Marga's Note: The articles below by the Los Angeles Time and The Guardian decribe how the Pentagon recently agreed to a policy of enforced disappearance of people. Under this policy, prisoners would be kept off public records and away from the scrutiny of lawyers and judges. Tens of thousands of people have been disappeared by US allies in Latin America in the last few decades.
The Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons defines enforced disappearances as "the act of depriving a person or persons of his or their freedom, in whatever way, perpetrated by agents of the state or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of the state, followed by an absence of information or a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the whereabouts of that person, thereby impeding his or her recourse to the applicable legal remedies and procedural guarantees. ".
American courts have ruled that forced disappearances are crimes against the laws of nations. Indeed, the statute of the International Criminal Court makes it clear that systematic or massive forced disappearances are crimes against humanity.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-prison9jul09,1,7225418.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Los Angeles Times
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Pentagon Reportedly Aimed to Hold Detainees in Secret
Proposal to keep some prisoners 'off the books' went against promises
for yearly case reviews.
By John Hendren and Mark Mazzetti, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON -- Despite pledging yearly reviews for all prisoners
held by the U.S. military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Pentagon officials
tentatively agreed during a high-level meeting last month to deny
that process to some detainees and to keep their existence secret
"for intelligence reasons," senior defense officials said Thursday.
Under the proposal, some prisoners would in effect be kept off
public records and away from the scrutiny of lawyers and judges.
The meeting on the Guantánamo reviews occurred months after U.S.
officials came under harsh criticism by investigators and human rights
observers for practices involving "ghost" detainees in Iraq who
were kept hidden from inspectors for intelligence purposes.
It was unclear Thursday whether the Pentagon had followed through with
the proposal, or how it would be affected by last month's Supreme Court
ruling that granted detainees access to American courts. It also was
not clear how many detainees the proposal would apply to. The Pentagon
said there currently were 594 detainees at the camp, nicknamed "Gitmo."
A Swedish detainee was released Thursday.
But at the Pentagon meeting called to discuss the annual detainee
reviews -- which are to be overseen by Navy Secretary Gordon R.
England -- senior officials said they wanted to keep a small number of
prisoners' names out of public records to allow intelligence officials
to continue interrogations, a senior defense official said on condition
of anonymity.
Such a move would create an exception to the Pentagon promise to
review the case of every detainee annually to determine whether
he continued to pose a threat to the United States. Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld first disclosed plans to provide annual reviews
to detainees in February, in response to human rights concerns
expressed over open-ended imprisonment.
Two senior defense officials said they believed that the prisoners
who would be denied the reviews might be held by the CIA, rather than
the Defense Department.
A U.S. intelligence official said Thursday that the CIA was not holding
any detainees at Guantánamo, but added that the annual reviews would not
apply to CIA prisoners elsewhere.
But another source, a former senior defense official with knowledge of
detainee issues, said the Pentagon did not control the interrogations
of all Guantánamo detainees. "There are some individuals down there
where DOD doesn't have the lead on their interrogation and intelligence
exploitation," the former senior defense official said on condition of
anonymity.
Another senior defense official said that the wording in a June 23
statement on the promised annual reviews led him to believe that
the detainees exempted from the review were being held by the CIA.
In that memo, England described mandatory annual reviews of "Department
of Defense" detainees -- a designation that would exclude any detainee
held by the CIA. One of the senior defense officials said Wednesday
that that designation had been inserted deliberately.
"People very, very carefully crafted those words," the official said.
"When the draft language was sent around, they were very adamant
about keeping the words 'under DOD control' in. It led me to believe
that there were non-DOD detainees down there."
When Pentagon officials this week announced a separate, one-time review
into whether each prisoner had been properly labeled an "enemy combatant,"
the order again specified that it applied to "all detainees under the
control of the Department of Defense."
The proposal to deny some detainees' annual reviews rankled some in
the Pentagon, which is trying to recover from international criticism
of the abuse scandal at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
In light of the Supreme Court decision granting Guantánamo detainees
access to American courts, some internal Pentagon critics said it
would be unlikely that detainees held secretly would be allowed to
appear in federal courts.
A Pentagon spokesman said he knew of no detainee at Guantánamo
who would not receive annual reviews, and did not know of an
agreement to deny detainees reviews.
"It's my understanding that everybody under DOD custody will be
subject ... to the annual review process that has been outlined
previously," said the spokesman, a senior defense official.
Asked if any detainees were not under the Defense Department's control,
he said, "Not that I'm aware of."
One of the senior defense officials was skeptical as to whether
denying such a review would conform with the Supreme Court ruling
giving detainees access to federal courts.
"I don't know how any of this squares with anything. That's been
my problem with this thing from the beginning," he said. "Any time you
get the dark side involved, human rights tend to be less of an issue."
One critic said he spoke out about the proposal because he felt
that holding detainees "off the books" was unnecessary and potentially
illegal. He discounted arguments that the secrecy would withhold news
of the captures from other terrorists.
"These Al Qaeda guys are smart," one of the senior defense officials
who was critical of the policy said on condition of anonymity. "If
Mohamed is no longer on the other end of the phone, they're going
to know we've got him."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1258111,00.html
The Guardian (U.K.)
Saturday July 10, 2004
'Ghost detainees' at Camp Delta
Pentagon accused of planning to exclude some Guantánamo prisoners
from review
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The Pentagon planned to continue the indefinite secret confinement
of some prisoners at Guantánamo and exclude them from a promised
annual review, it emerged yesterday.
The decision offers further evidence for a secret network at Guantánamo,
akin to that at Abu Ghraib, whereby "ghost detainees" were under
the control of the CIA and not the US military, and never officially
entered on the prison's books.
Reports in the Los Angeles Times that the Pentagon had reservations
about even a limited review for prisoners in Camp Delta at Guantánamo
naval base caused concern among rights activists.
The plan to deny some prisoners a review of their detention was
agreed last month by senior Pentagon officials. It was designed
as a response to a review process promised last February by the
defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Since then, the Supreme Court
has ruled that Guantánamo prisoners should have their day in court.
It was not immediately clear how the earlier Pentagon decision
would be affected by the verdict, or by a more recent version of
a prisoner review.
That review, announced this week, would establish military tribunals
to review each Guantánamo inmate; they would not get a lawyer to
argue that they do not pose a threat to US security.
But even that limited review - much criticised by lawyers for the
detainees - would not be afforded to detainees held secretly. The
wording of the order specified "all detainees under the control of
the Department of Defense", which the Los Angeles Times suggested
provided a loophole for detainees under CIA charge.
Rights campaigners say they do not know with absolute certainty
how many are at Camp Delta. The official figure is 594, after the
release of a Swedish man earlier this week.
"This just heightens our already very serious concerns about
what is taking place at Camp Delta," said Neil Durkin of Amnesty
International.
"We fear that the Pentagon is trying to set the goalposts very
narrowly in terms of the supreme court decision. If you are talking
about withholding certain individuals from even that procedure,
then we have tremendously serious concerns."
The LA Times quoted top defence officials as saying that prisoners
destined for indefinite detention without review were under the control
of the CIA, not the Pentagon.
However, a top military official told the Guardian there were no
detainees outside the defence department's control - at least in
the first year of Guantánamo.
Ghost detainees first intruded on the broader public consciousness
last May in the report by Major General Anthony Taguba on the abuses
at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
"Detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely
held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies (OGAs)
without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the
reason for their detention. The joint interrogation and debriefing centre
at Abu Ghraib called these detainees 'ghost detainees'," the report said.