Lost in much of the debate over whether or not torture is effective (never mind that it's still illegal) is the part true gruesome for most of us to want to think about, to talk about. But at The Daily Beast, lawyer and investigator for law firms and human-rights groups, John Sifton has the grim reminder of the nearly 100 men who died during interrogations.
A simple fact is being overlooked in the Bush-era torture scandal: the number of cases in which detainees have been tortured to death. Abuse did not only involve the high-profile cases of smashing detainees into plywood barriers ("walling"), confinement in coffin-like boxes with insects, sleep deprivation, cold, and waterboarding. To date approximately 100 detainees, including CIA-held detainees, have died during U.S. interrogations, and some are known to have been tortured to death.
A review of homicide cases, however, shows that few detainee deaths have been properly investigated. Many were not investigated at all. And no official investigation has looked into the connection between detainee deaths and the interrogation policies promulgated by the Bush administration.
Here are a few of the cases Sifton highlights in the article:
- Two detainees at Bagram air base died after extensive beatings by U.S. troops in December 2002—a case reported by The New York Times and that was also the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. Another death involved a man beaten to death by a CIA contractor at a base in Asadabad, in eastern Afghanistan, in June 2003....
- Jamal Naseer, a soldier in the Afghan Army, died (in March, 2003) after he and seven other soldiers were mistakenly arrested. Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables. Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.
- To the best of my knowledge, the first death of a U.S. detainee in custody occurred in August 2002—an Afghan detainee named Mohammad Sayari killed by four U.S. military personnel.... In 2006, additional documents obtained by the ACLU disclosed that the Army investigation had found probable cause to recommend charges of murder and conspiracy against the four Special Forces soldiers. According the investigation, the four soldiers had captured the detainee, a civilian noncombatant, and shot him, presumably after interrogating him.... Inexplicably, without a court martial, the case was closed. The captain received a letter of reprimand for "destroying evidence."
- [I]n December 2003, a 44-year-old Iraqi man named Abu Malik Kenami died in a U.S. detention facility in Mosul, Iraq. As reported by Human Rights First, U.S. military personnel who examined Kenami when he first arrived at the facility determined that he had no preexisting medical conditions. Once in custody, as a disciplinary measure for talking, Kenami was forced to perform extreme amounts of exercise—a technique used across Afghanistan and Iraq. Then his hands were bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he was hooded, and forced to lie in an overcrowded cell. Kenami was found dead the morning after his arrest, still bound and hooded. No autopsy was conducted; no official cause of death was determined.
- Another infamous case from Iraq involved a CIA "ghost" detainee named Manadel al-Jamadi, who was tortured to death by a CIA interrogation team at Abu Ghraib prison in November 2003.... Reporting by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and NPR’s John McChesney revealed that al-Jamadi was strung up from handcuffs behind his back, a torture tactic sometimes called a "Palestinian hanging." After an investigation, the CIA referred the case to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution of the CIA personnel involved, but no charges were ever brought.
Sifton also discusses the case of one of the CIA's "disappeared" detainees, Hassan Ghul (Meteor Blades detailed his case here), and suspects Ghul is among those tortured to death.
The official sanction of torture, in fact, not just the sanction of torture but the before-the-fact decision to use torture as a policy tool had this inevitable consequence: homicide. Torturing people to death wasn't official policy, but once unleashed it was inevitable that abuse would spread and intensify and result in murder. And that should demand a criminal investigation, not just of those directly responsible for the deaths, but of those who authorized them. As Sifton concludes, "many detainee homicides in Iraq and Afghanistan were the direct result of approval and orders from the highest levels of government, and ... officials in the government are accomplices. Any meaningful investigation of those homicides would reveal the initial authorizations and their link to the homicides.... One cannot speak glibly of 'policy differences' and 'looking forward' and 'distraction' when corpses are involved."
(H/T TalkLeft)