Casualties of war
1,000 detainees stripped of rights
By Leslie Feinberg
How many Arab, South Asian and Muslim individuals in this
country have been swept up in raids and detained? It's a
secret.
Where are they being held and under what conditions? It's a
secret.
How many are being abused and mistreated? It's a secret.
But those who are holding them behind bars are not making a
secret about this: They want the legal go-ahead to employ
torture to extract details from the unknown number in their
custody.
It is estimated that more than 1,000 people have been
detained since Sept. 11 in connection with the attacks that
day. Most of them remain jailed. On Oct. 29, a coalition of
civil rights groups, including Arab and Muslim organizations,
filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding that the
names of individuals and the charges they face be released.
On Oct. 26, civil rights defenders met with FBI Director
Robert Mueller, but he rebuffed their requests for information
about those arrested. Just that morning President George W.
Bush had penned into law the "anti-terror" bill that gives the
state sweeping powers of surveillance, investigation and
detention.
Kate Martin, from the Center for National Security Studies,
told the New York Times, "The secret detention of more than 800
people over the past few weeks is frighteningly close to the
practice of 'disappearing' people in Latin America."
Of course, some of the same U.S. repressive agencies that
played a guiding hand in training and arming those "dirty wars"
in Central and South America are today carrying out massive and
secret internment of Arab and Muslim people in this
country.
Justice Department spokesperson Mindy Tucker, reports BBC
News on Oct. 20, "said the arrests on immigration charges for
people suspected of having some connection to terrorist
activities reflects a new approach, that of preventing
attacks."
Tucker is admitting that these are "preventive detentions."
None of those arrested in this witch-hunt have been charged
with any "terrorist crimes." The bulk of those detained are
being charged with petty immigration or other legal violations.
A smaller number are being held on so-called material witness
warrants, which allows authorities to seal their identities.
(BBC News, Oct. 30)
Legalize torture?
The mass incarceration of so many hundreds of people based
on who they are, not what they've done, creates a vast net for
police and spy agencies to go "fishing" for information. But,
the top cops are complaining, those held behind bars aren't
talking for the most part.
Could that be because they don't have the information that
the investigators want? FBI and Justice Department officials
want the legal right to torture answers out of them--just to be
sure.
"FBI considers torture as suspects stay silent," was the
headline of Damian Whitworth's article in the Oct. 22 Times of
London.
Washington Post staff writer Walter Pincus, in an Oct. 21
article, quoted a senior FBI official: "We're into this thing
for 35 days and nobody is talking." He added, "Frustration has
begun to appear."
Pincus wrote, "Among the alternative strategies under
discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those
employed by Israeli interrogators, to extract information.
Another idea is extraditing the suspects to allied countries
where security services sometimes employ threats to family
members or resort to torture."
He concludes, "The country may compare the current search
for information to brutal tactics in wartime used to gather
information overseas and even by U.S. troops from prisoners
during military actions."
While the depth and breadth of police brutality cases in
this country--perhaps the best known is the torture of Abner
Louima in Brooklyn, N.Y.--document that torture is an
often-used weapon in the repressive state arsenal, this is a
call to legalize and normalize the use of torture against
individuals caught in "preventive detention" dragnets.
Abuse and mistreatment
Despite the mantle of silence, word of abuse and
mistreatment of those jailed is leaking out.
An Oct. 15 Washington Post article reports that in a
high-security wing on the ninth floor of Manhattan's
Metropolitan Correction Center, an unknown number of men with
Middle Eastern names are being held in solitary confinement in
8-by-10-foot cells. Each has little more than a cot and a thin
blanket.
"They have no contact with each other or their families and
limited access to their lawyers," the reporters note. Defense
lawyers "have grown frustrated that their clients are kept
incommunicado, denied exercise and provided limited opportunity
to shower.
"The lawyers said that the prison is not providing their
clients with a basic Muslim diet and that guards unnecessarily
bang on steel cell doors every two hours to conduct head
counts. The prisoners cannot use the telephone."
Detainees must confer with their law yers through wire
screens and "The prisoners are brought to the meeting in
shackles, escorted by as many as six guards."
Others who are being secretly held have slipped out word
about beatings, racist abuse and other forms of ill
treatment.
The FBI detained Muhammad Rafiq Butt on Sept. 19. He died in
Hudson Country jail a month later, on Oct. 23. Authorities say
he died of natural causes. But such overall, purposeful
concealment about the situation of those interned makes it
impossible to know for sure under what conditions he died.
Attorney Randall B. Hamud is trying to defend some of those
currently detained. He said his clients "had asked time and
again to call me and they were not allowed to do so." Hamud
concluded, "Law school doesn't prepare you for this."
Reprinted from the Nov. 8, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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