In his inaugural address, President Obama said: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." This echoed a statement Ben Franklin made in 1759: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." As we continue to call for accountability for torture, we must remind the President that what was true in 1759 must still hold true today: if we abandon this nation’s adherence to the rule of law, we’re abandoning our core values.

Our Accountability for Torture Blog Forum ended yesterday with a focus on detainees who were tortured to death while in U.S. custody. More bloggers picked up on the general issue of accountability.

Jeff Kaye writes at Firedoglake about the use of drugs in interrogations on prisoners in the current Army Field Manual—the same one President Obama has held as the standard for interrogation procedure:

[…]Yoo’s memos, which were written to provide supposed legal cover for the use of drugs and other forms of torture, appear to place the Army Field Manual’s restrictions on the use of drugs out of sync with Yoo/Addington’s legal justifications. Yoo would disallow the use of drugs that "cause profound mental harm," that "penetrate to the core of an individual’s ability to perceive the world around him, substantially interfering with his cognitive abilities, or fundamentally alter his personality," and are calculated to that end — a fairly stringent standard.

But the Army Field Manual only prohibits the use of drugs in interrogations which would cause "lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage," a much more permissive standard than "profound mental harm," especially when the latter is defined as something similar to "brief psychotic disorder" (per Yoo) . Thus, when Cambone and Company, getting off on their oh-so-smart word games in the redraft of the AFM, removed the prohibition against "chemically induced psychosis" from the old AFM, and replaced it with their new formulation, then according to Yoo’s own analysis, the Army Field Manual now allowed the drugging of prisoners in a manner that would amount to torture.

McJoan at Daily Kos writes:

Torture wasn’t limited to waterboarding. It was the combination of sleep deprivation, stress positions, "walling," exposure to extreme heat and cold. It was used indiscriminately and in combinations that were not only approved but were "virtually choreographed" by the highest levels of government: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet and John Ashcroft. And, as we’re likely to find confirmed in the CIA report to be released tomorrow–unless it is redacted into utter irrelevance–that the CIA knew it wasn’t an effective tool for gathering intelligence.

Don’t forget, the intelligence that it was employed to gather very early in the war in Afghanistan was the false intelligence to take us into Iraq.

[…]Our collective hands are stained. Sunlight, in the form of accountability is our only hope of cleansing that stain.

Digby writes:

[…]We deserve to know and the tortured dead deserve some justice. And if we want to just deal in pragmatic concerns, if anyone thinks that refusing to hold people accountable for what happened and showing the world that we can be trusted to civilized at least after the fact doesn’t make us less safe, they are out of their minds. This is how countries become pariah states.

The United States went crazy after 9/11 and tortured many, many people, at least a hundred of them to death. It happened. How do we live with that?

In "When Torture Kills: Ten Murders In US Prisons In Afghanistan," Andy Worthington culls from his exhaustive research and reporting on detainees to highlight 10 murders, "three of which, to the best of my knowledge, have never been investigated at all."

Christy Hardin Smith says in response to yesterday’s outline for accountability by the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer: “[T]he building of a complete and transparent public record has to be at the top of the list for me. More sunlight, please. And soon.”

Daphne Eviatar at the Washington Independent wrote about the hearing in Mohammed Jawad’s case today. We’re arguing that the evidence extracted through torture—the same evidence that a judge threw out in Jawad’s military commission case—should not be admissible in his case challenging his detention in federal court.

At Firedoglake, bmaz writes:

[…]So, what do we do about the criminal, immoral and depraved acts officials of the US government have conducted in our name? Clearly Bush and Cheney had no interest in accountability for their crimes of torture. But now President Barack Obama, who sold the electorate that he was the man to bring change and accountability, has shown himself to be more of the same. He truly desires to walk the other way and not address the wrongs committed against our nation, Constitution and fiber of existence. And, as Glenn Greenwald adroitly points out, President Obama even wants to raise the ante on indefinite detention without charges. How should we deal with that?

[…]The Founders gave us the answer to that conundrum. You follow the Rule of Law. You uphold the Constitution, what it stands for, and honor every drop of blood spilled since the Revolution to establish and defend it. You honor your oath to office. You do the right thing and have accountability on the merits. That is what you do, and it is time for a concerted effort from the grassroots to demand just that. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, those who would give up the essential Rule of Law for temporary security and political gain, deserve neither.

