SO MUCH FOR LAST YEAR'S "PLEDGE"......
U.S. Pledges to Avoid Torture
Pledge on Terror Suspects Comes Amid Probes of Two Deaths
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 27, 2003; Page A11
washingtonpost.com
The Bush administration pledged yesterday for the first time that the United States will not torture terrorism suspects or treat them cruelly in an attempt to extract information, a move that comes as the deaths of two Afghan prisoners in U.S. custody are being investigated as homicides.
"All interrogations, wherever they may occur," must be conducted without the use of cruel and inhuman tactics, the Pentagon's senior lawyer wrote after members of Congress and human rights groups pressed the White House to renounce abusive tactics reported by U.S. government officials.
On a day when President Bush asserted that his administration intends to lead by example in a global fight against torture, Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II said that anyone found to have broken the law in the Afghanistan deaths will be prosecuted.
Human rights organizations welcomed the announcement, which went further than the Bush administration had gone before. An earlier letter from Haynes, for example, had mentioned the prohibition against torture without citing the broader category of mistreatment that is against the law in the United States.
While neither Bush nor Haynes cited specific tactics, human rights activists said the administration appeared to bar such techniques as depriving prisoners of sleep, withholding medicine and forcing them to stand at length in painful positions. U.S. authorities have used each technique against captives held abroad in the war on terrorism, according to current and former national security officials interviewed last year by The Washington Post.
"The president and Defense Department have today unequivocally rejected the use of any techniques to interrogate suspects that would constitute 'cruel' treatment prohibited by the U.S. Constitution," a group of human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Freedom House and the Center of Victims of Torture, said in a joint statement. They called on the administration to allow independent monitors to "assure the world that this pledge is being fully redeemed in practice."
U.S. treatment of terror suspects and potential witnesses has been particularly obscure. The Bush administration typically prevents prisoners from contacting attorneys or asserting rights to fair treatment. Indeed, U.S. authorities have refused to identify the large majority of detainees or release any information about them, arguing that such data could help terrorists.
In the first 15 months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, nearly 3,000 suspected al Qaeda members and supporters were detained worldwide, according to U.S. officials.
National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday that prisoners abroad are being treated humanely, but reports have surfaced in the news media about cruel treatment of detainees in American-run detention centers, where the rules of due process are not always applied. In interviews with The Post last year, members of the U.S. government's national security apparatus defended the use of violence as just and necessary.
"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job. I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this," said an official who supervised the capture of accused terrorists. Officials said painkillers were used selectively to win cooperation of Abu Zubaida, a high-ranking al Qaeda member shot in the groin during his arrest.
U.S. officials said they sometimes transfer uncooperative suspects to foreign countries where security services are known for brutality. In some of countries where "extraordinary renditions" take place, security services use mind-altering drugs such as sodium pentathol to get detainees to answer questions relayed by U.S. government personnel.
The secret CIA interrogation center at Bagram air base north of Kabul, the Afghan capital, has been the site of mistreatment including "stress and duress" techniques in which prisoners are deprived of sleep or kept in awkward positions until they feel pain, sources told The Post.
Two Afghan detainees died in Bagram in December. Military pathologists said one died of a heart attack and the other of a blood clot in the lung, but both showed signs of blunt force trauma. Their deaths were classified as homicides in March. A U.S. Army criminal investigation is underway.
The death of an Afghan man in U.S. custody over the weekend is also under investigation, U.S. military officials in Kabul said Monday. The man died Saturday afternoon at a holding facility near Asadabad in the eastern province of Konar.
Human rights organizations and members of Congress invoked the global convention on torture to argue that the techniques cited by U.S. officials did not comport with U.S. law or international commitments. In a June 2 letter to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) raised a number of legal issues about the treatment of detainees arrested during the post-Sept. 11 crackdown on terrorism.
Haynes replied in a letter released yesterday that the U.S. promise of good behavior goes beyond a prohibition on torture to encompass "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Avoiding comment on specific cases and practices as "inappropriate," Haynes said the definition refers to behavior considered unconstitutional in the United States.
"It's a very, very welcome statement," Human Rights Watch executive Tom Malinowski said of Haynes's letter. "What that means is that whether you call it 'stress and duress' or 'torture lite,' the administration is saying that it's wrong and prohibited, that the United States isn't doing it and that no one else should do it."
Malinowski said officials from some countries whose treatment of prisoners is considered objectionable have countered that the U.S. government itself uses similar techniques.
Bush, in honoring U.N. Torture Victims Recognition Day yesterday, said, "The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment."
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