US accused of using torture during interrogation

LOS ANGELES: The United States is condoning the torture and illegal interrogation of prisoners held in the wake of Sept 11, in defiance of international law and its own constitution, according to lawyers, former US intelligence officers and human rights groups. They claim prisoners have been beaten, hooded and had painkillers withheld.

Some prisoners inside American penal institutions and detention camps have been subjected to interrogation techniques which do not leave injuries, but which lawyers consider to be abusive. Others have been sent to countries where electric shocks and more conventional forms of torture have been used, according to the claims.

Wayne Madsen, a former US navy intelligence officer, points to two forms of what he calls torture being practised by America or its partners in the wake of September 11.

The first consists of techniques such as sleep deprivation and shining harsh lights at detainees which, Mr Madsen labels “torture lite”. He says this is being practised on hundreds of inmates held by the US at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda connections.

The second, less subtle, kind of torture is being inflicted on prisoners taken by the US military to third-party countries with lax human-rights records. Mr Madsen, now a commentator on intelligence-gathering, said he understood that prisoners who were believed to have information had been taken to countries including Egypt, Morocco and Syria where such full-blown torture techniques were used.

The allegations come as the debate continues in the US on whether torture is justified in extreme “ticking bomb” cases where thousands of lives might be saved through pre-empting terrorist attacks. The idea that in such cases, permission for torture could be granted by judicial warrant was first raised shortly after Sept 11 by the Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz.

“I hear from former agents that it [torture] was done and that it is done,” Mr Dershowitz told the Guardian newspaper. His position was that if an interrogator believed that torture was absolutely necessary to save lives, they would have to appear before a judge. “Such a procedure would require the judges to dirty their hands by authorising torture warrants or bear the responsibility for failing to do so.” Mr Dershowitz, who has acted for such clients as O.J. Simpson and Claus von Bulow, said that after the subject was raised last year his position on the issue was distorted, and he had received unwelcome support “from a lot of yahoos who said, ‘great, let’s torture everyone.’ But there was also a lot of praise from people for bringing the topic out from below the radar screen and putting it on the agenda.”

Mr Dershowitz said he believed that the US currently “freely subcontracts its torture to Jordan, Egypt and the Philippines”.

While the official US position is that torture is not used and that all international conventions are observed, within some agencies of law enforcement the reality appears to be one of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

At a hearing last September of the House and Senate intelligence committees, Cofer Black, then head of the CIA counterterrorist centre, said of the treatment of suspects: “This is a very highly classified area, but I have to say that all you need to know is there was a ‘before 9/11’, and there was an ‘after 9/11’. After 9/11 the gloves came off.”

One official, who has supervised the capture and transfer of prisoners, told the Washington Post last year: “If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job. I don’t think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA.”

The report suggested that CIA interrogators at Bagram air base in Afghanistan kept Al Qaeda members standing or kneeling for hours in painful positions, and deprived them of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of light. This practice comes under the general interrogation heading of “stress and duress”.

Other prisoners have been taken to Diego Garcia — the Indian ocean island leased from Britain — where interrogators have impersonated nationals of countries known to use torture, in an effort to loosen the tongues of captives.

“It is as American as apple pie,” William Goodman, legal director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, said of the claims that such techniques had been used. “Dershowitz is not a lone voice. He speaks for a segment of the population, and there is clearly some thought being given to this.” Mr Goodman said that the law clearly prohibited the use of torture.

The LA-based constitutional lawyer Stephen Rohde said that the US was already violating the Geneva convention by its interrogation of prisoners: “Donald Rumsfeld has been boasting about the information [from prisoners] as a valid reason for holding them indefinitely without lawyers and without charging them. We are violating the Geneva convention by interrogating them.”

The Taliban prisoners should only have been required to give their name, rank, serial number and date of birth, he said. Lawyers representing those being interrogated have expressed their concern.

“I have never seen clients treated so badly” said Randy Hamud, the San Diego-based lawyer who has represented a number of the Arab men detained last year, some of whom are still in custody. “The constitution has been cast aside. The United States is no longer the moral leader of the world.”

