Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism 12 by IRCT International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims

NEWSLETTER Volume 3, Issue 2

Preventing Torture Framing the Issue

March 2009

within the fight against terrorism Inside this issue:

Will Bangladesh ever be free from torture?

Will Bangladesh ever be

free from torture?

by Rater Zonaki, Asian Human Rights Commission Treating tortured ex-

Torture at the hands of police and security forces is a way of life in Bangladesh. Torture is the most useful tool for the police, military and paramilitary forces to carry out their official duties, from controlling mobs to investigating criminal offences to maintaining law and order. It can be either self-assigned, directed by a court or under instructions from a public official or influential politician. One family’s experience provides an example. On Dec. 30, 2002, at around 12:30 a.m. a group of army officers led by Major Sagir Ahmed, commander of the force in Paikgachha Upazilla, Khulna district, went to the house of journalist F. M. Abdur Razzak to arrest him. Their action fell under a government crackdown on crime code-named Operation Clean Heart, though no lawful reason was given for seeking to arrest Razzak. During the raid Razzak’s house was ransacked. The panicked family did not disclose Razzak’s whereabouts when asked, so the soldiers tied the hands of Razzak’s 70-yearold father Nur Ali Fakir and

16-year-old brother Bodiuzzaman Bodi with rope. When Razzak’s wife Rahima asked the officers the reason for the raid and requested them not to harm her family members, she inadvertently committed a grave mistake. Nur Ali, Bodi and Rahima were beaten with rifle butts, boots and sticks for about two hours. Sagir Ahmed stamped on Rahima’s toes with his boots. After this physical brutality, the soldiers poured three pitchers of cold water on Rahima and forced her to sit in the open in the cold night for two-and-a-half hours in her wet clothes. The cries of Nur Ali, Bodi and Rahima echoed through the neighbourhood, but nobody dared to step forward and save them, fearing they would face similar treatment. Rahima’s sevenyear-old daughter Irani heard their cries and woke up to witness the brutality. She was so traumatized that for months she feared her mother and could not come to her, which compelled the family to send her to her aunt’s house. Nur Ali was detained at a military camp and later charged under the Special

Powers Act of 1974 and sent to the Khulna District Jail under a preventive detention order issued by the administration. After a few months he was granted bail by the High Court, which came at a high cost, with money spent on lawyers and corrupt staff in the various branches of the country’s judiciary. Bodi and Rahima were seriously ill a week after these events, when this writer met them in person. Rahima had lost a few of her toenails and the nail on her right big toe appeared like the open bonnet of a car. The whole family has spent a lot of money to cure the physical problems caused by this undeserved attack, and continues to do so. More than six years after this brutality, Rahima is permanently ill with various physical complications. The condition of Nur Ali has gradually worsened and Bodi is struggling to maintain a normal life. There was no way for these victims to seek justice for their sufferings. There was no question of punishment for the perpetrators. Instead, ironically, the government passed the Joint Drive Indemnity Act,

detainees: a way forward Could Afghanistan be the next Guantánamo? Recommended reading

2003, in the Parliament to ensure impunity for the armed forces and other lawenforcement agencies, despite the heinous crimes they committed during Operation Clean Heart. In addition to the physical and psychological pain of torture, Rahima faced social stigma after this treatment by the armed forces. But worst of all was the trauma to her family. As she asked, “Can any authority compensate a mother for those days when my daughter feared to come to me?” Hundreds of similar questions have been suppressed in the hearts of Bangladeshis for decades and the cries of torture victims still fill the air in the territories of Bangladesh. The use of torture by the police and security forces is so common that one’s own story often supersedes the suffering of others. But the question is, how long will the nation endure torture? (cont.)

