Supporters of president-elect Jair Bolsonaro celebrate his triumph in the early hours of Oct. 29, in front of the former captain's residence on the west side of Rio de Janeiro. The far-right candidate garnered 55.13 percent of the vote and will begin his four-year presidency on Jan. 1, 2019. Credit: Fernando Frazão/Agencia Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 29 2018 (IPS)

Voters in Brazil ignored threats to democracy and opted for radical political change, with a shift to the extreme right, with ties to the military, as is always the case in this South American country.

Jair Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old former army captain, was elected as Brazil’s 42nd president with 55.13 percent of the vote in Sunday’s runoff election, heading up a group of retired generals, such as his vice president, Hamilton Mourão, and others earmarked as future cabinet ministers. He takes office on Jan. 1.

His triumph caused an unexpected political earthquake, decimating traditional parties and leaders.

The Bolsonaro effect prompted a broad renovation of parliament, with the election of many new legislators with military, police, and religious ties, and right-wing activists.

His formerly minuscule Social Liberal Party (PSL) is now the second largest force in the Chamber of Deputies, with 52 representatives. The country’s most populous and wealthiest states, São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, elected PSL allies as governors, two of whom had no political experience.

Brazil thus forms part of a global rise of the right, which in some countries has led to the election of authoritarian governments, such as in the Philippines, Turkey, Hungary and Poland, or even the United States under Donald Trump.

Bolsonaro’s chances of taking his place in the right-wing wave only became clear on the eve of the first round of elections, on Oct. 7.

Little was expected of the candidate of such a tiny party, which did not even have a share of the national air time that the electoral system awards to the main parties. His political career consists of 27 years as an obscure congressman, known only for his diatribes and outspoken prejudices against women, blacks, indigenous people, sexual minorities and the poor.

But since the previous presidential elections in 2014, Bolsonaro had traveled this vast country and used the Internet to prepare his candidacy.

Early this year, polls awarded him about 10 percent of the voting intention, which almost doubled in August, when the election campaign officially began.

That growth did not worry his possible opponents, who preferred him as the easiest adversary to defeat in a second round, if no candidate obtained an absolute majority in the first. The idea was that he would come up against heavy resistance to an extreme right-wing candidate who has shown anti-democratic tendencies.

Fernando Haddad, the candidate of the leftist Workers Party, promised his supporters, after his defeat in the Oct. 28 elections, that as an opposition leader he would fight for civil, political and social rights in the face of Brazil’s future extreme right-wing government. Credit: Paulo Pinto/Public Photos

But this was no ordinary election. The poll favorite was former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), whom the leftist Workers’ Party (PT) insisted on running, even though he had been in prison on corruption charges since April, and was only replaced on Sept. 11 by Fernando Haddad, a former minister of education and former mayor of São Paulo.

Five days earlier, Bolsonaro had been stabbed in the stomach by a lone assailant during a campaign rally in Juiz de Fora, 180 km from Rio de Janeiro.

The attack may have been decisive to his triumph, by giving him a great deal of publicity and turning him into a victim, observers say. It also allowed him to avoid debates with other candidates, which could have revealed his weaknesses and contradictions.

But two surgeries, 23 days in a hospital and then being confined to his home, due to a temporary colostomy, prevented him from participating in election rallies. So the social media-savvy candidate focused on the Internet and social networks, which turned out to be his strongest weapon.

The massive use of WhatsApp to attack Haddad aroused suspicions that businessmen were financing “fake news” websites, thus violating electoral laws, as reported by the newspaper Folha de São Paulo on Oct. 18. The electoral justice system has launched an investigation.

The recently concluded campaign in Brazil triggered a debate about the role of this free instant messaging network and “fake news” in influencing the elections.

The social networks were decisive for Bolsonaro, who started from scratch, with practically no party, no financial resources, and no support from the traditional media. The mobilisation of followers was “spontaneous,” according to the candidate.

Brazil, the largest and most populous country in Latin America, with 208 million people, is one of the five countries in the world with the most social media users, with 120 million people using WhatsApp and 125 million using Facebook.

But these tools were only successful because the former army captain managed to personify the demands of the population, despite – or because of – his right-wing radicalism.

He presented himself as the most determined enemy of corruption and of the PT, whose governments from 2003 to 2016 are blamed for the systemic corruption in politics and the errors that caused the country’s worst economic recession, between 2014 and 2016.

As a military and religious man, recently converted to an evangelical church, he swore to wage an all-out fight against crime, a pressing concern for Brazilians, and said he would come to the rescue of the conventional family, which, according to his fiery, and often intemperate, speeches, has been under attack by feminism and other movements.

He seduced business with his neoliberal positions, represented by economist Paulo Guedes, presented as a future minister.

The promise to reduce the size of the state and cut environmental taxes, among other measures, brought him the support of the agro-export sector, especially cattle ranchers and soybean producers.

The economic crisis combined with high crimes rates, added to a wave of conservatism in the habits and customs of this plural and open society, galvanised support for Bolsonaro, while offsetting worries about his authoritarian stances or his inexperience in government administration.

Bolsonaro said he would govern for all, defending “the constitution, democracy and freedom…It is not the promise of a party, but an oath of a man to God,” he said while celebrating his victory, announced three hours after the close of the polls.

His speech did little to reassures the opposition, which will be led by the PT, still the largest party, with 56 deputies and four state governors.

A week earlier he said that in his government “the red criminals will be swept from our homeland,” referring to PT leaders. He threatened to jail his rival, Haddad.

In the past he defended the torturers of the military dictatorship and denied that the 1964-1985 military regime was a dictatorship.

His brutal statements are downplayed by his followers as “boastfulness” and even praise his declarations as frank and forthright.

The problem is not the statements themselves, but the fact that they reveal his continued fidelity to the training he received at the Military Academy in the 1970s, in the middle of the dictatorship

He considers the period when generals were presidents “democratic”, since they maintained parliament and the courts, although with restrictions and subject to controls and purges..

Bolsonaro’s victory, with 57.8 million votes, also has the symbolic effect of the absolution of the military dictatorship via elections, to the detriment of democratic convictions.

About 20,000 people a year visit the Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace, built in the foothills of the Andes mountains, where the city of Santiago lies, from the ruins of what was the biggest torture centre during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Dec 8 2016 (IPS)

After 26 years of democratic governments, Chile has finally passed a law that defines torture as a criminal act, but which is still not sufficient to guarantee that the abuses will never again happen, according to human rights experts.

On Nov. 11, President Michelle Bachelet enacted a law that typifies torture, cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment as crimes, in what she described as “a decisive step in the prevention and total eradication of torture” in Chile.

“It is good that this law has been enacted and that torture can be prevented at a national level, which is what the United Nations demands. But for us this doesn’t mean anything,” Luzmila Ortiz told IPS.

Ortiz’s husband, sociologist Jorge Fuentes, was a leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). He was detained in Paraguay in May 1975 and handed over in September of that year to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship’s (1973-1990) secret police."To fully recognise the phenomenon of torture as a serious crime to be eradicated and punished with sentences proportionate to its gravity is part of the state’s obligation to not repeat these acts in the future." -- Nelson Caucoto

DINA repatriated him to Chile, where he was tortured and later “disappeared” in January 1976 under Operation Condor, a plan involving the coordination between the military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay to track down, kidnap, torture, transfer across borders, disappear and kill opponents of the regimes such as guerrilla fighters, political activists, trade unionists, students, priests or journalists.

“They destroyed our lives, because this is a wound that will not close until we know what happened to him. This is terrible, and it not only hangs over me but over my son as well,” Ortiz said.

She recalled with sorrow that in Villa Grimaldi, a notorious torture centre, “they subjected him to atrocities. He was confined to a dog house. It is a pain so profound that you can’t get over it.”

For Cath Collins, director of the Diego Portales University’s Transitional Justice Observatory, the new law is welcome, but “no law can, by itself, guarantee that these things will never again happen.”

“To that end, efforts are needed in many areas, including a change in the institutional culture and day-to-day practices of the armed forces, police, prison guards and other state entities,” she said.

“Never again” was a demand set forth by groups of victims of human rights violations in the “Truth and Reconciliation” report drafted in 1991, a year after Chile’s return to democracy.

The report stated that reconciliation is impossible unless the truth comes out about every case, in order to avoid a repeat of human rights abuses.

Approximately 2,000 people were tortured in Londres 38 between October 1973 and January 1975. In the building, there are plaques with the names of the 98 people murdered and disappeared there. Credit: Courtesy of Memory Space Londres 38

Collins said that, to make progress towards the eradication of torture, “we have to eliminate every vestige of tolerance or normalisationof actions of brutality, incidental or systematic, and break the culture of denial and impunity.”

However, she cautioned, “institutional interventions are not enough.”

“The authorities as well as civil society also have to educate and educate ourselves, in favour of ethics and respect, and against authoritarianism, arrogance, verbal and physical violence that often invades our
social interactions and day-to-day relationships,” said the expert.

Despite its limitations, the law enables Chile to present itself as a country that has accomplished this task, on Dec. 10 when Human Rights Day is celebrated. This year’s theme is “Stand up for someone’s rights today” – a reference to the need for everyone to play an active role in defending the rights of others – part of the new ethics that have to be promoted in this country, said Collins.

Nelson Caucoto, a human rights lawyer who has defended many victims of the dictatorship, says the new law that typifies torture “provides better protection for fundamental rights.”

“Every measure that entails the advancement, recognition, protection and guarantee of human rights helps build the edifice of ‘nunca mas’ (‘never again)’ To fully recognise the phenomenon of torture as a serious crime to be eradicated and punished with sentences proportionate to its gravity is part of the state’s obligation to not repeat these acts in the future,” he told IPS.

He added that “the issue of torture and its victims in Chile has been one of the poor cousins in the struggle to enforce human rights with respect to the dictatorship. Pinochet was arrested in London for (cases linked to) torture, but in Chile there were no legal proceedings against him for torture,” he said.

In 2004, the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture classified more than 40,000 Chileans as victims of this crime.

But human rights organisations say the figure is much higher. They estimate that half a million Chileans were victims of torture during the dictatorship, Caucoto said.

According to official figures, 2,920 people were killed in the political violence during the military dictatorship, including 1,193 who were “disappeared”, while 40,280 were tortured and one million fled into exile. Of the disappeared, the remains of 167 have been identified, according to the forensic medicine institute.

For Leopoldo Montenegro, member of the Londres 38 Memory Space, which was another major detention and torture centre, the new legislation is of utmost importance.

But in his opinion, “the state has failed to take strong decisions with respect to issues such as justice, restitution, compensation and measures to ensure non-repetition.”

Montenegro told IPS that while the new law has a preventive effect, in order to guarantee that the abuses will never again be committed, the most important element is justice. This means “that the courts must admit the charges of torture filed by the victims and punish the perpetrators. In that sense, there have only been symbolic rulings,” he said.

Two verdicts that stand out were handed down by Judge Alejandro Solís in cases involving 23 survivors of Villa Grimaldi, which has been turned into a Park for Peace and Memory, and 19 survivors of Tejas Verde, another illegal detention centre.

Caucoto hailed Bachelet’s announcement of the creation of a National Mechanism for Prevention of Torture, “which is required by the Optional Protocol to the Convention against torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatments or punishment.”

“Its creation is important because in Chile there is no body with the necessary powers to prevent torture. It has to be noted as a great advance,” he said.

Montenegro, meanwhile, advocated the adoption of measures to create the conditions to ensure that the abuses will never again occur, and complained about the state’s lack of will “to carry out public policies of justice with respect to crimes committed during the dictatorship.”

Collins said that what is needed is “a cultural shift and a change of mindset with respect to eliminating the acceptance of inflicting violence or tolerating passively that it be inflicted on our behalf. It doesn’t matter whether it is the political opponent of the past or the alleged ‘criminal’ of today.”

An annual report by the Ministry of the Interior’s Human Rights Programme pointed out that as of Dec. 1, 2015 there were 1,048 human rights cases in the courts.

Of the 1,373 former agents of the dictatorship facing prosecution, 344 have been convicted, 177 are serving prison sentences – 58 with benefits – and six are on parole.

Meanwhile, Luzmila Ortiz continues to face the trauma of her past and to deal with the psychological problems suffered by her son, who is now 45. “He was two and a half years old when he witnessed my detention (when agents of the regimebroke into their house searching for her husband) after being separated from his father. He has been affected since then,” she said.

Her case, dismissed by the Chilean justice system, is now pending in the Inter American Court of Human Rights “where there are many other legal proceedings and there is practically no hope.”

“There are always legal mechanisms to protect the perpetrators,” she lamented, arguing that “the crucial thing is to do away with the protection that the torturers still enjoy.”

Excerpt:

A scene from the mission of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) to Chad to inquire into crimes committed by the regime of Hissène Habré in 2001. Credit: FIDH/cc by 2.0

By a Global Information Network correspondent
DAKAR, Jul 21 2015 (IPS)

After years awaiting justice by a court of law, Chadian citizens packed the Palais de Justice in Dakar, Senegal, to catch a glimpse of Hissene Habre, president of the central African nation from 1982-1990 during which time his iron fist rule took between 1,200 and 40,000 lives, according to evidence compiled by Chadian and international rights groups.

Members of victims’ groups, whose efforts to bring Habre to court spanned over two decades, now strained to view this now slight figure dressed in white robes and a traditional white turban to cover most of his face.

The 72-year-old former strongman appeared unrepentant. As the proceedings began, he shouted “Down with imperialism! [The trial] is a farce by rotten Senegalese politicians. African traitors. Valet of America,” setting off a struggle between his supporters and alleged victims. At least half a dozen guards rushed to remove him. A small group of supporters was also removed.

When Mr. Habre refused to return to the courtroom, presiding judge Gberdao Gustave Kam warned he would be forced to attend on Tuesday. Over 100 victims are due to testify at the trial.

“We want to show the Chadian people, and why not all Africans, that no, you cannot govern in terror and criminality,” Souleyman Guengueng, 66, a former accountant who spent more than two years in Habre’s prison, said to Diadie Ba, a Reuters journalist.

“After 25 years, to see him again – it was a very emotional experience,” said Clément Abaifouta, president of the Association of Victims of the Crimes of Hissène Habré, who claims he was forced to dig graves for many of his fellow inmates. “But now I see that I am in the sun and he is in the shade. For us, the victims, this has been an important occasion.“

The tribunal is supported by the African Union but is part of Senegal’s justice system, making it the first time in modern history that one country’s domestic courts have prosecuted the former leader of another country on rights charges.

A successful trial would also make the case that African countries could try their own, rather than have the Western-led International Criminal Court (ICC) be the venue for trials of Africans.

The case against Habre turns on whether he personally ordered the killing and torture of political opponents and ethnic rivals. In 1992, the Chadian Truth Commission accused Habré’s government of up to 40,000 political murders, mostly by his intelligence police, the Documentation and Security Directorate. (DDS)

Human Rights Watch in 2001 unearthed thousands of documents in the abandoned DDS headquarters updating Habre on the status of detainees. A court handwriting expert concluded that margin notes on one document were Habre’s.

“Rarely do we find so much evidence of crimes,” said Reed Brody of HRW. “And these match the testimonies of the victims, day for day, word for word.”

“This is the end of a nightmare,” said Jacqueline Moudeina, the lead lawyer for the victims. “The fact that he is here and listens to victims speak of all the atrocities they suffered is already a great victory.”

Habré denies being responsible for hundreds of deaths.

The trial is expected to last several months.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

(From left to right) Fatima, Aza and Rabab, three Sahrawi women activists, pose from an undisclosed location in Laayoune, the capital of occupied Western Sahara. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
LAAYOUNE, Occupied Western Sahara, Jul 17 2015 (IPS)

Ten women are gathered to discuss how to transmit Sahrawi culture and tradition to the younger generations. As usual, it´s a secret meeting. There is no other way in the capital of Western Sahara.

Rabab Lamin chose the place and the date for this latest meeting of the Forum for the Future of Sahrawi Women, an underground organisation yet seemingly far from being disorganised.

“We set up the committee in 2009 and today we rely on 60 active members, an executive committee of 16 and hundreds of collaborators,” Lamin, the mother of a political prisoner, tells IPS.

“Here you´ll hardly come across any Sahrawi who has not been mistreated by the police, nor a family who has not lost one of their own" – Aza Amidan, sister of a Sahrawi political prisoner
“Our goal is to fight for the fundamental rights of the Sahrawi people through peaceful struggle,” adds the 54 year-old woman, before noting that she was born “when the Spaniards were here.”

This year will mark four decades since Spain pulled out of Western Sahara, its last colony, leaving the territory in the hands of Morocco and Mauritania. While Rabat claims that this vast swathe of land – the size of Britain – is its southernmost province, the United Nations labels it as a “territory under an unfinished process of decolonisation.”

Since the ceasefire signed in 1991 between Morocco and the Polisario Front – the authority that the United Nations recognises as a legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people – Rabat controls almost the whole territory, including the entire Atlantic coast.

Only a tiny desert strip on the other side of the wall built by Morocco remains under Sahrawi control. That´s where the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was announced in 1976, a political entity today recognised by 82 countries.

The most immediate consequence of Sahara´s frozen conflict was the displacement of almost the entire Sahrawi people to the desert of Algeria. Those who dared to stay still suffer the consequences of their decision:

“Since the Moroccans took over our land we have only faced brutality,” laments Aza Amidan, the sister of a political prisoner. “We are constantly harassed and beaten; they raid our houses, they arrest our men and women, even kids under 15.

“Here you´ll hardly come across any Sahrawi who has not been mistreated by the police, nor a family who has not lost one of their own,” says Amidan. The 34-year-old activist stresses that the founder and current leader of the Forum, Zukeine Ijdelu, spent 12 years in prison.

Sahrawi women activists who have taken to the streets in Laayoune, capital of occupied Western Sahara, are often forcibly dispersed. Credit: Mohamed Salem

In a report issued two months ago, Amnesty International labels the practice of torture in Morocco as “endemic” while underlining that Sahrawi political dissidents are among the main targets. The NGO also accused the Moroccan government of “protecting the torturers, and not the tortured.”

Sahrawi activists claim that one of the main tasks of this women´s organisation is to support, “both morally and economically”, those who have suffered prison or their relatives. Amidan gives the details:

“We gather money among the community for those women as they are always the ones who suffer most. Whether it´s them who are arrested or their husbands, it´s them who have to sustain their families.”

Despite several phone calls and e-mails, the Moroccan authorities refused to speak to IPS on these and other human rights violations allegedly committed in Western Sahara.