Mr Hamud represents men detained because they had contact with some of the September 11 hijackers who had been based in San Diego. He said he believed that the polygraph (lie detector) test was being used as an interrogation technique. “They were given polygraph tests and then told that they had failed them so they would have to come up with information about other people,” he said.

One of his clients, Osama Awadallah, he said, was physically abused by guards when detained in New York. “Female officers observed them while they were strip searched,” he said. “It was very humiliating. They were kept in conditions like a meat locker.”

Mr Hamud said he believed that some prisoners were kept in other countries where surrogates carried out torture and passed on the information to the US. “For instance, they have used Jordanian surrogates in Jordan. The FBI and federal law enforcement authorities have been showing a pattern abroad of having people arrested and taken to states with a history of, shall we say, excessive interrogation techniques, such as Egypt or Syria.”

Peter Keane, the dean of the law faculty at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, said that none of the statements emanating from the prisoners held without charge would be admissible in court. “They would be presumed to be compelled statements,” he said.

Mr Keane said that the last time prisoners were interrogated and held in such a way was during the American civil war, when nearly 8,000 Confederate prisoners were held and questioned.

The civil rights lawyer Stephen Yagman is part of a group which has initiated a lawsuit on behalf of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay.

“They are using sensory deprivation to induce a feeling of depression so that they become receptive to any human contact,” he said. He suggested that the interrogators were trying to develop a long-term “parasitic relationship” with subjects.

Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch, said that a modern interrogation technique was to develop a total dependency between the prisoner and the interrogator. “That does not count as a human rights violation, however,” she said.

She said that of the 750 who had been held on immigration charges in the wake of September 11, 110 had been charged with unrelated offences, and 80-100 were still inside. Getting information about many was almost impossible, she said.

A Human Rights Watch inquiry found that the authorities had held detainees “for prolonged periods without charges, impeded their access to counsel, subjected them to coercive interrogations and overridden judicial orders to release them on bond during immigration proceedings.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.

Winter makes it all so pleasant, festive

QUITE possibly in the fact that the prices of chicken have shot up in the city, there is an element of concealed optimism, and cheer. Something that obliquely symbolizes the point that a friend of mine believes is the optimism in the air, there is something reassuring about this, notwithstanding all the grim scenarios the pessimists always offer. They always see the glass as half empty. There are, of course, always reasons for being unhappy with this city. But forget that old story for a change.

This story that chicken has become more expensive reflects not just the awareness that white meat is preferred to red meat; which also means that all that cardiologists like Dr Azhar Faruqui keep stressing upon is working its way quietly, but surely. It also means that the marriage season is in bloom. With the return of the extravagant menus for weddings and valimas, chicken is more in demand. There may be some relationship to the fact that Eidul Azha is due next month, but from the interesting report that these pages carried during the week, there is something enigmatic about the price of chicken having gone up.

For some of us this demand for chicken reflects the fact that at this time of the year, the sticky city weather turns mild and kind, and even compassionate and, like the failure and the erratic nature of the way in which power and water suppliers (the KESC and the Water and Sanitation Department), does not drive you to insanity and rage. Indeed, this is time for saying that we have one winter in town, rather late some might say to have said that, but perhaps still a good time to take notice of it. For there is an optimism in the air, and perhaps it has something to do with democracy having been revived? There are some disturbing reports on this count, with reference to the province, and the city, yet the winds of cheer, and a certain bonhomie seems to be in the air.

Many experienced Karachiites have believed that the months of November through March are, generally speaking, the best time to be in Karachi. This is the season where the usual challenges of residing in Karachi are at their lowest in a sense. This is party time for those who believe in them, says one citizen, who observes that even the number of beggars rises in the Sindh capital due to the mildness of the winter here. The harshness and the bite of the winter in the rest of the country make people come here for relief. And even the ordinary Karachiite finds relief in the mild gentle winter that comes. It is such respite from Karachi’s hot and invariably humid weather, which makes everything so depressing, underlines one citizen, who seems not to understand the heatwave that strikes Punjab and the North West Frontier Province.