John Amato at Crooks and Liars added:
“The torture issue is horrifying and the longer we get away from the Bush years, the more information the ACLU is able to gather. These documents are, in a word, vile.”

So while Torture Awareness Month is over, our call for accountability is only just beginning. Remind President Obama of his own words on Inauguration Day. Ask the Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor. Only then can we truly know what was done in our names, and begin the work needed to repair the damage done.

In May 2006 at the Cheim & Read Gallery in New York, Jenny Holzer first exhibited her Redaction Paintings. The paintings feature formerly classified and sensitive government documents concerning American engagement in the Middle East, particularly after the attacks on the World Trade Center in September of 2001. The documents, culled from various government agencies and departments, such as the CIA, FBI, and the Department of Defense, were released through the landmark 1966 Freedom of Information Act. With the torture scandal in its insurgency and another Republican administration firmly in place, Holzer set about, with some urgency, to collect a representative series and sequence of documents to explore the discourse concerning the war on terrorism and torture through the language of its shapers, practitioners, and wagers.

Instead of attempting to deduce the truth claims in journalistic reportage (whether textual or visual), Holzer pared story or scoop down to the basics of communication—the directives, emails, memos, letters, and autopsies that are the linguistic bones (and individual voices) of a potentially instrumentalized and motivated rhetorical body. Her urgency was partially goaded by what has characterized as the Bush administration’s "secrecy obsession." From secret military tribunals to continual reclassification of documents to ordering agencies to use the most restrictive and legalistic response possible for FOIA requests, the Bush administration’s withdrawal and obfuscation of information made it imperative to assemble and classify materials from a slippery archive that furtively slides in and out of exposure.

Read more…

Since 2004, the ACLU and its partners — the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace — have been litigating under the Freedom of Information Act for documents concerning the abuse of prisoners held by the Department of Defense and CIA. The litigation has resulted in the release of thousands of pages of government documents, including the Justice Department torture memos that were released in April, the FBI emails that discussed the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, and dozens of autopsy reports relating to the deaths of prisoners in the custody of the Defense Department.

To those of us who have been working on the lawsuit, though, the remarkable thing is not how much information has been released but how much is still being withheld. Six years after we filed our FOIA request, and five years after the Abu Ghraib photos were broadcast by CBS 60 Minutes, the Defense Department is still withholding photographs showing prisoners being abused at facilities other than Abu Ghraib as well as details of abusive interrogation methods used by military interrogators in Afghanistan and Iraq. The CIA is still withholding a crucial report authored by that agency’s Inspector General, transcripts in which prisoners describe the abuse they suffered at the hands of their CIA interrogators, as well as hundreds of documents relating to the destruction of videotapes showing CIA prisoners being waterboarded. We’re expecting some of these documents to be released to us tomorrow, but it’s clear that it will be months and perhaps years before we have anything that resembles a complete picture of how the torture policies were developed, on whose authority they were implemented, and what consequences they had for prisoners held by the military and CIA.

If it’s remarkable how much information is still being withheld, it’s even more remarkable how little has been done to address the information that has been released. Congress has convened no select committee. The Justice Department has inaugurated no criminal investigation other than a narrowly circumscribed one into the destruction of the waterboarding tapes. The victims of the Bush administration’s torture program have received no official acknowledgement, and the proposition that they should be compensated for the abuse they suffered at the hands of their interrogators is one that has not got traction at all.

Earlier this month, the ACLU launched an initiative that will put new resources behind our transparency work and behind the larger aim of accountability. The Accountability for Torture initiative has four interrelated goals.