Assimilation

At 62, Fatima Hamimid is one of the senior veteran activists of the Forum. She says torture is “something that can one can cope with.” But there are other grievances that are seemingly “irreparable”.

“Today’s workshop sought to raise awareness among the new generations over the cultural assimilation we´re being subjected to at the hands of Rabat. Morocco seeks to deny our mere existence by either erasing our history or including it into their own.”

The most eloquent proof of such policies may be the total absence of Hassaniya –the Arabic dialect spoken by Sahrawis – in the education system or the administration.

However, Hamimid also points to other issues such the explicit ban over the Sahrawi traditional tent, the harassment  women wearing their distinctively colourful garb often have to face, or the prohibition of giving names that recall historical Sahrawi dissidents to their children.

“This is yet another reason that drags us to the streets to organise and take part in demonstrations,” notes Hamimid. Peaceful protests, she adds, are another important axis of action of this group.

But it is neither easy nor free of risks. In its World Report 2015, Human Rights Watch denounces that Rabat has “prohibited all public gatherings deemed hostile to Morocco’s contested rule.”

The New York-based NGO also points to the “large numbers of police who blocked access to demonstration venues and often forcibly dispersed Sahrawis seeking to assemble.”

Under such circumstances, Takbar Haddi chose to conduct a hunger strike for 36 days in front of the Moroccan consulate in Gran Canaria (Spain), which ended with her hospitalisation in June.

Haddi is still asking the Moroccan authorities to deliver the body of her son, Mohamed Lamin Haidala, stabbed in February in Laayoune, and that both the circumstances of the crime and the alleged lack of an adequate health assistance be investigated.

The activist´s close relatives in Laayoune told IPS that the family had rejected an economic compensation from Rabat in exchange for their silence.

“Some people think that being free is just not languishing in prison, or not suffering torture,” explains Hamimid, while she serves the last of the three cups of tea marking Sahrawi tradition. “We, Sahrawi women, understand freedom in its full meaning.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Palestinian children, no matter how young, are often victims of mistreatment in Israeli police and military detention facilities. Photo credit: UNICEF/El Baba

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 5 2015 (IPS)

Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, has sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council demanding that action be taken against Israel over the abuse of Palestinian children after they have been arrested by Israeli security forces.

“Every single day and in countless ways, Palestinian children are victims of Israeli human rights violations, with no child considered too young to be spared the oppression being meted out by the Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers,”  wrote Mansour. “These crimes committed against our children are intolerable and unacceptable.”

"Every single day and in countless ways, Palestinian children are victims of Israeli human rights violations, with no child considered too young to be spared the oppression being meted out by the Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers” – Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations
The letter, sent on May 1, followed the detention of a nine-year-old boy, Ahmad Zaatari from Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem, who had been detained on the night of Apr. 28 for approximately eight hours by Israel police after they alleged that he and his brother, 12-year-old Muhammad Zaatari, had thrown stones at an Israeli bus.

Allegations of the mistreatment of Palestinian children while in Israeli police and military detention facilities in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are not new.

“The ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised throughout the process,” said the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in a 2013 report titled Children in Israeli Military Detention, which recommended that 38 changes be made after consulting with Israeli authorities.

However, in February 2015, UNICEF released an update reviewing progress made in implementing the report’s 38 recommendations during the intervening period, which found that “reports of alleged ill-treatment of children during arrest, transfer, interrogation and detention have not significantly decreased in 2013 and 2014.”

In an April 2015 report on ‘Children in Israeli Military Detention’, rights group Military Court Watch (MCW), which monitors the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, said that “at least 87 percent of UNICEF’s recommendations lack effective implementation and the ill treatment of children who come in contact with this system still remains ‘widespread, systematic and institutionalised’.”

Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP), a Palestinian human rights organisation specifically focused on child rights has been reported as saying that “Palestinian children are treated as mercilessly as adults. Most troubling are brutal beatings, other forms of torture and prolonged isolation in solitary confinement.”

According to DCIP, unlike Jews, Palestinian parents cannot accompany their children when interrogated, and there are cases of children even younger than 12 arriving at interrogation centres shackled, blindfolded and sleep-deprived.

Most experience physical abuse amounting to torture before, during and after interrogation, and “almost all children confess regardless of guilt to stop further abuse,” said DCIP, adding that the children are often forced to sign confessions in Hebrew which they cannot read or understand.

“Similarities in the situation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank exist because of the inevitable tensions that arise due to the prolonged military occupation,” Gerard Horton from MCW told IPS.

“You can tinker with the system as much as you like but unless the underlying causes are addressed the situation will remain the same.

“Most Palestinian children are arrested near Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. If you insert 500,000 settlers into occupied territory and the security forces’ job is to protect them, this inevitably results in the local population being terrorised,” added Horton.

Meanwhile, Israel was harshly criticised in a report of the board of inquiry regarding incidents during last year’s Gaza war released by U.N. Secretary General Bank Ki-moon on Apr. 27.

The board of inquiry concluded that Israel was responsible for the death of 44 Palestinians, and the injuring of 227 others, when they carried out seven attacks on six U.N. sites in Gaza where Palestinian civilians were sheltering.

Ban condemned the shelling attacks with “the utmost gravity” and said that “those who looked to them [U.N. shelters] for protection and who sought and were granted shelter there had their hopes and trust denied.”

According to Chris Gunness, spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the United Nations provided the Israelis with the exact locations of the U.N. facilities where the civilians were sheltering.

“The U.N. inquiry found that despite numerous notifications to the Israeli army of the precise GPS coordinates of the schools and numerous notifications about the presence of displaced people, in all seven cases investigated by the Board of Inquiry when our schools were hit directly or in the immediate vicinity, the hit was attributable to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces],” said Gunness.

However, the U.N. Secretary General also criticised Palestinian groups for putting some of the U.N. schools at risk by hiding weapons in some of them.

“I am dismayed that Palestinian militant groups would put United Nations schools at risk by using them to hide their arms. However, the three schools at which weaponry was found were empty at the time and were not being used as shelters,” said Ban.

Israeli diplomats put pressure on the United Nations not to release its findings into the war until the Israeli authorities had conducted their own investigation into alleged human rights violations. In September last year, Israel opened investigations into five criminal cases, including looting.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed during the Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Against the backdrop of serious human rights allegations, Azerbaijan is gearing up to host the first-ever European Games. Credit: ResoluteSupportMedia/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 2015 (IPS)

Months after being denied access to Azerbaijan’s places of detention, the head of the United Nation’s Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) announced Friday that her four-member delegation had successfully conducted investigations of Azerbaijani prisons, police stations and investigative isolation units.

“The Azerbaijani Government this time enabled unhindered access to places of deprivation of liberty,” confirmed Aisha Shujune Muhammad, head of the SPT delegation, in a statement published by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

“I can’t think of a single case of the ones we’ve followed – which largely are connected to political activists, journalists and human rights defenders – in which allegations of torture have been effectively investigated." -- Jane Buchanan, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch
As a state party to the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, Azerbaijan is obliged to allow independent experts full access to sites of detention, but last September the SPT was forced to suspend its visit after being prevented from inspecting some sites and barred from completing its work at others, “in violation of Azerbaijan’s treaty obligations”, according to OHCHR.

This month, from Apr. 16-24, SPT members visited a range of sites including pre-trial detention facilities, psychiatric hospitals, and social care institutions.

On Friday the subcommittee presented its confidential preliminary observations to Azerbaijani authorities, including recommendations for strengthening systems to protect those persons deprived of their liberty against torture and other cruel or inhuman treatment.

While welcoming the government’s cooperation, Muhammad stressed, “[The] State party has yet to guarantee all fundamental legal and procedural safeguards to persons deprived of their liberty, including access to a lawyer, a medical doctor, and to contact his or her family.”

Streets empty of political dissidents

The statement confirms what international watchdogs have been warning for the past few years: that ill treatment of prisoners and impunity, particularly with regards to political activists and journalists, is rampant in this land-locked nation of 9.4 million people.

“We have had long-standing concerns about conditions in detention and ill treatment and torture of people detained in police stations, in prisons and other facilities,” Jane Buchanan, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

“We have huge concerns about fair trials and due process, so we don’t have a sense of optimism at all – nor do I read a lot of optimism into the SPT’s statement. I would not say the trajectory is good.”

She said the situation is particularly worrying for human rights defenders and the media, who are currently weathering a harsh government crackdown against any form of dissent.

In 2014 alone, Human Rights Watch (HRW) recorded over 35 cases of activists, journalists and human rights defenders who were detained or imprisoned on politically motivated charges.

Buchanan said other, local groups have longer lists, whose numbers are closer to the 100 mark.

Even these could be conservative estimates, as many of those who would otherwise be monitoring violations of human rights are now behind bars, or have fled the country to escape prosecution.

“The government is effectively shutting down mechanisms for transparency and accountability for all kinds of things including torture and ill treatment,” she stated.

Amnesty International’s most recent country report for Azerbaijan echoes many of these concerns, highlighting cases like the arrest on May 6 of Kemale Benenyarli, a member of the opposition Azerbaijani Popular Front Party (APFP) who subsequently alleged that she was “beaten, punched, dragged and locked in a cell, where she was kept without food and water until her trial the following morning.”

At the time of her arrest, Benenyarli was among a group of peaceful protestors gathered outside the Baku City Grave Crimes Court, demanding the release of jailed youth activists associated with the NIDA Civic Movement.

Amnesty also reported that another protestor arrested that day, Orkhan Eyyubzade, complained that he was “stripped naked, dragged by the hair, punched, kicked and threatened with rape after he engaged in an argument with police officers during his detention on May 15.”

Other allegations of torture in detention include the withholding of medical treatment, denial of necessary foods due to medical conditions, and the use of physical violence on the part of staff or cellmates, according to HRW’s Buchanan.

“I can’t think of a single case of the ones we’ve followed – which largely are connected to political activists, journalists and human rights defenders – in which allegations of torture have been effectively investigated,” she added.

At present, rights groups say over 50 political prisoners are being held in jails around the country, largely on trumped-up charges.

European Games: A chance to shine a light on injustice?

Against the backdrop of serious rights allegations, which have been escalating since 2012, Azerbaijan is gearing up to host the first-ever European Games under the auspices of the Olympic Movement.

Over 6,000 athletes representing 50 countries are scheduled to participate in the event, which will run from Jun. 12-28 this year.

According to the London-based Business News Europe, the games are budgeted at an estimated eight billion dollars, and billed as the “most spectacular show in Azerbaijan’s history.”

While the government of President Ilham Aliyev hopes to use the games to spotlight his country’s economic development, rights groups are pushing the European Olympic Committees and key National Olympic Committees to instead shift the focus onto human rights abuses and political prisoners.

The Sports and Rights Alliance, a coalition comprised of the likes of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Football Supporters Europe, and Transparency International Germany, recently submitted a letter to Patrick Hickey, president of the European Olympic Committees, arguing that the current crackdown on critics and dissidents is “at odds with key principles of the Olympic Charter that the European Games are meant to uphold.”

The Alliance also urged the sporting body to use its leverage with Azerbaijan to, among other things, demand the immediate and unconditional release of rights activists like Khajida Ismayilova, Leyla Yunus, Arif Yunus, Intigam Aliyev, Rasul Jafarov, Rauf Mirgadirov, Anar Mammadli, Ilgar Mammadov, and Tofig Yagulblu.

“Those participating in the European games being funded by the Azerbaijani government have a real obligation to speak out,” Buchanan stressed.

Among those receiving “funding” to attend the games is Britain’s team of 160 athletes. In February, the Guardian reported that the British Olympic Association (BOA) had admitted that the host country would cover the bulk of the costs associated with getting its teams to Baku.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The Southern Africa Litigation Centre, Amnesty International and over a dozen other human rights organisations including the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights have signed an open letter demanding justice for crusading Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, whose exposés have offended several military officials and other higher-ups.

In their letter, published this week in a Malawian newspaper, the group praised Marques for “his long history of holding the Angolan government to account for human rights abuses and corruption through his insightful, thoughtful and well regarded journalistic investigations” and noted that “for his efforts, he has been arrested and detained multiple times in Angola.”

In the latest effort to silence Marques, legal action was launched by a group of generals over his book ‘Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola’, first published in Portugal in 2011.

The book cites a litany of human rights violations – including killings, torture and forced evictions – that took place in Lunda Norte in northeastern Angola where diamond excavations were taking place. Military officials, diamond miners and private security contractors – named in the book – first attempted to sue Marques for defamation in Portugal but their case was dismissed.

After the book appeared, the author filed a charge with the Angolan Attorney General on Nov. 14, 2011. He called on the authorities to investigate the moral responsibility of the generals for serious abuses. After hearing victims’ testimonies in 2012, the Attorney General set the case aside. New charges were then filed against Marques.

If convicted, he faces up to nine years in prison and damages of 1.2 million dollars on the charge.

“Mr Marques is the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards for his work. He is an equal opportunity human rights defender, working to expose violations no matter who is the accused or accuser,” the open letter writers noted.

Angola, the fourth-biggest diamond producing country by value, has been relaxing restrictions on exploration and development after producers, including South African giant De Beers, cut back operations during the global financial crisis. The move is worrying environmentalists as well as local people and the rise in numbers of anti-government protests is an irritant to the authorities who are keen to make an example of Marques with a successful prosecution.

In his speech as joint winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expressions in Journalism award last week, one of several international honours he has received, Marques said that the trial would make him stronger.

“It will show Angolans there is nothing to fear and challenge them to hold the authorities to account,” he said in a press interview.

Seven journalists have been murdered in Angola since 1992 and many others intimidated or imprisoned, according to The Guardian newspaper. This month, two activists, Marcos Mavungo and Arao Bula Tempo, were arrested in Angola’s northern oil-producing province Cabinda, hours before an anti-government protest was due to take place. They have been jailed on charges of sedition.

Previous demonstrations have been broken up using what Human Rights Watch call “excessive force” and last year a female student was hospitalised after a beating by police for taking part in a march.

Other signers to the open letter include Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the UK-based Media Legal Defence Initiative.

Edited by Phil Harris    

*The book – Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola – is not yet available in English.

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    

Governments must do more to address the impacts of forced disappearances of women, according to an international justice report released Monday.

Since 1980, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has documented over 54,000 cases of such disappearances from all over the world.

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), in releasing its report ‘The Disappeared and Invisible: Revealing the Enduring Impact of Enforced Disappearances on Women,’ urged governments to better address the effects of such crimes on females.

The report states women are the minority of those who are forcibly disappeared, but “the majority of family members who suffer exacerbated social, economic, and psychological disadvantages as a result of the loss of a male family member who is often a breadwinner.”

In surveying 31 countries – mostly in Africa and Central and South America – the ICTJ urged governments to remember “the need to consider women’s experiences, including when implementing measures like truth commissions, prosecutions, and reparations.”

The report states while women who have been forcibly disappeared experience much the same treatment as men in detention – including torture and ill treatment – women are often subject to gender-based violence including sexual violence and separation from their children.

The ICTJ said women left behind when a family member or partner is disappeared experience “ongoing victimisation” including poverty, family conflict and psychological trauma, as well as often being forced into low-paying, dangerous or exploitative working arrangements to support their families. Women may also face difficulty in accessing bank accounts, social services or ownership rights of property, which may be held in their partner’s name.

Flow-on effects are felt by children and other family members, including impacts on education, health and general well being.

“Although women make up the minority of those who are disappeared around the world, in almost every country we studied… they make up the majority of those who suffer serious, lasting harm after a disappearance,” said Amrita Kapur, senior associate for ICTJ’s Gender Justice programme.

“When a loved one goes missing, most often women are on the forefront of the search for truth and vulnerable to further abuses, even as they take on the role of breadwinner while raising children. Women’s stories are not being told, making it harder for governments to respond effectively.”

The report is part of an ongoing project between ICTJ and UN Women.

The report posits a set of recommendations to better support women who are left behind after the forced disappearance of a partner or family member. Chief among the findings is a call for a new legal category allowing relatives of a disappeared person to access benefits, inherit wealth and assets, and to dissolve marriages even without the person being declared dead.

The report cites the fact that remaining partners are often unwilling or unable to have their disappeared partner declared dead, but that many social benefits or legal avenues for redress only become available upon declaration of death.

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

Protestors armed with bamboo sticks faced police in riot gear in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, on May 4, 2013. Credit: Kajul Hazra/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2015 (IPS)

The cradle of some of the world’s most ancient civilizations, home to four out of the planet’s six billion people, and a battleground for the earth’s remaining resources, Asia and the Pacific are poised to play a defining role in international affairs in the coming decade.

But what does the future look like for those working behind the scenes in these rising economies, fighting to safeguard basic rights and ensure an equitable distribution of wealth and power in a region where 70 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day?

In its flagship annual report, the State of the World’s Human Rights, released Wednesday, Amnesty International (AI) slams the overall trend in the region as being “regressive”, pinpointing among other issues a poor track record on media freedom, rising violence against ethnic and religious minorities, and state repression of activists and civil society organisations.

The presence of armed groups and continuing conflict in countries like Pakistan, particularly in its northern tribal belt known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), as well as in Myanmar and Thailand, constitute a major obstacle to millions of people trying to live normal lives.

Much of the region’s sprawling population is constantly on the move, with the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) counting 3.5 million refugees, 1.9 million internally displaced people (IDPs), and 1.4 million stateless people, mostly hailing from Afghanistan and Myanmar.

UNHCR has documented a host of challenges facing these homeless, sometimes stateless, people in the Asia-Pacific region including sexual violence towards vulnerable women and girls and a lack of access to formal job markets pushing thousands into informal, bonded or other exploitative forms of labor.

Intolerance towards religious minorities remains a thorny issue in several countries in Asia; Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have allowed for the continued prosecution of Shi’a Muslims, Ahmadis and Christians, while hard-line Buddhist nationalist groups in both Myanmar and Sri Lanka have operated with impunity, leading to attacks – sometimes deadly – on Muslim communities.

Meanwhile, ethnic Tibetans in China have encountered an iron fist in their efforts to practice their rights to freedom of assembly, speech, and political association. Since 2009, about 130 people have set themselves aflame in protest of the Chinese government’s authoritarian rule in the plateau.

A dark forecast for women and girls

Despite all the conventions ratified and millions of demonstrators in the streets, violence against women and girls continues unchecked across Asia and the Pacific, says the AI report.

In the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea, home to seven million people, an estimated 75 percent of women and girls experience some form of gender-based or domestic violence, largely due to the age-old practice of persecuting women in the predominantly rural country for practicing ‘sorcery’.

In the first six months of 2014, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission had recorded 4,154 cases of violence against women, according to the AI report, while India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported an average of 24,923 rapes per year.

