Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch Call For Arrest Of George W. Bush

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch demanded the arrest and prosecution of former president George W. Bush before his appearance at an economic summit in Surrey, British Columbia on October 20th.

The advocacy organizations have called on Canadian federal authorities to arrest Bush due to the “overwhelming evidence that Bush and other senior administration officials authorized and implemented a regime of torture and ill-treatment of hundreds of detainees in US custody.”

Though both advocacy groups called for Bush’s extradition, The Vancouver Sun reports that the Canadian government has no intention to comply with the demand, saying the organizations were “engaging in cheap stunts.”

The ultimatum has also been dismissed in the US. Eliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Counsel for Foreign Relations, published a piece highlighting the arbitrary demands for prosecution by HRW and Amnesty.

Though the groups have been outspoken in their campaigns against Bush’s involvement with torture, they choose their targets selectively, Abrams argues, saying that neither organization demanded the arrests or tried to bar travel of other heads of state with histories of human rights violations:

“Bashar al-Assad visited Paris in 2008 and 2009: silence. Putin hit Brussels this year: silence. When in good health Fidel was a world traveler: silence. No calls for prosecution for the many killings such people have ordered.”

But Amnesty stood firm, saying in its statement that the former President authorized the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding, a violation of basic human rights and international criminal law.

Susan Lee, Americas Director at Amnesty International, called the opportunity for arrest “a crucial moment for Canada to demonstrate it is prepared to live up to its…obligations with respect to human rights…and must now demonstrate that…no one…is above international law.”

via huffingtonpost.com

Why not everyone is a torturer

By Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslam
Psychologists

The Experiment for the BBC
Guards and prisoners, taking part in The Experiment for the BBC in 2002
So groups of people in positions of unaccountable power naturally resort to violence, do they? Not according to research conducted in a BBC experiment.

The photographs from Abu Ghraib prison showing Americans abusing Iraqi prisoners make us recoil and lead us to distance ourselves from their horror and brutality. Surely those who commit such acts are not like us? Surely the perpetrators must be twisted or disturbed in some way? They must be monsters. We ourselves would never condone or contribute to such events.

Sadly, 50 years of social psychological research indicates that such comforting thoughts are deluded. A series of major studies have shown that even well-adjusted people, when divided into groups and placed in competition against each other, can become abusive and violent.

OTHER RESEARCH
Stanley Milgram at Yale instructed experimenters to give electric shocks to another
They did so, despite person’s cries of pain

Most notoriously, the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo and colleagues, seemingly showed that young students who were assigned to the role of guard quickly became sadistically abusive to the students assigned to the role of prisoners.

Combined with lessons from history, the disturbing implication of such research is that evil is not the preserve of a small minority of exceptional individuals. We all have the capacity to behave in evil ways. This idea was famously developed by Hannah Arendt whose observations of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, led her to remark that what was most frightening was just how mild and ordinary he looked. His evil was disarmingly banal.

Prisoner being threatened by a guard with a dog
The latest pictures show detainees being threatened with dogs (AP Photo/Courtesy of The New Yorker)
In order to explain events in Iraq, one might go further and conclude that the torturers were victims of circumstances, that they lost their moral compass in the group and did things they would normally abhor. Indeed, using Zimbardo’s findings as evidence, this is precisely what some people do conclude. But this is bad psychology and it is bad ethics.

It is bad psychology because it suggests we can explain human behaviour without needing to scrutinize the wider culture in which it is located. It is bad ethics because it absolves everyone from any responsibility for events - the perpetrators, ourselves as constituents of the wider society, and the leaders of that society.

In the situation of Abu Ghraib, some reports have indicated that the guards were following orders from intelligence officers and interrogators in order to soften up the prisoners for interrogation.

If that is true, then clearly the culture in which these soldiers were immersed was one in which they were encouraged to see and treat Iraqis as subhuman. Other army units almost certainly had a very different culture and this provides a second explanation of why some people in some units may have tortured, but others did not.

Grotesque fun

Perhaps the best evidence that such factors were at play is the fact that the pictures were taken at all. Reminiscent of the postcards that lynch mobs circulated to advertise their activities, the torture was done proudly and with a grotesque sense of fun.

