He is not even the beginning of the end. Gonzales is the latest and most blatant actor in the United States' long and abominable participation in the use of torture.
From the final report of the United Nations International Conference on Torture:
The use of torture to extract confessions was not uncommon in the United States 60 years ago. This was especially true for black criminal suspects in the south. In one death sentence case the Supreme Court found that the confession had been obtained under torture and stated forcefully that such methods violated the fundamental guarantees of Due Process in the US Constitution. However, notwithstanding this official condemnation, abuses of custodial interrogation by police officers, often referred to as the "third degree", were a common feature in American criminal justice practices well into the 1960s. The Supreme Court developed a jurisprudence in which confessions that were not "voluntary" were not admitted as evidence, but abusive interrogation practices continued to be commonplace throughout the United States.
Paul Hoffman, the author of the background paper "National Efforts to Eradicate Torture," which is cited above, also noted that "
official torture has been eliminated during the last 25 years in the US."
Please tell that to Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was sodomized by New York police officers in December 1999.
Need more evidence of how torture is woven into the thread of American life? Ida B. Wells documented the lynchings of 12 black men in Georgia in 1899,
An example must be made. Ordinary punishment was deemed inadequate. This Negro must be burned alive.
Between 1882 (when reliable statistics were first collected) and 1968 (when the classic forms of lynching had disappeared), 4,743 persons died of lynching, 3,446 of them black men and women.
Link
As James Allen has documented in his book Without Sanctuary, professional photographers were hired to take pictures and print postcards to "commemorate" lynchings. What did they write on the back? Wish you were here?
According to Amnesty International the United States has ratified the United Nations Convention on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment with reservations. Those reservations include one to Article 16 explicitly in reference to the continued use of the death penalty and to limit "cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment" to that which is prohibited by the Constitution. Amnesty notes, however, that
[t]he reservation has far-reaching implications and can apply to any US laws or practices which may breach international standards for humane treatment but are allowed under the US Constitution, for example, prolonged isolation or the use of electro-shock weapons.
Sounding familiar?
Amnesty International's concerns on torture in the US include:
- Police brutality and excessive force
- Electro-shock stun devices
- Dangerous restraint holds
Besides the case of Mr. Louima, Amnesty notes the following cases in its
Briefing to the UN Committee against Torture.
Restraints and shackles
For example, in December 1999 Amnesty International received reports of the punitive use of restraints in La Plata County Jail, Colorado. Allegations included inmates being handcuffed to rings set in walls or on the floor of isolation cells for hours at a time as punishment or being held face-down on the floor of cells in four-point restraint, with their ankles secured by leg-irons and their hands cuffed to wall or floor rings. In at least one incident, a stun gun was allegedly used to electro-shock a prisoner handcuffed to the wall, as punishment for verbal aggression. Amnesty International is concerned that when the prisoner filed a complaint, the investigating officer allegedly responded that the use of the stun gun in this way had been an act of ''calm professionalism''. Amnesty International believes that such a response can only encourage misuse of electro-shock weapons in the jail. Amnesty International called for a full investigation into the allegations and urged that the use of stun weapons in the jail be suspended.
In February 2000, a lawsuit was filed alleging widespread abuse at a juvenile detention facility in Plankinton, South Dakota. The allegations included children being placed in punitive handcuffs and shackles, causing injury and discomfort: some were forced to lie on their backs spread-eagled in four-point restraints for hours at a time, including overnight. It was also alleged that girls were forcibly stripped by male staff while held in four-point restraint.
In Rights for All (pages 67-70), Amnesty International documented torture and ill-treatment involving the use of restraint chairs (a metal-framed chair which allows prisoners to be immoblized with four-point restraints securing both arms and legs, and straps across the chest). Prisoners strapped into the chair for minor acts of non-compliance have been tortured and hooded; stripped naked and left for hours in the chair in their own waste; shocked with stun guns or pepper sprayed while in the chair. In Sacramento County Jail, California, in 1997 and 1996, the chair was frequently used to torture and ill-treat inmates: prisoners were threatened with electrocution while strapped into the chair and one woman was left naked in the chair for hours in full view of male guards and subjected to sexual taunts. Children in custody have also been ill-treated with restraint chairs.(40) Some people have been interrogated while in the chair (see above).
