Gurdial

T O R T U R E - THE UNBROKEN CHAIN

BY PROF GURDIAL SINGH NIJAR

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A. THE BACKGROUND The US Senate’s Select Intelligence Committee’s 2014 Torture Report speaks in its executive summary of 500 pages1 of the blatant acts of torture in Iraq committed by occupying US-British forces. Coming from the prime country of origin of these acts, which has long denied committing them, the torture report is news. But it is nothing new. History is replete with unspeakable horrors committed on local populations by these countries : the decimation of Native Americans; the napalming of Vietnamese children’s bodies to pulp; the mass slaughter of Kenyans in the 1950s. Torture, flogging, abuse of women and children, tiger cages, concentration camps, ‘special prisons’ and many unspeakable horrors were commonplace.

Indeed, “torture” is the common element that runs through these invasions. It draws together most colonial occupations, no matter where or when. That is the essence of imperialism. As Shakespeare said “History is prologue”. And It is laced with a strong dose of racism.

Complicity of the mainstream media For the mainstream media none of this was news worth reporting. It would not print the graphic pictures of the atrocities in Vietnam – that spoke a thousand words. Its facile rationalization: its readers would not accept them or it would be construed as ‘sensationalism’; or the ‘chosen’ journalists world forfeit the right to be embedded in the invading forces and denied a frontline view of the action. Or else the news was presented in language that presented the perpetrators as civilising agents of change blocked by an obdurate local uncivilised population. It was a naked display of racism.

The independent iconic journalist John Pilger says it best: The “Mau Mau Teror” was reported and perceived one way: as “demonic” black against white. The racist message was clear, but “our racism” was never mentioned. When they arrived in Vietnam, the Americans regarded the Vietnamese as human lice. They called them “gooks” and dinks” and “slopes” and they killed them in industrial quantities, just as they had slaughtered the Native Americans; indeed, Vietnam was known as “Indian country”.

In Iraq, nothing has changed. Inboasting openly about killing “rats in their nest,” US marine snipers, who in Falluja shot dead women, children and the elderly, just as German snipers shot dead Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, were reflecting the racism of their leaders. Paul

W Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary who is said to be the architect of the invasion of Iraq, has spoken of “snakes” and “draining the swamps” in the “uncivilized parts of the world”.

Language cover Yet another contrivance: couch the episodes in language invoking sympathy for the torturers. Newsweek referred to the brazen shooting of women and their babies in the villafe of My Lai as an unfortunate ‘American tragedy’.

But there is a difference today. The truth of the atrocious Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and its torture is news. And can hardly be suppressed. Indeed much of what is revealed was long out in the open through leaked Pentagon documents which revealed continuing widespread torture in Iraq – ‘systematic’ according to Amnesty International; and the outspoken stories of the soldiers involved. Then there has been the global outcry, the voices of people from all over the world – such as the 2012 Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal guilty verdict for the crime of torture against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their coterie of legal advisers which received worldwide coverage in the social media.

Sterilizing the acts In a sense the Senate Report seeks to sterlise the acts of torture somewhat. Robert Fiske of the Independent notes how linguistic acrobatics conceals the whole filthy crude barbaric acts in a three-letter acronym “EIT” for ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’; and the CIA director, under pressure, admitted only to some ‘techniques’ being abhorrent, leaving intact the rest as justifiable EIT.

Open transparent system?

That the acts were hidden and denied for so long speaks not of an open transparent system in contrast to that in the Soviet Union – as the Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria would have us believe – but a hallmark of something gone terribly wrong where criminal acts in clear violation of domestic and international law can proceed with impunity. The report tries to restore rather belatedly a semblance of credibility in the name of ‘democratic accountability’.

Yet a report that Cheney the main architect of the torture ‘programmes’ calls “full of crap” surely deserves our attention. Never mind that it is a decade late in coming; and stops short of pointing to the ultimate decision makers. At least it was published. And the crimes placed in the public domain. Unlike the inrealised promise of the accomplice British Government made by its minister:

1 The full report comprises close to 7,000 pages. It is the most comprehensive account of the torture program to date. It took more than three years to complete, and is based on the review of millions of CIA and other records, although the CIA refused to let Senate investigators interview its employees. [https://www.aclu.org/cases/senate-torture-report-and-cia-reply-foai?redirect=national-security/senate-torture-report-and-cia-reply-foia].

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“The Government fully intends to hold an independent, judge-led inquiry, once all police investigations have concluded, to establishe the full facts and draw a line under these issues.”

B. THE REPORT The report is a sordid tale of lies, deceit, chicanery, corruption, willful illegality and unbounded brutality and cruelty for which surely the highest echelons of authority can hardly feign ignorance. Indeed a clear case of the commission of war crimes. After all those victims have paid (and some are still paying) the price, there now emerges evidence of : 1 The CIA’s brazen lies. Its information was inaccurate, misleading or even fabricated. As regards its main point that it secured valuable information through torture which helped thwart terrorist action and kept US lives and facilities and the world safe : The Committee reviewed the CIA’s operational cables and records and concluded that the information extracted through torture “played no role…”. And that the 14 torture modes “did not produce additional intelligence material and were on all counts useless”. a. A key detainee – Khalid Shaykh Muhammad’s – torture information saved several hundred possibly thousands of lives. Report: “almost entirely inaccurate”. b. Helped thwart the UK Urban targets plot with intelligence information from the torture. Report: untrue – the information was “from foreign intelligence sources or was accidentally obtained”. c. Got “torture information” and thwarted the Heathrow Airport plot and the arrest of four persons. Report: not true – none of them were captured as a result of information obtained during of after the torture.