Abu Ghraib prison (AP/Courtesy The New Yorker)
‘Those in the photos wanted others to know what they had done’ (AP/Courtesy The New Yorker)
Those in the photos wanted others to know what they had done, presumably believing that the audience would approve. This sense of approval is very important, since there is ample evidence that people are more likely to act on any inclinations to behave in obnoxious ways when they sense - correctly or incorrectly - that they have broader support.

So where did the soldiers in Iraq get that sense from? This takes us to a critical influence on group behaviour: leadership. In the studies, leadership - the way in which experimenters either overtly or tacitly endorsed particular forms of action - was crucial to the way participants behaved.

Many guards in our experiment did not wish to act - or be seen to act - as bullies or oppressors
Thus one reason why the guards in our own research for the BBC did not behave as brutally as those in the Stanford study, was that we did not instruct them to behave in this way.

Zimbardo, in contrast, told his participants: “You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me - and they’ll have no privacy…. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness”.

Officers’ messages

In light of this point it is interesting to ask what messages were being provided by fellow and, more critically, senior officers in the units where torture took place? Did those who didn’t approve fail to speak out for fear of being seen as weak or disloyal? Did senior officers who knew what was going on turn a blind eye or else simply file away reports of misbehaviour?

All these things happened after the My Lai massacre, and in many ways the responses to an atrocity tell us most about how it can happen in the first place. They tell us how murderers and torturers can begin to believe that they will not be held to account for what they do, or even that their actions are something praiseworthy. The more they perceive that torture has the thumbs up, the more they will give it a thumbs up themselves.

So how do we prevent these kinds of episodes? One answer is to ensure that people are always made aware of their other moral commitments and their accountability to others. Whatever the pressures within their military group, their ties to others must never be broken. Total and secret institutions, where people are isolated from contact with all others are breeding grounds for atrocity. Similarly, there are great dangers in contracting out security functions to private contractors which lack fully developed structures of public accountability.

Power vacuum

Another answer is to look at the culture of our institutions and the role of leaders in framing that culture. Bad leadership can permit torture in two ways. Sometimes leaders can actively promote oppressive values. This is akin to what happened in Zimbardo’s study and may be the case in certain military intelligence units. But sometimes leaders can simply fail to promote anything and hence create a vacuum of power.

The Experiment
‘Inmates’ in The Experiment in their cells

Our own findings indicated that where such a vacuum exists, people are more likely to accept any clear line of action which is vigorously proposed. Often, then, tyranny follows from powerlessness rather than power. In either case, the failure of leaders to champion clear humane and democratic values is part of the problem.

But it is not enough to consider leadership in the military. One must look more widely at the messages and the values provided in the community at large. That means that we must address the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment in our society. A culture where we have got used to pictures of Iraqi prisoners semi-naked, chained and humiliated can create a climate in which torturers see themselves as heroes rather than villains.

Again, for such a culture to thrive it is not necessary for everyone to embrace such sentiments, it is sufficient simply for those who would oppose them to feel muted and out-of-step with societal norms.

Leaders’ language

And we must also look at political leadership. When administration officials talk about cleaning out “rats’ nests” of Iraqi dissidents, it likens Iraqis to vermin. Note, for example, that just before the Rwandan genocide, Hutu extremists started referring to Tutsi’s as “cockroaches”.

A hooded and wired Iraqi prisoner is seen at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq in this undated photo. (AP Photo/Courtesy of The New Yorker)
The US is trying to limit the damage after an abuse scandal (AP/Courtesy The New Yorker)
Such use of language again creates a climate in which perpetrators of atrocity can maintain the illusion that they are nobly doing what others know must be done. The torturers in Iraq may or may not have been following direct orders from their leaders, but they were almost certainly allowed to feel that they were behaving as good followers.

So if we want to understand why torture occurs, it is important to consider the psychology of individuals, of groups, and of society. Groups do indeed affect the behaviour of individuals and can lead them to do things they never anticipated. But how any given group affects our behaviour depends upon the norms and values of that specific group.