1. Comprehensive disclosure about the torture program and its consequences. Over the next few months, we will step up our efforts under the FOIA. On the same day we launched the Accountability for Torture initiative, we filed a new FOIA lawsuit seeking some critical documents that in our view ought to be made public. These documents include OLC memos as well as correspondence between the White House and CIA about the CIA’s interrogation and detention program.
2. The assembly of an accurate, comprehensive, and accessible historical record. Beyond advocating for comprehensive disclosure, we’ll also step up our efforts to make the documents we’ve obtained through the FOIA more accessible. We’ve already launched a new version of our search engine; while it’s still far from perfect, it’s an improvement on the original version and we will be making additional improvements over the next few months. Our legislative office will continue to press Congress to appoint a select committee that can examine the origins of the torture program, produce a comprehensive account of that program, and recommend legislative changes to ensure that past abuses are not repeated.
3. Recognition and compensation for the victims. We will step up our efforts — both in Congress and the courts — to obtain recognition and compensation for the victims of torture. We’ve already filed several lawsuits on behalf of victims — in Ali v. Rumsfeld, for example, we represent Iraqis and Afghans who were abused at Abu Ghraib and Bagram, and in Mohamed v. Jeppesen we represent five victims of the CIA’s rendition program. Over the next few months, we’ll develop a broader strategy to ensure that torture victims are not forgotten.
4. The appointment of an independent prosecutor. The publicly available evidence warrants a criminal investigation. Senior government officials who authorized torture should not be immune from prosecution, and they certainly should not be shielded from investigation. In fact, sanctioning impunity for government officials who authorized torture would send a problematic message to the world, invite abuses by future administrations, and further undermine the rule of law that is the basis of any democracy. As more information gets released — through FOIA litigation and through the hard work of investigative journalists — we will continue to call on the Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor to examine issues of criminal responsibility.

President Obama has spoken eloquently about the importance of restoring America’s moral authority abroad. Restoring that moral authority, though, will require restoring the rule of law at home, and restoring the rule of law at home will require finally confronting the gross human rights abuses of the last administration. Over the next few months, we’ll press the Obama administration to do this. As we’ve been saying, accountability for torture is a legal, political, and moral imperative.

Today, several prominent bloggers are writing about detainees who died in U.S. custody, using documents released through the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. We’re not talking suicide, or death by "natural causes." No, this is death as a result of torture and abuse while in custody. This effort comes on the eve of the release — we hope — of the CIA Inspector General’s report on waterboarding. (You might’ve heard last Friday that the release was delayed.)

At Salon, Glenn Greenwald writes:

The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody — at least. While some of those deaths were the result of "rogue" interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that’s one reason we’ve always considered those tactics to be "torture" when used by others — because they inflict serious harm, and can even kill people. Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions — that we Look to the Future, not the Past — are thus literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder.

Marcy Wheeler focuses on the case of detainee 04-309:

Now I’m no doctor–and I definitely can’t make sense of the cardiac findings. But it sounds like "stress positions," "sleep deprivation," "walling," and "water dousing" are all leading candidates to have caused the death of 04-309. Or, to use the terms used for techniques approved for use by one Special Forces group in Iraq until May 18, 2004, about a month after 04-309’s death, "safety positions," "sleep adjustment/sleep management," "change of environment/ environmental manipulation," and "mild physical contact." It doesn’t really matter what you call the techniques, though, because they amount to torture that–in the case of an apparently healthy 27 year old man–appear to have killed him in three days time.

A lot of people–from the CIA to Cheney to the torture apologists–want this debate to be about waterboarding, a technique they’ve only admitted to using with three detainees, and a technique that–as far as we know–did not kill anyone in US custody. But that distracts from the other techniques that just as much torture, the ones that were killing Iraqi civilians in a matter of days.

Drational at Daily Kos zeroes in on one detainee, known as Habibullah, and the circumstances of his death:

Habibullah was being interrogated by the military. Upon autopsy he was clothed only in an adult diaper. Because he was taken from his cell to the Bagram medical facility "dead on arrival" it is likely he was wearing a diaper when he was found "unresponsive, restrained in his cell" (hanging shackled from the ceiling). This is consistent with the nudity and use of diapering during "sleep deprivation" approved by Rumsfeld and described as part of the protocols for CIA interrogation during one technique: sleep deprivation- in which the detainee is shackled standing or sitting for up to 7 1/2 days straight. We have learned from the 2005 Bradbury memos that sleep deprivation causes venous stasis in the legs and has led to severe leg edema. We know that Habibullah was shackled to the ceiling of his cell for sleep deprivation, where he was ultimately found dead. This scenario is reinforced by a citation of a DOD criminal investigation report in the recently released Senate Armed Services Committee Report on Detainee Treatment (PDF). This citation noted that "the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation combined with other mistreatment at the hands of Bagram personnel, caused or were direct contributing factors in the two homicides [Habibullah and Dilawar]."

