could be justified, in the case in question, the youth could have been arrested using other means.” Abu Hashem has been incarcerated since the incident.

Meanwhile, torture of Palestinians in detention by Israeli security services has been on the rise since the second half of 2014, according to the Public Committee Against Torture (PCAT) in Israel, an attorney representing Palestinian prisoners and Israel’s left-leaning Haaretz daily.

“In years past there were a few rare cases of torture. But something has changed,” the attorney told Haaretz.

In all of 2014, 23 Palestinians filed a number of complaints of torture by the Shin Bet (Israel’s domestic intelligence agency).

Until 1999, thousands of Palestinian prisoners were tortured every year. PCAT estimates that most Palestinians questioned had experienced at least one kind of torture.

In September 1999, following a petition to the High Court of Justice, the court prohibited the systematic use of torture, but left a small opening for interrogators

This opening applied to cases known as “ticking time bombs” where the use of force is permitted to obtain crucial information.

However, critics have pointed out that what constitutes a “ticking time bomb” is open to interpretation as well as the fact that Palestinian prisoners who have been tortured have sometimes given false information just to stop the torture.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The mother and father of Fadi Al-Qutshan beside their son's framed picture outside their home in Gaza. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS.

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY , Mar 28 2014 (IPS)

“If you want to live and receive medical treatment, you have my number, so you can call me and agree to my request. You will then get medical help, and survive.” The request, the patient said, was from an Israeli intelligence officer looking to recruit him in exchange for treatment.

The 28-year-old Fadi Al-Qutshan never did become a spy for Israel. And he did not survive long.The centre has documented several cases of arrest and manipulation of patients from Gaza needing to pass through the Erez crossing.

Qutshan suffered from a rare illness that led to artery blockage. With no help possible in Gaza, he was advised to go for treatment at a hospital in the West Bank. His application to Israeli authorities – needed for a Palestinian to enter another Palestinian area – was refused several times. It was finally granted on the intervention of the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights in Gaza.

At the West Bank hospital Qutshan was told he needed treatment at the Israeli hospital, Tel Ha Shomar. He did get passage and admission to the Israeli hospital and was operated on successfully. He needed a follow-up visit to complete treatment. That return became conditional.

“His phone rang when he was sitting next to me, and his expressions started to change and he suddenly ended the call and switched off his phone,” his mother Zeina Al-Qutshan told IPS. “He told me after that the caller was an officer from the Israeli intelligence services offering a permit to return to the hospital in exchange for working with Israel as a spy in Gaza.” Zeina said her son refused to collaborate. He died soon after.

“Blackmail of patients because of their need to travel through Israeli checkpoints has turned these checkpoints into traps for Palestinian patients,” Ahlam Al-Aqra’, solicitor with the legal aid unit of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, told IPS. “Many needing to go through checkpoints are either arrested or pressured to work as spies,” he said. “This is against basic human rights, and it must stop.”

The centre has documented several cases of arrest and manipulation of patients from Gaza needing to pass through the Erez crossing (at the intersection of Gaza, the West Bank and Israel), and of harassment of their family members or others accompanying them.

The number of patients arrested and put in Israeli jails has increased, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners. The total number of Palestinian political prisoners and detainees in Israel is 4,800, and it says about a quarter require medical help.

Ministry spokesperson Eslam Abdo gave a specific breakdown. “In all 170 prisoners need surgery, 23 prisoners have cancer, and 45 are suffering from a physical disability and need support with their movement. Eighteen prisoners are serving a sentence in Ramallah jail-clinic because of their critical health situation.”

More than 1.5 million people live in Gaza Strip on a small area of 360 sq km. As a result of the Israeli-imposed blockade, Gaza is suffering from severe shortage of hospitals and medical equipment. Hospitals in Gaza are unable to deal with all medical needs, and they refer critical cases to the West Bank and Israel depending on permits from the Israeli army who control the Erez crossing point.

The health system in the West Bank is in a better situation but it is Israeli hospitals that are well-equipped.

Mahmould Shamlakh was detained by the Israeli army on his way to an Israeli hospital. “After obtaining all required permits I accompanied my wife for medical treatment to the West Bank,” he told IPS. “My wife was sent back to Gaza and I was detained for nine months in Israeli jails under difficult circumstances for no reason.”