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Will Bangladesh ever be free from torture? (cont.) Will this brutal practice ever end? The criminalization of torture has been demanded by everyone who has directly or indirectly been a victim. Now this demand can be fulfilled by the Parliament of Bangladesh. But the biggest question is whether the country's politicians, especially the parliamentarians, want to end the brutal practice of

torture or not. Many Bangladeshis, after their own bitter experiences, believe that politicians want to continue the ongoing practice of torture for their own political and personal benefit. On Feb. 18 the Torture and Custodial Death (Prohibition) Bill, 2009, was registered in the secretariat of the country’s Parliament. Saber Hossain Chowdhury, a member of Parliament of the

ruling party, the Bangladesh Awami League, submitted it as a private member’s bill, which was supposed to be introduced at a session of Parliament on March 5. This bill is an acid test for parliamentarians as well as policy-making politicians. Now it is up to them to prove whether Bangladesh wants to end the culture of torture, which remains beyond the scope of challenge, and

make room for victims to seek legal redress. The parliamentarians can also prove that they have the political will and capacity to listen to the pains of the people. Is there really any commitment to say “good-bye” to torture? Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a Bangladeshi human rights defender now working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. This article originally appeared in UPI Asia.

Treating tortured ex-detainees: a way forward by Sune Segal, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims

President Obama’s firm decision to end and reverse the illegal policies and practices of the previous U.S. administration – under which a yet unknown number of terrorism suspects have been tortured – is a giant step in the right direction. In particular, the President’s signing of executive orders to close down Guantánamo and to oblige U.S. government agents to rely on the U.S. Army Field Manual 2-22.3 for interrogations – i.e. an effective ban on torture – is extremely encouraging. However, crucial concerns remain. Among them are what the new administration will do to address the long-term health and other needs of torture survivors released from Guantánamo and other U.S.-run detention facilities. Those needs will no doubt be extensive. It is well-

known that numerous detainees at places like Abu Ghraib and Bagram, in addition to Guantánamo, have been subjected to torture. In 2008, experts affiliated with the IRCT and Physicians for Human Rights performed forensic examinations of 11 men previously kept at the three aforementioned places. The examinations – the first of their kind – established indisputable medical evidence that all of the men had been tortured. One medical evaluator for the study, a physician with 20 years of experience in providing medical care to victims of torture, said that the torture the men had endured was “second to none”. Some of the torture techniques the 11 were exposed to were explicitly authorised by the previous administration: sleep deprivation, stress positions, sensory overload and waterboarding. Other methods included rape,

electric shocks to the genitals and a case where a detainee was forced to drink urine under threat that his female family members would be raped if he refused. It hardly needs pointing out that the immediate physical and mental pain such treatment causes is beyond the pale. What must be underlined, however, is that it doesn’t stop there. As the IRCT’s two decades of experience working with torture survivors has demonstrated time and again, the after-effects of torture are devastating if left untreated. Chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia and severe depression are just a few of the symptoms survivors commonly suffer. In order to address the wrongs of the previous administration President Obama should work swiftly and effectively to ensure that the United States fulfils its obligation to provide all torture survivors

released from Guantánamo and other U.S. detention facilities with the specialised medical and psychological care they are entitled to. In addition to healing the physical and mental scars left on the survivors, the process of providing such care paves the way for establishing medical evidence that can be used in a court of law to hold perpetrators accountable – a key concern, as impunity is a major obstacle to the eradication of torture. Such evidence is crucial to establish what has really happened to the hundreds of men and boys held in U.S. custody during Mr Bush’s time in office and to bring those responsible for torture to justice – not just

Volume 3, Issue 2 the small fish, but also those at the top of the chain of command. Independent torture rehabilitation centres around the world stand ready to help with the daunting task. Several such centres have already provided medical and psychological treatment services as well as legal and

Page 3 social support to tortured exGuantánamo detainees. As for cases in which prisoners are released to countries where specialised torture rehabilitation centres already exist, the Obama administration should ensure that linkages be made between ex-detainees and torture rehabilitation centres respectively.

In countries where such services are yet unavailable, concerted efforts must be made to establish them through teaching health professionals the highly specialised skills needed to address torture survivors’ physical and mental health needs and to document torture cases according to international standards.