Having mentioned the demand for chicken reminds me to mention the decision of the Punjab cabinet which has recommended that there should be one dish during all marriage-related functions for a maximum 300 quests; and a formal law is to be implemented after approval in the assembly session scheduled for next week, (Jan 29). If the number of guests exceeds 300 even that one dish will not be allowed. There are other details of how the violators are to be dealt with. So wait and see.

Thought naturally goes out to what may happen in Karachi, and Sindh also. There is so much extravagance here too, and in fact the manner in which the rich have taken to wedding meals and menus is shameful and embarrassing, keeping in mind the nature and extent of poverty there is. Don’t really go by the fact that the price of chicken has risen and so has the demand. The fact that new cars have become expensive and yet new cars are in demand, and in short supply, is not to mean that all is well. Poverty has grown, dear reader, and you have to look at the way in which the low-income people live, and how the poor struggle to survive.

When in this season of cheer and mild winter the well-off have comfort and warmth, the poor have slept on pavements after having their “awami chicken soup” from the pushcart, or wayside cabin which displays a hanging chicken over a large container which has steaming hot spicy chicken soup. Those of us who have tried it, relish it, and know its worth, of course. Those who haven’t, only pass by, never adventuring to try and see the nourishment even this soup has. One learns that even Burnes Road now has this delicious soup, and its quality is good, in addition to all the other delicacies that Burnes Road is famous for. Which reminds me that Karachi’s winter is also famous for “kastoori milk,” which has become quite a fashionable thing to have at this time of the year. Tried it?

The weather seems to have its psychological impact on the citizens in a very positive way. Suddenly and not so suddenly the anger, the irritation, the impatience, the general grumbling all seem to disappear, or at least fade away into the distance. Whether it is the pedestrian or the driver, the office worker or the student, or even the unemployed, there is something somewhat accommodating, in the overall attitude; that hostility that is born of many social and community causes, takes a back seat. Even traffic jams don’t upset people that much and the useless argument that strangers have, and the bitterness that rising prices bring, seems not to matter. I have often been surprised at the manner in which the most negative of attitudes has become positive, all on account of the weather having become cool. And believe me, the Quetta winds bring out the very best in some citizens of the Sindh capital. They wear their woolly best, they eat with still more carelessness, and they make it as merry as it is possible, throwing their worries out of their lives as long as the cold wave lasts. But that Quetta cold wave plays havoc with some people - those vulnerable to the severity of the weather; when the minimum temperature goes into single digit reading such people, instead of enjoying the crispness of the season, and the nip in the air, catch common colds, and coughs, and depending on how their personal chemistry has been developed over the years, they find themselves visiting their family doctor or resorting to self-medication. Is self-medication is due to the rising cost of medicine, or is it due to the confidence that people have picked up from conversations with all and sundry.

Language, distribution of power

Words are the most powerful drug used by the mankind, said Kipling.

And when Dr Tariq Rehman, teacher, researcher and linguist, in his book Language, Ideology and Power, Language-learning among the Muslims of Pakistan and Northern India (which was described by one speaker as a research of foundational importance), establishes the linkage of the language with the distribution of power in our society one seems to understand not only the effects but also the side effects, as it were, of this drug of words.

Booklovers from Islamabad (each one of whom was described as the chief guest by the author) were entertained to a discourse by scholars and writers at the auditorium of the Islamabad Club on the launching of the publication brought out by the Oxford University Press on Friday evening.

Researchers in an age where generally our universities seem to be merely concerned with teaching; and in an environment where there is very little premium on knowledge, appear to be a rare commodity and the accolades that the author (although, he told the audience he had come prepared that Ghalib kay urean gay purzea) got from the speakers did reflect the amount of work that has gone into the making of this, what a reviewer would say in yesteryear, magnum opus on the subject. (But, dear reader, here no review is intended).

