ABU GHRAIB: The Abuses Started at the Top

“Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” (airing February 22, 2007 at 9:30pm EST on HBO) is a stark and moving chronicle of abuses that were not isolated actions by a few bad apples, but the inevitable outcome of policies that began at the highest levels of the Pentagon and the White House. (Click on image below to view trailer.)

Those policies ignored the fundamental underpinnings of American law, human rights law and the laws of war, as well as the protests of top military lawyers and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. First came the denial of any legal protections to detainees labeled as “unlawful enemy combatants” held at Guantanamo Bay. That was followed by the authorization of harsh interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, nakedness, and other forms of abuse and humiliation. Those techniques were imported to Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

Abu Ghraib provided the graphic images that shocked the world and the conscience of a nation.  But it is just the tip of the iceberg. As Human Rights First's report Command’s Responsibility, documented, well over one hundred detainees have actually died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Human Rights First Responds

In response to the revelations of Abu Ghraib, Human Rights First launched its End Torture Now campaign to put an end to the United States’ abusive policies. 

In fighting the U.S. policy of torture, we are

• Building and sustaining a coalition of more than 40 retired U.S. generals and admirals who believe the best national security strategies are those that protect human rights. Their voices helped to pass the Detainee Treatment Act banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment;
  
• Seeking legal accountability of the former secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for his role in authorizing and failing to prevent and punish acts of torture of detainees;
  
• Seeking legislative fixes of the misguided and unconstitutional portions of the recently-passed Military Commissions Act, including its purported elimination of habeas corpus; and
  
• Ensuring that the CIA complies with the ban on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and does not engage in secret detention and the use of so-called “alternative interrogation procedures.”

What You Can Do Now

A Call for Oversight and Accountability of the CIA

While the Defense Department has made some improvements in the treatment of detainees the President insists that the CIA may still engage in the secret detention of detainees and interrogate them with an “alternative set of procedures.”  CIA sources have told reporters that they were previously authorized to subject detainees to waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, exposure to severe cold temperatures, slapping, and refusal of pain medication.  The President says that the techniques that are now permitted are lawful but will not disclose them.  There is good reason to think that nothing has changed and the techniques are illegal and abusive. 

No one is being held responsible.  In one much reported case from late 2002, a CIA case officer allegedly ordered an Afghan prisoner at a secret prison outside of Kabul stripped naked, chained to a floor and left outside in the November night. 

The detainee died; the CIA officer was promoted.

A total of 21 civilians, including CIA agents, were referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution, but the DOJ indicated in December 2006 it is unlikely to bring charges against anyone; one CIA contractor was previously prosecuted. 

Until the CIA is properly constrained by law and oversight and held responsible for its abuses, any improvements on the military side are unlikely to last long. Military investigations noted that the CIA’s presence within military detention facilities confused military interrogators on which interrogation guidance was controlling and that CIA agents transferred to military detention centers detainees who had already been subjected to abuse. 

Click here to write your representative and senator and tell them to tell the President and the attorney general to put a stop to the CIA’s secret detention program and hold abusers accountable.