A recent article appearing in the US journal The Progressive, reports that at least 11 people have died in the USA after being placed in restraint chairs.(41) They include several cases described by Amnesty International in Rights for All (including the case of Michael Valent, a mentally ill man who died from a blood clot after spending 17 hours in a restraint chair in Utah State Prison in 1997; and Scott Norberg who died of asphyxia in Maricopa County Jail, Arizona, while being forced into a restraint chair with a towel round his face after being shocked more than 20 times with a stun gun). Other recent cases cited in the article include Demetrius Brown, a 20-year-old mentally ill man who died in Jacksonville, Florida in October 1999 (see page 13 above). James Earl Livingston, also mentally ill, died in Tarrant County, Texas, in July 1999, allegedly after being pepper sprayed by sheriff's officers and left in a restraint chair.
In many jurisdictions women are kept in restraints (such as handcuffs and leg shackles) while in labour up until the moment of birth and shackled again shortly afterwards.
Supermax units
In March 1999 a federal district judge ruled that the stark conditions in administrative segregation units in Texas "deprive inmates of the minimal necessities of civilized life" and were "virtual incubators of psychoses-seeding illness in otherwise healthy inmates and exacerbating illness in those already suffering from mental infirmities". Court-appointed experts who had visited the units, described an environment in which "smeared faeces, self mutilation and incessant babbling and shrieking, are almost everyday occurrences".(44)
Dogs and private contractors
In July 1998 four jailers were indicted for violating inmates' civil rights at the Brazoria County Jail in Texas, a private facility run by Capital Correctional Resources Inc. (CCRI). An investigation began after a news station obtained a training video showing prisoners being hit and kicked by guards, shocked with stun guns and bitten by dogs. One of the indicted guards had been hired by CCRI despite a criminal record for beating prisoners while employed by the Texas prison system.
There have also been reports of torture and ill-treatment in several facilities run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the second-largest private prison operator in the USA. In August 1998, up to 20 Wisconsin inmates in CCA-run Whiteville Correctional Facility in Tennessee, were allegedly ill-treated by a Special Operations and Response Team (SORT) following an attack on a guard: the treatment reported included prisoners being kicked, slammed into walls, subjected to racist abuse and electro-shocked by stun guns and stun shields. One prisoner said that he was handcuffed, stripped, forced to kneel on the floor, sexually assaulted with a shampoo bottle by a guard and shocked with a stun gun; another inmate reported being stripped, kicked and shocked in the stomach and testicles with a stun gun. Other cases included the misuse of stun shields during cell searches by SORT teams in the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio; and allegations of excessive force, including the use of stun shields, against Alaska prisoners in the Central Arizona Detention Center in Florence, Arizona, in August 1998.(51) Amnesty International is seeking information on CCA company policy regarding electro-shock stun weapons and has urged that the company suspend their use in the facilities under its control.
Rape
Human Rights Watch has a report on rape of male prisoners in the US.
The number of women incarcerated in US prisons has tripled since 1985. According to Amnesty, nearly every inmate interviewed in US Justice Department investigation into Michigan prisons in 1995 reported various sexually aggressive acts of guards.
And then there is the School of the Americas which between 1982 and 1992 used CIA interrogation manuals which included recommendations on prisoner interrogation including creating "unpleasant or intolerable situations, to disrupt patterns of time, space, and sensory perceptions." A 1992 report to then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney noted that the manuals included "offensive and objectionable material" that "undermines U.S. credibility and could result in significant embarrassment."
Embarassment.
Indeed. When Bush announced that we would be invading Iraq in order to effect "regime change," I was angered and appalled, but not surprised. We have a long history of regime change in the world. Chile. Vietnam. Iran. Pick a continent. Pick a hemisphere. Been there, done that.
What was astonishing, what took my breath away, was the brazen announcement to the world that this was our intent. No longer the plausibly deniable work of covert operations. Now we shout it from the sea to shining sea.
So, it is for me with Alberto Gonzales. Not surprised that the US engages in torture. But that he would provide this god-drunk piece of arrogance a legal framework to justify state-sanctioned torture. That this, torture, was something that we could pretend was within the rule of law and present, without embarassment to the civilized world.
Links
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
School of the Americas Watch
Prison Rape Resources
Hastings Law Library Iraq: Legal News and International Law