“Efforts to increase our understanding of the socio- linguistic dynamics of Pakistan,” said Dr Joan L.G. Baart, a visiting researcher from Holland at the Institute of Pakistan Studies, “can be broken down into two subtasks: one on the one hand, to put it simply, one needs a theory of human social behaviour; a theory that throws light on the question as to why groups of people make the choices they do. On the other hand,” he said, “the current situation in Pakistan is the product of a sequence of historical events that have led up to it; so, one needs to know what that history is.” Dr Baart thought that the book extensively deals with both these aspects and offers a well thought out theory of social behaviour, which looks in particular at power and its unequal distribution as a driving force in socio-linguistic processes.

He thought that the author has done an incredible amount of research, “and for language after language, he has traced the history of how it has emerged in this part of the world, how its status has risen and in some cases fallen, and how it has been used in the different spheres of life and in particular in education”. He summed this up thus: “In all, Dr Rahman has put before us a monumental work, a repository of knowledge, a book that is extremely valuable even just as a reference work on the social history of the languages of Pakistan in general and the history of language teaching in Pakistan in particular...”

Throwing light on Tariq Rahman’s thesis that establishes relationship between language and power (and how power wielding classes develop standardized language to distinguish them from common people}, historian and scholar Dr Mubarak Ali referred to the example in the Urdu language, where ahle zaban (people of language) were those who claimed to speak chaste and pure language. In this case, mother tongue was not the criterion to speak standardized language. He said that famous Urdu poet Inshaullah Khan Insha, regarded only the inhabitants of 13 mohallahs (parts of town) of Delhi as the people of language. In Pakistan, he thought, Urdu has lost its privilege and instead of it English has become the language of power as it is adopted by bureaucracy, army officers, businessmen, media people and educationists. “However, as pointed out by Dr Rehman,” he said, “interestingly, on the other hand, big landlords and ulema without knowing English, have high political and social status because landed property and religious knowledge are their power bases”.

Writer Khaled Ahmed dealt with the problems of nationalism and ideology in our context. He thought that great myths in terms of the effect of Imperialism (of Macaulay’s minute, for instance) have been proved wrong in view of looking at things in the light of facts.

He spoke of the mistake that was made in imposing Urdu in Bengal, which he described as the first fissure in our unity. Same is the case in Sindh where he thought when one refers to the ethnic trouble, it is the way people speak. How is language related to ideology and what ideology does to society? He thought that nationalism isolated us, and in terms of the language divided the nation. Referring to books by K.K.Aziz he spoke of the attempts to falsify history.

He also dealt with introducing Urdu in the government of NWFP, and spoke of the introduction of Urdu in Punjab by a Chief Minister, which resulted in some civil servants using translators. He pleaded for looking at the language in new paradigms. He called the author a moderate person — “yet he would not hesitate when it comes to speaking the truth.”

Prof Mohammad Waseem applauded the book for its historical, interpretative and comparative analyses. He dealt at length with the role of Urdu and said in the Punjab, where it was introduced by the British in 1849 (which included major part of NWFP), Islamic books were available only in Urdu. It was true of other provinces too. That is why any kind of agitation against Urdu was resented by the ulema. He lauded the author for the kaleidoscopic nature of the book.

Ameena Syed, the managing-director of Oxford University Press, Pakistan, introduced the book. Fayyaz H. Raja, Manager of OUP in Islamabad acted as the stage secretary.

And now a word about the author: Dr Tariq Rahman is professor of linguistics and South Asian Studies, at the Quaid-i-Azam University. He was a Fulbright Senior Research scholar at the University of Texas at Austin in 1995-96. He was guest professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and has been lecturing at American universities. Some of his books are: Language and Politics in Pakistan and Language Education and Culture.

Dr Tariq Rahman spoke of work of the researcher and the way society should help him institutionally. Incidentally he spoke of Ghalib and his economic plight, one wished the bard were a researcher in these times. He might have got a Fullbright fellowship somewhere in the US, and would not have said: Qarz kee peetay thay maea aur yeah khte they kay han

Rang laigee hamari faqamasti aik din. Dear reader ask not for Ghalib’s translation.—Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad