De Verenigde Staten een rechtsstaat?

[Bart Meerdink]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Linkje, (nytimes.com, June 17, 2003) toch maar even overgenomen.

Zonder aanklacht maanden onder mensonwaardige (zelfs dier-onwaardige)
omstandigheden gevangen houden, en dan ook nog de namen geheim mogen
houden van de rechtbank (**).

Niet-Amerikanen die de pech hebben in handen te vallen van de
'terrorisme-onderzoekers' daar, hebben nauwelijks nog rechten, en
niemand kan het voor hen opnemen, vanwege dat hun identiteit
'staatsgeheim' is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/international/asia/17PRIS.html

Inmates Released from Guantánamo Tell Tales of Despair
By CARLOTTA GALL with NEIL A. LEWIS

ABUL, Afghanistan, June 16 — Afghans and Pakistanis who were detained
for many months by the American military at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba
before being released without charges are describing the conditions as
so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves.

According to accounts in the last three months from some of the 32
Afghans and three Pakistanis in the weeks since their release, it was
above all the uncertainty of their fate, combined with confinement in
very small cells, sometimes only with Arabic speakers, that caused
inmates to attempt suicide. One Pakistani interviewed this month said he
tried to kill himself four times in 18 months.

An Afghan prisoner who spent 14 months at the camp, at the American
naval base at Guantánamo, described in April what he called the
uncertainty and fear. "Some were saying this is a prison for 150 years,"
said Suleiman Shah, 30, a former Taliban fighter from Kandahar Province
in southern Afghanistan.

None of those interviewed complained of physical mistreatment. But the
men said that for the first few months, they were kept in small
wire-mesh cells, about 6 1/2 feet by 8 feet , in blocks of 10 or 20. The
cells were covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides to the elements.

"We slept, ate, prayed and went to the toilet in that small space," Mr.
Shah said. Each man had two blankets and a prayer mat and slept and ate
on the ground, he said.

The prisoners were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower.
"After four and a half months we complained and people stopped eating,
so they said we could shower for five minutes and exercise once a week,"
Mr. Shah said. After that, he said, prisoners got to exercise for 10
minutes a week, walking around the inside of a cage 30 feet long.

In interviews at their homes, weeks after being released, he and the
freed Pakistani detainee talked of what they said was the overwhelming
feeling of injustice among the approximately 680 men detained
indefinitely at Guantánamo Bay.

"I was trying to kill myself," said Shah Muhammad, 20, a Pakistani who
was captured in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, handed over to
American soldiers and flown to Guantánamo in January 2002. "I tried four
times, because I was disgusted with my life.

"It is against Islam to commit suicide," he continued, "but it was very
difficult to live there. A lot of people did it. They treated me as
guilty, but I was innocent."

In the 18 months since the detention camp opened, there have been 28
suicide attempts by 18 individuals, with most of those attempts made
this year, Capt. Warren Neary, a spokesman at the detention camp, said
today. None of the prisoners have killed themselves, but one man has
suffered severe brain damage, according to his lawyer.

The prisoners come from more than 40 countries, and include more than 50
Pakistanis, about 150 Saudis and three teenagers under 16, a majority of
them captured in Afghanistan, said Dr. Najeef bin Mohamad Ahmed
al-Nauimi, a former justice minister in Qatar, who is representing
nearly 100 of the detainees.

Dr. Nauimi represents many of the Saudis, and American lawyers represent
about 14 prisoners from Kuwait. There are also 83 Yemenis, he said, and
a sprinkling of others, including Canadians, Britons, Algerians and
Australians, and one Swede.

Since January 2002, at least 32 Afghan prisoners and three Pakistanis
have been released from Guantánamo Bay. Five Saudis were recently handed
over to the Saudi authorities. Yasser Esam Hamdi, an American-born
Saudi, was moved from the camp to a military brig in Norfolk, Va., in
April 2002. Captain Neary said 41 people had been released in all, but
he could not give a more exact description.

At the same time, the military is preparing to place about 10 of the
prisoners before a military tribunal soon, officials said this month.

Mr. Muhammad, who spent 18 months in Cuba before his release, said that
"when they first took us there they would not let us talk, or stand or
walk around the cell.

"At the beginning it was very hard to bear," he added. "There was no
call to prayer, and there was no shade. In the afternoon the sun came in
from the side."

(Page 2 of 2)

Under the current routine, a majority of the prisoners remain in their
cells but for two 15-minute periods a week, in which they walk around
the cage and take a shower. In addition, the call to prayer is played
over the prison's loudspeakers five times a day, according to Capt.
Youseff Yee, the Muslim chaplain who oversees the religious needs of the
Guantánamo prisoners.