A 2013 U.N. Women study involving 10,000 men throughout Asia and the Pacific found that nearly half of all respondents admitted to using physical or sexual abuse against a partner.

According to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), two out of every five girls in South Asia could wind up as child brides, with the highest prevalence in Bangladesh (66 percent), tailed closely by India (47 percent), Nepal (41 percent) and Afghanistan (39 percent).

“In East Asia and the Pacific,” the organisation said, “the prevalence of child marriage is 18 percent, with 9.2 million women aged 20-24 married as children in 2010.”

Holding the State accountable

Amnesty’s report presents a cross-section of government responses to activism, including in China – where rights defender Cao Shunli passed away in a hospital early last year after being refused proper medical treatment – and in North Korea, where “there appeared to be no independent civil society organisations, newspapers or political parties [and] North Koreans were liable to be searched by the authorities and could be punished for reading, watching or listening to foreign media materials.”

Imposition of martial law in Thailand saw the detention of several activists and the banning of gatherings of more than five people, while the re-introduction of “colonial-era sedition legislation” in Malaysia allowed the government to crack down on dissidents, AI says.

Citizens of both Myanmar and Sri Lanka faced a virtually zero-tolerance policy when it came to organised protest, with rights defenders and activists of all stripes detained, threatened, attacked or jailed.

Throughout the region media outlets had a bad year in 2014, with over 200 journalists jailed and at least a dozen murdered according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Amnesty’s report also found torture and other forms of ill treatment to be a continuing reality in the region, naming and shaming such countries as China, North Korea, the Philippines and Sri Lanka for their poor track record.

An earlier Amnesty International report, ‘Torture in 2014: 30 years of broken promises’, found that 23 Asia-Pacific states were still practicing torture, three decades after the U.N. adopted its 1984 Convention Against Torture.

The report found evidence of torture and ill treatment ranging “from North Korea’s brutal labour camps, to Australia’s offshore processing centres for asylum seekers or Japan’s death rows – where prisoners are kept in isolation, sometimes for decades.”

In Pakistan the army, state intelligence agencies and the police all stand accused of resorting to torture, while prisoners detained by both the policy and military in Thailand allege they have experienced torture and other forms of ill treatment while in custody.

In that same vein, governments’ continued reliance on the death penalty across Asia and the Pacific demonstrates a grave violation of rights at the most basic level.

Amnesty International reported that 500 people were at risk of execution in Pakistan, while China, Japan and Vietnam also carried on with the use of capital punishment.

Perhaps the only positive trend was a rise in youth activism across the region, which is home to 640 million people between the ages of 10 and 24, according to the United Nations. The future of the region now lies with these young people, who will have to carve out the spaces in which to build a more tolerant, less violent society.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The Third Geneva Convention and the UN Covenant Against Torture do not exempt tortures that somebody believes to be “effective”. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, Washington, Feb 7 2015 (IPS)

“Enhanced interrogation”: the George W. Bush administration bureaucrats who coined the term had perfect pitch. The apparatchiks of Kafka’s Castle would have admired the grayness of the euphemism. But while it sounds like some new kind of focus group, it turns out it was just anodyne branding for good old-fashioned torture.

Unfortunately, the debate around it unleashed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report has largely missed the point.If the leaders of the richest and most powerful empire in history can claim that defending it requires torturing prisoners, what other government or non-state actor will hesitate to make the same claim?

Certainly, the report did provide overwhelming evidence that torture did not produce useful intelligence.  The CIA had concluded previously that torture is “ineffective”, “counterproductive”, and “will probably result in false answers”.

An FBI agent wrote that one prisoner had cooperated and provided “important actionable intelligence” months before being tortured.  Some CIA agents and soldiers reportedly questioned the legality of the policies and resisted carrying them out.

A Bush Justice Department lawyer acknowledged: “It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program.”  In any case, it is inherently impossible to know that any intelligence purportedly extracted by torture could not have been elicited by legal interrogation.

Fundamentally, though, whether torture “works” or not is immaterial.

The Third Geneva Convention and the U.N. Covenant Against Torture do not exempt tortures that somebody believes to be “effective”.  The codes are based on the hard-headed calculation that by agreeing not to torture non-combatants, nations can reduce the probability of their own non-combatants being tortured.

Post-WWII trials imprisoned and executed German and Japanese officials for war crimes including torture.  Nuremberg and Tokyo established the indelible principle that acting as responsible government officials, or following the orders of one, is not a defense against accusations of war crimes.

Granted, these norms have been observed as much in the breach as in practice.  And on the blood-soaked canvas of the past century, the damages of torture pale beside the scope of suffering inflicted by the “legal” savageries of war.  Yet if the leaders of the richest and most powerful empire in history can claim that defending it requires torturing prisoners, what other government or non-state actor will hesitate to make the same claim?

Dick Cheney, former Vice President and current Marketing Director for the Spanish Inquisition, says: “I’d do it again in a minute.”  No one should doubt his sincerity.

One of the “enhancements” was reportedly an effort to fabricate a justification for invading Iraq.  High Bush administration officials allegedly put heavy pressure on interrogators “to find evidence of cooperation between al-Qaeda and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime,” in an effort to fabricate a justification for invading Iraq, according to a former senior US intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist cited by McClatchy News.  No such evidence was found.

But beyond such immediate imperatives, the torture policy meshed seamlessly with a discretionary war premised on lies and optimized for “Shock and Awe”.  This neat ideological package asserted the unchallengeable power of a “Unitary Executive” above constitutional checks and balances, national law and international treaties.

Echoing Richard Nixon’s circular self-justification of three decades earlier, Justice Department lawyer Steven Bradbury told Congress: “The president is always right.”

Strategically, the Bush-Cheney project targeted conceptual smart bombs on the very idea of human rights.  The rest of the world got the message, and the damage to US national security has yet to be repaired.

“Enhanced interrogation”, however, has roots reaching back decades into CIA collaboration with dictatorships in Latin America.

Brazil’s National Truth Commission recently concluded that from 1954 through 1996 the US gave some 300 military officers “theoretical and practical classes in torture”.  Current President Dilma Rousseff was one of those tortured by the military, which ruled the largest country in Latin America from 1964 through 1985.

Over the past half-century, the CIA has been implicated in providing similar training to military dictatorships across South and Central America.  The United States also provided military aid and advice to many of them, participated in coups against elected governments, and was complicit in the murder and disappearance of hundreds of thousands, according to investigative journalist Robert Parry.

In Guatemala, for example, the CIA trained and supported a military and intelligence apparatus that exterminated close to 200,000 people over 30 years and committed genocide against Mayan communities, according to an independent Historical Clarification Commission.

The origins of US torture policies go back to early in the Vietnam War. According to the Senate report, “In 1963, the CIA produced the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, intended as a manual for Cold War Interrogations, which included the ‘principal coercive techniques of interrogation …’”.

In 1983, sections of KUBARK were incorporated into the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual, “used to provide interrogation training in Latin America in the early 1980s”.

One of the CIA officers who provided these trainings was later “orally admonished for inappropriate use of interrogation techniques.”  But his efforts ultimately proved to be a good career move.  In 2002, the CIA made him chief of interrogations.

Bush’s head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center allegedly destroyed videotapes of torture and discouraged field agents from questioning the practices, according to historian Greg Grandin.

In 1992, the Pentagon destroyed most documentation of these training programmes, Parry reported.  The orders came from the office of then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

In response to mounting evidence of decades of torture, what would an “indispensable nation” do?

The release of the Senate report was an important precedent. But until perpetrators all the way to the top are brought to justice, our government will rightly be seen as hypocritical when it criticises the human rights violations of others.

Ultimately, the gravity and scope of wrongdoing call for a reincarnation of the 1975 Church Committee, which investigated abuses by intelligence agencies in the wake of Watergate. It should serve as a truth commission exposing the US government’s use of torture, terror and other human rights violations, going back 40 years to where Church left off.

The official U.S. Senate history of the Church Committee cites historian Henry Steele Commager, referring to executive branch officials who seemed to consider themselves above the law: “It is this indifference to constitutional restraints that is perhaps the most threatening of all the evidence that emerges from the findings of the Church Committee.”

Meanwhile, allies have begun digging.  In 2009, Spanish jurist Baltasar Garzón Real opened two investigations of the Bush torture programme, one of which is still pending.  In December, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin filed complaints accusing several high Bush administration figures of “the war crime of torture” under German and international law.

The odds of seeing Cheney and company in a glass booth may be slim.  But it would be a small victory for humanity if they had to look over their shoulders whenever they travel abroad.

As some of us never seem to learn, genuine national security is about not black ops and drones, but hearts and minds.

As an epitaph for the Bush-Cheney vision, consider Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1818 poem “Ozymandias”:

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein. Credit: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 5 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations, which is the legal guardian of scores of human rights treaties banning torture, unlawful imprisonment, degrading treatment of prisoners of war and enforced disappearances, is troubled that an increasing number of countries are justifying violations of U.N. conventions on grounds of fighting terrorism in conflict zones.

Taking an implicit passing shot at big powers, the outspoken U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein of Jordan puts it more bluntly: “This logic is abundant around the world today: I torture because a war justifies it. I spy on my citizens because terrorism, repulsive as it is, requires it.“The space for dissent in many countries is collapsing under the weight of either poorly-thought out, or indeed exploitative, counter-terrorism strategies. " -- Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein

“I don’t want new immigrants, or I discriminate against minorities, because our communal identity or my way of life is being threatened as never before. I kill others, because others will kill me – and so it goes, on and on.”

Speaking Thursday at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., Zeid said the world needs “profound and inspiring leadership” driven by a concern for human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people.

“We need leaders who will observe fully those laws and treaties drafted to end all discrimination, the privation of millions, and atrocity and excess in war, with no excuses entertained. Only then, can we help ourselves out of the present serious, seemingly inexhaustible, supply of crises that threatens to engulf us,” he declared.

Last year, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was accused of subjecting terrorist suspects to “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including water-boarding, sleep deprivation and physical duress.

The Western nations, who have been involved in air attacks inside Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, have both justified and dismissed thousands of civilian killings as “collateral damage” – even as they continue to preach the doctrine of human rights and the sanctity of civilian life inside the General Assembly hall and the Security Council chamber.

And, meanwhile, there are several countries, including Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which continue to justify the death penalty in the execution of terrorists and the public flogging of bloggers and political dissenters – as part of the war against terrorism.

Last week, the Islamic State of the Levant (ISIL) was accused of brutally killing a Jordanian air force pilot because Jordan was part of a coalition launching air attacks on ISIL forces.

In return, Jordan reacted swiftly by executing two convicted prisoners – with links to al-Qaeda – as a retaliation for the killing of the pilot.

“It was an eye for an eye,” a Jordanian was quoted as saying.

Last December, 117 of the 193 U.N. member states adopted a General Assembly resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty. But the executions have continued.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has publicly opposed capital punishment, says “the death penalty has no place in the 21st century.”

Javier El-Hage, general counsel at the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), told IPS his group applauds the high commissioner’s call for ‘better leadership’ and a ‘global rethink on education’ as the two main weapons the world could benefit from in the struggle against the ‘causes of the worst conflicts and atrocities across the world,’ present and past.

Specifically, on the area of leadership, Prince Zeid called for leaders that are ‘driven by a concern for the fundamental freedoms of all people,’ who fully observe international human rights treaties.

On the educational front, he said children everywhere should be taught what ‘bigotry and chauvinism are,’ the ‘terrible wrongs they can produce,’ and that ‘blind obedience can be exploited by authority figures for wicked ends.’

“As the high commissioner suggests, the worst atrocities of human kind have in fact been caused by bigoted, chauvinist authoritarian leaders representing a fraction or even a majority of a country’s population, but who, through achieving a monopoly in education and information by cracking down on dissent and independent media, pushed radical economic, nationalist, racist or religiously extremist agendas in a way that trampled the rights of minorities and dissenters of all kinds,” Hage added.

For example, nationalist, racist or religiously extremist agendas were used against Jews in Germany, Ukrainians in the Soviet Union, Kurds in Turkey, and against blacks until recently in apartheid South Africa and even most of the Western World until the abolition of slavery.

These discriminatory agendas are still being pushed today against the Uyghur and Tibetan peoples in China and against Christians and different Muslim faiths under theocratic dictatorships across the Middle East, including the ones like Saudi Arabia or Jordan that are friendly to Western democracies, as well as the ones like Iran or Syria that aren’t.

Zeid said international human rights law represents a distillation of humanity’s experience of atrocities, and the remedies to prevent them. But today, leaders are too often deliberately choosing to violate those laws, he complained.

“In the years after the Holocaust, specific treaties were negotiated to cement into law obligations to protect human rights. Countries the world over accepted them – and now alas, all too frequently, ignore them in practice.”

He pointed out that forceful reprisals against atrocities – including attacks on children and “the savage burning of my compatriot the pilot Mu’ath al Kassassbeh” by ISIL – are having limited impact.

“Just bombing them or choking off their financing has clearly not worked… for these groups have only proliferated and grown in strength. What is needed is the addition of a different sort of battle-line, one waged principally by Muslim leaders and Muslim countries and based on ideas.”

Zeid noted a knock-on effect on key civil and political rights in other countries: “The space for dissent in many countries is collapsing under the weight of either poorly-thought out, or indeed exploitative, counter-terrorism strategies. Human rights defenders are therefore under enormous pressure in many parts of the world today…They risk imprisonment or worse in the peaceful defence of basic rights.”

HRF’s El-Hage told IPS throughout the 20th Century, leaders of the Soviet Union and its satellites around the world installed single-party state apparatuses — with strong propaganda machineries and no independent media, instead of open education — that advanced radical economic agendas to the detriment of the majority of their populations.

This not only triggered atrocities, such as mass starvation, which were not a result of direct physical repression of minorities (like the Ukrainian famine), but instead of an economic policy that rejected individual rights and limited the ability of small farmers and business owners to provide for themselves by controlling their own mobility, access to resources, property rights, freedom of information and their ability to associate with others in mutual cooperation.

While promoting the idea that they could help the masses, these authoritarians let the individual members of such masses suffer—even starve, he added.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Sub-Saharan migrant garbage collectors push their carts through the streets of Tripoli´s old town. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
TRIPOLI, Libya, Dec 18 2014 (IPS)

It’s easy to spot Saani Bubakar in Tripoli´s old town: always dressed in the distinctive orange jumpsuit of the waste collectors, he pushes his cart through the narrow streets on a routine that has been his for the last three years of his life.

“I come from a very poor village in Niger where there is not even running water,” explains the 23-year-old during a break. “Our neighbours told us that one of their sons was working in Tripoli, so I decided to take the trip too.”

Of the 250 Libyan dinars [about 125 euro or 154 dollars] Bubakar is paid each month, he manages to send more than half to his family back home. Accommodation, he adds, is free.

“We are 50 in an apartment nearby,” says the migrant worker, who assures that he will be back in Niger “soon”. It is not the poor working conditions but the increasing instability in the country that makes him want to go back home.

Thousands of migrants remain detained in Libyan detention centres, where they face torture that includes “severe whippings, beatings, and electric shocks” – Human Rights Watch
Three years after Libya´s former ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled and killed, Libya remains in a state of political turmoil that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war. There are two governments and two separate parliaments – one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, 1,000 km east of the capital. The latter, set up after elections in June when only 10 percent of the census population took part, has international recognition.

Accordingly, several militias are grouped into two paramilitary alliances: Fajr (“Dawn” in Arabic), led by the Misrata brigades controlling Tripoli, and Karama (“Dignity”) commanded by Khalifa Haftar, a Tobruk-based former army general.

The population and, very especially, the foreign workers are seemingly caught in the crossfire. “I´m always afraid of working at night because the fighting in the city usually starts as soon as the sun hides,” explains Odar Yahub, one of Bubakar´s roommates.

At 22, Yahub says that will not go back to Niger until he has earned enough to get married – but that will probably take longer than expected:

“We haven´t been paid for the last four months, and no one has given us any explanation,” the young worker complains, as he empties his bucket in the garbage truck.

While most of the sweepers are of sub-Saharan origin, there are also many who arrived from Bangladesh. Aaqib, who prefers not to disclose his full name, has already spent four years cleaning the streets of Souk al Juma neighbourhood, east of the capital. He says he supports his family in Dhaka – the Bangladeshi capital – by sending home almost all the 450 Libyan dinars (225 euros) from his salary, which he has not received for the last four months either.

“Of course I’ve dreamed of going to Europe but I know many have died at sea,” explains Aaqib, 28. “I´d only travel by plane, and with a visa stamped on my passport,” he adds. For the time being, his passport is in the hands of his contractor. All the waste collectors interviewed by IPS said their documents had been confiscated.

Defenceless

From his office in east Tripoli, Mohamed Bilkhaire, who became Minister of Employment in the Tripoli Executive two months ago, claims that he is not surprised by the apparent contradiction between the country´s 35 percent unemployment rate – according to his sources – and the fact that all the garbage collectors are foreigners.

“Arabs do not sweep due to sociocultural factors, neither here nor in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq … We need foreigners to do the job,” says Bilkhaire, Asked about the garbage collectors´ salaries, he told IPS that they are paid Libya´s minimum income of 450 Libyan dinars, and that any smaller amount is due to “illegal subcontracting which should be prosecuted.”

Bilkhaire also admitted that passports were confiscated “temporarily” because most of the foreign workers “want to cross to Europe.”

According to data gathered and released by FRONTEX, the European Union´s border agency, among the more than 42,000 immigrants who arrived in Italy during the first four months of 2014, 27,000 came from Libya.

In a report released by Human Rights Watch in June, the NGO claimed that thousands of migrants remain detained in Libyan detention centres, where they face torture that includes “severe whippings, beatings, and electric shocks.”

“Detainees have described to us how male guards strip-searched women and girls and brutally attacked men and boys,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher in the same report.

In the case of foreign workers under contract, Hanan Salah, HRW researcher for Libya, told IPS that “with the breakdown of the judicial system in many regions, abusive employers and those who do not comply with whatever contract was agreed upon, can hardly be held accountable in front of the law.”

Shokri Agmar, a lawyer from Tripoli, talks about “complete and utter helplessness”:

“The main problem for foreign workers in Libya is not merely the judicial neglect but rather that they lack a militia of their own to protect themselves,” Agmar told IPS from his office in Gargaresh, west of Tripoli.

That is precisely one of the districts where large numbers of migrants gather until somebody picks them up for a day of work, generally as construction workers.