The most shocking and saddening part: these deaths are the direct result of authorizations for abusive techniques at the highest levels of the Bush administration. And the Obama administration has yet to hold those who authorized those techniques accountable.

Today is the last day of June, which is Torture Awareness Month. If you haven’t already, send the Justice Department evidence of torture. Tell the DOJ you demand accountability and justice.

In my recent book, Jesus Was a Liberal, I wrote: “I believe that Jesus was a religious liberal. He came with a fresh new progressive vision… Instead of an eye for an eye, he asked us to turn the other cheek. Instead of loving just our neighbors, we were called upon to love our enemies too.”

I think about those words when the issue of torture rears its ugly head time and again. There was a time historically when torture was not only widespread but considered acceptable under the right circumstances. By 1800, however, most European countries had legally abolished the use of torture under any circumstances. Then there was an unexpectedly virulent resurgence of torture in Europe in the 20th century, especially in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Under the auspices of the United Nations, though, in 1948, all nations on earth, with six abstentions, agreed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states simply in Article 5: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Likewise, the Geneva Conventions in 1949 affirmed international law that prisoners of war in captivity need reveal only their name, rank and serial number, and then, "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted…to secure from them information of any kind whatsoever."

There’s a story in the eighth chapter of the gospel of Luke where man named Legion, kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, is freed by Jesus. He’s been tormented by internal demons, we’re told, as well as external. When Jesus first approaches him, he begs Jesus not to torment him, too. True to his nature throughout the gospels, though, Jesus comes to liberate, not to torment. He calls the demons out of Legion, and they move to inhabit swine which then run away and drown in a lake.

Read more…

Bob Herbert has an excellent piece in The New York Times today about our habeas corpus case on behalf of Mohammed Jawad.

The Afghan government recently sent a letter to the U.S. government demanding Jawad’s return and suggesting he was as young as 12 when he was captured in Afghanistan and illegally rendered from that country almost seven years ago.

The U.S. government continues to rely on evidence obtained through torture and coercion in Jawad’s habeas challenge to his unlawful detention, despite the fact that the very same evidence was suppressed by the judge in Jawad’s military commission trial.

Jawad was still a boy when he was captured in Afghanistan. He was coerced into signing a confession written in Farsi, a language he could not speak, much less read or write (in fact, Jawad was functionally illiterate even in his native language of Pashto). He was later rendered to Bagram and then to Guantánamo, where he was subjected to the worst forms of torture. After weeks of isolation and abuse, Jawad tried to kill himself by repeatedly banging his head against the wall of his cell. No doubt irreparable harm has been done to Mohammed Jawad’s body and mind. The U.S. has no credible evidence against him. And yet he remains captive in U.S. custody.

Writes Herbert of Jawad’s harrowing story:

[S]ince his capture he has been tortured and otherwise put through hell. The evidence against him has been discredited. He has tried to commit suicide. But the U.S. won’t let him go.

Andy Worthington has also written about Jawad here.

For the last two weeks, Americans have been watching events unfold in Iran. Regardless of our depth of knowledge or political standings, we recognize that something profound is happening there. People are fighting to be heard, to be treated with dignity. We support and applaud them because it is part of our national character. We also stand aghast at the idea of a prison like Evin, where people are routinely detained for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or for simply speaking their minds. We are disgusted when we hear that people are tortured into false confessions, or when we see images of a Neda-like figure.

As a Muslim, I feel another layer of disgust: these are other Muslims perpetrating violence against one another. The Iranian state claims to be creating a true Muslim state, but what they are really doing is reenacting the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn — which took place in 680 A.D. — at every opportunity. The Battle of Karbala and the massacre of Husayn and his family are universally condemned as a sign of oppression, and of holding the power of this world higher than the judgment of God. In many countries, including Iran, there are yearly commemorations of the death of Husayn, to share in that suffering and to make sure the lessons of those ten days of torture are never forgotten.