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR Israel) has condemned Israeli policies towards Palestinian patients seeking medical access.

“Physicians for Human Rights-Israel had called in the past on the Israeli security authorities to stop this manipulation of the most basic humanitarian needs of medical patients from Gaza as a means of coercing them and their families,” the organisation told IPS in a statement.

“This conduct of arresting patients or persons who escort them after giving them permits or clearance to pass through Erez is a policy that constitutes cruel, inhuman [treatment] that PHR Israel strongly condemns and objects to.”

Over the last three years, 13,000 cases have been referred for further and urgent medical treatment to Israeli and Palestinian hospitals outside Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health. The Israeli blockade of Gaza, coupled now with closure of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, means that this number is likely to increase over the coming weeks and months.

Palestinians demonstrating outside the UN office in Gaza calling for freedom for political prisoners. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Feb 23 2013 (IPS)

A few stoic lines from Palestinian political prisoner Samer Issawi, 33, transmitted to his sister Shireen have given new strength to Palestinian resolve to fight Israeli occupation and its prison policies. As has the hunger strike of four others in Israeli prisons along with Issawi.

“The battle waged by me and by my heroic colleagues, Tariq, Ayman and Ja’affar, is everyone’s battle, the battle of the Palestinian people against the occupation and its prisons,” he told his sister last week. He added that his health has deteriorated dramatically and “I’m hung between life and death.”

The day he sent that message, Feb. 16, was the 208th day of Issawi’s hunger strike. Held under administrative detention in an Israeli prison, Issawi is one of five long-term Palestinian hunger strikers protesting indefinite detention by Israel without charge or fair trial.

On Feb. 19, three days after proclaiming his dedication to hunger striking until justice or death, an Israeli court rejected an appeal for the near-death Issawi’s bail, instead postponing a decision until mid-March. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) notes that in addition to his hunger strike, Issawi, now 46 kg, recently began refusing water and vitamins.

A Jerusalemite, Issawi was re-arrested months after being released in the October 2011 prisoner swap exchanging Israeli tank gunner Gilad Shalit for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel re-arrested Issawi, Ayman Sharawna, 37, and 12 others using article 186 of Israeli military order 1651, which the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Addameer, notes “allows for a special Israeli military committee to sentence released prisoners to serve the remainder of their previous sentence based on secret evidence provided by the military prosecution without disclosing the evidence to the prisoner or his lawyer.”

Re-arrested on Jan. 31, 2012, Sharawna has been on and off hunger strike for over 200 days collectively since Jul. 1, 2012, stopping briefly when he believed there was hope for his release. Already in November 2012, Addameer reported that Sharawna’s health had “drastically deteriorated” and that he was “unable to stand, speak easily or urinate.” A recent independent report suggests Sharawna is now in solitary confinement despite his critical condition, and his health is rapidly failing.

According to Addameer, there are currently over 4,743 Palestinians detained by Israel, including 193 children and 178 held under administrative detention.

“Administrative detention is an illegal Israeli policy where the Israelis imprison Palestinians without any trial or charges, claiming that they have secret information that certain Palestinians are dangerous to Israeli security,” says Gaza-based Osama al-Wahidi, head of the information department at the Hussam association for Palestinian prisoners and ex-prisioners.

“Two of the hunger strikers were arrested immediately after the November 2012 Israeli attacks on Gaza,” notes Wahidi.

One of the two, Jafar Ezzedine, 41, is likewise nearing death on his quest to freedom.

“After nearly three months of hunger striking, he is very thin, very weak and ill. He looks like he shouldn’t still be alive,” says Tarek Ezzedine, Jafar’s brother. Also imprisoned by Israel, Tarek Ezzedine, director of Voice of Prisoners Radio, was likewise released in the prisoner swap, and immediately exiled by Israel to Gaza.

“This isn’t his first hunger strike,” says Tarek Ezzedine. “He went on a 54-day hunger strike in March 2012, part of a mass prisoners’ hunger strike.” In May, 2012, through Egyptian mediation, more than 1,000 prisoners agreed to end their strikes when Israel agreed to improve conditions for Palestinian prisoners.