Aghedo arrived from Nigeria three weeks ago. For this 25-year-old holding a shovel with his right hand, Tripoli is just a stopover between an endless odyssey across the Sahara Desert and a dangerous sea journey to Italy.

“There are days when they do not even pay us, but also others when we can make up to 100 dinars,” Aghedo tells IPS.

The young migrant hardly lowers his guard as he is forced to distinguish between two types of pick-up trucks: the ones which offer a job that is not always paid and those driven by the local militia – a false step and he will end up in one of the most feared detention centres.

“I know I could find a job as a sweeper but I cannot wait that long to raise the money for a passage in one of the boats bound for Europe,” explains the young migrant, without taking his eyes off the road.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, recently appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, notes that few countries will admit their state apparatus has been practising torture, even when the scars are all too visible on the victims who manage to escape. Credit: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 11 2014 (IPS)

The timing was inadvertently impeccable as two stinging reports on harsh interrogation techniques – by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States and former military regimes in Brazil – were released on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

Not surprisingly, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric was peppered – and metaphorically tortured – with a barrage of non-stop questions on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s response to the charges."They knew they were outside the lines, they concealed it from their own people, and yet no one will be held accountable." -- Prof. Vijay Prashad

“The secretary-general believes the prohibition of torture [by the U.N. convention] was absolute and non-negotiable,” Dujarric told reporters at Wednesday’s noon briefing.

But the questions seemed never ending – even as he refused to be pinned down.

“No, I do not believe the secretary-general had direct communication with anyone in the U.S. administration [after the report was released Tuesday].”

“No, no one is taking the report as gospel. And it is not for the secretary-general to say it is a definitive report,” he shot back. “There is an open debate – and this is the start of a process,” he added.

The release of the two reports – by a U.S. Senate committee on the CIA’s interrogation tactics, and also the systematic human rights violations in Brazil as revealed in a report by the country’s National Truth Commission – also coincided with Human Rights Day, which the United Nations commemorates annually on Dec. 10.

“Strange coincidence indeed,” Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, told IPS.

He said the report by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee shows they were well aware the revelations “stink”.

“There is a very telling section [in the report] where they say that [then U.S. Secretary of State] Colin Powell must not be informed, because if he is, he would blow his stack,” said Prashad, who has written extensively on international politics and is the author of 15 books.

“They knew they were outside the lines, they concealed it from their own people, and yet no one will be held accountable,” he added.

The United States ratified the 1987 U.N. Convention Against Torture back in October 1994 and Brazil in September 1989.

Responding to the two reports, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, urged the U.N.’s 193 member states to act unequivocally in their effort to stamp out torture.

He said the U.S. report shows torture is still taking place in quite a few of the 156 countries that have ratified the Convention and have domestic legislation making torture illegal.

“To have it so clearly confirmed that it was recently practised as a matter of policy by a country such as the United States is a very stark reminder that we need to do far, far more to stamp it out everywhere,” he continued.

This has been true at the best of times, he added.

It is particularly true during this period of rising international terrorism, when it has shown a tendency to slither back into practice, disguised by euphemisms, even in countries where it is clearly outlawed, said Zeid, a former permanent representative of Jordan to the United Nations.

However, he “warmly welcomed” the publication of the Senate Committee’s summary report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Programme, as well as the report of Brazil’s National Truth Commission which documents the extensive use of torture, among other gross and systematic human rights violations, over a 42-year period, including the 1964-85 military dictatorship.

The Brazilian Commission, which was established in May 2012, investigated the serious human rights violations that occurred between 1946 and 1988 – the period between the last two democratic constitutions in Brazil.

These violations include unlawful imprisonment and torture; sexual violence; executions and subsequent concealing of corpses; and enforced disappearances.

“When practiced massively and systematically against a population, these violations become a crime against humanity,” the report said.

The report on the CIA said terrorist suspects, after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, were subjected to sleep deprivation (as long as a week), water-boarding, rectal-hydration, with some prisoners “literally hooked like a dog that had been kenneled.”

The CIA defended its techniques by arguing that its brutal treatment of suspects was aimed at protecting the country from further terrorist attacks.

Zeid said: “Although there are very significant differences between these two exceptionally important reports, not least in their scope and the periods they cover, I commend the governments of Brazil and the United States for enabling their release.”

Few countries, he pointed out, will admit their state apparatus has been practising torture, and many continue shamelessly to deny it – even when it is well documented by international human rights treaty bodies, and the scars are all too visible on the victims who manage to escape.

“While it will take time to fully analyse the contents of these two landmark reports – and I do not wish to pre-empt that analysis – we can still draw some stark conclusions about the failures to eradicate this serious international crime, for which there should be no statute of limitations and no impunity,” Zeid declared.

He also said one question neither report can answer on its own is how both countries will fulfil their obligation to ensure accountability for the crimes that have been committed.

In all countries, he pointed out, if someone commits murder, they are prosecuted and jailed. If they commit rape or armed robbery, they are prosecuted and jailed.

“If they order, enable or commit torture recognized as a serious international crime they cannot simply be granted impunity because of political expediency.”

When that happens, he said, “we undermine this exceptional Convention, and as a number of U.S. political leaders clearly acknowledged yesterday, we undermine our own claims to be civilized societies rooted in the rule of law.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Seven of 39 detainees who were subject to the most aggressive interrogation techniques provided no intelligence at all, while information obtained from the others preceded the harsh treatment, according to the report. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 10 2014 (IPS)

Tuesday’s release by the Senate Intelligence Committee of its long-awaited report on the torture by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of detainees in the so-called “war on terror” does not go far enough, according to major U.S. human rights groups.

While welcoming the report’s release, the subject of months of intensive negotiations and sometimes furious negotiations between the Senate Committee’s majority and both the CIA and the administration of President Barack Obama, the groups said additional steps were needed to ensure that U.S. officials never again engage in the kind of torture detailed in the report."Their actions destroyed trust in clinicians, undermined the integrity of their professions, and damaged the United States’ human rights record, which can only be corrected through accountability." -- Donna McKay of PHR

“This should be the beginning of a process, not the end,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “The report should shock President Obama and Congress into action, to make sure that torture and cruelty are never used again.”

He called, among other steps, for the appointment of a special prosecutor to hold the “architects and perpetrators” of what the George W. Bush administration called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) accountable and for Congress to assert its control over the CIA, “which in this report sounds more like a rogue paramilitary group than the intelligence gathering agency that it’s supposed to be.”

He was joined by London-based Amnesty International which noted that the declassified information provided in the report constituted “a reminder to the world of the utter failure of the USA to end the impunity enjoyed by those who authorised and used torture and other ill-treatment.

“This is a wake-up call to the USA; they must disclose the full truth about the human rights violations, hold perpetrators accountable and ensure justice for the victims,” said Amnesty’s Latin America director, Erika Guevara.

The Senate Committee’s report, actually a 524-page, partially-redacted summary of a still-classified 6,300-page report on the treatment of at least 119 terrorist suspects detained in secret locations overseas, accused the CIA not only of engaging in torture that was “brutal and far worse” than has previously been reported, but also of regularly misleading the White House and Congress both about what it was doing and the purported value of the intelligence it derived from those practices.

Water-boarding, for example, was used against detainees more often and in more of the CIA’s “black sites” than previously known; sleep deprivation was used for up to a week at a time against some suspects; others received “rectal feeding” or “hydration’; and still others were forced to stand on broken feet or legs.

In at least one case, a detainee was frozen to death; in the case of Abu Zubayda, an alleged “high-value” Al Qaeda detainee who was subject to dozens of water-boardings, the treatment was so brutal, several CIA officers asked to be transferred if it did not stop.

While the CIA officers and former Bush administration officials, notably former Vice President Dick Cheney, have long insisted that key information – including intelligence that eventually led to the killing of Osama bin Laden — was obtained from EITs, the report concluded that these techniques were ineffective.

Seven of 39 detainees who were subject to the most aggressive EITs provided no intelligence at all, while information obtained from the others preceded the harsh treatment, according to the report, which relied on the CIA’s own cables and reports.

In some cases, detainees subjected to EITs gave misinformation about “terrorist threats” which did not actually exist, the report found. Of the 119 known detainees subject to EITs, at least 26 should never have been held, it said.

Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, who fought hard for months to release the report over the CIA’s fierce objections, wrote in its Forward that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, “she could understand the CIA’s impulse to consider the use of every possible tool to gather intelligence and remove terrorists from the battlefield, and CIA was encouraged by political leaders and the public to do whatever it could to prevent another attack.”

“Nevertheless, such pressure, fear and expectation of further terrorist plots do not justify, temper or excuse improper actions taken by individuals or organizations in the name of national security,” according to Feinstein.

For his part, CIA director John Brennan, a career CIA officer appointed by Obama whose role in the Bush administration’s detention programme remains cloudy, “acknowledge(d) that the detention and interrogation program had shortcomings and that the Agency made mistakes.”

“The most serious problems occurred early on and stemmed from the fact that the Agency was unprepared and lacked the core competencies required to carry out an unprecedented, worldwide program of detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qa’ida and affiliated terrorists.”

But he also defended the EITs, insisting that “interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.” A fact sheet released by the CIA claimed, as an example, that one detainee, after undergoing EITs, identified bin Laden’s courier, which subsequently led the CIA to the Al Qaeda chief’s location.

With several notable exceptions, Republicans also defended the CIA and the Bush administration’s orders to permit EITs. Indeed, the Intelligence Committee’s Republican members released a minority report that noted that the majority of staff had not interviewed any CIA officers directly involved in the programme.

“There is no reason whatsoever for this report to ever be published,” said the Committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Saxby Chambliss. “This is purely a partisan tactic” which he said was designed to attack the Bush administration. Republicans also warned that the report’s release would endanger U.S. service personnel and citizens abroad by fuelling anti-American sentiment, especially in the Muslim world.

But Sen. John McCain, who was himself tortured as a prisoner of war in the Vietnam war, defended the report, calling it “a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose …but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.”

McCain has championed efforts to pass legislation outlawing torture, particularly because Obama’s 2009 executive orders prohibiting such practices could be reversed by a future president.

Passage of such a law – whose prospects appear virtually nil in light of Republican control of both houses of Congress for the next two years – is one of the demands, along with release of the full report, of most human-rights groups here.

“The Obama administration and Congress should work together to build a durable consensus against torture by pursuing legislation that demonstrates bipartisan unity and fidelity to our ideals,” said Elisa Massimino, director of Human Rights First.

Many groups, however, want Obama to go further by prosecuting those responsible for the EIT programme, a step that his administration made clear from the outset it was loathe to do.

“We renew our demand for accountability for those individuals responsible for the CIA torture programme,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented a number of detainees at Guantanamo, including Abu Zubaydah, in U.S. courts. “They should be prosecuted in U.S. courts; and, if our government continues to refuse to hold them accountable, they must be pursued internationally under principles of universal jurisdiction.”

“The report shows the repeated claims that harsh measures were needed to protect Americans are utter fiction,” according to Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. “Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of the officials responsible, torture will remain a ‘policy option’ for future presidents.”

Noting that health professionals, including doctors and psychologists also played a role in the EITs, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) also called for legal accountability. “For more than a decade, the U.S. government has been lying about its use of torture,” said Donna McKay, PHR’s executive director.

“The report confirms that health professionals used their skills to break the minds and bodies of detainees. Their actions destroyed trust in clinicians, undermined the integrity of their professions, and damaged the United States’ human rights record, which can only be corrected through accountability,” she said.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com. He can be contacted at ipsnoram@ips.org

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Nadezdha Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina (fourth and fifth from the right) with activists from the Andrei Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice in Moscow marking the United Nations International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking with calls for reform of Russia's hard-line drug policies. Credit: Andrei Rylkov Foundation

By Pavol Stracansky
MOSCOW, Jun 26 2014 (IPS)

A protest in Moscow Thursday marking the U.N. International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking has highlighted the ‘torture’ drug users are put through in the Russian criminal justice system.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, members of the Pussy Riot Group who were controversially jailed for performing in a Moscow cathedral in 2012, spoke in the Russian capital to highlight the plight of drug users in Russia.

Joining protestors in more than 80 cities around the world demanding drug policy reforms, they attacked what they said was their country’s “cruel and inhuman” treatment of drug users.

Describing a litany of rights abuses against drug users, including torture and beatings by police and prison warders, they said Russian authorities viewed imprisonment as a “cure for drug dependency”.“Similar to xenophobia and homophobia, narcophobia has become a protective cloak for the authorities .... Creating an image of the enemy, the subhuman, the zombie, and reinforcing that image in the public consciousness justifies the inhuman treatment of drug dependent people in our country” – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, members of the Pussy Riot punk rock group

“People who use drugs are outcasts – they are despised, hated, accused of all problems, and criminalised. Similar to xenophobia and homophobia, narcophobia has become a protective cloak for the authorities…. Creating an image of the enemy, the subhuman, the zombie, and reinforcing that image in the public consciousness justifies the inhuman treatment of drug dependent people in our country,” they said.

“Russia’s drug policy is built on torture. Humiliation and violation of human dignity – thisis what drug dependent people face everywhere, from hospitals to prisons and other state facilities,” they added.

Russia takes a hard-line approach to drug use, implementing repressive drugs legislation, including lengthy jail terms for possession of even tiny amounts of hard drugs.

Drug users say they are also targeted by police: official figures show that one in six of the Russian prison population is a drug user and, according to other surveys, just under 30 percent of drug users have been arrested at some point since they started using drugs.

They say they also regularly have confessions extracted from them or are coerced into helping officers as they go into withdrawal in detention – a charge police deny.

There is a complete lack of relevant medical services for drug users in temporary holding facilities and pre-trial detention centres and even painkillers are rarely given to addicts going into withdrawal.

Drug users in prison face particular hardship. Conditions for all prisoners are poor with hygiene often bad, cells massively overcrowded and brutality and disease rife. But drug users are especially vulnerable.

Anya Sarang, head of the Moscow-based Andrei Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice, which works to raise awareness of drug problems, told IPS: “Russian prison is torture in itself with prisoners not given basic medical infection control, nutrition etc., and general human rights violations. But drug users are more vulnerable than other prisoners.

“For instance many are HIV positive, but not only are there problems getting their medicine or starting them on treatment because they are not given necessary immune system checks in some cases, but their diet is poor and there is always the risk of infections, such as tuberculosis.”

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major problem in Russian prisons, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other bodies. Studies have shown that a person with HIV is 25 times more likely to contract TB in a Russian prison than outside one.

But the risk of potentially deadly infections is only one problem facing drug users in prisons. As in many jails across the world, drugs are smuggled in and traded between inmates, giving users, some of whom may never have tried hard drugs, access to substances like heroin and experience of dangerous drug-taking methods.

Campaigners say that this is further evidence of how the criminalisation of drug use only perpetuates and worsens drug problems.

Michel Kazatchkine, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, told IPS: “We know from studies that contact with the criminal justice system is associated with increased injection drug use and other similar behaviour, among other problems. Putting drug users in prisons …. is making things worse not just in prisons but also for communities when they are released from prison.”

Activists point to how opioid substituition therapy (OST) for people in custody or prison has been successfully implemented in some Western states.

But the practice is completely banned in Russia, despite being widely implemented in many countries around the world, recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and having been proved to be successful in helping halt the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Russia has one of the world’s fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemics – there were 78,000 new HIV cases registered last year, up from 69,000 in 2012 and 62,000 in 2011 – which the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) and other bodies say has been historically driven by injection drug use.

Drug use in the country is growing equally rapidly. According to figures from the country’s Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) there were an estimated 8.5 million drug addicts in 2013 – up from 2.5 million since 2010. The service says up to 100,000 people die each year in Russia from drug abuse. It is also the world’s largest heroin consumer.

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina said only a reform of drug policy including decriminalisation would improve the situation in prisons.

But Russian authorities show no sign of lifting the OST ban nor improving the very limited harm reduction services which exist in the country and FSKN officials have made a number of public statements in recent months reaffirming their commitment to hard-line drugs policies.

Kazatchine told IPS: “I don’t see any sign of Russia’s approach to drugs softening. What I am seeing is a toughening of the way Russian society looks at marginalised groups, such as drug users, men who have sex with men, LGBT people, etc. The climate has toughened and Russia is de facto criminalising drug use and recession.”

This, critics say, has left Russian drug users in a terrible position in society. Sergey Votyagov Executive Director of the Eurasian HRM Reduction Network (EHRN), told IPS that they were “one of the most stigmatised and under-served populations” in the country.

Meanwhile, the devastation wrought by Russia’s drugs policies has been seen clearly in its newest territory. Just days before Thursday’s protest in Moscow, campaigners in Ukraine had raised the alarm over the fate of drug users in Crimea following its recent annexation.

OST is available in Ukraine and had been provided to 800 people in Crimea. But as part of Russia, Moscow ordered OST programmes there shut down at the start of May.

A mission by the Council of Europe to Crimea which ended last month reported that at least 20 people had died following the cessation of the programmes and at least 50 more had migrated to the Ukrainian mainland, while a few had gone to Russia for detoxification and rehabilitation treatment.

Those who remained spoke of having to deal with intimidation by new authorities and, in some cases, losing their jobs because of either worsening health or their status as former OST patients being made public.

Some who have fled the peninsula described the fear and desperation among drug users still there.

Speaking at an event organised by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine in Kiev earlier this month, one woman, Oksana, who left the day after her OST treatment had stopped, said:  “I might have died if I had stayed in Crimea.

“I am disabled, I have had a stroke and I know very well how it feels to be left without therapy and help. Those who could not leave Crimea are in terrible conditions. Some of them are already dead, others have chosen suicide.”

There is little hope that things in Crimea will change any time in the foreseeable future. Earlier this month, Sergei Donich, deputy prime minister in the Crimean government, told local media that OST was ineffective and was being pushed by pharmaceutical firms who stood to gain from it.

Kazatchine described the situation on the peninsula as a “tragedy”, adding that it was unlikely there would not be more deaths among drug users.

He told IPS: “Evidence shows that OST reduces mortality, it prevents overdoses among drug users. I think it is inevitable that [with no more OST] more drug users will die.”

Salvadorans Carlos Santos (left) and Fabricio Santín alongside a papier-mâché sculpture of a torture victim with a plastic bag – “la capucha” - on his head. Torture and killings by state death squads were widespread during the country's 1980-1992 civil war. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Micah Luxen
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2014 (IPS)

Alfreda Disbarro is awaiting trial in her native Philippines, charged with the sale and possession of illegal drugs. According to her sworn affidavit, while in police custody, she was in so much pain that she couldn’t eat, had difficulty breathing and kept vomiting.