Evil can become banal, but so can humanism. The choice is not denied to us by human nature but rests in our own hands. Hence, we need a psychological analysis that addresses the values and beliefs that we, our institutions, and our leaders promote. These create the conditions in which would-be torturers feel either emboldened or unable to act.

We need an analysis that makes us accept rather than avoid our responsibilities. Above all, we need a psychology which does not distance us from torture but which requires us to look closely at the ways in which we and those who lead us are implicated in a society which makes barbarity possible.

Alex Haslam is a professor of psychology at University of Exeter and editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Stephen Reicher is a professor of psychology at University of St Andrews, past editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.


via news.bbc.co.uk

‘I thought it was the end of the world’ | | Torture in Kashmir - The Pakistan Papers

“I will never be the same,” says Raheel Ali (name changed), a student in his early twenties. In his late teens, Ali was put through physical and psychological torture by the Indian security agencies in the disturbed region of Kashmir.

Currently pursuing his post-graduation, Ali recalled what he went through. “I was thrown into a dark room and tortured. They used gun butts to break my back. While I was still in pain, a stream of blood ran through my nose and head… and when it clotted in my left eye, I went blind. An hour later, some policemen came and began to torture my private parts. This was and will be the most shameful experience for me for the rest of my life. When electric shocks were given to my private parts, I felt that was the end of world and it was perhaps,” he said.

“I recovered from my injuries but everything changed for me. My smile had disappeared, I lost sleep. When I was alone, strange thoughts came to my mind. It was horrible. Then people from the security agencies began to bother me. They made my life hell. I had to give minute details about myself to them every time. This, again, depressed me.”

For Ali, things got out of hand and he sought help from his cousin, a psychiatrist. In Kashmir, where sexual torture is never discussed because of social stigma, Ali was left with no choice but to confide to his family. “I had to tell my brother how they had tortured my private parts with cigarette butts, electric shocks, copper wire and how much pain I felt while urinating. He took me to a doctor and finally, I was put on medication,” says Ali. “On one hand, I had to take psychiatric drugs and on other hand, I had to take antibiotics, healers, etc. I recovered after almost a year… but still I get nightmares about it almost every week.”

Ali feels that his close relationships have been affected because of the torture. “I hate pity. I just hate it when people do that,” he says, as he looks away.

The United Nation’s Convention Against Torture states that torture cannot be “justified under any exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency”.

According to NGOs working in the Indian administrated Kashmir, last summer several youth and underage boys were picked up by the authorities for participating in street demonstrations against the ‘Indian occupation‘. Often, under the ambit of draconian laws, youth and children as young as ten are held, even in isolation, and not produced in court. Human rights lawyers in Kashmir complain that the details of these detention cases are not recorded, giving the forces involved impunity from prosecution. No First Information Report were lodged against the perpetrators and acts like Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) – Section 4 permit arrest without a warrant.

The armed forces enjoy impunity under AFSPA, which makes it mandatory to seek prior permission of the Central government to initiate any legal proceeding. Even the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) does not have the power to investigate the armed forces under Section 19 of the Human Rights Protection Act 1993 (as amended in 2006).

To make matters worse, most international human rights groups are barred from monitoring the situation in Kashmir. State-appointed commissions, that have investigated several killings and massacres after public outcries, have proven to be toothless. As a result, people no longer view the State as a justice-delivering entity and they have lost faith in all the democratic processes.

Last December, a WikiLeaks release disclosed that US officials had evidence of widespread torture by Indian police and security forces and were secretly briefed by Red Cross staff about the systematic abuse of detainees for extracting confessions in Kashmir, in their leaked diplomatic cables.

The dispatches revealed that in 2005, US diplomats in Delhi were briefed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) about the use of electrocution, beatings and sexual humiliation against hundreds of detainees. Other cables show that as recently as 2007, American diplomats were concerned about widespread human rights abuses by Indian security forces who, they said, relied on torture for confessions.

Inspector General Jammu and Kashmir Police S. M. Sahai, when asked if booking juveniles and putting them in jail with adults would radicalise them, said, “Sending a impressionable boy to Central Jail can only bring out a more hardened criminal. But we are also stuck in a situation where we have to make a difficult choice. We tell the government what are the kinds of problems we are facing. This is definitely being taken into consideration.”