“We have no direct contact with Jafar. His lawyer says that Jafar’s health is extremely poor now.”

Ezzedine and two others arrested in the early hours of Nov. 22, 2012, went on hunger strike on Nov. 28.

Tarek Qa’adan, 40, and Yousef Shaaban Yassin, 29, participated in demonstrations against the November 2012 Israeli attacks on Gaza. They were among 55 Palestinians arrested on Nov. 22, in what Tarek Ezzedine says is punishment for peacefully protesting the Israeli attacks.

“On the same day that they stopped bombing Gaza, the Israeli army took Jafar from his house,” says Tarek Ezzedine. “He participated in a demonstration in Jenin, where over 1,000 people were demonstrating, why arrest him? He didn’t organise the demo, he was like anyone participating.”

As with Samer Issawi, Addameer reporrs that already as of Jan. 24, 2012, Qa’adan was at risk of a fatal heart attack due to his weakened state.

“The road of prisoners, and the road of Palestinians in general, is not paved with flowers, it’s paved with thorns,” says Mahmoud Sarsak, a Palestinian footballer from Rafah, and one of the prisoners’ movement victors.

Waging a 92-day hunger strike in protest over being held for three years by Israel in a similar form of administrative detention specific to the Gaza Strip, Sarsak was released in July 2012.

Like Sarsak, Hana Shalabi and Akram Rikhawi were likewise released back to the Gaza Strip after their extended hunger strikes.

“If any of the hunger strikers die, it will not be in vain,” says Sarsak. “Their martyrdom will be a message to re-awaken the struggle for freedom. There will surely be a third Intifada (uprising) against the Israeli prison system and the occupation.”

Although hashtags like #ReleaseIssawi, #PalHunger, and #FreeSamer have been trending on Twitter, and news of the hunger strikers is all over Facebook, little has been said or written in international media about the plight of the five Palestinian strikers nearing death.

“When Shalit was being held in Gaza, the whole world, especially America and Obama, was focused on Shalit, talking about democracy, calling on the Red Cross to be able to visit him,” says Tarek Ezzedine.

“So why is the world silent on our prisoners?”

On Feb. 13, 2013, Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur, called for the release of Palestinian prisoners held without charge, saying “Israel must end the appalling and unlawful treatment of Palestinian detainees. The international community must react with a sense of urgency and use whatever leverage it possesses to end Israel’s abusive reliance on administrative detention.”

The release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in late 2011 set off scenes of jubilation throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, as families joyously welcomed their loved ones homes after months and years apart. But for many of these same families, an Israeli military order – that allows Israel to re-arrest released Palestinian prisoners based on secret evidence – has now shattered those happy reunions.

“It was like a historic (moment),” said Shireen Issawi, about the day her brother, Samer Issawi, was released from an Israeli prison in 2011. “We started to laugh and to cry. When we really saw him in the street, walking towards us, we just started to cry and scream, ‘Samer! Samer!’ We couldn’t believe it.”

But in July of last year, Samer, a 33-year-old resident of Issawiya in East Jerusalem, was re-arrested after Israel said he broke the conditions of his release. On Feb. 21, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court sentenced Issawi to eight months in prison, which will be applied retroactively starting from the date of his arrest on Jul. 7, 2012.

Issawi is now waiting for a ruling from an Israeli military committee on his case, however, and still might be forced to serve the remainder of his original sentence, 20 more years, in prison.

Issawi has been on hunger strike for over 200 days now in protest of his imprisonment, subsisting intermittently on only water, salt, and vitamins. During a court hearing on Feb. 19, his mother, Layla, collapsed from the stress of the situation.

“We took her to the hospital in ambulance and she was in a very bad condition,” Shireen told IPS, adding that the pressure on her family began from the very moment her brother was re-arrested. “We couldn’t believe that he was arrested again with no charges. It was very, very difficult for us. We started to cry and pray to God that he will be released.”

Passed in 2009, Article 186 of Israeli military order 1651 allows a special Israeli military committee to put released Palestinian prisoners back behind bars for the remainder of their original sentences, based on undisclosed evidence that isn’t shared with the prisoners or their lawyers.