According to her same affidavit and testimony, Disbarro was arrested violently in October 2013 and taken to police headquarters where she was forced to admit her guilt via methods of torture – enduring punches to the stomach and face, blows by a club and wooden stick, fingers to the eyes, and being forced to eat a mop.“It’s virtually everywhere, in one way or another.” -- Michael Bochenek

Disbarro’s sister alerted the Commission on Human Rights. The resulting examination by a doctor reported marks of injury over her body. Disbarro remains in custody.

Amnesty International is marking the 30^th anniversary of the U.N.’s Convention Against Torture with the grim news that stories like Disbarro’s and the practice of torture is still common in many countries.

Torture, according to Amnesty, is physical or mental pain or suffering that is inflicted intentionally for a particular purpose, such as trying to obtain information or to punish a person for who he or she is or what he or she is alleged to have done.

The London-based human rights watchdog started a new campaign as a result, called Torture in 2014: 30 Years of Broken Promises.

Of the 141 countries Amnesty works with, every one reported torture or other ill-treatment in the past five years. In addition, a survey of 21,000 people from 21 countries reveals fear of torture is present in all of these, and found that the majority of people believe governments should make clear laws against torture.

“It’s virtually everywhere, in one way or another,” Michael Bochenek, Amnesty International’s senior director for law and policy, told IPS.

“There may be differences in degree – there may differences in whether a particular state has a systematic or pervasive use of torture, versus something in another country that’s more episodic. But it’s not just repressive states that use torture.”

Bochenek says the primary responsibility to end torture falls on governments, but that citizens can demand increased accountability on the part of their own government.

Torture prevention and response mechanisms include allowing lawyers into detention centres to meet with their clients and requiring judges and other court officials to open investigations when they see something that suggests torture.

In one such response, the government of Angola suspended 16 prison guards and firemen for a brutal attack on prison inmates, which was “a rare reaction to public anger from one of Africa’s most authoritarian governments,” Reuters reported in September 2013.

In a video of the incident, guards allegedly beat prisoners with sticks and laughed as the inmates lay on the floor bleeding and crying.

“We express our indignation at the acts performed by these officers,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

And while human rights violations are highly publicised under repressive governments in countries such as North Korea and Syria, the actions of power players such as the United States may influence worldwide norms, says Bochenek.

“That’s why the U.S. reliance on torture was so damaging during the years immediately after the attacks of Sep. 11,” he told IPS.

“Not only was this an extraordinary departure from previous practice in terms of defending or upholding in principle the prohibition on torture, but it really undermined the credibility that the United States had when it was trying to promote human rights in general, whether on torture or anything else.”

Amnesty reports that since 1984, 155 states have ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture, at least 79 of which are still torturing. A further 40 U.N. states haven’t adopted the convention, although the global legal ban on torture binds them too.

“Everyone has the right to be free from torture,” said Bochenek.

Pablo Neruda taping his poems in the U.S. Library of Congress in 1966. Credit: Public domain

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Nov 11 2013 (IPS)

Ongoing efforts to determine the causes of the deaths of high-profile Chileans – singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, former presidents Eduardo Frei Montalva and Salvador Allende, and Nobel Literate Prize-winner Pablo Neruda – indirectly bring visibility to thousands of other victims of Chile’s 1973-1990 dictatorship.

“A search for the historical truth is being driven by penal proceedings,” Luis Emilio Rojas, director of the master’s programme in penal law at the Alberto Hurtado University, told IPS.

“While the goal is to determine criminal responsibility, the reopening of legal proceedings indirectly helps to establish the occurrence of events that are milestones in the history of Chile,” he added.

Human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras was the first to file, in conjunction with the Association of Relatives of Politically Executed Persons (AFEP), a lawsuit to establish the cause of the death of socialist president Salvador Allende during the military’s bombing of the La Moneda presidential palace in the Sep. 11, 1973 coup.

Today Contreras is demanding clarification of the death of poet Pablo Neruda, which occurred on Sep. 23, 1973 – just 12 days after his close friend Allende was overthrown.

Neruda’s remains were exhumed in April from the final resting place he shared with his last wife, singer and writer Matilde Urrutia (1912-1985), at their home in Isla Negra, 110 km west of Santiago.

On Friday Nov. 8, seven months after the exhumation, the Forensic Medical Service reported that international forensic experts ruled out the presence of toxic chemical substances that could have caused Neruda’s death.

Contreras noted, however, that the forensic exams by Chilean and foreign experts were just the first part of the investigation. He said that on Monday Nov. 11 “we will request that other laboratories take part in the investigation, in search of toxicological agents that are biological, not chemical, in nature, such as sarin gas, mustard gas, or bacteria.”

Judge Mario Carroza, who investigated whether third parties were involved in the death of the 1971 Nobel laureate, said it could not yet be established judicially whether Neruda was killed or died of cancer 40 years ago.

If the results of the forensic experts do not satisfy all of the concerned parties, “we will have to look for other alternatives,” he added.

Neruda, who was 69 years old and was being treated for prostate cancer when he died, had been a member of the Communist Party of Chile for 28 years.

At the time of his death, he was getting ready to go into exile in Mexico, where he would have been a prominent voice of opposition against the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

In the days before his death, Neruda was demoralised when his three houses were raided by agents of the dictatorship.

His most beloved home, in Isla Negra, was looted by the troops, who overturned his seashell and butterfly collections and destroyed paintings, his incomplete writings, and the books, masks, wooden carvings, bottles, pipes and ocean-related memorabilia that filled the shelves of nearly every room.

The military had all of his staff fired, and only his wife and his driver and personal secretary, Manuel Araya, were allowed to stay.

Although Neruda was being treated for prostate cancer, Araya alleges that he was killed by an injection to his stomach given by someone posing as a doctor in the private Santa María clinic on the supposed orders of the dictatorship.

Nine years later, former president Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970) was killed in the same clinic, with a biological toxin, according to the legal investigation of his death.

Frei Montalva’s case shocked Chilean society, because it proved that the Pinochet regime had used toxins against its opponents. It also helped “raise awareness among some incredulous people,” AFEP president Alicia Lira told IPS.

But the perpetrators of abuses during the dictatorship still enjoy impunity, even though the regime’s human rights violations are now talked about openly, Lira said.

“There is impunity when many cases were closed by the military prosecutors office, which is both judge and plaintiff, and when more than 178 agents of the state who murdered and ‘disappeared’ people have not spent a single day in prison because of the application of ‘media prescripción’ [by which a sentence may be reduced when more than half the statute of limitation has elapsed] or because they were granted a suspended sentence,” she said.

Singer-songwriter and activist Víctor Jara was killed Sep. 15, 1973 while he was being held in Chile’s national stadium along with thousands of other opponents of the coup. His body showed signs of torture and was riddled with bullet wounds.

But it was not until 2008 that an investigation was launched into his death. The man accused of ordering his torture and firing the fatal shot, army Lieutenant Pedro Barrientos, is still at large, living a quiet life in the United States.

Contreras said it is a “moral duty” to investigate these deaths in the face of contradictory elements.

“Just as the law requires an inquiry into the death of a homeless man who dies of cold, which seems fair to me, why not investigate the death of a president? To me that is absolutely despicable,” he said, referring to Allende’s death.

For many years, doubts surrounded the death of Allende, who entrenched himself in the presidential palace along with a number of armed civilian supporters to resist the coup and the bombing of La Moneda. As a result of the lawsuit brought by Contreras, it was finally confirmed that he committed suicide.

In Neruda’s case there are also contradictions, which means “you are ethically and morally obligated to investigate, and if you don’t, you are a scoundrel,” Contreras said.

During the regime, 3,065 people were killed and/or forcibly disappeared, and 37,000 were held as political prisoners.

Some 1,300 human rights cases are making their way through the courts in Chile, involving crimes like extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, torture, or illicit association committed between 1973 and 1990.

These cases and others that have been resolved cover 75 percent of the victims of killings or forced disappearance recognised by the state, but only a small portion of the cases of political prisoners who survived torture.

The progress made by Argentina in trials for crimes against humanity committed by the 1976-1983 dictatorship has been tarnished by a growing number of human rights violators escaping from prison.

Human rights organisations are concerned about the rise in the number of escapes from what they consider lax prison conditions.

The number grew from 35 to 40 escapes a year to 54 over the past year, Lorena Balardini, a researcher with the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a leading human rights group, told IPS.

“The previous number was persistent and steady,” she said. “Some were captured while others escaped…But what caught our attention is that since 2012, the number of fugitives has jumped to 54.”

Argentine victims of forced disappearance. Credit: ha+/CC BY 2.0

According to figures from the public prosecutor’s office, updated this month, 1,049 people are currently facing prosecution in trials for human rights abuses committed during the dictatorship, when up to 30,000 people were killed or disappeared in the country’s “dirty war”.

In addition, 471 have been tried for kidnapping, torture, forced disappearance, extrajudicial executions and other crimes against humanity. Of these, 426 were convicted and 45 acquitted.

Meanwhile, 853 are in custody, either convicted or awaiting trial. More than 60 percent of them are in common prisons, 36 percent are under house arrest, and the rest are in security forces installations or hospitals.

Balardini, head of research at CELS, said there is no clear explanation for the increase in escapes, although she suggested it could be related to “the flexible detention conditions” that some of the human rights violators enjoy, whether due to a decision by the courts or the prison authorities.

The latest case, which gave rise to suspicions of privileged treatment, was the escape of retired army major Jorge Olivera and retired army lieutenant Gustavo de Marchi on Jul. 25.

They were found guilty of human rights abuses Jul. 4 in the western province of San Juan. Olivera was sentenced to life in prison and de Marchi was given a 25-year sentenced.

Olivera and de Marchi had been transferred from the Marcos Paz prison in San Juan to the Cosme Argerich Central Military Hospital in the city of Buenos Aires, 1,300 km away, for appointments in dermatology, kinesthesiology and psychiatry.

The request for the transfer and medical appointments was filed by Olivera’s wife, Marta Ravasi, a psychologist in the military hospital. It was initially rejected by the court where the two men were tried. But another judge, Miguel Ángel Gálvez from San Juan, approved the request.

Shortly after they arrived at the hospital, the two men went missing. Interpol immediately issued an international notice for their arrest, and the justice ministry offered a reward of two million pesos (364,000 dollars) for information leading to their capture.

The government of centre-left President Cristina Fernández sacked military and prison personnel implicated in the escape, and charges were brought against Judge Gálvez.

To prevent future escapes, all transfers of people detained in connection with human rights cases were suspended. And on Jul. 29 the justice, defence and health ministries signed an agreement to review the medical condition of all of the detainees.

According to the agreement, the detainees will no longer be taken to military hospitals, but to the health centre that serves each prison.

In addition, government officials explained, every transfer of prisoners will be based on symptoms or health problems that have been duly certified, rather than on a simple request from the prisoner, as was the case up to now.

The justice ministry’s national programme for the coordinated search for people wanted for crimes against humanity currently has a list of 52 fugitives. Rewards are offered for their capture.

“The most difficult case is that of (Jorge) Vildoza,” said Balardini, referring to the former captain who was one of the heads of the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) in 1976 and 1977, when it was the dictatorship’s biggest clandestine centre for torture, killings and forced disappearance.

Vildoza and his wife Ana María Grimaldos moved to Switzerland in 1986, taking with them their illegally adopted son, who was born at ESMA in 1977. Two years later, the Argentine courts issued international warrants for their arrest for kidnapping the boy. But Vildoza was never captured.

In 1998, the boy, by then a young man, presented himself in court in Argentina and underwent DNA testing to verify his identity. He turned out to be Javier Penino Viñas, the son of Hugo Penino and Cecilia Viñas, victims of forced disappearance. Viñas was seven months pregnant when she was seized in 1977. She was last seen at ESMA.

Nevertheless, Javier continued to live with the couple who stole and raised him, until he married.

Grimaldos was arrested a year ago in Argentina, after entering the country on a false passport. She is currently under prosecution for theft of children. She claims her husband died, but the search for him continues.

Theft of the children of political prisoners was one of the crimes of the dictatorship. The babies, or in some cases toddlers, were illegally adopted, often by military families.

Balardini said the escapes from prison have been a problem since the start of the human rights trials in the mid-1980s, which were cut short by amnesty laws passed in 1986 and 1987 that were struck down in 2005, allowing the cases to be reopened.

CELS says the dictatorship’s human rights abusers have their own support networks and sources of financing that make it possible for them to obtain forged documents, hire lawyers, move from one country to another, and survive far beyond the reach of Argentina’s justice system.

The activist said the rewards offered by the government help put the issue on the table and increase its visibility.

But she said the special conditions that the prisoners enjoy, better than those of common criminals, make it easier for them to escape.

She said CELS has been “surprised” by cases of human rights violators who have already been living at large before they are captured, and who, despite requests by prosecutors and the victims’ lawyers, are granted bail by judges and later flee.

Olivera, who was let off the hook by the amnesty laws, was arrested in Italy in 2000 on a warrant from the French justice system. But he went free, thanks to false documents.

Finally, a warrant for him was issued in Argentina in 2007, and a year later he was arrested. But he escaped just three weeks after he was sentenced on Jul. 4.

Margarita Camus, a victim who testified in the trial against Olivera and de Marchi, said she was worried about the escapes. “We know what kind of people they are, how they move around in hiding, and it makes us nervous and uneasy.”

Balardini pointed out that escapes have also occurred in other parts of the country. But she said they only receive attention when they involve better-known figures like Oliveri and de Marchi.

In other cases, suspects have skipped bail. For example, retired army colonel Carlos Arroyo disappeared in May before the start of a trial against him and eight other human rights violators in Bahía Blanca, near the city of Buenos Aires.

At the time, the prosecutor’s unit in Bahía Blanca stated that “the need for all of those charged with crimes against humanity to be held in prison units has been repeated on innumerable occasions, given the concrete and real risk that they will flee since, as it has been seen, those who formed part of the terrorist state still today count on the connivance of different sectors of power who protect this kind of criminal.”

And in the northeastern province of Formosa, a trial against nine suspects charged with kidnapping 74 people is set to begin on Jul. 31. But the main defendant, Ángel Spada, a former army intelligence chief in an infantry battalion, skipped bail in June.

Poland has been identified as having hosted a secret CIA prison. Cuba is host to the notorious Guantanamo Bay. Pictured here are protestors during the 10-year anniversary of Guantanamo Bay detention center, in January 2012. Credit: Amnesty International/Christoph Koettl/CC By 2.0

By Robert Stefanicki
WARSAW, Jul 21 2013 (IPS)

The only sign of life at Szymany’s “international airport” are mosquitoes eager to suck blood out of a rare visitor. The gate is locked with a rusted chain and a padlock.

Evidence suggest that some of the last passengers at this site were CIA officers and their prisoners. That was in 2003. Soon after, the airport about 180 km north of Warsaw inside the picturesque Mazury forests went out of service.

Bounded by the Freedom of Information Act, Polish Airspace authorities have revealed that at least 11 CIA aircrafts landed at Szymany, and some of their passengers stayed on in Poland. The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) was not informed about those flights.

From Szymany the prisoners were driven to a nearby intelligence academy in Stare Kiejkuty, where the CIA had a separated facility. In 2006, a few months after Poland was first identified as having hosted a secret CIA prison, Polish ombudsman Janusz Kochanowski visited the CIA villa – only to see that its chambers have been freshly renovated.

According to a U.S. intelligence source quoted by The New York Times, the prison in Poland was the most important of the CIA’s black sites, where terror suspects were subjected to interrogation techniques that would not be legal in the United States. The source claimed that Poland was picked mostly because “Polish intelligence officials were eager to cooperate.”

Two other European countries with known but unconfirmed black sites are Romania and Lithuania; the rest were in Asia and North Africa.

Human rights groups believe about eight terror suspects were held in Poland, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Two other men currently detained at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility have been granted “injured person” status in the ongoing investigation.

The first is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national alleged to have organised the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. He has claimed that he was often stripped naked, hooded, or shackled during seven months at Stare Kiejkuty, and subjected to mock execution with a gun and threats of sexual assault against his family members.

The second, a stateless Palestinian known as Abu Zubaydah, said he was subjected to extreme physical pain, psychological pressure and waterboarding – mock drowning.

Any Polish leaders who would have agreed to the U.S. programme would have been violating the constitution by giving a foreign power control over part of Polish territory, and allowing crimes to take place there.

Former prime minister Leszek Miller, now chairman of the opposition Democratic Left Alliance has been the prime target of criticism. There are demands he should face a special tribunal charged with trying state figures.

In March 2008, the Polish authorities opened a criminal investigation. “This indicates that Poland is a country with a rule of law,” Senator Jozef Pinior told IPS. “But the protraction is a reason for concern. The investigation has been moved to the third consecutive prosecutor’s office, in what looks like playing for time.”

Pinior, one of the leaders of the Solidarity opposition movement during the 1980s, and more recently a member of the European Parliament, has for long been lobbying for a full investigation into what the CIA was doing in Poland. Twice he was called in as witness in the investigation. He claims to have seen a document on a CIA prison with PM Miller’s signature."Poland is no banana republic, our security services do not do such things behind the back of the government.” -- Polish Senator Jozef Pinior

“The Polish government, especially Leszek Miller, must have had knowledge that such sites existed on Polish territory without any legal basis,” Pinior said. “They must have known about the torture too. Poland is no banana republic, our security services do not do such things behind the back of the government.”

It is still not clear how much knowledge the Polish leaders had about the black site in Stare Kiejkuty. Some have vehemently denied the prison’s existence, but some admit it between the lines, though denying responsibility.

“Of course, everything took place with my knowledge,” said former president Aleksander Kwasniewski in an interview with leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

“The President and the Prime Minister agreed to secret service co-operation with the Americans, because that is what was required by national interest…the decision to co-operate with the CIA carried a risk that Americans would use unacceptable methods. But if a CIA agent brutally treated a prisoner in a Marriott hotel in Warsaw, would you charge the directors of that hotel for the actions of that agent?”

For now Poland is the only country with investigation into the secret jails still open (Lithuania closed its case inconclusively). The officials blame delays on lack of cooperation on the U.S. government.

According to a public opinion poll by SW Research released in June, 82 percent Polish respondents said that the issue of CIA secret prisons should be clarified, and 78 percent that those responsible for human rights abuses and breach of constitution should be held liable.

“In the U.S. there is a stamp of approval that even though torture did happen, they are unwilling to go after the criminals. So Poland has tremendous responsibility to pursue the investigation and hold people accountable. It could be an inspiring example for the rest of the world,” Ramzi Kassem, attorney for some Guantanamo prisoners told IPS.