It is easy for us as Americans to condemn the current events in Iran. As a Muslim, especially here in the U.S. where there is a breadth and depth of Islamic thought, we also feel deep religious pains. However, that shock and despair begins to sound hollow as we realize how much Americans have become that which we once condemned.

Guantánamo is a blight on our national character, and the "torture memos" reveal the worst of the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed there. Guantánamo is a prison where people can be held indefinitely, abused, tortured, and released without ever facing any charges. We keep minors in lock-up based on coerced confessions. Men who are found to be innocent remain locked up due to legal limbo.

The U.S. is a nation of laws, and yet we seem more outraged by injustices happening in other parts of the world than those occurring in our own name. As anAmerican, I am shocked. As a Muslim, my faith commands me to speak out. This revulsion has nothing to do with the fact that most of the detainees are Muslim. It has to do with the Qur’anic injunction to command the good (e.g. yad‘ūna ilā al-khayr wa yāmurūna bi-l-ma‘ rūfi, 3:104), and not torturing is good. The fact that we need to be told that not torturing is good should sadden all of us.

The story of Cain slaying Abel taught us that a desire for glory in this world leads us away from doing good in the community.

When the Prophet Abraham (AS) began preaching monotheism, he was tied to a stake to be burned: to be tortured in the fire. Fear and base instincts led to this horrific act against a messenger of God.

When the Prophet Moses (AS) first expressed the desire to do good, it was to stop the torture of a Hebrew slave.

When the Prophet Jesus (AS) was tortured on the way to Golgotha, none of his believers would claim that torture is a good thing.

Prophet Muhammad (SAS) expressly forbade the torture and mistreatment of prisoners.

No believing Muslim would say that the torture of the Prophet’s grandson and family on the field of Karbala represents a good thing.

For these reasons, as believing Muslims, we cannot stand by when anyone seeks to torture, to further oppress, or to generally erode the good.
As the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) has stated:

Muslim Americans, in the spirit of the Qur’anic injunction to “exhort one another to truth and constancy,” believe that we must join together to confront the pain that was inflicted in the name of our country’s security.  Only by knowing the truth will the American people have the opportunity to develop a strong conviction that torture must never be justified. 

We can and must demand a higher standard. We cannot be deaf to the voice of justice, but must establish it. Torture is not just.

Hussein Rashid is a proud Muslim and native New Yorker. He is currently a faculty member at Hofstra University and Associate Editor at Religion Dispatches. He is the convener of islamicate and a contributor to Talk Islam and AltMuslimah; his work has appeared at City of Brass and Goat Milk. He has appeared on CBS Evening News, CNN, Russia Today, Channel 4 (UK), State of Belief - Air America Radio, and Iqra TV (Saudi Arabia).

The Reform Jewish Movement, like many other religious traditions, opposes the use of torture unequivocally. The most common catchphrase of Jewish social justice is undoubtedly "Tzedek, tzedek tirdof," or "Justice, justice shall you pursue" (Deuteronomy 16:20). Many ask of this text, "Why the repetition of the word tzedek (justice)?" It is commonly believed to be repeated to stress the importance that we must be just in our pursuit of justice; that we must have both just ends and just means.

Those who interrogate detainees seek the information that they think will bring "dangerous individuals" to justice, but there is nothing just about their means — torture. By its nature, torture occurs in the shadows of our legal system and violates the precious due process rights guaranteed to all individuals in the American justice system, and cherished by many religious traditions, including the Reform Jewish Movement.

Another basic the tenet of Jewish morality is that all individuals are created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Yes, even the most dangerous among us are created in that divine image. And as such, all individuals deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Yet, when we employ torture, we defile and disrespect that image of God.

Taking us one step farther, is renowned Jewish thinker Joseph Caro, who taught that:

If someone attacks another, the second is innocent of any responsibility for injury caused to the first, since he has a right to defend himself, but if he was able to use less force but caused greater injury then he is guilty.

What does this mean in the case of torture? It means that while we have a right to defend ourselves, if we must harm another to do so, we must cause as little harm as possible, a sort of proportional response theory. Because torture is an ineffective means of defending ourselves against our attackers, those who inflict greater physical and psychological injury than is necessary in turn become guilty.

