Report Blames Top US Officials for Alleged Torture of Detainees
By Matthew Schofield
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Wednesday 03 May 2006
Berlin - Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
of detainees by U.S. forces is widespread and, in many cases,
sanctioned by top government officials, Amnesty International charged
Wednesday.
The allegations, contained in a 32,000-word report released in
New York and London and posted on the human rights organization's Web
site, are likely to influence a U.N. hearing on U.S. compliance with
international torture agreements that begins Friday in Geneva.
Amnesty International sent a copy of the report to the U.N. Committee
Against Torture, which is holding the hearings.
"Although the U.S. government continues to assert its
condemnation of torture and ill-treatment, these statements
contradict what is happening in practice," said Curt Goering, the
group's senior deputy executive director in the United States. "The
U.S. government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate
torture, it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other
ill-treatment can flourish."
American officials denied the allegations. "There's no more
staunch defender of human rights around the world than the United
States government," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, said "humane
treatment of detainees is and always has been the (Defense
Department) standard." He noted that a dozen reviews of military
detention operations had found no evidence that the top officials
encouraged abuse.
The report notes that American military officials have listed 34
deaths of detainees in U.S. custody as "confirmed or suspected
criminal homicides." It suggested that the true number may be much
higher, saying "there is evidence that delays, cover-ups and
deficiencies in investigations have hampered the collection of
evidence."
"In several cases," it says, "substantial evidence has emerged
that detainees were tortured to death while under interrogation. . .
.. What is even more disturbing is that standard practices as well as
interrogation techniques believed to have fallen within officially
sanctioned parameters, appear to have played a role in the
ill-treatment."
The Amnesty International report was a foretaste of the hearing
in Geneva, scheduled for Friday and Monday.
The United States is dispatching a delegation of 30 officials to
testify at the hearing, which is a follow-up to a review in 2000 that
was critical of America's treatment of inmates in its domestic
prisons.
The hearing is expected to focus on the allegations of
mistreatment of prisoners taken captive in the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq or seized by U.S. agents in other countries and later jailed
at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or at undisclosed
locations.
The United States is one of seven nations the committee is
reviewing during meetings this month. The others are Georgia,
Guatemala, Peru, Qatar, South Korea and Togo.
The United States is one of more than 140 nations that have
approved the convention against torture. The U.S. has written to the
committee saying it's unequivocally opposed to torture.
The Amnesty International report questions that, saying there's
evidence that top American officials had approved abusive
interrogation techniques.
"Most of the torture and ill-treatment stemmed directly from
officially sanctioned procedures and policies, including
interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld," said Javier Zuniga, Amnesty International's Americas
director.
The report criticizes the United States for giving those
convicted of abuse relatively light sentences.
"The heaviest sentence imposed on anyone to date for a
torture-related death while in U.S. custody is five months, the same
sentence that you might receive in the U.S. for stealing a bicycle,"
Goering said. "In this case, the five-month sentence was for
assaulting a 22-year-old taxi driver who was hooded and chained to a
ceiling while being kicked and beaten until he died."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050406A.shtml
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