Otherwise, Kassem said, Poland will prove to be “a puppet regime willing to do the dirty work for the U.S. in much the same way that Jordan, Egypt and other dictatorships were doing at the time, imprisoning people and torturing them because the U.S. asked them to.”

Although no major political party in Poland wants the truth about Polish cooperation with the CIA to come out, Senator Pinior is “cautiously optimistic”.

“Any attempt to cover up would result in colossal shame,” he said. “I believe Polish democracy and institutions are too strong to be manipulated.”

Nazeeha Saeed, Credit: Christophe Meireis

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Jul 10 2013 (IPS)

In May 2011, almost a year and half after a Tunisian street vendor’s self-immolation sparked waves of revolution still rocking the Middle East, Bahraini journalist Nazeeha Saeed was tortured during her 13-hour detention before signing a confession she was not allowed to read.

Saeed, who had been covering Bahrain’s pro-democracy movement for France 24, was blindfolded, slapped, kicked and beaten with a hose in Riffa police station where she had voluntarily gone for questioning.

She was charged with fabricating news reports, working with Iranian and Lebanese channels and being part of a terrorist cell. A photograph of her covering a protest in the capital, Manama, is the only evidence she’s seen.

Following complaints from France24, Bahrain’s Ministry of the Interior launched an investigation that resulted in the acquittal of one female officer two years later.

Saeed was never tried or sentenced. Lingering psychological trauma prevented her from fully returning to work for six months.

Though King Hamad of Bahrain’s ruling Sunni Al-Khalifa family has urged for reform in the Shia-majority island kingdom, freedom of association and online activism are severely restricted, while charges of torture and unfair trials continue to surface.

More than 60 people have died since protests began in February 2011.

On Jul. 9, Bahraini officials said two attacks in a Shia-majority village left one police officer dead and at least three others injured.

“My country was not violent before Feburary 2011,” Saeed told IPS correspondent Jasmin Ramsey. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What is press freedom like in Bahrain?

A: Since two years ago, it has not been easy for us journalists to work. The freedom we were used to has been reduced. We have to be careful with each and every word we write and say in our coverage. We can be arrested; we can be interrogated just for using certain words.

Q: What happened two years ago?

A: Two years and four months ago the uprising started in Bahrain. People went into the streets inspired by the Arab Spring, asking for more freedom, democracy and accountability. But there was a huge crackdown and maybe that’s why people in Washington and other cities don’t really know what happened.

Maybe they know that at one point people went out to protest in Pearl Square for a month, but since then they may have heard little to nothing because most of the protestors were either arrested, sacked from their jobs or left the country because they felt they were in danger. Some were killed.

Q: Can you describe what happened to you while in police custody?

A: On May 22, 2011, I got a call to go to the Ministry of Interior for questioning. Sometimes they come to your house, sometimes they call. I am a journalist. I thought it would be good to cooperate. I thought it wouldn’t be more than a couple of hours so I didn’t inform my family, I only told France24 on the way to the station.

A male officer met me and said it’s better I tell him everything because it’s useless to lie. He said they had all the videos, phone calls and pictures that prove I’m guilty.

Q: What did they charge you with?

A: There were three charges. Fabricating reports and news, dealing with Iranian and Lebanese channels that I have never worked with, and they accused me of being part of a terrorist cell – its media element.
I said where did you get this from if I didn’t do these things?

He said I should stop lying.

Then a female officer came into the room and began punching me on my face and pulling me from my hair. “Don’t lie, don’t lie, you are a liar.” “You are a Safawi” — a term used in Bahrain to insult Shia and accuse them of being loyal to Iran.

Then another policewoman came into the room, pulled me from my hair and threw me onto the floor. All of them started to kick me, punch me and step on me. This happened in an office with a desk and computer in it.

They made fun of the way I looked and dressed. One woman put a shoe in my mouth and said it was cleaner than my tongue. She said she was so happy to see me like this. I had that shoe in my mouth for 30 minutes.

They took me to another room with other female detainees. I could only hear their voices. Every time they moved me from room to room they pulled me by my hair, so hard that it was bruised for days afterwards. They told me to face the wall and put my hands up. After 30 minutes they came in again and began beating me from all sides with a hose. They go in and out of the room and since you’re blindfolded, you can only wonder who will be beat next.

Then it got more professional. They shocked me with electronic Tasers. Every time I got shocked, they all burst into laugher. Then they took me out of the room, put me on a chair lying on my stomach and beat me on my back, head, legs and the heels of my feet with a hose. They accused me of working with an Iranian TV station and I kept saying no. They said I lied in my reports about people being killed by the army.

During one of the sessions a female officer tried to force me to drink from a bottle. I was blindfolded and she wouldn’t tell me if it was urine so I pushed it away with my hand. She poured it on my face in anger (it left an allergic reaction). She also pulled me by my hair and forced my head into a toilet.

I was there for 13 hours before being allowed to leave.

Q: What did you sign?

A: I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed to read the document. I was just shown the place where I was supposed to sign.

Q: Bahrain’s government argues the protest movement has been incited by Iran. You interviewed many of the protestors. What is your take?

A: Such a thing never came up Pearl Roundabout. I never saw an Iranian influence. I can’t speak on behalf of all the protestors. Maybe some of them are allied with Iran. I’m not sure. But the protestor’s demands are obvious. Some said they wanted to overthrow the regime, but that’s an example of freedom of speech. The protestors were demanding freedom, democracy, accountability and the end of corruption.

During my arrest they identified me as Shia. All the time they were accusing me of being allied with Iran. They said I supported Velayat-e faqih [a Shiite principle that gives supreme power to a religious figure and was implemented in Iran after its 1979 revolution] but I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. They accused me of many things I didn’t know the meaning of.

Q: What can Washington do to support the movement for democracy and human rights in Bahrain?

A: I need support from any human being in this world. This is my story and I didn’t get justice. All governments, be they American, British or any other, should influence my government to implement fair trials and to stop harassing journalists.

Excerpt:

Britain has agreed to compensate Kenyans tortured during the Mau Mau uprising against colonial rule in the 1950s, Foreign Secretary William Hague said Thursday.

Hague expressed “sincere regret” that the abuses had taken place and told parliament the government would pay a total of 30.8 million dollar to 5,228 clients represented by a British law firm.

A lawyer for the victims said on Wednesday the settlement had been agreed without disclosing the sum.

“(The negotiations) have included everybody with sufficient evidence of torture. And that number is about 5,200,” Kenyan lawyer Paul Muite said.

Negotiations began after a London court ruled in October that three elderly Kenyans, who suffered castration, rape and beatings while in detention during a crackdown by British forces and their Kenyan allies in the 1950s, could sue Britain.

The torture took place during the so-called Kenyan Emergency of 1952-1960, when fighters from the Mau Mau movement attacked British targets, causing panic among white settlers.

Al Jazeera’s Peter Greste, reporting from the Kenyan capital Nairobi, said Britain would also pay for a special memorial to be erected at the site where the abuses took place.

He said that since the case was settled out of court, it would not set a legal precedent for future claims of compensation for abuses during colonial rule. But he added that it could set a “moral precedent” for other victims to step up.

‘Pain and grievance’

The 30.8 million dollars in compensation would work out at 5,891 dollars per claimant in a country where average national income per capita is 821 dollars.

The foreign office said in last month’s statement that “there should be a debate about the past”.

“It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history,” the statement said.

“We understand the pain and grievance felt by those, on all sides, who were involved in the divisive and bloody events of the Emergency period in Kenya.”

In a test case, claimants Paulo Muoka Nzili, Wambugu Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara last year told Britain’s High Court how they were subjected to torture and sexual mutilation.

Lawyers said that Nzili was castrated, Nyingi severely beaten and Mara subjected to appalling sexual abuse in detention camps during the Mau Mau rebellion.

A fourth claimant, Susan Ngondi, has died since legal proceedings began.

The Mau Mau nationalist movement originated in the 1950s among the Kikuyu people of Kenya. Its loyalists advocated violent resistance to British domination of the country.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission has estimated 90,000 Kenyans were killed or maimed and 160,000 detained during the uprising.

‘Triumph’

London tried for three years to block the Mau Mau veterans’ legal action in the courts, drawing condemnation from the elderly torture victims who accused Kenya’s former colonial master of using legal technicalities to fight the case.

Caroline Elkins, a Harvard history professor who acted as an expert witness in the case launched in 2009, said the settlement would be the first of its kind for the former British Empire.

“(It) should be seen as a triumph,” Elkins told Reuters during a visit to Nairobi for the British announcement.

Elkins wrote the book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya which served as the basis for the Mau Mau case.

Britain had first said that responsibility for events during the Mau Mau uprising passed to Kenya upon its independence in 1963, an argument which London courts rejected.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Ian Henderson’s death announcement Apr. 15 in Bahrain brings to an end the life of a British expatriate who was the architect and supervisor of the harsh internal security policies of the al-Khalifa ruling family since the early days of independence over 40 years ago.

Henderson’s life’s work intertwined intimately with al-Khalifa, especially with the family’s all-powerful perennial Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman, the ruler’s brother.

The policies of discrimination, exclusion, and intolerance practiced by the Sunni minority ruling family against the Shia majority were designed and executed by Henderson and his subordinates and blessed by the prime minister. They have been grounded in fear, repression, systematic violations of human rights, and in some cases torture.

This is the legacy that Ian Henderson has bequeathed to the people of Bahrain.

Henderson was a British national and a colonial officer who was renowned for using violent tactics to subdue the anti-British Mau Mau movement in Kenya. After independence, the British government in 1968 removed him from Kenya and installed him in Bahrain as a security adviser to Al-Khalifa.

Three years later, when Bahrain acquired its independence from Britain, the Bahraini prime minister retained Henderson as his security adviser and head of Bahrain’s Security and Intelligence Service.

His department employed British, Bahrainis, Omanis, Jordanians, Sudanese, Pakistanis, and others. He was responsible directly to the prime minister and acted in his name. The main mission of Henderson’s BSIS was to penetrate dissident and pro-democracy groups – Sunni and Shia – and defeat them.

The Security Service under Henderson’s supervision and control commonly practiced fear, intimidation, and “enhanced interrogation methods”. Like the prime minister, in the early 1970s Henderson perceived all human rights advocates and proponents of the constitution and an elected parliament as “radicals”, “extremists”, and “terrorists”. Many were arrested without due process or clear charges and often beaten and tortured.

I spent 1972-1973 in Bahrain as a U.S. Senior Fulbright Scholar conducting field research on the making of the new state of Bahrain. Once I called Henderson for an interview on domestic security. He declined and told me he would have to get permission from the prime minister for such an interview because he worked for him directly.

The interview never took place. But when I met him at an official function and introduced myself, he said,” I know who you are. We keep tabs on everyone who lives here.”

On another occasion, I wanted to call him from a minister’s office. The minister, who became agitated and visibly afraid, did not want Henderson to know that I called him using the minister’s telephone number. The minister told me, “Everyone is afraid of Mr. Henderson. He has absolute authority in Bahrain because he acts on behalf of Shaikh Khalifa, and no one dares to cross him.”

Henderson instilled fear in the population, cemented the power of the prime minister, and stifled all voices of dissent. Once in the late 1970s, I visited the home of a distinguished journalist who worked for the local newspaper al-Adwa’. His son, who was just released from detention on a trumped up charge of incitement, was beaten severely by Henderson’s security officers. The marks from the beatings were still visible on his body.

On the flight out of Bahrain, I asked a British security officer sitting next to me about the beatings of the journalist’s son. As he already had a few drinks, the officer freely acknowledged the story and told me, “Yes, we do interrogations but we do not torture; Arab mercenaries do that!” By “mercenaries”, he meant the Arab expats who worked in his department.

The past two years have clearly shown the regime tactics of fear, intimidation, and terror have failed to silence demands for reform, equality, and democracy in Bahrain. Equally, Henderson’s legacy has made Bahrain less secure and the legitimacy of the ruling family and its long-term control of the country more precarious.

Many Bahrainis, who suffered from Henderson’s security extralegal practices, often refer to him as the “Butcher of Bahrain”. It’s interesting to note that the policies of fear helped enhance the prime minister’s control of the economic and political life of the country but did not cement the legitimacy of Al-Khalifa autocracy. Nor did they silence calls for justice and popular participation in decision making.

The colonial mentality of the past two centuries, which was brought by the Al-Khalifa family to bolster their rule, no longer works in the 21st century. Like their Arab counterparts, Bahraini youth and pro-democracy advocates have used the new social media and their sheer determination to face down the regime.

The prime minister and the ruling family should view Ian Henderson’s death more than two years after the start of popular upheaval as a stark symbolism and a strong metaphor of what Bahrain has become. For 40 years force has failed to silence calls for dignity and demands for democracy. If these demands are not met in 2013, Henderson’s legacy that began 40 years ago will remain sullied.

*Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “Bahrain: A Political Development in a Modernizing Society.”

Former U.S. Republican Congressman Asa Hutchinson hopes his country can redeem itself after torturing an unknown but certainly large number of detainees.

“There is no persuasive evidence in the public record that the widespread use of torture against suspected terrorists was necessary,” he said during a press briefing Tuesday in Washington.

“Torture often produces false information, and it is difficult and time-consuming for interrogators and analysts to distinguish what may be true and usable from that which is false and misleading,” Hutchinson continued.

“We see no evidence in the public record that the traditional means of interrogation would not have yielded the necessary intelligence following the attacks of 9/11,” he added.

Hutchinson is co-chair of the Constitution Project’s blue-ribbon Task Force on Detainee Treatment, a bipartisan group comprised of high-ranking U.S. officials from the judiciary, Congress, diplomatic service, military and intelligence agencies, as well as experts in law, medicine and ethics.

For over two years, the task force amassed public records and conducted over 100 interviews to shed light on the U.S.’s treatment of suspected terrorists since Sep. 11, 2001.

The task force concluded in a 560-page report that it is “indisputable that the U.S. engaged in the practice of torture” and that “the nation’s highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of torture”.

Hutchinson said that the task force’s definition of torture stems from historical and legal court cases. He explained that interrogation techniques the U.S. State Department identifies as torture when implemented by other nations are similar, if not identical, to some U.S. interrogation techniques.

Hutchinson said, “We as a nation have to get this right. I look back at history to the time during World War II when we interned some Japanese Americans. At the time, it seemed like a right and proper thing to do. But in the light of history, it was an error.”

He added, “This report will hopefully put into focus some of the actions taken in the post-9/11 environment.”

U.S. Ambassador James Jones, a democrat from Oklahoma and co-chair of the task force, noted the importance for his country to uphold and value the rule of law. “What we tried to do in this report is to point out where we separated ourselves and our official actions from those values, and how we must get back on track,” he said.

“We believe that this report is the most comprehensive record of detainee treatment across multiple administrations and multiple geographic theatres,” he added.

Laura Pitter, a counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Programme, told IPS, “It’s an incredibly important report.”

She added, “It’s not some kind of a political witch-hunt, it’s a bipartisan effort to look at things objectively.”

The report’s 11 chapters cover a span of topics, including detention at Guantanamo Bay, the role of psychologists in interrogation techniques, the U.S. rendition programme and the efficacy of torturing for information.

The report also includes character sketches of both victims and perpetrators of torture, such as Captain Albert Shimkus of the U.S. Naval Medical Corps, who was in charge of a medical facility in Guantánamo’s Camp Delta detention centre.

According to the report, Shimkus initially lauded Camp Delta’s treatment of detainees, comparing their medical treatment in Guantánamo to that received by U.S. troops.

But Shimkus now believes the commanders he reported to walled him off from the abuse U.S. detainees suffered. He told the task force that he had been used “as a tool” by those who wanted to draw a misleading picture of Guantánamo.

Asked why President Barack Obama’s administration has kept U.S. treatment of detainees in the shadows, Pitter told IPS, “There doesn’t appear to be the political will to unseal what the U.S. did in its name.”

She added, “It’s very unfortunate because it makes it very difficult for the U.S. to then argue that other countries should abide by these principles when (the U.S.) clearly did not… and then fails to account for it publically.”

Asked how U.S. torture of non-U.S. nationals affects diplomatic relations abroad, Pitter said, “When the U.S. engages in torture and abuse and fails to account for that abuse and hold those responsible for abuse, it undermines U.S. credibility to argue for the same type of adherence to those principles in other countries.”

She continued, “The impact is on U.S. foreign policy because (the U.S.) is working with these nations and these countries on a number of issues and (is undermining) their relationships.”

Pitter said that the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the U.S.’s own domestic laws obligate the U.S. to investigate torture and prosecute those who are responsible. But the report stated that “no CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) personnel have ever been convicted or even charged for numerous instances of torture in CIA custody.”

Pitter noted the existence of a 6,000-page classified report detailing the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme, and called for it to go public.

Pitter also noted that the U.S. is legally obligated to “provide redress to these victims… who were never charged for the crime and are released”.

She argued, “The wrongdoing that was done to them should be acknowledged, and there should be some ability to provide some kind of compensation to them for the years that they lost and the abuse that they suffered… So perhaps that’s the next step.”

Salvadoran activists Carlos Santos (left) and Fabricio Santín alongside a papier-mâché sculpture of a torture victim with a plastic bag – “la capucha” - on his head. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Mar 21 2013 (IPS)

A report containing the testimonies of victims of torture during El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war will be published 27 years after it was written, to help Salvadorans today learn more about that chapter in the country’s history.

The 197-page book “La tortura en El Salvador” (Torture in El Salvador), to be launched in April, contains the accounts of 270 victims interviewed in 1986, in the heat of the civil war, by the non-governmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES). IPS was given exclusive access to the report prior to publication.

Most of the interviews were carried out in the La Esperanza prison on the outskirts of San Salvador by members of the CDHES who had also been arrested, tortured and later imprisoned in that facility, where many of the country’s political prisoners were held in the 1980s.

“In the 1980s it was impossible to publish the document, because of the repression. But finally it will see the light of day,” CDHES director Miguel Montenegro told IPS.

El Salvador’s 12-year civil war left 75,000 – mainly civilians – dead and 8,000 disappeared.

When a peace agreement put an end to the conflict, a lack of funds stood in the way of publication of the report, Montenegro said.

The activist was seized in 1986 by the notorious Treasury Police, and learned first-hand about the torture techniques practiced by the security forces.

Because of their involvement in serious human rights abuses, the National Police, the Treasury Police and the National Guard were dismantled and replaced by the National Civilian Police under the United Nations-sponsored peace accord reached in January 1992 by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas and the government of Alfredo Cristiani of the far-right National Republican Alliance (ARENA).

