Warning dear readers that I’ve been sick and I’m plumb wore out, so this diary will be briefer and more lightly sourced than it should be; I just want to put a placemark in my 16-year research into our nation’s post-9/11 treatment of detainees, and specifically the policy/practice of U.S. kidnapping and detention of noncombatant children in intelligence and war efforts. There will be more articles coming.
Suspected 9/11 plan architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (known as KSM) had sons who were 7 and 9 years old when their father fled during a 2002 CIA raid on his Pakistan hideout. Mohammed escaped that time, only to be captured a few months later. However, the CIA captured his two sons and we’ve never learned what happened to them, except for a few brief glimpses over the years as reports indicated that KSM’s sons were “used as leverage” in the interrogations of their father and as other detainees in US custody reported seeing them or hearing of them.
Here and there during 2002, 2003, and 2004, I kept reading news reports that included small, virtually parenthetical mentions of other children of other “terrorist” leaders and even Iraqi military leaders.
Since the end of 2002 and virtually every day for two years, I spent my lunchtime and personal days calling my senators from North Carolina to inquire about this practice of detaining small children. One day, the aide for Sen. Elizabeth Dole who drew the short straw in the office and had to take my daily calls decided he’d himself been tortured enough, so he called a pal at the US Dept. of Defense and outright asked whether this was a thing now: Did the U.S. develop a practice for kidnapping and detaining noncombatant children, and who was responsible for oversight of this practice? Who was checking in on the children, making sure they’re already, ensuring they’re not subjected to brutal treatment, finding out whether they’re ever returned to their families?
So Aaron from Sen. Dole’s office asked his Defense Dept. pal and the answer came back to me in a phone call: Yes, this is a useful method of garnering information; no one gets hurt, and the children are returned to their families.
I asked Aaron to call his friend back and ask him who exactly know all this, and which agency/department is in charge of oversight? Who keeps records on how long these children are detained, where they’re kept, and how they’re treated? Do the children experience lingering effects of being kidnapped by the CIA and/or US military forces for prolonged periods of time under the circumstances in which they’re held?
Exasperated, Aaron reached out again to the Defense Dept. A few weeks later, I received a packet in the mail from Aaron: a “FOR EYES ONLY” report from the US Central Command to Sen. Elizabeth Dole responding to her request for an inquiry into US detention practices in intelligence and combat operations.
SUBJECT: Detention of Civilians in Iraq
PURPOSE. To respond to a Joint Staff request for information regarding the detention and treatment of Iraqi civilians. This information is required in order to respond to a Congressional Inquiry by Senator [Elizabeth] Dole.
DISCUSSION. All questioning of detainees is conducted in a professional manner, by trained interrogators, under regular supervision. US/Coalition regulations, as well as international law/treaties, prohibit the use of torture.
a. The Geneva Conventions (GC) permit us, as an occupying power, to detain civilians who pose a threat to the security of Coalition Forces or the Iraqi State.
b. Approximately 6,900 civilians are currently being detained in Iraq as security internees. These are individuals who attempted, planned, or physically committed crimes against Coalition forces, or are believed to harbor information regarding future planned attacks.
c. In accordance with the GC, the Coalition maintains the right to detain civilians for questioning regarding criminal acts. These detainees are immediately processed for release when they are no longer required for questioning.
d. The Coalition implemented a detainee review process that provides broader procedural discretions than the GC.
(1) A military attorney reviews all detainee case files when the detainee is inducted into a detention facility.
(2) All detainees are then served with a copy of their internment order, which states the basis for the detention. Detainees are further provided an opportunity to appeal, in writing, the decision to intern them.
(3) In accordance with the GC, each detainee case file is reviewed no later than six months from the date of detention, in order to determine whether continued detention is warranted.
(4) Finally, every civilian detained for questioning is processed for release at the conclusion of the interview process. Only those individuals who continue to pose a threat to Coalition forces, or the Iraqi State, remain in custody.
e. The number of Iraqi cilivians detained by Coalition forces is decreasing.
f. There are fewer than 200 pre-trial criminal detainees in Coalition-operated facilities.
3. RECOMMENDATION. None. Information provided in response to Joint Staff query.
APPROVED BY: J.F. Sattler, Major General, USMC, Director of Operations
PREPARED BY: Julio L. Alvarez, Jr., LTC, USA, Chief, Ground Operations
22 JAN 04
Serendipitously, Sen. Dole’s office made the wrong inquiry: they asked for information on adult detention processes in wartime Iraq rather than on kidnapping and detention of noncombatant children in both intelligence and combat efforts across the various fields of operation.
However, this report did contain that salient statement that the US government had never admitted before: That, in essence, a determination had been made that the US and its coalition forces would use broader procedural discretions than those outlined in the Geneva Conventions.
I shopped this report around to a couple reporters at the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal who’d been writing about these “disappeared” children, and we decided to put this report forward with other information immediately when international attention was riveted to investigations on treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq in 2004.
I also took this information and my various other documentation to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. I'm a nobody, just an elderly catlady grandmother in North Carolina. But I put a trip to the Netherlands on my Visa card after going through the process of scheduling meetings with key staff at the ICC, including a war-crimes prosecutor. Although the Bush/Cheney administration had removed the United States as signatories to the Rome Statute that established the ICC and the U.S. was, therefore, no longer bound by ICC law, I figured it was worthwhile for someone to at least bring this up and chronicle the unsuccessful efforts to get the issue addressed by U.S. legislative, legal, and judicial bodies.
Well, blahblahblah and argle-bargle, we know how that went, right? No where. The ICC declined to establish jurisdiction to pursue a war-crimes case against a nation with an operating jurisprudence system and laws that governed the legality of such practices. As long as the US had laws against torture, kidnapping, and illegal/inhumane detention and a legal system that could adjudicate such cases, the ICC believed it could not and would not step in.
I'm really exhausted, so I'll skip ahead to today, when Gina Haspel took part in a hearing to confirm her as head of the U.S. CIA. Most senators asked in the confirmation hearing questions about the "morality" of her part in torturing detainees, or about her participation in destroying evidence of that torture. One of my favorite stoopid questions: "What would she do if the president asked her to do something immoral?"
Torture is not a moral issue. And it's not hypothetical. Who the eff cares what Ms. Haspel "would do" when we aren't even asking what she and others DID do? What, are we convening a hearing to bring these issues to the Dalai Lama, the Pope, hundreds of philosophy experts, and that odious leader of the Southern Baptist Convention? Hell, no. Putting a known torturer and whitewasher-of-torture in charge of the CIA has nothing to do with morality.
Torture is illegal. Destroying evidence of torture is illegal.
Further, the kidnapping and inscrutable detention-without-end of noncombatant children is illegal. But will Gina Haspel even admit it’s not only something the US has done but also is doing and also has developed policies regarding? Policies that deny access to these chidren by the Red Cross, Red Crescent, Amnesty International, and other organizations that care about human beings who are put into cages, jails, prisons?
I’m going to wrap up for today, but I’m once again following the trail of this vile practice the United States has developed, implemented, and protected from prying eyes.