It is a vital part of the drive to get the U.S. back on the track of international law and order that all torture survivors released from U.S. custody be provided with the support and care they are entitled to and to ensure that their cases are medically documented by qualified specialists. Sune Segal is Head of Communications at the IRCT.

Could Afghanistan be the next Guantánamo? by Stacy Sullivan, Human Rights Watch

When President Barack Obama issued an executive order just hours after taking office announcing that he planned to close the detention facilities at Guantánamo within a year, few were happier than those of us who were down at Guantánamo Bay monitoring the irreparably flawed military commissions. As human rights advocates, we had been lobbying for Guantánamo’s closure for years and hoped the decision would be a precursor to ending other “war on terror” abuses. But while Obama has signalled a clear break with some of the most abusive Bush Administration practices – halting the unfair military commissions, renouncing torture and directing the CIA to abide by the same interrogation standards approved by the military – the Obama Administration has made a number of disappointing decisions that quietly signalled support for many of Bush's “war on terror” policies. One of those decisions came late last week, when

administration lawyers upheld the Bush Administration position that persons picked up around the world but transferred to Afghanistan and detained by U.S. forces there are not entitled to habeas corpus rights – that is, the right to challenge the grounds of their detention in U.S. courts. The decision would not be so troubling if the detainees being held there had any other legal recourse, such as a functioning Afghan judicial system. Unfortunately, they do not. More than 600 detainees are being held at Bagram, the U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan, many for several years. Few have seen lawyers or had access to a court. Although the International Committee of the Red Cross visits Bagram, little public information is available about the detainees. However, some are known to have been picked up in other countries – Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Somalia – and then transferred by the United States to Bagram. These men are no different from

the men being held in Guantánamo, but for the fact that they were brought to Afghanistan rather than Cuba. They should be granted habeas rights. The United States cannot use Afghanistan as another Guantánamo in which to hold people from other lands, unbound by any law. The detainees captured in Afghanistan may not be entitled to habeas rights in the United States, but they still cannot be held indefinitely without an impartial process to review the grounds of their detention. International law provides people detained in civil wars the right to a process to challenge the ground of their detention, ideally before local courts. The United States, however, has not provided any such process. The detainees in its custody – some of whom may have been picked up by mistake – have no way to contest the allegations against them, and often don’t even know what the allegations are. The dangers of holding terrorism suspects without review have been illustrated all too vividly by Guan-

tánamo, where many of the men turned out to be innocent, the victims of having been turned over to U.S. forces in exchange for bounty. Holding men who had done nothing wrong did not make the United States any safer. To the contrary, it may well have provided ammunition to those who would do harm to the United States. And it also undermined the fundamental right not to be deprived of one’s liberty without legal basis. As the Obama Administration prepares to send more troops into Afghanistan in the hope of defeating the resurgent Taliban, it needs to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. It can only do that by upholding the values for which it claims to be fighting. A good place to start would be ensuring that those in U.S. detention are granted lawyers and a meaningful opportunity to challenge the grounds of their arrest. Stacy Sullivan is Counterterrorism Advisor at Human Rights Watch. This article was first published online in New America Media on 2 March 2009.

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International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) Borgergade 13 · P.O. Box 9049

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The “Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism” newsletter is published bimonthly as part of a joint FIDH-IRCT project aimed at reinstating respect for the prohibition against torture in counterterrorism strategies both globally and in ten target countries: Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Mauritania, the Philippines, Russia and Syria. The newsletter editors welcome submissions of content for future issues, including articles (send query first), comments, letters to the editor (up to 250 words) and suggestions for recommended reading. To submit content or make enquiries, email Brandy Bauer, IRCT Senior Communications Officer, at tortureandterrorNL@irct.org

www.fidh.org

For more information about the “Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism” project, please visit the IRCT web site (www.irct.org) or contact: Sune Segal, Head of Communications, IRCT, +45 20 34 69 14, sse@irct.org or Isabelle Brachet, Director of Operations, FIDH, +33 1 43 55 25 18, ibrachet@fidh.org

This newsletter is being published with funding from the European Commission