More than 40 torture techniques are described in detail and depicted in drawings in the report.

One of the most commonly used techniques was the “avioncito” (airplane), in which the victim’s hands were tied behind his or her back and the victim was suspended in the air from the wrists, often causing dislocation of the shoulders.

In the “capucha” (hood), a plastic bag was placed over the prisoner’s head, to partially suffocate them, while the “submarino” (submarine) involved simulated drowning.

Other methods were electric shock, cutting off the tongue, or destroying the eyes with chemicals.

“They would take me to a room in the Treasury Police headquarters in San Salvador where the walls and the floor were covered with dried blood,” Montenegro said.

The book also provides profiles of torture victims who were forcibly disappeared.

The abuses formed part of a state policy put into effect by the army high command, and Salvadoran society has a right to know what happened, Montenegro said.

The amnesty law approved by Congress in 1993 protected the perpetrators of war crimes and other human rights abuses committed during the conflict from prosecution.

But retired generals Eugenio Vides Casanova and José Guillermo García, both of whom served as defence minister in the 1980s, were found guilty in 2002 by a U.S. court for the torture of three civilians by units under their command. The court ordered the two retired officers to pay 54.6 million dollars in damages to the civilians.

The CDHES document is coming out shortly after an investigative report by the BBC and The Guardian, published as a documentary on Mar. 5, revealed that retired U.S. Colonel James Steele, a Special Forces veteran of Vietnam who was posted in El Salvador in the 1980s, was later sent to Iraq.

The British media report said Steele, who trained and directed counterinsurgency operations in El Salvador, was sent to Iraq to implement the so-called “Salvadoran option” to fight the insurgency after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq 10 years ago.

Steele was reportedly sent to train special Iraqi police brigades in torture techniques employed in this Central American country in the 1980s.

“It is sad that what was used here in El Salvador is being revived in Iraq; this country served as the school,” Montenegro said.

Another investigation into torture committed during the civil war is being conducted by the Salvadoran Association of Torture Survivors (ASST), founded three years ago.

The ASST has two aims: to find out what happened and to bring complaints before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). “We are documenting the cases, to file formal complaints,” Carlos Santos, the president of the ASST, told IPS.

Santos was studying theatre when he was arrested in 1983 along with another student, Fabricio Santín, in the eastern city of San Miguel, where they were tortured before they were transferred to La Esperanza prison.

“Because no one was ever held accountable or punished for the abuses, there is a risk that they could be committed again in the future,” said Santín. “And that is what we don’t want.”

In 2012, the IACHR accepted a complaint brought by the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University in representation of Santos and Rolando González, another member of the ASST.

The complaint also covers four other cases, including the death of Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton, who was killed in 1975 by fellow members of one of the left-wing groups that made up the FMLN, after he was found guilty of insubordination and spying for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in a “revolutionary trial”.

The case brought before the IACHR accuses the current government of centre-left President Mauricio Funes of the FMLN of negligence with respect to investigating crimes like torture.

The Funes administration has refused to sign the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, which provides for in situ monitoring such as unannounced visits to local prisons.

Nor has it ratified the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court set up to try war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity that national courts cannot or will not handle.

“These are the things that worry us, because they hinder progress in the search for truth, justice and reparations,” the president of the Committee of Relatives of Victims of Human Rights Violations (CODEFAM), Guadalupe Mejía, told IPS.

David Morales, director general of the government’s Human Rights Unit, declined to comment to IPS on government policy.

Since September 2012, Santos and Santín have been touring the country with the exhibit “Nunca más en El Salvador” (Never Again in El Salvador), which uses papier-mâché sculptures of people to show torture techniques used during the years of state violence.

“Some of the images are shocking, but we want to show them so that this won’t happen again,” Santín said.

Manuel Cordero, captured on camera in 2009 by a journalist with Uruguay’s Channel 12 violating house arrest in Brazil. Credit: Canal 12

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Mar 5 2013 (IPS)

The trial over a campaign of terror coordinated among the dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America in the 1970s and 1980s began Tuesday in Buenos Aires with former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla as one of the main defendants, along with another 24 former military officers.

Under Operation Condor, as the coordination between the military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay was known, opponents of the regimes were tracked down, kidnapped, tortured, transferred across borders and killed – including guerrilla fighters, political activists, trade unionists, students, priests, journalists or mothers demanding to know what had happened to their missing sons and daughters.

“This is the first time in Latin America that a trial is being held over Operation Condor, to prosecute those responsible, above and beyond trials held in some countries for specific cases,” lawyer Luz Palmas of the Fundación Liga Argentina por los Derechos Humanos (FUNLADDHH), a human rights organisation, told IPS.

The 25 defendants include Videla and other former generals like Reynaldo Bignone and Luciano Benjamín Menéndez. Uruguayan general Manuel Cordero, prosecuted for the role he played in the illegal detention centre at Automotores Orletti in Buenos Aires, was extradited from Brazil for this trial.

Three of the accused were declared unfit to stand trial for health reasons. Another 15 people under investigation died before the case came to trial.

“Orletti was an operational base for Condor. Foreigners who were kidnapped were taken there, which is why it was decided to take both the cases to oral trial together,” said Palmas, who represents survivors of the torture centre as well as victims of forced disappearance.

The trial that began Tuesday, which could stretch on for up to two years, is for the kidnapping and forced disappearance of 106 people. The largest group of victims were Uruguayans (48), but there were also Argentines, Bolivians, Chileans, Paraguayans and one Peruvian.

The case was initiated in 1999, when the two amnesty laws that put a stop to the prosecution of members of the military for human rights abuses committed during Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship were still in force.

The lawsuit thus invoked forced disappearance as a crime against humanity that was not subject to amnesty.

After the amnesty laws were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2005, along with the presidential pardons of former members of the military junta, the case picked up speed, more victims were included and more people came under investigation.

In the Orletti case, the crimes are illegal detention and torture. Sixty-five victims were identified, some of whom survived and, like Ana Inés Quadros, a Uruguayan citizen, have already testified in an earlier stage of the trial in 2010 against four torturers belonging to the Argentine intelligence services.

At that time, Quadros declared that she was kidnapped in Buenos Aires in July 1976 and taken to Orletti, where she was tortured and raped by Cordero. She was later transferred to an illegal detention centre in Uruguay, and eventually freed.

However, Cordero is only being tried for illegal detention under Operation Condor, and not for the crimes he committed in Orletti, because the Brazilian justice system did not grant extradition for that case.

In the view of Lorena Balardini, research coordinator for the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a local human rights group, this trial “is the biggest to be held so far in the region over Operation Condor, and could serve as an impetus for other countries where there have been delays or backsliding,” she told IPS.

Balardini said there had been “a setback” in Uruguay. She was referring to a Supreme Court ruling in February this year overturning a lower court verdict to remove the statute of limitations on crimes of the 1973-1985 dictatorship, regarded as crimes against humanity.

“This trial is a way of making these abuses visible and judging them from the viewpoint of coordination between dictatorships,” she said. For this reason, CELS, in its capacity as legal representative of several victims, has focused on key cases in which that coordination is proven.

For example, CELS is representing the families of Marcelo Gelman – the son of Argentine poet Juan Gelman – and his wife María Claudia García Irureta. The couple was kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1976 at the ages of 20 and 19 respectively, when García was seven months pregnant.

Gelman was killed and his body was identified in 1989, but García was taken from Orletti to Uruguay, where she gave birth to Macarena Gelman, who was finally tracked down at the age of 23 by her grandfather in 2000. García’s body has never been found.

Complaints will also be lodged on behalf of Horacio Campiglia and his secretary Susana Pinus, Argentine citizens who were kidnapped in Galeão airport in Rio de Janeiro in 1980 and were presumed to have been transferred to Argentina, where they disappeared.

In the context of Operation Condor, other famous cases were investigated specifically, such as the murders in Argentina of Uruguayan Congressmen Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz in 1976.

Former Bolivian president Juan José Torres, who took refuge in Argentina after being overthrown by Hugo Banzer in 1971, was also murdered there in 1976.

According to lawyer Carolina Varsky, head of litigation at CELS, these murder cases were not included in the Operation Condor trial in order to evade restrictions imposed by the amnesty laws, and only cases of forced disappearance – considered “ongoing crimes” – were taken up.

As for the central role played by Chile’s DINA, the secret police of late dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), Varsky regretted the lack of progress in prosecuting direct or indirect agents of repression who participated in Operation Condor.

Essential evidence came from Paraguay, where lawyer and journalist Martín Almada discovered in 1992 what are known as the Archives of Terror in a police station in Asunción, containing innumerable documents shedding light on the fate of Operation Condor victims from the seven countries.

Further evidence is contained in declassified documents from the United States State Department, such as a 1976 memo from an FBI agent describing the coordinated actions of South America’s military regimes, which could go “as far as murder.”

Thousands of Palestinian mourners have gathered in the town on Sair in the occupied West Bank for the funeral of Arafat Jaradat, who died in an Israeli jail under disputed circumstances.

Palestinian officials say preliminary autopsy results show Jaradat’s death on Saturday was caused from torture by his Israeli interrogators. Israeli officials say there is no conclusive cause of death and that more tests are needed.

Monday’s funeral comes at a time of rising tensions after weeks of protests by Palestinians outraged over Israel’s treatment of thousands of Palestinians prisoners.

The demonstrations have stoked Israeli fears of a third Palestinian uprising.

Palestinian Authority (PA) police kept order as Jaradat’s funeral got under way, while Israeli forces remained outside the village.

Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston, reporting from the funeral, said people in Sair “never believed the official Israeli version of events … that he had died of a heart attack”.

“There is a great deal of concern across Israel and the Palestinian territories that this death, and the last few weeks of protest about the issue of Palestinian political prisoners inside Israeli jails, could lead to further uprisings, demonstrations and clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli army,” she said.

“At this point it’s difficult to know if the situation will calm down in a few days or if these protests will intensify.”

Vowing revenge

Fighters from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, vowed on Monday to avenge the death of Jaradat.

“This horrific crime will not go unpunished and we promise the Zionist occupation that we will respond to this crime,” said a statement distributed to crowds at the funeral, while masked members of the group fired assault rifles into the air.

Palestinians have been staging regular protests demanding the release of prisoners, particularly several who are on hunger strike, but tensions have soared since Jaradat’s death.

On Sunday, a Palestinian man was seriously wounded after he was hit by live fire near Ramallah, and two others were injured in the same protest near Ofer prison, medics said.

Israel on Monday demanded that the PA rein in unrest. “Israel expects the Palestinian Authority to act responsibly to prevent incitement and violence which will only exacerbate the situation,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Torture accusations

Issa Qaraqaa, the Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs, accused Israel on Sunday of torturing Jaradat to death, citing the preliminary findings of an Israeli-Palestinian autopsy.

Qaraqaa said the autopsy, carried out at Israel’s national forensic institute in the presence of a Palestinian doctor, indicated bruises on Jaradat’s torso and damage to muscles, as well as broken ribs.

Israel released a similar account of the post mortem but stressed that there were “fractures in the ribs” which “could be testimony to resuscitation efforts”.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

“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.”

At 8 a.m. on Oct. 25, 1975, Brazilian journalist Vladimir Herzog voluntarily reported to the São Paulo headquarters of the government’s intelligence agency and was never seen alive again.

The facilities he had been summoned to were just one of the detention and torture centres that were active during Brazil’s last dictatorship.

Herzog was editor-in-chief of the news department at the São Paulo-based television network TV Cultura, and had been called in for questioning by the Information Operations Department of the Centre for Internal Defence Operations (DOI-CODI) for his alleged connections to the then-illegal Brazilian Communist Party (PCB).

He died under torture, but his death was made to look like a suicide by the military in an attempt to cover up the murder. A photograph released later showed Herzog hanging in his cell, but in a position that clearly revealed that the military’s suicide version was a farce.

The picture quickly became a symbol of the lies of the military regime.

Denounced by the Union of Professional Journalists of São Paulo, the death of “Vlado” – as he was called by friends and family – had profound repercussions, triggering a wave of protests and setting off a mass movement that played an instrumental role in bringing down the dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

More than 37 years later, Herzog’s murder could be the case that finally sets Brazil on the path of investigating the crimes and abuses committed throughout its long dictatorship.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organisation of American States (OAS) accepted a petition to open an inquiry to determine the responsibility of the Brazilian government in Herzog’s death, understanding that the state has not fulfilled its duty to investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators.

The IACHR will submit a report with its findings to the central-left administration of President Dilma Rousseff and, if the government fails to implement its recommendations, it will bring the case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

In 2010, the court issued a ruling condemning Brazil for its failure to open up criminal inquiries and prosecute the perpetrators of the “arbitrary detention, torture and forced disappearance of 70 individuals during the dictatorship, including members of the Communist Party and peasants from the region,” who were part of the Araguaia guerrillas, a group that operated from1972 to 1974 in Marabá, state of Pará.

Attempts to bring the perpetrators of human rights abuses committed during the past dictatorship have been thwarted by a 1979 amnesty law (No. 6,683) passed by the military regime that pardoned anyone involved in political crimes or human rights violations in the period between Sep. 2, 1961 and Aug. 15, 1979.

Despite this obstacle, the Rousseff administration made great progress in this sense with the establishment of a National Truth Commission (created by Law No. 12,528) in 2011, mandated with investigating cases of forced disappearances of political opponents during the dictatorship.

This law was enacted in 2012 and sets a term of two years for the commission to complete its mandate. According to the document “Direito à Memória e à Verdade” (The Right to Memory and Truth), prepared by the government, at least 150 dissidents arrested or kidnapped by repressive forces during that period are still missing today.

Their relatives continue to search for their remains or for any information on the fate of their loved ones.

The truth commission is not the only effort to reveal the truth of the dictatorship’s abuses, as an increasing number of committees are being formed by state representatives, students and workers.

“Every action seeking truth and justice organised by the younger generations, to learn about and fight for human rights in Brazil is a new blow dealt against the dictatorship and the state of emergency,” Maria do Rosário Nunes, the presidency’s human rights secretary, said on Jan. 19 at the launching of the Journalists’ Truth Commission.

“Brazil has been slow to join the debate on truth commissions, which is aimed at recovering (collective) memory and obtaining justice for the deaths and disappearances committed during the dictatorship, and it’s far behind other countries, such as Uruguay and Argentina,” Beth Costa, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told IPS.

“But the IFJ and the National and Latin American Federation of Journalists welcome this firm decision by the government of Brazil,” she added.

Costa acknowledged the government’s difficulty in countering historical resistances, which date back to the period of national re-democratisation.

“For years there was resistance from the military, which still has an impact through the seats held in parliament by the country’s conservative parties, many of which backed the military regime,” she said.

The members of the National Truth Commission face the challenge of filling in the information gaps that exist in the cases of disappearances and assassinations, and in the files that were put at their disposal for the investigation, which may not be complete despite the Data Access Act that Rousseff passed along with this specialised body.

“Some 25 journalists were killed during the dictatorship,” journalist Audálio Dantas told IPS. A former president of the Union of Professional Journalists of São Paulo, Dantas headed the protests to expose Herzog’s staged suicide.

Dantas, who currently heads the National Commission of Brazilian Journalists for Memory, Justice and Truth, detected major gaps in the government’s files, which he consulted as part of the research for his book “As duas guerras de Vlado Herzog” (The Two Wars of Vlado Herzog), published in 2012 by Editora Civilização Brasileira.

When he tried to access the case files, he was asked to furnish a copy of Herzog’s death certificate.

“This demand was not only absurd, it was disrespectful to Vlado’s memory. Meeting this request would have entailed accepting as true the cause of death recorded by the certifying doctor, Harry Shibata, a DOI-CODI collaborator, who signed the certificate without ever seeing the body, ruling it a suicide,” Dantas wrote in his book.

“The Truth Commission finally succeeded in having the certificate amended,” he told IPS. Now it states that Herzog’s died as a result of “injuries and abuses suffered while in the São Paulo second army facilities (DOI-CODI).”

Beth Costa believes that reconstructing the history of the journalists who were forcefully disappeared by the dictatorship will be a key step in rebuilding the country’s collective memory and in the process of re-democratisation of its institutions, especially at a time in which Brazil is listed among the countries with the greatest number of journalists murdered in the line of duty.

Freedoms such as the right to report freely and safely and the right to be informed are once again at risk. This was made patently clear when newspaper reporters André Caramante, of Folha de São Paulo, and Mauri Konig, of Paraná’s Gazeta do Povo, were forced to leave the country after receiving death threats for exposing police misconduct.

Dantas recalled that, in addition to guaranteeing the safety of all media professionals, the government must weed out certain elements from police forces, which were left over from the dictatorship and form extermination squads.

“It’s shameful that after successfully fighting off political repression we are now incapable of battling the repression that is a daily reality in the peripheries of our large cities and inside our police stations,” he said.

“The government is afraid to tackle this problem, perhaps because most middle and upper class people believe that seizing and executing without trial is an acceptable practice. It’s the country’s biggest shame today,” he charged.

Representatives of the Argentine state and of non- governmental organisations will be visiting prisons without prior warning, beginning next year, to prevent inmates from being tortured and abused – a problem that persists three decades after the end of the dictatorship, often with fatal results.

Under a new law that created the National Mechanism for Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a team will be set up to make regular surprise visits to prisons as well as police stations, psychiatric hospitals and juvenile institutions.

Members of the team can demand information about inmates, meet their families, interview prison officials and keep a record of habeas corpus writs filed in order to ensure the safety of prisoners and adequate prison conditions.

The law, approved in late November, brings the country in line with the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT), an international treaty ratified by Argentina in 2004.

OPCAT, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2002 as an addition to the 1984 U.N. Convention against Torture, and came into force in 2006, established an international inspection system for prisons. This includes an international subcommittee to monitor that the states parties establish national mechanisms for visits to prisons.

The treaty set a deadline for states to comply with the provision, which in the case of Argentina was 2007. But the law creating the mechanism was delayed for five years because of disagreements over the composition of the oversight body.

In an interview with IPS, lawyer Eva Asprella, coordinator of the Working Group on Persons Deprived of Liberty at the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a prominent local human rights group, explained that the difficulties were due to the fact that the provinces in this federal country enjoy considerable autonomy.

The debate was solved by designing a 13-member National Committee and a Federal Council made up of the local (regional or provincial) mechanisms. The two bodies will operate in a coordinated manner, and there will also be representatives of the local mechanisms on the National Committee.

The Committee will be made up of the national prison ombudsman, a delegate from the central government’s Human Rights Secretariat, six representatives chosen by Congress, who cannot be legislators, two representatives of the local mechanisms and three civil society experts.

