Torture in Countries to Which U.S. Has Transferred Terrorist Suspects
On the subject of Canadian citizen Maher Arar and his allegations of torture at the hands of the Syrians after being deported there by the U.S.....Check out this page from Human Rights Watch. It has a list of countries we have deported people to that practice torture. Among them, Syria:
Syria : Administration of electric shocks; pulling out fingernails; forcing objects into the rectum; beatings; bending detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts.
Here's more from the same page:
The December 26 Washington Post article also discussed the rendition, or transfer, of suspected members of Al Qaeda to third countries that not only use the "stress and duress" techniques described above, but other, more brutal methods of interrogation. According to the article, U.S. officials defended renditions by saying interrogators with a greater cultural, religious and language affinity would be more successful in obtaining information. However, other comments from anonymous officials suggested that detainees were deliberately moved to countries known for their use of torture because the officers of the third countries face fewer constraints on their interrogations. One unnamed official was quoted as saying, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." The various methods of torture used in the third countries, like the "stress and duress" techniques, are also described and condemned in the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights. Listed below are the descriptions of the torture techniques used in reported countries of rendition, as reported by the State Department.
Here's Mr. Arar's account of his torture:
As soon as he arrived, Arar said he was subjected to beatings by security officials that continued throughout his imprisonment in a jail cell he described as a "grave." "It had no light. It was three feet wide. It was six feet deep. It was seven feet high," Arar said, adding that there was little light or air in the cramped cell. "I spent 10 days and 10 months inside that grave," with nothing more than two blankets, two dishes and two bottles.
And as his confinement dragged on, Arar said the torture became unbearable. "They kept beating me until I had to falsely confess... I would have said anything to stop the torture... I remember I urinated on myself twice," Arar said. "At the end of each day they would always say tomorrow will be harder. So each night I could not sleep."
Arar said his life in jail was "hell" -- marked by threats of electric shock, being subjected to the tortured screams of other prisoners, and, notably, a thrashing with shredded cables that lasted 18 hours. "What I went through is just beyond human imagination."
See also, Counterpunch, "This is What They Did to Me." which has a far more graphic and detailed account written by Arar of his torture. Arar also speaks of encountering another Canadian citizen in a Syrian jail:
On around Sept. 19 or 20, I heard the other prisoners saying that another Canadian had arrived there. I looked up, and saw a man, but I did not recognize him. His head was shaved, and he was very, very thin and pale. He was very weak. When I looked closer, I recognized him. It was Abdullah Almalki. He told me he had also been at the Palestine Branch, and that he had also been in a grave like I had been -- except he had been in it longer.
He told me he had been severely tortured -- with the tire, and the cable. He was also hanged upside down. He was tortured much worse than me. He had also been tortured when he was brought to Sednaya, so that was only two weeks before.
Abdullah Almaki
Please read this Canadian news article about Abdullah Almaki. He is still being held in Syria.
A major thanks to Joanne Mariner, Deputy Director of the Americas Division for Human Rights Watch and a Findlaw legal columnist for the links contained in this post. We read her Findlaw columns religiously, and you should too.
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