“It is unfortunate that the parents have allowed their children to step out,” Sahai added. “Kashmir has a very severe parenting problem. You can’t blame the system for everything. This is the basis of fascism. They always use impressionable youth to drive the society in a particular direction, using the fear factor to their own disaster. It’s a conscious choice that people have to make. It’s not about juvenile homes. The best home for a child is a parents’ home. If they cannot control their children, then what can the state do?”

Torture in police custody remains a widespread and systematic practice in India, especially in disturbed states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Chhattisgarh and Manipur. In a report, Suhas Chakma, Director of the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), which has Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, states, “The NHRC has recorded 16,836 custodial deaths, or an average of 1,203 per year during the period 1994 to 2008; these included 2,207 deaths in police custody and 14,629 deaths in judicial custody.”

“Given well-established practices and consistent documentation of persons being tortured to death in police and prison custody, it is not unreasonable to conclude that a large number of those who died in custody were subjected to torture. Cases of torture not resulting in death are not recorded by the NHRC. Further, the Central para-military forces and the Indian army remain outside the purview of the NHRC under Section 19 of the Human Rights Protection Act, 1993. The actual cases of torture, in reality, run into thousands,” elaborates the ACHR study.

Fasiha Qadri, lawyer and human rights activist who has fought cases in Kashmir, reveals what she has witnessed during her tenure. “In my field experience, the aftershocks of torture haunted the victims even years later. To narrate the shocking experiences made their trauma more intense. All the torture survivors were men, and at times were very reserved with her about narrating the full details of the torture, especially about the torture to their private parts, that has left many men incapacitated for life.”

In her capacity as a lawyer, Qadri feels a majority of cases do not make it to court. “Most of the victims were unable to carry on normal work, seriously cutting down their livelihood prospects. Medical bills and the treatment expenses drain the victims and their families, economically. Most of victims suffer from severe anxiety and depression and their life is never normal again. With such destitution and survival priorities, victims are too pre-occupied to think of fighting a legal battle.”

Dilnaz Boga is an Indian journalist and the recipient of Agence France-Presse Kate Webb Prize for her work in Indian-administered Kashmir.

via dawn.com

Sexual Torture Used On Bradley Manning « LeakSource

Brig officials have confirmed to The New York Times that Bradley Manning will be forced to be nude every night from now on for the indefinite future. Not only when he sleeps, but also when he stands outside his cell for morning inspection along with the other brig detainees.  They claim that it is being done “as a ‘precautionary measure’ to prevent him from injuring himself.”

via leaksource.wordpress.com

Go to the leaksource link above to read the whole article.

This sort of behaviour on the part of the custodians can get quickly out of hand, and I might add, that Manning is probably not the only one enduring this treatment.

Bush’s Interrogators Stressed Nudity

Editor’s Note: The disclosure that Army Pvt. Bradley Manning was subjected to seven hours of forced nudity on Wednesday – amid new pressures aimed at getting him to identify others involved in the WikiLeaks case – recalled how the Bush administration used nudity and other abusive tactics to break down “war on terror” detainees.>

In 2004, the CIA told President George W. Bush’s lawyers how useful forced nudity was for instilling “learned helplessness” in prisoners, though the repeated emphasis on nudity took on a lewd and sadistic quality, as Robert Parry reported in this article from the archives:

via uruknet.info

Follow the link to read more.

28 hours in the dark heart of Egypt’s torture machine | World news | The Guardian

The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor.

A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: “In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don’t behave – electrocution and rape.”

Cuffed and blindfolded, like my fellow detainees, I lay transfixed. My palms sweated and my heart raced. I felt myself shaking. Would it be my turn next? Or would my outsider status, conferred by holding a British passport, save me? I suspected – hoped – that it would be the latter and, thankfully, it was. But I could never be sure.

I had “disappeared”, along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak’s vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an “orderly transition” to democratic rule.

Judging by what I witnessed, that seems a forlorn hope.