The question of torture is one in which we not only have efficacy and truth on our side, but also morality. In the words of former Navy Judge Advocate General Rear Admiral John Hutson:

In a war like this, when we are tempted to respond in kind, we must hold ever more dearly to the values that make us Americans. Torture or "cruel, inhuman or degrading" conduct, are not part of our national character.

We must move forward and look to our future, but take care to understand our past and how these abuses occurred for so long in order to ensure that torture is never again used in America’s name.

Arielle Gingold is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the Washington office of the Union for Reform Judaism, whose more than 900 congregations across North America encompass 1.5 million Reform Jews.

(Originally posted at The Washington Spectator.)

My name is Murat Kurnaz. I am twenty-seven years old. I was born and raised in Germany. Recently, I got married to a kind young woman from a good family, which makes me happy. We rented a nice flat in the Turkish section of my hometown of Bremen, Germany. My life now appears to be hopeful, even normal. But before all of this, from the age of nineteen to twenty-four, I spent five years of my life as a prisoner (or, I often think, as a victim) in American torture camps in Kandahar and Guantánamo Bay.

How did this happen to someone like me, from an honest, hardworking family? Have you ever read stories or seen movies where someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time and his life turns into a nightmare?

I was traveling with a peaceful missionary group, which I had joined to learn to read the Koran and to pray. My family is Muslim, but they did not pray. I wanted to learn these important Muslim rituals because I had just married a devout woman in Turkey (who later divorced me while I was in Guantánamo). Besides, I was young and wanted to travel and see some other part of the world. I left my home in Bremen in the fall of 2001, but before war had broken out in Afghanistan. I didn’t know it at the time, but this decision turned out to be a colossal mistake.

Extraordinary Rendition
Toward the end of my travels in Pakistan, I was on a civilian bus, full of regular Pakistani men and women, headed for the airport to return home to Bremen. At a routine checkpoint, a Pakistani guard pulled me off the bus to ask me questions — he may have thought I was suspicious because of my Western appearance. Next thing I knew, I was in Pakistani detention for weeks; I was interrogated repeatedly, and told them over and over my story. It didn’t matter; they held me hostage and eventually turned me over to the Americans. I remember very well the first question American interrogators asked me: "Have you seen Osama bin Laden?" I answered "Yes"— like everyone else, I had seen him on TV and in the newspapers. But I live in Germany. Of course I’ve never seen him in the flesh.

The Americans shackled and hooded me (the first of hundreds of times this was done to me) and flew me to the American base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. I later learned from my American interrogator that they paid the Pakistani police a bounty of only $3,000 for me. This was a cheap price. I know many detainees who were sold to the Americans for bounties. The Americans dropped flyers all over Afghanistan offering lots of money for this. I heard recently that the [former] president of Pakistan wrote a book bragging that he had received almost $300 million from Americans to turn over suspects.

Kandahar
In the American prison camp in Kandahar I was shocked by the awful treatment we received. All my life, I had a very good impression of Americans, so I couldn’t believe Americans would do these kinds of things. It was winter and freezing cold and I just had overalls and no blankets or coat. We slept outside, behind barbed wire fences. Soldiers watched me and the other prisoners with machine guns, and threatened to kill us. They called me "terrorist." They punched and kicked me. The food I received seemed barely enough to keep me alive. When we needed to go to the bathroom, they gave us buckets. After my first interrogation in Afghanistan, they asked me if I was with Al Qaeda or the Taliban. When I insisted I was not, they got angry. They also tried to get me to sign a piece of paper admitting I was a member of Al Qaeda. I refused. The abuse got worse. Once, a guard dunked my head in a large bucket of water and punched me in the stomach so I would be forced to inhale. One guy used electroshocks on my feet, and joked that it would keep me warm. At one point, I was chained and hung by my wrists for a long time. A doctor sometimes checked if I was okay. Then I would be hung up again in the same position.

The interrogators also accused me of being affiliated with Mohamed Atta. They thought that because we are both from Germany and both Muslims, I must have worked with him. This was ridiculous, and without any basis in reality. But I believe the hanging was punishment for not admitting to this, coercion to try to force me to admit it. The pain from this treatment was beyond belief. I know that others died from this kind of treatment.

