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<DIV><FONT size=4>Well, after all, we are the beacon of freedom and justice for
the world!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><BR>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<BR><A
href="mailto:deco@moscow.com">deco@moscow.com</A><BR></FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=Tbertruss@aol.com
href="mailto:Tbertruss@aol.com">Tbertruss@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, January 03, 2005 11:02
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Freedom and
Democracy</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=arial size=5
FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="18"><B><BR><A
href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1382033,00.html">http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1382033,00.html</A><BR><BR>Guantanamo
Briton 'in handcuff torture'</FONT><FONT lang=0
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face=Arial color=#000000 size=3
FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="12" BACK="#ffffff"></B> <BR><BR>David Rose on the
allegation that a British detainee was suspended by his wrists as punishment
for reciting the Koran while in US military custody <BR><BR></FONT><FONT
lang=0 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2
FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10" BACK="#ffffff"><B>Sunday January 2, 2005<BR><A
href="http://www.observer.co.uk/">The Observer</A></B></B> <BR><BR>A British
detainee at Guantanamo Bay has told his lawyer he was tortured using the
'strappado', a technique common in Latin American dictatorships in which a
prisoner is left suspended from a bar with handcuffs until they cut deeply
into his wrists. The reason, the prisoner says, was that he was caught
reciting the Koran at a time when talking was banned. <BR><BR>He says he has
also been repeatedly shaved against his will. In one such incident, a guard
told him: 'This is the part that really gets to you Muslims, isn't it?'
<BR><BR>The strappado allegation was one among many made about treatment at
both Guantanamo and the US base at Bagram in Afghanistan made to the British
lawyer Clive Stafford Smith when he visited his clients Moazzam Begg and
Richard Belmar at the Cuban prison six weeks ago, having tried for the
previous 14 months to obtain the necessary security clearance. <BR><BR>But it
is clear the disturbing claim is only the tip of the iceberg. Under the rules
the United States military has imposed for defence lawyers who visit
Guantanamo, Stafford Smith has not been allowed to keep his notes of meetings
with prisoners, and will not be able to read them again until they have been
examined and de-classified by a government censor. <BR><BR>He cannot disclose
in public anything the men have told him until it too has been been
de-classified, on pain of likely imprisonment in the US. <BR><BR>Stafford
Smith has drawn up a 30-page report on the tortures which Begg and Belmar say
they have endured, and sent it as an annexe with a letter to the Prime
Minister which Downing Street received shortly before Christmas. For the time
being - possibly forever - the report cannot be published, because the
Americans claim that the torture allegations amount to descriptions of
classified interrogation methods. <BR><BR>However, Stafford Smith's letter to
Tony Blair - which has been declassified - says that on his visit to the
Guantanamo prisoners, he heard 'credible and consistent evidence that both men
have been savagely tortured at the hands of the United States' with Begg
having suffered not only physical but 'sexual abuse' which has had 'mental
health consequences'. <BR><BR>Thousands of documents obtained last month under
the US Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union
support the claims of torture at Guantanamo, which has apparently continued
long after the publication last April of photographs of detainees being abused
at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. They include memos and emails to
superiors by FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency officers, who say they were
appalled by the methods being used by the young military interrogators at
Guantanamo. <BR><BR>According to the memos, the abuse was 'systematic', with
frequent beatings, chokings, and sleep deprivation for days on end. Religious
humiliation was also routine, with one agent reporting a case in which a
prisoner was wrapped in an Israeli flag. <BR><BR>'On a couple of occasions I
entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a foetal
position to the floor, with no chair, food or water,' an anonymous FBI agent
wrote on 2 August. 'Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves,
and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.' <BR><BR>Reports of
identical treatment were first published by The Observer last March, in
interviews with three British detainees who had been released - Shafiq Rasul,
Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed. They were then strenuously denied by the
Pentagon. But according to another FBI memo dated 10 May, when an agent asked
Guantanamo's former commander, Major General Geoffrey Miller, about techniques
the FBI regarded as illegal, he was told that the interrogators 'had their
marching orders from the Sec[retary] Def[ense]', Donald Rumsfeld. General
Miller told the US Congress under oath that although Rumsfeld had authorised
the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo, this had never
happened. According to the memos, this was inaccurate. <BR><BR>Stafford Smith
asks Blair in his letter 'to approach the plight of my clients with renewed
vigour'. Asked by The Observer whether he planned to do this last week, a
Downing Street spokesman declined to comment. <BR><BR>In a second letter, to
the Foreign Office minister Baroness Symons, Stafford Smith suggests that
Britain's complicity in abusive techniques at both Guantanamo and Afghanistan,
where Begg and Belmar were held before being taken to Cuba, is wider than
previously thought. <BR><BR>Begg and Belmar, he writes, were both questioned
by an MI5 officer who gave his name as 'Andrew', while they were being abused
by Americans both in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. According to the letter, 'he
was the one who told Mr Begg that the more Mr Begg (falsely) said he was
guilty of something, the quicker he would get home. Andrew was also the one
who said that he would not comply with both of my clients' requests for
consular notification, as well as Mr Begg's requests to learn whether his
pregnant wife, Sally, and their three children were safe in Pakistan.'
Stafford Smith is asking for Andrew's full name and access to him, to assist
his client's defence. <BR><BR>Having fled Afghanistan where he had been trying
to set up a school before the war against the Taliban began in October 2001,
Begg was abducted by American agents from the house the family was renting in
Islamabad. <BR><BR>Belmar was captured after attending a religious school for
a few weeks before the 11 September terrorist attacks. An FBI source who
personally questioned him before he was sent to Guantanamo has told The
Observer he recommended his immediate release because he had 'no involvement'
with terrorism, but was overruled by MI5. <BR><BR>Stafford Smith says in his
letter to Baroness Symons that Begg made a false written confession after
being tortured in February 2003, when two agents who had abused him at Bagram
- where Begg witnessed the deaths of two prisoners officially classed as
homicide - came to Guantanamo. But neither he nor Stafford Smith have been
allowed to see this statement, which apparently forms the main grounds for his
continued incarceration. Stafford Smith asks the Foreign Office for help in
obtaining a copy, and asks: 'What kind of civilised legal system does not
allow the suspect to see his own statements? How can the prisoner's statement
be said to be classified information when, if it were true, the prisoner would
already know it?' <BR><BR>Last night the Foreign Office said 'we are trying to
do our utmost' for the four British detainees while 'we take every allegation
of torture seriously'. The request for information about the MI5 man would be
considered. <BR><BR>Azmatt Begg, Moazzam's father, said he had given up hope
the British government would intervene in a meaningful way to help his son.
'They are not protecting their own citizens, but merely falling in with
whatever the Americans want to do.' </FONT><FONT lang=0
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face=Arial color=#000000 size=3
FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="12"
BACK="#ffffff"><BR><BR>----------------------------------------<BR><BR>V2020
Post by Ted Moffett<BR></FONT>
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