Case closed

The examination of the complaints did not turn up any excesses in the interrogation, and in the wake of this, the official in charge of the OIC [Ombudsman of Interogees' Complaints] in the State Prosecutor's Office decided to close the examination file.

A few days ago, I posted a piece entitled ‘Pity the poor torturer’, which dealt in part with an interview with a retired Shin Beit torturer who went by the pseudonym, Sheriff. Friday’s Ha’aretz had a piece by Gideon Levy entitled ‘The twilight zone’ that detailed the experiences of one of nine Palestinians whose testimony is documented in a new report from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.

The report, “Ticking Bombs”: Testimonies of Torture Victims in Israel, begins with a poem, The Colonel and the Major by Avigdor Feldman. Here is a stanza, probably about that same Sheriff

The Colonel and the Major Johnny and Sheriff
The hand that strikes is sprinkled with brown age spots
An open palm, a slap
A sprung fist to the midriff.
A rolled hand punches the headTwo hands box the ears
Cymbals.

Luwaii Ashqar won’t walk again.

He is a young man whose world fell apart. He entered prison sound of body and mind and emerged a broken man. For four days and four nights nonstop, he says, he was interrogated and subjected to torture of the most brutal kind.

Was there a judgment by the High Court of Justice? There was. It banned precisely the types of torture he underwent: the "banana posture," the "shabah" (body stretching with hands tied to a chair), "invisible" blows and the "frog posture" (being forced to stand for hours on the toes in a crouching position) - all the way to a vicious kick to his chest that bent his body backward while he was tied to a chair with his arms and legs, and which was the probable cause of the partial paralysis of his legs.

After some ‘sports’ to warm him up for ‘military interrogation,

‘…they made me crouch on my toes, not letting me lean on the back of my foot. I was in that position for 40-50 minutes, maybe an hour - that was my estimate - until I felt my soles swelling and they turned blue and there was tremendous pain. After that, stand up, and they tied my hands and pressed as hard as they could on the metal handcuffs until the metal dug into my hand. Here are the signs, you can still see them. Because of the pressure, the key of the handcuffs didn't always work and they would bring huge metal scissors, like they use in construction, and tear off the handcuffs and then bring new ones, to go on. The color of my hands changed to blue, and when they opened [the handcuffs] my hands shook. The interrogator stood on the table and pulled me with a chain of handcuffs. When I fell, they pulled me by the hair…’

And so it goes on, for four days without food or sleep.

‘”You will drink only half a cup of saltwater.” That is what they gave me every time after they bent me and I vomited. Why with salt? I asked. Give me without salt. No, so nothing will happen in your stomach and intestines. I would drink it and vomit…He said to me: Stand on your feet. I felt that my legs were cold, like pins and needles in the legs. I said: I can't. He said: Now you are paralyzed. I said: I guess I am. He said: That is what we promised you and that is what you want…After that, they stopped the military interrogation.’

After another two months of interrogation without further torture, he was sentenced to 26 months’ prison for assisting a wanted person to hide and using a forged document.

Although the Supreme Court has outlawed torture, there is a loophole. Interrogators can claim extenuating circumstances if prosecuted for torture, where they claim they needed to use torture to get information about a ‘ticking bomb’. Clearly the message has not got through yet. Shin Bet’s investigation revealed

His interrogation was carried out according to the rules and directives, with constant review of the interrogation process.

The rehabilitation Luwaii needs is not available in the West Bank and Shin Bet will almost certainly obstruct the permission he needs to get treatment in Israel or overseas.

'You can't prove anything!'

In his Council of Europe report, ‘Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report’, released yesterday, rapporteur Dick Marty begins

What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven: large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice. Others have been held in arbitrary detention, without any precise charges levelled against them and without any judicial oversight – denied the possibility of defending themselves. Still others have simply disappeared for indefinite periods and have been held in secret prisons, including in member states of the Council of Europe, the existence and operations of which have been concealed ever since.

Some individuals were kept in secret detention centres for periods of several years, where they were subjected to degrading treatment and so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (essentially a euphemism for a kind of torture), in the name of gathering information, however unsound, which the United States claims has protected our common security. Elsewhere, others have been transferred thousands of miles into prisons whose locations they may never know, interrogated ceaselessly, physically and psychologically abused, before being released because they were plainly not the people being sought…These are the terrible consequences of what in some quarters is called the “war on terror.”

Marty’s investigations are a response to US president George W Bush’s admission on 6 September 2006

In addition to terrorists held at Guantanamo, a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the U.S., in a separate program operated by the CIA. The detainees recently transferred to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay were previously held and questioned by the CIA. The CIA program focused on a number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives – dangerous men with unparalleled knowledge about terrorist networks and plans for new attacks.