To date, over a dozen Palestinians have been re-arrested under this law. Many of these prisoners were released in the November 2011 agreement between Israel and Hamas that saw 1,027 Palestinian prisoners exchanged for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Mourad Jadallah, a legal researcher with Ramallah-based prisoners rights group Addameer, explained that Israel quietly passed the military order as negotiations towards a prisoners exchange were being held, and long before the agreement was finalised.

“Israel, before taking any action, prepared the ground to bypass the agreement,” Jadallah said. “They had to protect themselves, at least legally, and give themselves the authority to re-arrest the Palestinian prisoners, and this is what they did.”

On Feb. 20, a group of Palestinian lawyers petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court against the military order. The law’s application, Addameer stated in a press release, is “completely unjustified and undermines the protection of prisoners and ex-prisoners, and puts the lives of the hunger strikers in grave danger.”

“The Court said it understands the need for this petition, but it’s still early because until now, the military committee never used this Article,” Jadallah told IPS, about the hearing. “At the same time, the case of Samer Issawi, it was based on (Article) 186.”

Right now, four Palestinian prisoners – Samer Issawi, Ayman Sharawna, Jafar Ezzedine and Tarek Qa’adan – are conducting open-ended hunger strikes in protest of their detention in Israeli prisons.

A movement in solidarity with the hunger strikers has grown in recent weeks. Demonstrations are regularly held in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, and inside Israel. Supporters have even begun hunger strikes of their own in solidarity with the prisoners.

On Feb. 11, former Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan – who was released from Israeli jail in 2012 after conducting a 66-day hunger strike – began a sit-in and hunger strike at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) offices in Al Bireh, near Ramallah.

The ICRC closed its office shortly after Adnan’s hunger strike began. A spokesperson for the organisation told Israeli daily Ha’aretz that “as a humanitarian organisation we cannot agree that our offices be used for political purposes.”

According to Israeli human rights group Btselem, 4,517 Palestinian prisoners were held in Israeli jails at the end of 2012, including 178 Palestinians held without charge or trial under Israeli administrative detention orders.

Israel has detained an estimated 800,000 Palestinians – 20 percent of the overall Palestinian population, and 40 percent of the male population – since its military occupation of the Palestinian territories began in 1967. (END)

“We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world,” said then Vice President Dick Cheney (left) in 2001. “A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quickly, without any discussion."

By George Gao
NEW YORK, Feb 6 2013 (IPS)

Shedding new light on a chapter of the U.S. “war on terror” that has largely remained shrouded in secrecy, the Open Society Justice Initiative released a report Tuesday detailing the cases of 136 individuals who were extraordinarily rendered or secretly detained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Entitled “Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition”, the report confirms that the CIA held suspected terrorists in undisclosed prisons, known as “black sites”. The agency also carried out “extraordinary renditions” – defined by the report as the illegal transfer of a detainee to the custody of a foreign government for detention or interrogation.

According to the Justice Initiative’s report, CIA detainees were tortured and abused in detention sites around the world. Some were wrongfully detained, and others were never charged for a crime.

“That’s the thing with these cases, each one is quite disturbing,” Amrit Singh, author of the report and senior legal officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative’s National Security and Counterterrorism programme, told IPS.

Take the case of Fatima Bouchar, one of 136 individuals whose experience the report documented. In 2004, the CIA and Thai authorities abused Bouchar at an airport in Bangkok. She was chained to a wall and starved for five days, before being rendered to Libya. Bouchar was four and a half months pregnant at the time.

“Part of the reason why this report was written is because it’s really important to tell the stories of what happened to these victims,” said Singh.

The report argues that along with its illegality, torture produces faulty information. It cites the case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who was extraordinarily rendered by the U.S. to Egypt in 2002. Under the threat of torture, al-Libi fabricated information about Iraq, Al-Qaeda and the use of biological and chemical weapons.

In 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell cited this fabricated information in his speech to the U.N., while advocating for war in Iraq.

The report was written in the context of post 9/11 U.S. counterterrorism policies. Its opening epigraph draws from a 2001 television interview with Vice President Dick Cheney, conducted by Tim Russert for “Meet the Press” on NBC News.

