Command's Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan

Human Rights First:  Press Briefing on
“Command’s Responsibility: Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan”
February 22, 2006

STATEMENT OF DEBORAH PEARLSTEIN
DIRECTOR, U.S. LAW AND SECURITY PROGRAM, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST

Deborah Pearlstein, Director, U.S. Law and Security Program, Human Rights First is the editor of Command’s Responsibility and a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Deborah leads Human Rights First's efforts in research, litigation, and advocacy related to U.S. counterterrorism and national security policy.

Thank you for joining us today.  My name is Deborah Pearlstein, and I direct our U.S. Law and Security work at Human Rights First.  Also with me are my colleague, Hina Shamsi, and Generals Irvine and Xenakis, both recently retired from the U.S. Army.  I’m going to make a few brief introductory remarks, and then I’ll be introducing each of them to say a few words.  We are all then happy to take your questions.

What’s news here?  This report is the first and most complete accounting to date of how many detainees have died in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, including what were the circumstances of their deaths, and what were the consequences, if any, for those involved.  It identifies systemic problems surrounding these deaths that we’ll discuss, from inadequate training and guidance, to command interference, to gross failures in investigation and prosecution following wrongful deaths.  It also shows how little record keeping and disclosure there has actually been – close to half the deaths we researched are for causes that are still officially undetermined or publicly withheld.  For this reason, we expect the actual numbers are higher than what we give here.  And it shows the result of these failures: people are dying in U.S. custody and no one is held to account. 

Why focus on command responsibility?  You’re going to hear today about the role commanders played in failing to give clear guidance to troops, in undermining the completion of investigations, and sometimes unwittingly, in lessening the punishment troops face for even the most serious criminal treatment of detainees.  You’ll also hear how little commanders themselves have been called to account.  And you’ll see in our recommendations a series of ways to hold commanders to account for the problems identified here.  Why do we focus on them, they’re surely not the only ones responsible for wrongful acts?  Commanders are the only link between civilian policy makers (who have given unclear and sometimes unlawful guidance) and the Lynndie Englands of the services – 19, 20, 21-year-old troops who we’ve asked to shoulder primary responsibility for guarding detainees or for collecting human intelligence, and asked to take the blame.  Commanders are not in an easy position, but they’re the only ones who can exercise judgment about what orders are lawful, and they’re the canary in the coal mine who can say when things are going wrong.  If the buck doesn’t stop with them, it doesn’t stop.  As General Irvine can discuss from experience, and as this report makes clear, they can prevent the worst crimes from happening, or they can stand aside and watch with impunity.  So far, the latter has been too often the case.

Why is this important? The United States today continues to hold some 15,000 individuals in detention facilities worldwide.  The secrecy surrounding this system, and the lack of accountability for those who’ve committed crimes within it, is an ongoing danger – both for the risk of torture and abuse it poses for detainees, and for the role it has played in undermining U.S. cooperation with allies and in compromising U.S. efforts to gain human intelligence.  Today, the Army is in the throes of finalizing its new field manual for interrogation operations; the Senate is poised to call Gen. Miller back to Capitol Hill to clarify his earlier testimony about his role in ordering abusive treatment at Abu Ghraib; and several trials of lower ranking troops for abusing detainees are about to get underway – trials in which senior command have either refused to testify asserting their right against self-incrimination, or have reached deals giving them immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony.  If the President, and the military and intelligence services, are serious about setting up incentives to deter their agents from engaging in torture and other unlawful treatment – now is the time to make that policy clear.

Why focus on deaths? Detainees dying in U.S. custody is one piece of a much larger story, one that includes hundreds of incidents of torture and abuse not resulting in death in U.S.-run facilities worldwide.  We looked at deaths for two reasons: (1) To counter a misperception by some that detainee abuse has been limited to moderate discomfort or humiliation; and (2) to see how the Administration has done in holding people to account not for limited infractions, but for the worst of the worst – where people were killed or tortured to death.  This record is not good.  The Administration says that those who break the laws against torture and abuse will be held to account; but the burden is now on them to make it so.  As long as the United States says one thing and does another, we’re not doing justice and we’re not winning the fight against terror.