In response to the revelations in Marty’s report, the BBC reports

A CIA spokesman said the report was biased and distorted…"operations have been lawful, effective, closely reviewed and of benefit to many people - including Europeans - by disrupting plots and saving lives".

Or, as Bart Simpson put it, ‘I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, you can't prove anything!’

Pity the poor torturer

In Iraq, when Tony Lagouranis interrogated suspects, fear was his friend, his weapon. He saw it seep, dark and shameful, through the crotch of a man's pants as a dog closed in, barking. He smelled it in prisoners' sweat, a smoky odor, like a pot of lentils burning.

So writes Laura Blumenfeld in today’s Washington Post. But now,

The American interrogator was afraid. Of what and why, he couldn't say. He was riding the L train in Chicago, and his throat was closing.

"I tortured people," said Lagouranis, 37, who was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq from January 2004 until January 2005. "You have to twist your mind up so much to justify doing that."

Lagouranis's tools included stress positions, a staged execution and hypothermia so extreme the detainees' lips turned purple. He has written an account of his experiences in a book, "Fear Up Harsh," which has been read by the Pentagon and will be published this week. Stephen Lewis, an interrogator who was deployed with Lagouranis, confirmed the account, and Staff Sgt. Shawn Campbell, who was Lagouranis's team leader and direct supervisor, said Lagouranis's assertions were "as true as true can get. It's all verifiable." John Sifton, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the group investigated many of Lagouranis's claims about abuses and independently corroborated them.

"At every point, there was part of me resisting, part of me enjoying," Lagouranis said. "Using dogs on someone, there was a tingling throughout my body. If you saw the reaction in the prisoner, it's thrilling."

Not long ago in Iraq, he felt "absolute power," he said, over men kept in cages. Lagouranis had forced a grandfather to kneel all night in the cold…

"I couldn't make sense of the moral system" in Iraq, he said. "I couldn't figure out what was right and wrong. There were no rules. They literally said, 'Be creative.' "

Now Lagouranis's power had dissolved into a weakness so fearful it dampened his upper lip. Sometimes, on the train, he has to get up and pace. But he can't escape.

Being an interrogator, Lagouranis discovered, can be torture. At first, he was eager to try coercive techniques. In training at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., instructors stressed the Geneva Conventions, he recalled, while classmates privately admired Israeli and British methods. "The British were tough," Lagouranis said. "They seemed like real interrogators."

But interrogators for countries that pride themselves on adhering to the rule of law, such as Britain, the United States and Israel, operate in a moral war zone. They are on the front lines in fighting terrorism, crucial for intelligence-gathering. Yet they use methods that conflict with their societies' values.

But veteran torturers

whose wartime experiences stretch back decades, are more practiced at finding moral balance. They use denial, humor, indignation. Even so, these older men grapple with their own fears -- and with a clash of values.

James, 65, was one of Britain's most experienced interrogators in Northern Ireland. Starting in 1971, James said, he worked for the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), interrogating Irish nationalists Gerry Adams, Bobby Sands and others whom the British government suspected of being terrorists. Peter Taylor, a leading historian of the conflict in Northern Ireland, said he believes that "James's account is entirely credible."

"Yes, a bloke would get a cuff in the ear or he might brace against the wall. Yes, they had sleep deprivation," he said. "But we did not torture."

Once, IRA leader Brendan Hughes claimed that James had cocked a gun to his head. James does not deny it. "You fight fire with fire," he said,…"If it's going to save lives, you're entitled to use whatever means you can." How do you fight bad guys and stay good? "You don't. You can't."

According to an experienced Israeli torturer ‘who spoke on condition that he be identified by his code name, Sheriff’

"You have to play by different rules," the Israeli interrogator told an American visitor. "The terrorists want to use your own system to destroy you. What your president is doing is right."

He played good cop, and bad: "One day I was good. Next day I was bad. The prisoner said, 'Yesterday you were good. What happened today?' I told him we were short on manpower."

But when the pressure mounted for intelligence, Sheriff said, the best method was "a very little violence." Enough to scare people but not so much that they'd collapse. Agents tried it on themselves. "Not torture."

Sometimes a prisoner would accuse Sheriff of torture. He tried to shift the moral burden by blaming the prisoner: "I would tell him this: 'I'm sorry. We prefer it the nice way. You leave us no choice.' "

"I've got a clean conscience because I rarely use it."

Sheriff's concerns, however, aren't legal, they're mortal. He carries a Beretta. In cafes, he faces the door. He ran into a former subject -- "a bit scary" -- knocking on the window of his car.

For all his bravado, quips and denials, Sheriff is afraid to have his full name published.

"I would not like to die in pain."

Life’s tough for a retired torturer.

Judge frees torturers

In case there was any doubt about the relation between courts and justice, it would seem that it’s still that case that the issue is not what you did or whether you’re the one who did it, but who you are. No matter how gruesome and appalling the crime.