“We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world,” said Cheney. “A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quickly, without any discussion.”

The report also lists 54 complicit “foreign governments” that participated with the CIA in various ways: by hosting CIA. prisons on their territories; by capturing, transporting and torturing detainees; by providing intelligence, etc.

“It really speaks to the power that the U.S. wields over the world,” said Singh. “In this case, the U.S. has power essentially to recruit partners in committing human rights violations in the name of countering terrorism.”

Checks and balances and extrajudicial killings

In 2002, Maher Arar was detained by U.S. authorities at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. The CIA flew him out to Amman, Jordan, where he was abused by Jordanian guards. Then he was extraordinarily rendered to Syria, locked in a grave-like cell for 10 months, beaten with cables and threatened with electric shocks.

Arar’s lawyer Maria LaHood, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told IPS that they sued the U.S. government officials who sent him to be tortured. But their case came up short.

“Basically, the defendants (the U.S. government) came back with the same arguments as they always do, saying even if what (Arar) says is true – that the U.S. sent him to Syria to be tortured – the officials can’t be held liable,” said LaHood.

She said that when U.S. government officials associate their actions with “national security”, it is nearly impossible to prosecute them. “The judiciary cannot touch it.”

“Even though there’s constitutional violations here, there’s no remedy,” she added. “(Arar) couldn’t go anywhere with his case in the U.S. He hasn’t gotten an apology. He’s still on the watch-list.”

LaHood told IPS about similar challenges in prosecuting extrajudicial killings. She noted an ongoing case Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta in which the families of three U.S. citizens – who were killed in U.S. drone strikes – are suing the U.S. executive branch.

“The defendents – Panetta, Petraeus and a couple of others – have moved to dismiss the case, arguing that the judiciary can’t adjudicate the case,” she said.

When asked about the balance of power between the executive and judicial branches of the U.S. government, LaHood said, “(The) executive power has grown and grown, and that’s in part because the executive is increasing its own power, and in part because the judiciary is deferring to it.”

Philip G. Alston, a professor of law at New York University School of Law and a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, told IPS, “The executive branch is effectively given carte blanche by the judicial branch.

“The latter has particularly abdicated its responsibility to uphold the rule of law in any matter that involves the CIA,” he added. “The result is that it is left to make its own decisions, subject only to pro forma Congressional oversight – which, as far as can be judged from the public record, is little short of cheerleading.”

Singh told IPS, “There’s no doubt that there are serious terrorist threats today in the world, and they must be dealt with in an appropriate an lawful manner, but the fact that these threats exist does not constitute grounds to deviate from established domestic and international law.

“U.S. courts have largely denied victims of torture their (compensations). U.S. courts have not acted as a constraint on the abuse of executive power, which is how they should conduct their business,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) released a statement in response to a controversial U.S. Department of Justice white paper, entitled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associate Force.”

“The parallels to the (George W.) Bush administration torture memos are chilling,” said Vincent Warren, executive director at CCR, of the white paper. “Those were unchecked legal justifications drawn up to justify torture; these are unchecked justifications drawn up to justify extrajudicial killing.”

It appears that Iran has hanged Afghan prisoners on death row despite pending mercy pleas from their relatives.

The Wolesi Jirga (Upper House) has condemned the hanging of Afghan nationals in Iranian prisons as immoral and against good neighbourly relations. The office of Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin has described it as a “massacre”.

While there has been no official confirmation of the number of executed prisoners, it is reported that 1,200 of the 5,800 Afghans in Iranian prisons have been sentenced to death.

Recently relatives of some of the condemned men, living along the border with Iran, requested the Iranian authorities to release the prisoners to Afghan custody. They said 50 of their relatives were hanged, and the Iranian government has taken payments in Iranian Tomans (the rial is the official currency of Iran but the older Toman – 10 rials to a Toman – is used by many people in everyday transactions) for the return of the bodies, some of which have been received mutilated.

News agencies report that 20 bodies of Afghans were handed over to relatives in Herat and Nimroz provinces.

Mohammad Akbar, a resident of Kohsan district in Herat province, received his brother’s body two months ago after he paid the sum of roughly 50 dollars in Tomans. He told Killid his brother had left for Iran in search of work a year back, but just a few months later, he was arrested, and accused of smuggling by Iranian security forces. He said his brother had never been involved in smuggling narcotics, and he was hanged though he was innocent.

Mohammad Akbar said the family is facing acute financial problems. “What will happen to the family of my brother,” he lamented.

Mohammadullah who is from Ghorian district, Herat province, said he recovered his son’s body from Iran after six months of immense effort.

“My son went illegally to Iran along with six friends last year. Since they did not have visas they were arrested by Iranian authorities,” he said. “All of them were hanged for ‘illegal work’ that was never explained. Their bodies were handed over after paying the money,” he added.

According to Mohammadullah, body parts of the deceased men had been cut off, harvested of “internal organs” that may have been smuggled “to other countries”.

Abdul Qader Rahimi, the head of AIHRC (Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission) in western Afghanistan, said based on the reports filed by people in Herat, 10 bodies of Afghans hanged in Iran were handed over to their relatives in Kohsan district. Border police in Nimroz have confirmed this, and said the relatives have paid “huge amounts of money” to Iranian authorities.

Tension has been rising in the province over the fate of Afghans facing capital punishment in Iran. Protestors led by civil society organisations have urged the government to take the complaint to the UN. Thousands of Afghans work illegally in Iran. Most have crossed the porous border through checkpoints at Islam Qala in Herat and Tanga Abrishom area of Nimroz province.

An official at the border who did not want to be named said most of the executed prisoners were residents of western Afghanistan who had gone for work to Iran.

“The trend of hanging Afghans may increase in the future,” he warned.

AIHRC’s Rahimi’s considers the lack of access to just courts the biggest hurdle for Afghans in custody in Iran. Mohammad Reza Khoshak, Member of Parliament from Herat, said in many cases Afghans have been convicted even though they are innocent. “We have received complaints that our people have gone to Iran for work, but dossiers have been fabricated with false accusations that they were criminals, and they were hanged, which is a big concern for us,” he said.

MPs from Herat have requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation to get the prisoners back from Iran. “Their dossiers should be investigated in Afghanistan,” urged Khoshak.

However, Mir Farooq Husani, a tribal and religious leader in Herat, thinks the execution of Afghan prisoners in Iran is a political issue. “Iran is trying to put pressure on Afghanistan in different ways to make it more difficult for the international community in the country,” he said.

In his opinion Afghan prisoners have limited access to their attorneys, and also, there is little transparency in the investigations. The Afghan government must urgently take up the issue with its counterparts in Iran to “prevent the repeat of the hangings,” he warned.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed it has not received any specific information on the hangings but has asked Iranian authorities to deal with Afghan prisoners justly and according to agreements between the two countries.

On Oct. 14, in a joint press conference with deputy foreign minister Ludin, Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for Asia and Oceana Affairs, said,  “According to law, Afghan refugees who have perpetrated big crimes would not be exempted, they would be executed.”

Araqchi claimed Afghan prisoners were not being made political pawns. According to Ludin, two Afghan diplomats from the embassy in Tehran have been assigned for the Afghans in Iranian jails.

*Shoaib Tanha writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS.

Rights groups denounced the decision not to pursue prosecutions of CIA officers who may have been responsible for the deaths of two prisoners in their custody. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 1 2012 (IPS)

U.S. human rights groups have roundly condemned Thursday’s announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder that the Justice Department will not pursue prosecutions of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers who may have been responsible for the deaths of two prisoners in their custody.

The announcement appeared to mark the end of all efforts by the U.S. government to hold CIA interrogators accountable for torture and mistreating prisoners detained during the so-called “Global War on Terror” launched shortly after the Al Qaeda attacks on Sep. 11, 2001.

For rights activists and for supporters of President Barack Obama, it was the latest in a series of disappointing decisions, including the failure to close the detention facility at the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba. They had hoped Obama would not only end the excesses of President George W. Bush’s prosecution of the war, but also conduct a full investigation of those excesses, if not prosecute those responsible.

“This is truly a disastrous development,” said Laura Pitter, counter-terrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “To now have no accountability whatsoever for any of the CIA abuses for which there are now mountains of evidence is just appalling.”

“It completely undermines the U.S.’s ability to have any credibility on any of these issues in other countries, even as it calls for other countries to account for abuses and prosecute cases of torture and mistreatment,” she told IPS.

“Continuing impunity threatens to undermine the universally recognised prohibition on torture and other abusive treatment and sends the dangerous signal to government officials that there will be no consequences for their use of torture and other cruelty,” noted Jameel Jaffar, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Today’s decision not to file charges against individuals who tortured prisoners to death is yet another entry in what is already a shameful record.”

In his announcement, Holder suggested that crimes were indeed committed in the two cases that were being investigated by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham but that convictions were unlikely.

“Based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths, the department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.

The two deaths took place at a secret CIA detention facility known as the Salt Pit in Afghanistan in 2002 and at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison the following year. The victims have been identified as Gul Rahman, a suspected Taliban militant, and Manadel Al-Jamadi, an alleged Iraqi insurgent.

The two were the last reviewed by Durham, who had originally been tasked by Bush’s attorney general, Michael Mukasey, in 2008 with conducting a criminal investigation into CIA interrogators’ use of “waterboarding” against detainees and the apparently intentional destruction of interrogation videotapes that recorded those sessions.

In August 2009, Holder expanded Durham’s mandate to include 101 cases of alleged mistreatment by CIA interrogators of detainees held abroad to determine whether any of them may be liable to prosecution.

At the time, he also stressed that he would not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the controversial legal guidance given by the Bush administration regarding possible “enhanced interrogation” techniques that could be used against detainees.

Such techniques, which include waterboarding, the use of stress positions and extreme heat and cold, are widely considered torture by human rights groups and international legal experts. As such, they violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT), as well as the Geneva Conventions and a 1996 U.S. federal law against torture.

Holder’s position was consistent with Obama’s statement, which human rights groups also strongly criticised, shortly after taking office in 2009 that he did not want CIA officials to “suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering” to escape prosecution and that he preferred “to look forward as opposed to…backwards”.

In his first days in office, Obama ordered all secret CIA detention facilities closed and banned the enhanced techniques authorised by his predecessor.

In late 2010, Durham announced that he would not pursue criminal charges related to the destruction of the CIA videotapes. Seven months later, he recommended that, of the 101 cases of alleged CIA abuse referred to him, only two warranted full criminal investigations in which CIA officers had allegedly exceeded the Bush administration’s guidelines for permissible interrogation techniques.

Now that Holder and Durham have concluded that prosecutions of the individuals involved are unlikely to result in convictions, it appears certain that no CIA officer will be prosecuted in a U.S. jurisdiction. Prosecutions of Bush officials responsible for authorising the “enhanced interrogation” techniques have also been ruled out.

In 2006, a private contractor for the CIA was successfully prosecuted and sentenced to six years in prison for beating an Afghan detainee to death three years before.

Some commentators suggested that these decisions, including the dropping of the two remaining cases, have been motivated primarily by political considerations. Indeed, HRW director Kenneth Roth wrote in an op-ed last year that “dredging up the crimes of the previous administration was seen as too distracting and too antagonistic an enterprise when Republican votes were needed”.

In a statement Thursday, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee praised Holder’s decision. Republicans protested Holder’s referral of the 101 cases to Durham in 2009.

But rights activists expressed great frustration. Holder’s announcement “is disappointing because it’s well documented that in the aftermath of 9/11, torture and abuse were widespread and systematic,” said Melina Milazzo of Human Rights First (HRF), which has been one of the most aggressive groups in investigating and publicising torture and abuse by U.S. intelligence and military personnel.

“It’s shocking that the department’s review of hundreds of instances of torture and abuse will fail to hold even one person accountable.”

Similarly, the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) noted that Holder’s announcement “belies U.S. claims that it can be trusted to hold accountable Americans who have perpetrated torture and other human rights abuses”.

It said the decision “underscores the need for independent investigations elsewhere, such as the investigation in Spain, to continue”. Victims and rights groups including CCR filed criminal complaints against former Bush officials in Spanish courts in 2009, launching two separate investigations by judges there.