Guantánamo
From Kandahar, I was transferred to Guantánamo in 2002. In Guantánamo, the conditions and the treatment were barely fit for animals, and certainly not for human beings. I was deprived of sleep and food for long intervals. The guards called the sleep deprival "Operation Sandman." I was forced to be in solitary confinement for long periods of time for no reason and subjected to extreme cold and heat. I was subjected to religious and sexual humiliation. I was beaten multiple times. The guards forced me to accept medication that I did not want. I was interrogated over and over again, but always with the same questions. I told my story over and over, my name over and over, and details about my family over and over. I quickly got the impression that the interrogations were pointless and not really interested in the truth.

The first time I saw my American lawyer was in October 2004. At first, I did not believe he was a lawyer. There was no law in Guantánamo and the interrogators always lied to us, so I didn’t know what was the truth. But this man brought a handwritten Turkish note from my mother, and so I came to trust him. He told me there was a legal case that my family brought to get me released. I had no idea about this. From 2002 until my lawyer’s visit in 2004 in Guantánamo, I had no idea anyone even knew the camp existed or even that I was alive. After that, I received many postcards from Americans supporting me, and I know there were many other people in America and Germany working to help me get out. I want to thank them for their help.

Crime and Punishment
I always knew I had done nothing wrong. But it has now been proven not only that I’m innocent but that both the U.S. government and the German government knew it all along. In fact, they had discussed my innocence as early as the fall of 2002. The U.S. government asked the Germans if they would take me back, and the Germans said no. They left me to rot in this horrible place for an additional three years. I think that I was eventually released because of the work of my lawyers in the U.S. and in Germany, who proved to the German public that I was innocent and to pressure the new German government to negotiate for my release. If there had been any law in Guantánamo, I would have been released much earlier. Instead, the U.S. just called me an enemy combatant and said I had no rights. I believe my story, with some variations, is true for many others still in Guantánamo.

Since my release, I have written a book about what happened — Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo. I have spoken about my ordeal with many people in different countries — Germany, Belgium, France, U.K., Ireland, Sweden. My impression is that they all were deeply disappointed that this is being done by Americans and angry at America for not living up to its own standards. They all supported the U.S. after 9/11, but now they criticized the U.S. for its hypocrisy and for ignoring the law. I hope the new American president, Barack Obama, sticks to his promise to close Guantánamo, because I worry about some of the other detainees who are in their seventh year there. No human being can endure this treatment and isolation. I know that what was done to me cannot be undone. But will anyone be punished in the U.S. for what was done to me and others?

I might expect a system like Guantánamo to be developed by a poor, tyrannical, or ignorant country. I never would have imagined it would be created by the United States of America. In Germany, we believe that leaders who commit illegal acts must be punished. Is this not what happens in a democracy?

By Lisa Magarrell, Director of the U.S. Accountability Project at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), and Anh-Thu Nguyen, law fellow on the Project. ICTJ assists societies pursuing accountability for past mass atrocity or human rights abuse.

When a U.S. federal court sentenced Chuckie Taylor, Jr., in 2009 for the crime of torture of his fellow Liberians, the Department of Justice proclaimed, “Our message to human rights violators, no matter where they are, remains the same: We will use the full reach of U.S. law, and every lawful resource at the disposal of our investigators and prosecutors, to hold you fully accountable for your crimes. …[T]orture will not be tolerated here at home or by U.S. nationals abroad.”

The trial of Taylor — son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor –demonstrated the capacity of U.S. courts to prosecute individuals for gross violations of human rights no matter where they occur. It also showed the government’s ability to carry out the United States’ obligations under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (”the Torture Convention”).

Definitive information has come to light — through Freedom of Information Act litigation and investigations undertaken by the Senate Armed Service Committee (PDF), the International Committee of the Red Cross (PDF) and others — that U.S. agents have undeniably committed serious crimes, including torture. These reports and investigations underscore the need to examine in much greater depth the systems and institutional decisions behind illegal and immoral aspects of U.S. counterterror policies and practices.

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