Human Rights Report - The Hypocrisy Edition, Volume 8

[Solly Mack]

The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices comes out between February and March of every year. This year's report, for 2008, is the last one for the Bush administration. The previous reports under Bush read pretty much the same. Those previous reports can be found here.





Torture by proxy: International law applicable to ‘Extraordinary Renditions’


Disappearing Act: Rendition by the Numbers




Countries involved (by no means a complete list) with Bush's extraordinary rendition program. The links in each box will take you to the report for that country.

Egypt


c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment


Security forces used unwarranted lethal force and tortured and abused prisoners and detainees, in most cases with impunity. Prison and detention center conditions were poor. Security forces arbitrarily arrested and detained individuals, in some cases for political purposes, and kept them in prolonged pretrial detention. The executive branch placed limits on and pressured the judiciary. The government's respect for freedoms of press, association, and religion declined during the year, and the government continued to restrict other civil liberties, particularly freedom of speech, including Internet freedom, and freedom of assembly, including restrictions on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Government corruption and lack of transparency persisted.

Article 42 of the constitution prohibits the infliction of "physical or moral harm" upon persons who have been arrested or detained; however, the law fails to account for mental or psychological abuse, abuse against persons who have not been formally accused, or abuse occurring for reasons other than securing a confession. Police, security personnel, and prison guards routinely tortured and abused prisoners and detainees, especially in cases of detentions under the Emergency Law, which authorizes incommunicado detention for prolonged periods. The government rarely held security officials accountable, and officials often operated with impunity.

Domestic and international human rights groups reported that the State Security Investigative Service (SSIS), police, and other government entities continued to employ torture to extract information or force confessions. On August 6, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) documented 40 cases of torture and 14 cases of torture resulting in death in 2007 by police officers. Between 2000 and 2007, the EOHR documented more than 226 cases of torture inside police stations, including 93 deaths likely caused by torture and mistreatment. In numerous trials, defendants alleged that police tortured them during questioning. Human rights activists also continued to call attention to more than a dozen amateur videos that observers with mobile phone cameras circulated on the Internet documenting abuse of citizens by security officials.

Morocco


c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment


The law prohibits such practices, and the government denied the use of torture. According to domestic and international human rights organizations, prisoners, and detainees, however, members of the security forces tortured and abused individuals in their custody. The penal code stipulates sentences of up to life imprisonment for public servants who use or allow the use of violence against others in the exercise of their official duties.

Jordan


c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The law prohibits such practices, but several domestic and international NGOs alleged torture and mistreatment of prisoners in police and security detention facilities. Article 208 of the penal code prohibits torture by public officials, including psychological harm, and provides penalties of up to three years' imprisonment, including hard labor if serious injury occurs. During the year there were no prosecutions of torture under this article.

Although torture is illegal in the country, an October report by the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), "Torture and Impunity in Jordan's Prisons," concluded that torture remained a widespread practice. Interviews with 66 prisoners in seven of the country's 10 prisons produced allegations of ill-treatment, which HRW concluded often amounted to torture. Common forms of torture detailed in the interviews were beatings with cables and sticks and suspension in metal cuffs for hours at a time. Political prisoners, including Islamists convicted of crimes against national security, reportedly received greater abuse than ordinary prisoners. The report also documented the severe lack of punishment and failure to investigate abusive guards.

In a January 2007 report the UN special rapporteur on torture described police and security forces as practicing "widespread" torture based on "consistent and credible allegations," which he stated were substantiated by forensic medical evidence. April and May 2007 reports from the Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR) and Amnesty International (AI), respectively, alleged torture and ill-treatment in government detention centers.

Syria


c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment


The law prohibits such practices, and the penal code provides punishment for abusers. Under Article 28 of the constitution, "no one may be tortured physically or mentally or treated in a humiliating manner." However, security forces reportedly continued to use torture frequently.

Local human rights organizations continued to cite numerous cases of security forces allegedly abusing and torturing prisoners and detainees and claimed that many instances of abuse went unreported. Individuals who suffered torture or beatings while detained refused to allow their names or details of their cases to be reported for fear of government reprisal.

Former prisoners, detainees, and reputable local human rights groups reported that methods of torture and abuse included electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; burning genitalia; forcing objects into the rectum; beating, sometimes while the victim was suspended from the ceiling; alternately dousing victims with freezing water and beating them in extremely cold rooms; hyperextending the spine; bending the detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts; using a backward-bending chair to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the victim's spine; and stripping prisoners naked for public view.

Feigned ignorance looks like guilt for a reason.





In case anyone wants it.

[Solly Mack]

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