I had often wondered, reading accounts of political prisoners detained and tortured in places such as junta-run Argentina of the 1970s, what it would be like to be totally at the mercy of, and dependent on, your jailer for everything – food, water, the toilet. I never dreamed I would find out. Yet here I was, cooped up in a tiny room with a group of Egyptian detainees who were being mercilessly brutalised.

I had been handed over to the security services after being stopped at a police checkpoint near central Cairo last Friday. I had flown there, along with an Iraqi-born British colleague, Abdelilah Nuaimi, to cover Egypt’s unfolding crisis for RFE/RL, an American radio station based in Prague.

We knew beforehand that foreign journalists had been targeted by security services as they scrambled to contain a revolt against Mubarak’s regime, so our incarceration was not unique.

Yet it was different. My experience, while highly personal, wasn’t really about me or the foreign media. It was about gaining an insight – if that is possible behind a blindfold – into the inner workings of the Mubarak regime. It told me all I needed to know about why it had become hated, feared and loathed by the mass of ordinary Egyptians.

We had been stopped en route to Tahrir Square, scene of the ongoing mass demonstrations, little more than half an hour after leaving Cairo airport.

Uniformed and plainclothes police swarmed around our car and demanded our passports and to see inside my bag. A satellite phone was found and one of the men got in our car and ordered our driver to follow a vehicle in front, which led us to a nearby police station.

There, an officer subjected our fixer, Ahmed, to intense questioning: did he know any Palestinians? Were they members of Hamas? Then we were ordered to move again, and eventually drove to a vast, unmarked complex next to a telecommunications building.

That’s when Ahmed sensed real danger. “I hope I don’t get beaten up,” he said. He had good reason to worry.

We were ordered out and blindfolded before being herded into another vehicle and driven a few hundred yards. Then we were pushed into what seemed like an open-air courtyard and handcuffed. I heard the rapid-fire clicking of the electric rattlesnake – I knew instantly what it was – and then Ahmed screaming in pain. A cold sweat washed over me and I thought I might faint or vomit. “I’m going to be tortured,” I thought.

But I wasn’t. “Mr Robert, what is wrong,” I was asked, before being told, with incongruous kindness, to sit down. I sensed then that I would avoid the worst. But I didn’t expect to gain such intimate knowledge of what that meant.

After being interrogated and held in one room for hours, I was frogmarched after nightfall to another room, upstairs, along with other prisoners. We believe our captors were members of the internal security service.

That’s when the violence – and the terror – really began.

At first, I attached no meaning to the dull slapping sounds. But comprehension dawned as, amid loud shouting, I heard the electrocuting rods being ratcheted up. My colleague, Abdelilah – kept in a neighbouring room – later told me what the torturers said next.

“Get the electric shocks ready. This lot are to be made to really suffer,” a guard said as a new batch of prisoners were brought in.

“Why did you do this to your country?” a jailer screamed as he tormented his victim. “You are not to speak in here, do you understand?” one prisoner was told. He did not reply. Thump. “Do you understand?” Still no answer. More thumps. “Do you understand?” Prisoner: “Yes, I understand.” Torturer: “I told you not to speak in here,” followed by a cascade of thumps, kicks, and electric shocks.

Exhausted, the prisoners fell asleep and snored loudly, provoking another round of furious assaults. “You’re committing a sin,” a stricken detainee said in a weak, pitiful voice.

Craving to see my fellow inmates, I discreetly adjusted my blindfold. I briefly saw three young men – two of them looked like Islamists, with bushy beards – with their hands cuffed behind their backs (mine were cuffed to the front), before my captors spotted what I had done and tightened my blindfold.

The brutality continued until, suddenly, I was ordered to stand and pushed towards a room, where I was told I was being taken to the airport. I received my possessions and looked at my watch. It was 5pm. I had been in captivity for 28 hours.

The ordeal was almost over – save for another 16 hours waiting at an airport deportation facility. It had been nightmarish but it was nothing to what my Egyptian fellow-captives had endured.

Later, I learned that Ahmed, the fixer, had been released at the same time as Abdelilah and me. He told friends we had been “treated very well” but that he had bruises “from sleeping on the floor”. I had flown to Cairo to find out what was ailing so many Egyptians. I did not expect to learn the answer so graphically.

via guardian.co.uk

UK firm’s partner ‘wanted Peru to curb priests in mine conflict areas’ | Business | The Guardian

Monterrico protests, Peru Three protesters were shot by during the Majaz mine demonstrations - one died

A mining company in Peru part-owned by a British FTSE 100 company agitated for the removal of teachers and Catholic bishops to new posts away from “conflictive mining communities”, according to a leaked US cable obtained via WikiLeaks.

An executive of the company, in which BHP Billiton has a one-third stake, urged diplomats to persuade the Peruvian government and church to “rotate” such professionals out of sensitive areas, the secret document said.

The US and Canadian ambassadors, who hosted a summit of foreign mining executives in Peru in August 2005, requested specific examples of “anti-mining” teachers and bishops “who engage in inappropriate activities” to take to government and church leaders, the cable claimed.

The US embassy reported in another cable that the role of the church in the protests – mostly involving local indigenous communities – was “controversial and still open to question”.

The cable also claims mining companies were said to feed information to the US embassy about the activities of drug traffickers in northern Peru.

The Majaz open cast mine, owned by British company Monterrico Metals and site of one of the bloodiest protests shortly before the summit, was said by company representatives to lie “along a foot track used by couriers who convey opium latex to Ecuador,” reported the same cable.

“We are working with both the police and company representatives to further develop the information they have,” the cable said. But it added that in the past there had been instances where unnamed non-US companies falsely claimed that drugs traffickers were co-ordinating protests to “enlist our [US government] assistance”.

Police shot three protesters at the Majaz mine protest, one of whom died. Protesters have issued proceedings in the high court in London against Monterrico Metals relating to the alleged “torture, inhuman and degrading treatment and false imprisonment” of demonstrators by police.

The company, which was taken over by Chinese gold mining firm Zijin in 2007, has vigorously denied any involvement in the alleged abuses at the mine and said it considers “allegations to the contrary made by the claimants to be wholly without merit”. The case is listed for trial in October.

Following the Majaz protest, the Peruvian president launched a crackdown on anti-mining demonstrations and promised to protect foreign mining investments in the country, the world’s third largest copper producer.

At the summit, the first cable reports the US ambassador also encouraged the mining companies to provide examples of NGOs or individuals advocating violence against them.

“Armed with this information, ambassadors would be able to confront any NGOs from their respective countries about such dangerous activities,” reported the cable.

An executive from Anglo American’s Minera Quellaveco reportedly blamed Oxfam America and Friends of the Earth for largely “fomenting anti-mining attitudes” at the meeting, it was alleged.

A spokesman for Oxfam America said that while such NGOs tried to make sure companies treated communities “justly”, they only did so through legal channels and never advocated violence.

Antamina is Peru’s second largest copper producer and is 33.75% owned by Anglo-Australian multinational BHP Billiton. Swiss-based miner Xstrata took a 33.75% stake in 2006, with the remainder owned by Japan’s Mitsubishi and Canada’s Teck.

The cable reports: “The Antamina executive recommended that the diplomats meet as a group with the education ministry to encourage a rotation of teachers – often members of the radical SUTEP teachers union and Patria Roja [a left wing political group] - in conflictive mining communities.

“He also suggested that the embassies urge the Catholic church to rotate bishops operating in these regions. The ambassadors agreed to consider this, but needed specific examples of anti-mining teachers and priests who engage in inappropriate activities.”

Antamina said: “The statements attributed to a former employee do not express Antamina’s policies or values either today or when the remarks were supposedly made. Antamina operates under a rigorous code of conduct, and works with its communities and local institutions in a spirit of collaboration and respect.”

BHP said it did not operate the Antamina business but added: “BHP Billiton encourages all the companies with which it partners, including joint ventures like Antamina that are not under BHP Billiton control, to adopt its principles of business conduct.”

Anglo American said it “enjoys strong and constructive relationships with a large number of NGO partners around the world, including in Peru where our social investment initiatives are a significant focus as we progress our two multibillion dollar copper projects, Quellaveco and Michiquillay”.

via guardian.co.uk

The Torture Career of Egypt’s New Vice President: Omar Suleiman and the Rendition to Torture Program

opednews.com, January 29, 2011 

In response to the mass protests of recent days, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has appointed his first Vice President in his over 30 years rule, intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. When Suleiman was first announced, Aljazeera commentators were describing him as a “distinguished” and “respected ” man. It turns out, however, that he is distinguished for, among other things, his central role in Egyptian torture and in the US rendition to torture program. Further, he is “respected” by US officials for his cooperation with their torture plans, among other initiatives.

Katherine Hawkins, an expert on the US’s rendition to torture program, in an email, has sent some critical texts where Suleiman pops up. Thus, Jane Mayer, in The Dark Side, pointed to Suleiman’s role in the rendition program:

Each rendition was authorized at the very top levels of both governments….The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman,     negotiated directly with top Agency officials.  [Former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as “very bright, very realistic,” adding that he was cognizant that there was a downside to “some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way” (pp. 113).

Stephen Grey, in Ghost Plane, his investigative work on the rendition program also points to Suleiman as central in the rendition program:

To negotiate these assurances [that the Egyptians wouldn’t “torture” the prisoner delivered for torture] the CIA dealt principally in Egypt through Omar Suleiman, the chief of the Egyptian general intelligence service (EGIS) since 1993. It was he who arranged the meetings with the Egyptian interior ministry…. Suleiman, who understood English well, was an urbane and sophisticated man. Others told me that for years Suleiman was America’s chief interlocutor with the Egyptian regime — the main channel to President Hosni Mubarak himself, even on matters far removed from intelligence and security.

Suleiman’s role in the rendition program was also highlighted in a Wikileaks cable:

the context of the close and sustained cooperation between the USG and GOE on counterterrorism, Post believes that the written GOE assurances regarding the return of three Egyptians detained at Guantanamo (reftel) represent the firm commitment of the GOE to adhere to the requested principles. These assurances were passed directly from Egyptian General Intelligence Service (EGIS) Chief Soliman through liaison channels — the most effective communication path on this issue. General Soliman’s word is the GOE’s guarantee, and the GOE’s track record of cooperation on CT issues lends further support to this assessment. End summary.

Suleiman wasn’t just the go-to bureaucrat for when the Americans wanted to arrange a little torture. This “urbane and sophisticated man” apparently enjoyed a little rough stuff himself.

Shortly after 9/11, Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was captured by Pakistani security forces and, under US pressure, torture by Pakistanis. He was then rendered (with an Australian diplomats watching) by CIA operatives to Egypt, a not uncommon practice. In Egypt, Habib merited Suleiman’s personal attention. As related by Richard Neville, based on Habib’s memoir:

Habib was interrogated by the country’s Intelligence Director, General Omar Suleiman…. Suleiman took a personal interest in anyone suspected of links with Al Qaeda. As Habib had visited Afghanistan shortly before  9/11, he was under suspicion. Habib was repeatedly zapped with high-voltage electricity, immersed in water up to his nostrils, beaten, his fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks.

That treatment wasn’t enough for Suleiman, so:

To loosen Habib’s tongue, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a gruesomely shackled Turkistan prisoner in front of Habib -” and he did, with a vicious karate kick.

After Suleiman’s men extracted Habib’s confession, he was transferred back to US custody, where he eventually was imprisoned at Guantanamo. His “confession” was then used as evidence in his Guantanamo trial.

The Washington Pos t’s intelligence correspondent Jeff Stein reported some additional details regarding Suleiman and his important role in the old Egypt the demonstrators are trying to leave behind:

“Suleiman is seen by some analysts as a possible successor to the president,” the Voice of American said Friday. “He earned international respect for his role as a mediator in Middle East affairs and for curbing Islamic extremism.”

An editorialist at Pakistan’s “International News” predicted Thursday that “Suleiman will probably scupper his boss’s plans [to install his son], even if the aspiring intelligence guru himself is as young as 75.”

Suleiman graduated from Egypt’s prestigious Military Academy but also received training in the Soviet Union. Under his guidance, Egyptian intelligence has worked hand-in-glove with the CIA’s counterterrorism programs, most notably in the 2003 rendition from Italy of an al-Qaeda suspect known as Abu Omar.

In 2009, Foreign Policy magazine ranked Suleiman as the Middle East’s most powerful intelligence chief, ahead of Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

In an observation that may turn out to be ironic, the magazine wrote, “More than from any other single factor, Suleiman’s influence stems from his unswerving loyalty to Mubarak.”

If Suleiman succeeds Mubarak and retains power, we will likely be treated to plaudits for his distinguished credentials from government officials and US pundits.  We should remember that what they really mean is his ability to brutalize and torture. As Stephen Grey puts it:

But in secret, men like Omar Suleiman, the country’s most powerful spy and secret politician, did our work, the sort of work that Western countries have no appetite to do ourselves.

If Suleiman receives praise in the US, it will be because our leaders know that he’s the sort of leader who can be counted on to do what it takes to restore order and ensure that Egypt remains friendly to US interests.

There are some signs, however, that the Obama administration may not accept Suleiman’s appointment. Today they criticized the rearrangement of the chairs in Egypt’s government. If so, that will be a welcome sign that the Obama administration may have some limits beyond which it is hesitant to go in aligning with our most brutal “friends.”

We sure hope that the Egyptian demonstrators reject the farce of Suleiman’s appointment and push on to a complete change of regime. Otherwise the Egyptian torture chamber will undoubtedly return, as a new regime reestablishes “stability” and serves US interests.

Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is co-founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
via uruknet.info

Evidence of torture and repression by Mubarak´s Police

Egypt - Evidence of torture and repression by Mubarak´s Police

By María Luisa Rivera, Wikileaks, 28 January 2011, 15.00 GMT

Many well-known activists including Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel peace laureate, have been arrested in their homes, civilians have been wounded and even killed in clashes with Egyptian police and security forces.   As an Internet blackout imposed by the state covers the country, every citizen and grassroots organization will now be exposed to arbitrary police forces. As secret documents from US prove, during the demonstrations today, authorities might use physical threats, legal threats and extraordinary laws such the Emergency Law as an excuse to persecute and prosecute activists during the pacific demonstrations taking place in Cairo and other cities.

As described by Cable 10CAIRO64 sent from the Embassy of Cairo on 12January, 2010, “Egypt’s State of Emergency, in effect almost continuously since 1967, allows for the application of the 1958 Emergency Law, which grants the GOE broad powers to arrest individuals without charge and to detain them indefinitely”. The cable also describes how “The GOE has also used the Emergency Law in some recent cases to target bloggers and labor demonstrators”.

Excessive use of force by police during the protests led to arbitrary executions and detentions in a vast array of abuses, a situation that is known and acknowledged in the past by U.S. diplomats based in Egypt. It is important to bear in mind the long record of police abuse and torture by Egyptian police forces.

In the aftermath of protest started on Monday January 25th, many citizens, including activists and Journalists were attacked. People were detained, brutally wounded and even killed as a result of excessive use of force by Police, a situation that is known and acknowledged in the past by U.S. diplomats based in Egypt.

In a Cable sent from Cairo Embassy on 2009, Cable 09CAIRO79 the reality of the police force is described: “Torture and police brutality in Egypt are endemic and widespread.  The police use brutal methods mostly against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators.” It was 2009 when the Government of the United States of America acknowledged the lack of concrete actions of the Egyptian government to improve the situation of police in Egypt. This same document points out how bloggers described the severe torture with electric shocks inflicted on a blogger, and how security forces stopped the torture when he began cooperating.

The suppression of dissent and collective action for change goes beyond direct use of force; it includes using legal threats to prosecute even the most harmless forms of dissent, including poetry: “A recent series of selective GOE actions against journalists, bloggers and even an amateur poet illustrates the variety of methods available to the GOE to suppress critical opinion, including an array of investigative authorities and public and private legal actions.” 

As recently as February 2010, as indicated in 10CAIRO213, an activist implored the United States diplomats to get closer to the Egyptian government in order to combat torture and reduce the growing brutality of the police. The answer from Vice President Biden is that the political leader, the highest authority in the country, is not a dictator. The answer from the U.S. is silence, and dismissal of the Egyptian people´s desire to create a better future.  

via wikileaks.ch