2 President Bush lied when he said in a 2006 speech that the “Karachi plots were ‘thwarted’, ‘disrupted’ or ‘uncovered’ as a result of the enhanced interrogation techniques”. CIA personnel in Karachi responded that “the information acquired from the CIA detainees and disseminated was already known to the CIA and US Consulate officials.”

3 The CIA bribed foreign governments to accept secret jails.

4 The CIA’s manipulation and deceit. Report : told foreign governments “not to let US ambassadors know” about the secret jails (‘balck holes’) the CIA was maintaining in various countries in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.

5 Complicity of doctors. They abandoned their professional and ethical codes when witnessing interrogation. Report: gives several examples including evidence that detainee Abu Zubaydah was interrogated without concern for preventing :Zubaydah’s wound from becoming infected”.

6 Complicity of Lawyers in the Office of the Legal Council. Report : accepted CIA assurances that they were acting in accordance with legal national and international agreements.2 7 Complicity of journalists : the media were given false information for release to deceive the public. Journalists were known to convey this false information sometimes fully aware of its falsity.

8 Blatant illegality. The CIA knew of their illegality as they destroyed incriminating interview video tapes in 2005.

9 Sheer arrogance. The CIA flatly refused to respond to the Senate Committee’ queries. Their conduct was described as “unprecedented and simply unacceptable, and appaling”.

10 Employed dubiously qualified psychologists to justify their water boarding torture 11 Acted with impunity. There were several deaths of detainees which did result I any legal proceedings. In short the acts which resulted in death went unpunished.

12 Acts of unprecedented cruelty. Detainees were shown pictures of family members in detention cells; and/or told that their family members would be arrested too. [In the KLWCT there was evidence adduced of detainees hearing the cry of females and told that these were the voices of their wife/daughter being tortured; or shots fired in nearby cells and the detainee informed that his family members was, or was going to be shot.]

The ICRC report acknowledged the commission of acts of torture, cruel treatment including inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.

13 Poorly trained persons with known psychological problems were left to mete out these gruesome acts of torture.

14 Sheer hypocrisy. President Bush was more interested in maintaining appearances rather than stopping the torture. He did not want pictures of detainees shackled to walls to appear.

Surely the supreme act of hypocrist was that the statement President Bush made at the UN International

2 In the KL War Crimes Tribunal case of Chief Prosecutor of the KL War Crimes Commission v George Walker Bush et al Case No 2-CP-2011 the Tribunal held that the lawyers and other advisers were guilty of promoting torture by giving advice justifying the EITs.

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violated. Neither was there any recommendation nor any follow up action as to the accountability or prosecution of the offenders. Nor, more importantly, any finding as to how high up he chain of command responsibility extends. The Nuremberg decision makes clear that the person or persons who are aware or ought to be aware of the criminal acts and fail to act are equally if not more responsible that the low level officials issuing the command or executing the acts.

President Obama described the executive summary as reinforcing “my long held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.”3 Yet executive branch agencies are fighting the release of the full torture report.

Nor has Obama’s administration even whispered plans of an investigation or prosecution of the offenders.

In that sense many see the Senate Report as little more than a grudging responses to appease the critics of the patently hideous acts committed willfully in clear violation of both US constitutional and military law as well as international law. And an attempt to whitewash the crimes so as to recapture the soiled moral high ground of this modern day empire because, as Obama admitted “these techniques did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and marde it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners.”

C. THE WAY FORWARD

Day in support of Victims of Torture on 26 June 2003: “The US is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the US and the countries of law-abiding nations in promoting, investigating, and to prosecute all acts of torture in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment.”

15 No assessment. Finally a significant disquieting omission of the Report: the Senate Committee acknowledged the ICRC’s indictment of the acts as torture, cruelty encompassing inhumane and degrading treatment. This is a clear violation of the Torture Convention and several other international humanitarian law agreements. In short clear evidence of war crimes.

As well as a flagrant violation of the US constitution and the domestics military codes.

The Report refers to the Torture Convention yet fails to assess which provisions of the Torture Convention of international law (or for that matter US law) were

The quest for the restoration of the rule of law in the international criminal justice system makes it imperative that there be a formal investigation leading up to the prosecution of all the offenders. Thus far powerrelations haul mainly African leaders to the international criminal court. The perpetrators of far worse war crimes – an illegal was, violent overthrow of lawfully elected regimes and the commission of grave crimes of torture – are rewarded with high paying lecture circuits and ffeted as celebrities.

Ironically, Tony Blair, reportedly, was paid a million or so dollars from a ‘lecture’ in KL by highly placed local personages’/institutions shortly after he was convicted of a war crime in this very city. This shows the level of moral depravity and compromise the quest for fame and fortune churns up from among the corporate dregs in our society.

This surely must be brought to an end – by an aware and courageous global citizenry – united in its demand that the perpetrators of these hideous acts be prosecuted for war crimes. Anything less will make us morally complicit and align us with the worst war criminals this modern century has ever produced.

3 https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/09/statement-president-report-senate-select-committee-intelligence.

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