Conditions improved after the first few months, and prisoners were moved
to newly built cells with running water and a bed, Mr. Shah said.
Interrogation was sporadic and it varied in length and intensity.
Sometimes they were questioned after 10 days, or 20 days, and then not
for several months, prisoners said.

But it was the uncertainty and fear that they would be there forever
that drove many of them to despair, prisoners said.

"All of the people were worried about how long we would be there for,"
Mr. Shah said. "People were becoming mad because they were saying: `When
will they release us? They should take us to the high court.' Many
stopped eating."

One Taliban fighter from the southern province of Helmand, who only uses
one name, Rustam, said in May that he was driven to trying to hang
himself because he was in a block of Arabs and Uzbeks he described as
"crazy."

"There were some very strange people, they were hitting their heads on
the wall, insulting the soldiers, and that is why I hated it," said
Rustam, who is 22, in an interview in an Afghan prison in Kabul. "I
think they were really crazy people, and that's why I kept asking to be
taken out for questioning."

When he tried to hang himself, Rustam said, the guards found him
quickly. "They untied me and said `Don't do this,' " he said. "They gave
me medicine, but it was no good. They put me under supervision and moved
me to another place."

Mr. Muhammad, one of three Pakistani prisoners to be released at the end
of April, said he first tried to hang himself because for months on end
he was surrounded by Arabs and could not speak their language.

"It was difficult not talking to anyone for so long," he said. "It was
because of the jail. They put me in a block full of Arabs, they were
only letting us out for a very short time, and it was very difficult. I
could feel myself going down."

After 11 months in the prison camp, he tied his bedsheet to a ceiling
wire and hanged himself from it at 4 o'clock one afternoon. "I don't
know what happened," he said. "They took me to the hospital. I was
unconscious for two days."

Only after that suicide attempt, Mr. Muhammad said, did his American
keepers tell him that he was only being held for questioning, and that
one day he would go home. Tranquilizers were prescribed, he said, but he
stopped taking the tablets after a while and attempted suicide again.

Then the doctors gave Mr. Muhammad a powerful injection that he said
left him unable to control his head or his mouth or eat properly for
weeks. Although he refused to have the injection, the military medical
personnel gave it to him by force, he said. He made two further attempts
to kill himself that he said were more protest actions at the conditions.

"We needed more blankets, but they would not listen," he said. "And I
kept asking them to take me to the Afghan and Pakistani side. All the
time I was with Arabs. I did not speak my own language for months." Mr.
Muhammad also threatened to kill himself again if he was given another
injection. He remained on tablets until his release, he said.

American officials have confirmed that one prisoner who tried to commit
suicide remains in the prison hospital with severe brain damage. Dr.
Nauimi said the prisoner was Mish al-Hahrbi, a Saudi schoolteacher. He
said that the teacher became desperate over not knowing what his future
held and that he tried to hang himself. The teacher was resuscitated but
is unlikely to recover from a severe hemorrhage, the lawyer said.

Back home with time to ponder their ordeal, the former prisoners now
want to demand compensation.

"The Americans said if anyone is innocent, they will get compensation,"
Mr. Muhammad said. "They held me for 18 months, and so they should give
me compensation. They told me I was innocent, but they did not apologize."

Human rights organizations have raised concerns about the conditions at
Guantánamo Bay and the unclear legal status of the detainees. The
American military has refused to consider them prisoners of war, even
though a majority were captured on the battlefield, and does not allow
them access to lawyers. No charges have yet been brought against any of
the detainees, some of whom have been there for 18 months.

Concerned about their prolonged detention without trial or clear legal
status, the head of the International Red Cross, which visits the
detainees, urged the Bush administration last month to start legal
proceedings for the hundreds of detainees and to institute a number of
changes in conditions at the camp.

Cmdr. Brian Grady, the staff psychiatrist at the camp's medical
facility, said in a recent interview that most prisoners suffering from
depression brought their symptoms with them to Cuba.

"I don't know what the effects of this particular confinement are," he
said. "I'd be hesitant to comment." Officials at Guantánamo have
generally dismissed the notion that the confinement and uncertainty
about the future are specifically to blame.

"I would not particularly say these circumstances are a factor,"
Commander Grady said.

But Jamie Fellner, director of the United States program for Human
Rights Watch, said in an interview that that was highly implausible.

"These conditions of confinement by themselves over a prolonged period
are enormously psychologically stressful," she said. "Added to that is
the uncertainty as to the future."

Ms. Fellner added that her group had not found any credible reports of
physical abuse and that it had investigated several accounts of beatings
and such that turned out to be unfounded.

Hospital officials said that about 5 percent of the inmates were
suffering from depression and that they were being treated with
antidepressants, typically Zoloft.



(**) Names of 9/11 Detainees Can Remain Secret, Court Rules
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/politics/17CND-NAME.html

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********