“This was a necessary, but not sufficient, step towards ensuring prevention,” Asprella said. “It’s a way of setting foot inside the prisons, getting past the walls, establishing dialogue, seeing what goes on inside, making recommendations and resorting to the justice system with writs of habeas corpus.”

The legislation will also give protection to many small organisations that are working under great difficulties in the provinces, she said. “CELS is well known and has had no problems, but some groups have been denied permission to enter the prisons, quite arbitrarily,” she said.

This was the case with the Human Rights Network in the northeastern province of Corrientes, which has been banned from entering the prisons, and the Zainuco Association in the southern province of Neuquén, she said.

Angie Acosta, one of the Zainuco Association’s lawyers, told IPS that in the view of her organisation, “the creation of the mechanism is essential for monitoring prisons.

“As soon as we started denouncing torture cases, they banned us from entering” Unit Number 11 in Neuquén, the capital of the province, said Acosta. “They said it was for security reasons, but they let the churches in,” she added.

Acosta pointed out that in 2004 there was a riot in that prison that was put down with brutal force, lasting four days and resulting in the trial of 27 police agents for torture. But only six were convicted, for lesser crimes.

The crisis broke out because of the officers’ abusive treatment of the mother of Cristian Ibazeta, a 34-year-old blind inmate with multiple sclerosis.

Ibazeta, who had filed numerous complaints about torture, was stabbed to death inside the prison in May, when he was only a month away from being eligible for furlough.

An investigation published by CELS in the book “Derechos Humanos en Argentina: Informe 2012” (2012 Report on Human Rights in Argentina) details tortures, beatings, arbitrary transfers, excessive punishment and lack of hygiene, which it says are common currency in many of the country’s prisons.

In the eastern province of Buenos Aires, the country’s most populous, which accounts for 50 percent of all prisoners, there is also severe overcrowding, with inmates sleeping on the floor without access to toilets and subjected to freezing showers and beatings, while their family members have to submit to humiliating gropings when they visit.

Asprella described how in January, 26-year-old Patricio Barros Cisneros, an inmate in a Buenos Aires prison, was beaten to death by prison guards after asking for a private place to meet with his wife, who was eight months pregnant.

“If a 26-year-old man was beaten to death by a gang in the street, it would be a media scandal for days. But when it happens in a prison, society ignores it, so it goes on happening,” she said.

The biggest trial for human rights crimes committed by Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship began Wednesday in Buenos Aires, with 68 people accused of crimes involving nearly 800 victims of the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA).

For the first time, six pilots who flew the so-called “death flights” – where political prisoners were dumped from planes, drugged but alive, into the ocean – will be tried.

The 68 defendants will be charged in cases involving the kidnapping, torture, and forced disappearance of hundreds of victims in ESMA, the regime’s biggest clandestine prison centre, where some 5,000 political prisoners were held over the years.

Most of the defendants (56) belonged to the navy, and five belonged to the coast guard. But there are also former members of the army, the police and the penitentiary service, as well as two civilians: lawyer Gonzalo Torres de Tolosa and former finance secretary Juan Alemann.

Five of the defendants are fugitives from justice. The national programme for the search for wanted suspects offers a 100,000 peso (20,000 dollar) award to anyone who provides information leading to their arrest.

The case is the biggest in Argentina since the human rights trials got underway again in the past decade, after the amnesty laws and pardons protecting human rights violators were declared unconstitutional.

While the accused and their defence counsel, and the families of the victims, survivors and their lawyers took their seats in the courtroom, another stage was set up for people to follow the trial.

A giant screen was installed in the Mabel Gutierrez auditorium in ESMA, which was converted into a human rights museum after it was handed over to human rights groups in 2004.

“This will be the biggest trial so far, because of the number of victims, defendants, and witnesses,” said Carolina Varsky, a lawyer with the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a human rights group taking part in the case, told IPS.

Varsky, the director of litigation in CELS, explained that the case had come to trial in bits and pieces, which she said “hid the true magnitude of the genocide committed” in ESMA.

Progress in the ESMA case began to be made in 2007, when a single defendant, former coast guard officer Héctor Febres, was tried. But he committed suicide in his cell just four days before the verdict was to be handed down.

And in 2011, 16 of 18 defendants in another ESMA trial were convicted.

The current trial is known as the “third branch” or the “unified ESMA case”.

The defendants include former navy captains Alfredo Astíz and Jorge Acosta, who were already convicted of other ESMA crimes. Acosta was also found guilty this year of involvement in stealing babies who were either born to political prisoners in detention or kidnapped along with their parents, who were later killed or “disappeared”. The children were mainly raised by military or police families.

Rodolfo Yanzón, one of the lawyers for a group of 40 survivors and victims’ relatives, told IPS that “we had opposed the breaking up of the cases, because we believed that it was best for the witnesses to not have to testify over and over again, and also because the (imprisoned) defendants had the right to be tried and convicted in a timely manner.”

In response to such demands, and to the recommendation of a higher court aimed at expediting the case, the court where the trial is being held agreed to show filmed testimony given by witnesses in other trials against the same defendants.

One of the survivors who have most often testified is Mario Villani, a 73-year-old physicist who lives in Miami, Florida. After he was kidnapped in 1977, he was held in five different detention and torture centres, for a total of three years and eight months. ESMA was the last.

Villani was tortured and forced to carry out different tasks during his detention. He gave his testimony to the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, and testified in the trials held after the dictatorship came to an end, in the 1980s, which were cut short by the amnesty laws and pardons of the members of the military junta.

Since then he has given his testimony – about the same crimes – in trials in Argentina, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Israel.

In an email response to IPS from the United States, Villani said he saw the start of the “mega-trial” as “one more step in the direction of justice.”

He said he felt “proud” to be able to help these cases move forward. But he added that “the struggle will continue as long as there are regimes in the world that need to use torture to maintain control.”

The testimony given by Villani and other survivors has helped keep the demand for justice alive for over three decades, bring the accused to trial, and identify some of the former torturers who were living their lives under other identities.

In the book “Desaparecido: Memorias de un cautiverio” (Disappeared: Memories of My Captivity), which he wrote with Fernando Reati, he said he still had nightmares. “If anyone wakes me up, I lift my arms and cover my face, in a defensive stance,” he wrote.

Like other political prisoners, Villani not only suffered torture himself, but also witnessed horrendous crimes, like the murder by torture of a Jewish schoolteacher who belonged to the Communist Party, and whose name he never learned.

“He made him strip, he tied him to the table with the bottom half of his body hanging off. He shoved a stick up his anus and gave him electric shocks,” he testified in the trial against federal police official Héctor Simón, alias “Turco Julián” or “Julián the Turk”.

Simón, who was convicted in several cases, was known for his fierce anti-Semitism. “The f***ing Jew died. Good thing, otherwise I would have had to let him go,” Villani recalls Simón saying when his victim died.

According to government figures, 14,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the dictatorship, although human rights organisations put the number at 30,000.

During the trial, which will last at least two years, three hearings a week will be held, and every seven days, DVDs will be shown, of the testimony of survivors and relatives of victims.

Startling new evidence of the torture, unlawful rendition, and other abuse of Libyan anti-Gaddafi rebels in U.S. detention facilities during the George W. Bush administration was revealed Wednesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The groundbreaking report, “Delivered into Enemy Hands: U.S.-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya”, was made public one week after Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Justice Department’s decision to cease investigations of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials who may have been responsible for the deaths of two prisoners.

The investigation, which initially began with the examination of 101 prisoner cases, was reduced to that of only two already dead prisoners. Additionally, the investigation only encompassed the abuses which were unauthorised by Bush.

Thus, the investigations did not include alleged waterboarding and other forms of torture which were approved by the president, according to Laura Pitter, counter-terrorism advisor at HRW and author of the report.

Pitter told IPS, “The investigation needs to be reopened, it needs to be broadened, and the U.S. needs to make a full accounting of what went on at these sites.”

Pitter’s report unveiled, for the first time, secret service documents recovered from Tripoli, as well as many personal testimonies of former detainees who were released after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi a year ago. These documents and testimonies shed light on unlawful and unethical practices of detention programmes and CIA investigation tactics that had been kept in the dark for years following the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks.

Fourteen former detainees were interviewed, all of whom reported being transported back to Libya after their capture outside of the country, in what is known as rendition. Most of these detainees who had worked to overthrow Gaddafi were involved in the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group (LIFG).

All persons interviewed report having been returned to Libya by the U.S. or other collaborating countries at a time when it was clear they would be tortured by the Libyan government.

International law strictly forbids this sort of rendition, as well as all acts of torture and ill-treatment. Other countries in collaboration with Gaddafi’s regime and the renditions were the United Kingdom, Afghanistan, Chad, China and Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Sudan, and Thailand.

In addition to these reports of renditions, five detainees described various methods of torture and cruel treatment by the CIA secret prisons in Afghanistan prior to their transport. Two men described experiences of water torture tactics, and one accurately described what is known as waterboarding.

Pitter wrote, “The allegations cast serious doubts on prior assertions from U.S. government officials that only three people were waterboarded in U.S. custody. They also reflect just how little the public still knows about what went on in the U.S. secret detention program.”

Other reports of physical abuse include being forced into cramped spaces and denied the ability to bathe for nearly five months, being denied food and sleep, and being chained to walls naked. One man, Majid Mokhtar Sasy al-Maghrebi, described a time when he was chained and abused.

According to Pitter’s report, al-Maghrebi said, “I was there for 15 days, hanging from my arms, another chain from the ground. They put a diaper on me but it overflowed so there was every type of stool everywhere, the temperature was freezing.”

Pitter’s 154-page report brings to light never before seen evidence of what could be a very serious offence against International Law. The Tripoli Documents highlighted in the report show how the United States may have tried to side-step the law against rendition through extracted promises from Libya that the prisoners would not be ill-treated.

The Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions set down protections against unfair rendition and ill-treatment, and HRW claims that the United States “violated its international legal obligations”.

Pitter told IPS, “Failure to account for past abuses undermines the United States’ credibility when trying to argue for human rights in other places.”

“It’s in National Security’s interest, really, to acknowledge past mistakes so they can make clear this was a mistake and it’s never going to happen again.”

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.

Members of the Murle ethnic group wait to receive food aid after attacks from a rival tribe that the U.N. says affected at least 120,000 people. Credit: Jared Ferrie /IPS

By Jared Ferrie
JUBA , Aug 25 2012 (IPS)

South Sudanese soldiers are allegedly beating and torturing civilians in the midst of a disarmament campaign in Jonglei state, and many have been unable to access justice because of a lack of prosecutors and judges, according to the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. 

“Justice and accountability in Jonglei seem to have fallen by the wayside,” HRWs Africa director, Daniel Bekele, said in a statement to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir as HRW called for him to intervene.

“Authorities should investigate the cycle of violence in Jonglei, immediately put a stop to violations committed in the course of civilian disarmament, and ensure that those responsible are held accountable.”

The alleged abuses are taking place in Pibor County, which is about 273 kilometres from Juba, South Sudan’s capital. The area is the traditional homeland of the Murle, an ethnic group involved in clashes with the Lou Nuer that lasted throughout 2011 and into early 2012.

The U.N. said more than 1,000 people were killed in Jonglei in 2011. In addition, at least 900 people – mostly Murle – were killed in attacks and counterattacks from December to February, according to a report released on May 25 by the U.N. peacekeeping mission.

In the wake of the clashes, South Sudan’s government began a statewide disarmament campaign and launched a peace process aimed at reconciliation between the Murle and Lou Nuer.

But the disarmament campaign has been plagued by allegations of abuse. On Apr. 30, a coalition of civil society groups including Washington DC-based Pact and the South Sudan Law Society released a report documenting violence during to the voluntary phase of disarmament. The report warned that violence was likely to increase as disarmament moved into the enforcement phase at the beginning of May.

Elizabeth Ashamu, a research fellow with HRW, told IPS that access to justice is a problem in much of South Sudan, which is one of the world’s poorest countries and has an underdeveloped legal system. But she said special efforts should be made to ensure that civilians have access to justice in the context of a disarmament programme being carried out by the army that has a history of committing abuses against civilians.

Ashamu said there is no civilian prosecutor or judge in Pibor County where HRW focused its research. While complainants can take their case to the police, if there is no prosecutor in the county, the case will not be heard in a local court. So victims would have to travel by land to the Jonglei state capital, Bor, where there is a prosecutor. But Bor is unreachable during the current rainy season when roads are flooded.

“It’s just physically difficult for anyone to file a complaint,” she said in an interview. “There’s also fear of coming forth and filing a complaint, which is exacerbated when the abuse is committed by soldiers.”

Between Jul. 19 and 26 Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed victims and witnesses who accused soldiers of shooting at civilians and beating them. A woman said about five soldiers beat her while she had her baby strapped to her back. One man had visible scars from ropes he said were used to tie him to a tree and sticks used to beat him. Another man said he and six others were subjected to water torture.

“They took us to a pool of water and pushed our heads under water. Then they lifted us up, beat us, and asked for guns. Then they pushed our heads into the water again,” he told HRW. “There were five soldiers (each) holding each of us — one for each leg, and each arm, and one person to push our heads into the water.”

The U.N. peacekeeping mission also released a statement on Aug. 24 documenting alleged abuses including rapes, abductions and simulated drownings.

“The majority of the victims are women, and in some cases children,” the mission said, calling on the authorities to hold perpetrators accountable while noting that the army has taken steps to investigate rape cases. The mission added that the army says it has ordered senior officers to conduct investigations and has recalled patrols allegedly involved in “criminal incidents”.

Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) told IPS that from mid-March to Aug. 20 it treated 90 people with violent trauma injuries in Pibor town, and surrounding villages. Of those, three died of their injuries. The organisation’s medical team also treated 16 rape survivors and eight survivors of attempted rape over the same period.

“These are just the patients that came to MSF to seek treatment, and MSF is concerned that there may be other people with trauma injuries who have not come forward to seek medical care,” said Stefano Zannini, MSF’s head of mission.

The U.N. mission, UNMISS, said on Aug. 24 there have been “significant improvements in the security situation in Jonglei state” since the clashes early this year, but incidents of abuse have spiked recently.

“UNMISS is concerned by the recent increase in serious human rights violations allegedly committed by some undisciplined elements within the South Sudanese Army (SPLA) in Pibor County.”

The mission said that between July 15 and Aug. 20 its monitoring teams recorded one killing, 27 allegations of torture or ill treatment, 12 rapes, six attempted rapes and eight abductions.

Researchers with HRW said they received credible reports of rape, and reports from local officials that more than six civilians were killed in the village of Likuangole after a soldier was killed on Aug. 16.

“Such reports likely represent a small fraction of the actual total number of incidents, as many victims do not travel to Pibor to report the crimes,” Bekele said in the letter to Kiir, referring to the county capital, which is also called Pibor.

The U.N. mission noted that the government sponsored a conference in May that brought together tribal leaders who agreed on steps to be taken to foster peace in Jonglei.

“Failure to identify those suspected of human rights abuses, carry out full investigations in all cases, and demonstrate that justice is being done for the victims, will undermine the confidence and collaboration of local communities in the disarmament process, and risks derailing the peace process,” the mission said.

South Sudan’s government spokesman, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, directed questions to the country’s human rights commission chair, Lawrence Korbandy, who was unable to comment.

Since March 2011, Syrian authorities have subjected tens of thousands of people to torture, rape, sexual abuse and unlawful detention, with some cases of ill treatment leading to death, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released Tuesday.

“I think we’re just scratching the surface,” the deputy director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division, Nadim Houry, told IPS.

“It helps to remember that the numbers of people who have gone into detention are really in the thousands,” Houry said.

The report, entitled “Torture Archipelago”, is based on interviews with over 200 people, both former detainees in such facilities and defectors from the Syrian military and intelligence agencies, and features reports on 27 facilities. Victims in the report include men, women, the elderly and children.

The report identifies the country’s four main intelligence agencies, collectively referred to as the “mukhabarat”, as operating the network of detention facilities.

Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told IPS, “There are many other situations where state employees – including military and intelligence personnel – have been charged and convicted of serious human rights violations, including torture, once the circumstances in the country have changed.”

The persons interviewed in the report recount a wide range of torture methods used, including electrocution, severe beating, mock execution, exposure to cold and heat, hanging upside down, sleep deprivation and the use of acid.

A soldier who was held at a facility in Latakia described his torture in the report: “The guard brought two electric prongs. He put one in my mouth, on my tooth. Then he started turning it on and off quickly. He did this 7/8 times. I felt like, that’s it. I am not going to leave this branch.”

Interviewees also reported grave violations of human rights, such as rape, sexual abuse and humiliation.

A man detained in a facility in Kafr Souseh said in the report, “Because they couldn’t sleep and had to stand all the time, people started to go crazy, to hallucinate. There was a group of five or six people in my group cell that started going crazy.”

When asked about the treatment available to victims of torture, Houry said, “It varies on the kinds of needs… and again on the country.”

Houry said that most victims spoken to had received treatment in neighbouring countries to Syria. “There is a need for more psychological follow up. Some NGOs are offering these services,” he said.

The report also documented several interviewees who witnessed the deaths of fellow detainees and five defected security force officers who witnessed detainees being executed and beaten to death.

The Violations Documentation Centre, a Syrian monitoring group, has recorded the names of 575 people who died in custody since March 2011.

The HRW report also stated, “In many cases, families of those killed in custody had to sign documents indicating that armed gangs had killed their relatives and had to promise not to hold a public funeral as a condition of receiving the body.”

The report recommends that the U.N. Security Council demand access to all Syrian detention facilities, as well as deploying monitors specially trained to identify gender specific human rights violations and personnel trained to work with children.

It also advised, amongst other recommendations, that the Security Council refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court and demand access to these facilities for humanitarian missions, foreign journalists and independent human rights organisations.

The report also urged Russia and China to support Security Council action on Syria, suspend all military sales and assistance to the Syrian government, and “condemn in the strongest terms the Syrian authorities’ systematic violations of human rights.”

All countries were advised to adopt targeted sanctions against Syrian officials credibly implicated in violations of international human rights laws.

“More can be done, but I think the priority right now is to get U.N. monitors and others to finally be given access to these people in detention,” said Houry.

“International non-governmental organisations, humanitarian assistance providers, the United Nations, and local organisations should develop, expand, and improve access to medical, psychological, social, and legal assistance including to Syrian male and female victims of sexual abuse inside and outside of the country,” Houry said.

Syria is party to international treaties that ban torture under all circumstances, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

“It can take years, or even decades,” Colville said “but there are an increasing number of ways in which abusers can one day be brought to justice.”