Torturing Terrorists
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Opinion Editorial by Anne Frances Durfee, Princeton University
(The views expressed in our submissions are independent and do not necessarily reflect those of the Arcadia Foundation)
Soon after Somalian pirates release their occasional Western hostage unharmed, Somalia drifts back to the unknown sea of hidden world politics. American media quickly reverts its attention to the hunt for Islamic terrorists and the expediency for human justice.
Quietly, the American government has captured and incarcerated Islamic terrorist suspects and their associates in secretly contracted prisons with the help of Ethiopia. Through contracting local Ethiopian warlords, the government is able to keep suspects in these prisons where they are interrogated by both U.S. and foreign officials. Many times, prisoners await transfer to the Guantanamo Bay detainment facility.Since America’s War on Terror began in 2001, the treatment of suspected terrorists detainees has been in constant debate. In his 2004 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush acknowledged that some Americans view terrorism more as a crime that should be handled with law enforcement andindictments. But President Bush responded, “After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States, and war is what they got.” In these secret prisons, captives undergo interrogation, often involving torture and unorthodox treatment.
Because these prisons are completely outside American legal jurisdiction and territory, prisoners are thrown into jail without consultation of an attorney or a fair trial, let alone knowledge of where they are and why. Clara Gutteridge, aninvestigator for Reprieve, a British organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, says that the victims of covert imprisonment “have the right to the truth and none of them have gotten close to that.”
In 2006, Christian-dominated Ethiopia, terrified by a growing Islamist movement in Somalia, moved their Army to Mogadishu, surrounding the home of Islamic President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and the borders of Somalia. Thousands of Somalians fled to Kenya, where at the Somalian-Kenyan border, some disappeared or were put into jail.
According to human rights reports, 85 people, including 11 children, were put on planes and sent into the sky by Ethiopian militants.
The Ethiopian government acknowledged that 41 suspected international terrorists were detained. When they were released, many prisoners claimed they were assaulted by United States officials.
The United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights, enacted in 1948, declares that every human has the equal and inalienable right to a fair trial, to not undergo torture, and to not be subject to arbitrary arrest, among an additional 37 rights. It is true that the host countries can interrogate in practices that the United States might not, such as with sometimes horrific torture. Though, as one
of the five permanent members of the United Nations, America could have an even greater duty to maintain the respect of the U.N. Declaration of Universal Human Rights, even through contracted foreign prisons or joint prisons.
President Bush disclosed the fact there are secret operation prisons in 2006, resulting in the detainment of 14 key terrorist suspects. Acknowledging that these prisoners undergo alternative set of procedures, he said, “The US does not torture. I have not authorized it and I will not.”
In 2007, an European Union report stated that the US had secret detention centers in Poland and Romania. Gutteridge said that Reprieve knows of just less than one hundred people in foreign prisons. “Sometimes, [the prisoners] don’t know where they’ve been,” she said. She gave an example of five different prisoners all describing the same unknown place. Reprieve assumes these five prisoners have been to the same prison, she added. Where they were held, neither Reprieve nor the prisoners know.
In a speech in Berlin last year, President Barack Obama announced, “I know my country has not perfected itself. At times,we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to its best intentions.”
In January 2009, President Obama issued an executive order to close the extraordinary renditions. It was famously announced in April that the aforementioned prisons were shut down and that the United States no longer will allow foreign contractors to interrogate captives. CIA Director Panetta stressed that the United States government does not use controversial torture techniques such as waterboarding.
Not knowing where the secret prisons were in the first place will make it especially hard to ensure these establishments have, in fact, been decommissioned.