Guantánamo Detainee Told Geneva
Rights Irrelevant
VIKRAM DODD & STEPHEN BATES /
The Guardian (UK) 6mar2006
[More
on Guantánamo
| Torture]
A senior US military officer at Guantánamo Bay told a detainee that he did
not care about international law and that the Geneva conventions did not apply
to proceedings at the military prison, according to thousands of Pentagon
documents released over the weekend by the US government after a court action by
the Associated Press news agency.
|
Rhuhel says ‘the
ERF team would come into the cell, place us face down on the ground then
putting our arms behind our backs and our legs bending backwards they
would shackle us and hold us down restrained in that position whilst
somebody from the medical corps pulled up my sleeve and injected me in the
arm. They left the chains on me and then left. The injection seemed to
have the effect of making me feel very drowsy. I was left like that for a
few hours with my legs and arms shackled behind me. If I tried to move my
legs to get in a more comfortable position it would hurt. Eventually the
ERF team came back and simply removed the shackles. I have no idea why
they were giving us these injections. It happened perhaps a dozen times
altogether and I believe it still goes on at the camp. You are not allowed
to refuse it and you don’t know what it is for’. Asif and Shafiq
describe similar experiences but they were not left shackled. — Detention
in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay Statement of Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal
and Rhuhel Ahmed p.72 (1.58MB
PDF)
Also see letter
from Moazzam Begg (624 KB PDF) Note:
If you're stuck in a position whereby you are ordered to partake in
this type of or other types of torture and mistreatment of people, you
might seek information and assistance from the Central
Committee for Conscientious Objectors. |
The outburst by the air force colonel came during a hearing to determine the
status of Feroz Abbasi, a Briton held for more than two years without charge or
trial, and who was released last year. The officer was presiding over a tribunal
convened to decide whether detainees were enemy combatants, as alleged by the
Bush administration. Critics dismissed the hearings, called combatant status
review tribunals, as kangaroo courts.
During the hearing Mr Abbasi, originally from Croydon, south London, said he
should be accorded prisoner of war status, and demanded his rights under
international law and the Geneva conventions. The tribunal president, not named
in the documents, says: "Once again, international law does not matter
here. Geneva conventions do not matter here. What matters here ... [is] your
actions while your were in Afghanistan." The clash continues, with Mr
Abbasi trying to raise the issue of his rights under international law. He and
the tribunal president are recorded speaking over each other, until the latter
says: "Mr Abbasi, your conduct is unacceptable ... I don't care about
international law. I don't want to hear the words international law again. We
are not concerned with international law. I am going to give give you one last
opportunity..." Mr Abbasi was later removed and his case considered behind
closed doors.
The US government claims the Muslim faith of detainees has been respected at
all times, but Mr Abbasi claimed in written evidence that a guard tried to feed
him pork. He also claimed two guards had sex in front of him, that a male guard
groped the breasts of a female colleague in front of him, and that he was
tricked into praying towards America rather than towards Mecca. He also says he
was drugged with a mind-altering chemical. The US military says it captured him
on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and also claims he was recruited to fight for
al-Qaida after attending the Finsbury Park mosque in north London where Abu
Hamza preached. Mr Hamza is serving a seven-year sentence in Britain after being
convicted of inciting murder and religious hatred.
The released documents are transcripts of tribunals and reviews conducted at
Guantánamo, Cuba. In the tribunals the detainees were presumed from the outset
to be enemy combatants by the US military officers hearing their cases, had
limited rights to call witnesses, had no lawyer, and were tried on the basis of
hearsay evidence.
The documents show detainees for the most part denying they were terrorists
and claiming they were wrongly held without charge or trial; they also provide
more names and detail regarding the total of detainees held by the US. One man
was found with a gun in Afghanistan, while others range from peasant farmers to
wealthy businessmen. Bisher al-Rawi, a British resident originally from Iraq,
was held for association with the preacher Abu Qatada, accused of providing
inspiration to those responsible for the September 11 2001 attacks on the US. He
claimed to have being passing information to MI5, but was told by the tribunal
president that the British government neither confirmed nor denied his story.
Some 490 detainees remain at Guantánamo. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, yesterday added his voice to criticism of Guantánamo Bay. In an
interview with Sir David Frost for the BBC, the archbishop warned: "Any
message given that any state can just override some of the basic habeas
corpus-type provisions is going to be very welcome to tyrants elsewhere in the
world, now and in the future."
Extracts: Six prisoners' stories
Here are six of the stories told in more than 5,000 pages of unedited
transcripts from 'enemy combatant' hearings, which have just been released by
the Pentagon
Emad Abdalla, Student, from Yemen:
Mr Abdalla, 25, was captured at a university dorm in Faisalabad, where he was
studying the Qur'an. He is accused of travelling to Afghanistan to participate
in jihad. He spent 19 days in Afghanistan before being taken to Guantánamo Bay.
Abdul Razak, Minister of commerce, Taliban government, Afghanistan:
Abdul Razak worked as the minister of commerce in the Taliban government. He
said the Taliban had given him a civilian job because he had no military
training. After the Taliban's fall, he said he took up farming, but months later
Afghan authorities arrested him. At the time he had a Kalashnikov rifle, which
his lawyer said he was carrying for protection. Razak said he did not oppose
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.
Fouad al-Rabia, Engineer, from Kuwait:
Fouad al-Rabia, 45, said he worked as an engineer for Kuwaiti Airways and is
a part-owner of a health club. He acknowledged he saw Osama bin Laden four times
while visiting Afghanistan in 2001 but denied accusations of providing money to
al-Qaida. Rabia told the tribunal he returned to Afghanistan that October to
gather evidence that would persuade people to support a relief effort there, but
was handed over to the Northern Alliance.
Kadir Khandan, Pharmacist, from Khowst, Afghanistan:
Kadir Khandan was accused of links to the Taliban and running a safe house
for an explosive manufacturing cell in Khowst. Khandan told the tribunal he
worked for the Karzai government and opposed the Taliban and that he was a
pharmacist who had studied in Pakistan. He said explosives destroyed people and
were "truly against my ideology". Khandan said he was tortured by US
soldiers in Afghanistan. Later he said: "Here in Cuba, I have been treated
nice. Overall it is fine here."
Karam Khamis Sayd Khamsan, Soldier, from Yemen:
Karam Khamis Sayd Khamsan denied accusations of links to the Taliban and
al-Qaida. He said a Yemeni drug dealer arranged to send him to Pakistan to act
as human collateral in a drug deal. "He offered me some money because he
knows ... I needed the money." He was detained in Pakistan.
Zain ul-Abedin, Taxi driver, from Tajikistan:
Zain ul-Abedin (initially listed as Jumma Jan), was captured in
Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, by coalition forces in 2003. He told the tribunal
that US forces had arrested the wrong man. He is accused of being a Taliban and
Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin leader, and of carrying out a mission in Tajikistan with
al-Qaida.
Associated Press
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1724495,00.html
15mar2006