The BBC reported the morning that

A US court has dismissed a lawsuit against former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld over claims prisoners were tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

even though

The court accepted that the nine men who sued had been tortured - and detailed the torture in its ruling.

In a ruling stretching to nearly 60 pages, the chief judge of the US district court for the District of Columbia said the allegations of torture were "horrifying".

finding

The nine men suffered abuse including being:

* hung upside-down and slapped until they lost consciousness

* stabbed with knives

* subjected to electric shocks

* deprived of sleep by loud noises and bright lights

* grabbed by aggressive dogs

They also were subjected to sexual humiliation.

None was ever charged with a crime.

All were released after detentions of one month to one year. Some were detained multiple times.

But unfortunately,

But Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the five Iraqis and four Afghans did not have US constitutional rights, and also that Mr Rumsfeld was immune from such suits.

Judge Hogan threw out the claims against retired Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of US military forces in Iraq, Col Thomas Pappas and former Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, both former commanders at Abu Ghraib prison.

Be it resolved

The other day, I learned that the American Historical Association had carried a ‘Resolution on United States Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession’, which urges its members

1. To take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession; and
2. To do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.’

It occurred to me, since ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways’, to see what position the American Philosophical Association had taken on the war. I was delighted to discover that they ‘express our serious doubts about the morality, legality and prudence of a war against Iraq led by the United States.’

That was a bit of a surprise, so I thought I’d check what the handmaidens of colonialism were saying. It turned out that they carried quite a long motion last year that

• …condemns the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and urges the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush to:
• Immediately withdraw all U.S. military personnel, intelligence agents, and subcontrators from Iraq ; and
• Cease all U.S. military operations and vacate all U.S. military bases in Iraq ; and
• Make payments for the removal and cleanup of depleted uranium, unexploded cluster bombs, and other residual waste left from munitions; and
• Prosecute all individuals who have committed war crimes against Iraqis; and
• Fund the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force to assume peacekeeping duties in Iraq.

Not only that, there was a separate resolution that ‘unequivocally condemns the use of anthropological knowledge as an element of physical and psychological torture; condemns the use of physical and psychological torture by U.S. Military and Intelligence personnel, subcontractors, and proxies’.

Furthermore, it calls on the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush to:

• Ban all interrogation techniques—including physical and psychological torture—that violate the broad universal humanitarian standard outlined in the U.N. Convention Against Torture; and
• Repudiate any attempts by any U.S. Government official to substitute any definition of torture for that broad universal humanitarian standard; and
• Repeal the 2006 U.S. Military Commissions Act; and
• Terminate the “extraordinary rendition” program and halt the transfer of detainees to countries with a history of prisoner abuse and torture; and
• Close all U.S. overseas prisons and release all prisoners being held without charge in U.S. prisons (including overseas prisons); and
• Release the names of all prisoners being held in U.S. prisons (including all overseas prisons); and
• Pay reparations to all victims who have suffered physical or psychological torture at the hands of U.S. Military and Intelligence personnel, subcontractors, and proxies; and
• Prosecute all individuals—including current and former Bush administration officials—who have authorized or committed war crimes or who have violated laws prohibiting torture.

One of the resolutions’ movers, Roberto J. González, Associate Professor of Anthropology at San Jose State University, writes in an article in the Chronicle of higher education in January (subscription only, but available here)

Kanhong Lin, a graduate student at American University, and I crafted the resolution opposing torture and the use of anthropological knowledge as an element of torture that we brought to the anthropology association. At the group's annual business meeting, nearly 300 anthropologists - the largest number in years - packed the conference auditorium and unanimously adopted the resolution.

The resolution is being submitted to the full membership by mail ballot this spring. It is important that all our members, particularly those who were not at the business meeting, know what led up to the meeting's vote. It is important that scholars in other fields know, as well.

Furthermore, referring to the American Psychological Association’s long August 2006 resolution providing, among other things,

BE IT RESOLVED that regardless of their roles, psychologists shall not knowingly engage in, tolerate, direct, support, advise, or offer training in torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment

Gonzalez notes

At the anthropology conference, there was widespread discussion of whether the earlier resolution by psychologists - who condemned scholarly participation in torture, but not in all interrogations - had gone far enough. These are issues that scholars need to discuss widely.

And so they do. Somewhat alarmingly, I couldn’t find any reference to resolutions along these lines on the Australian Anthropological Society site.

While visiting the AAA site, I just happened to notice among those little items they have about what members are up to, recent accomplishments, ‘Dr Joe Bloggs was recently appointed to the Milton Friedman Chair of Voodoo Economics at the University of South Central Arkansas’ sort of thing, an intriguing piece of information that I’ll take up in another post.