Vanessa Redgrave on Guantanamo Any decent person, British or America

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> r

> Tue, 24 Aug 2004

> Vanessa Redgrave on Guantanamo

 

 

> Vanessa Redgrave on Guantanamo

 

> Any decent person, British or American, could only

> feel the utmost shame

> and revulsion that such methods should be used.

 

> Vanessa Redgrave: Guantanamo's torture regime is a

> shameful disgrace

 

> The British intelligence services and the Foreign

> Office appear

> complicit in the torture

 

> 23 August 2004

> Guantanamo's military trials are condemned as

> grossly unfair

> Vanessa Redgrave: Guantanamo's torture regime is a

> shameful disgrace

 

> I have just returned from a theatre workshop in

> Croatia, with women who

> survived Tito's concentration camp for political

> prisoners on the island

> of Goli Otok. Officially this was a " work site " or

> " labour camp " , and

> was opened by the Yugoslav State Security Service in

> 1948, when Tito

> split from Stalin.

 

> The women prisoners were suspected of being

> pro-Stalin. They were never

> formally charged with a crime, and were never tried

> or given access to

> lawyers or a chance to defend themselves. On the

> island they were

> subjected to hideous beatings, forced to stand over

> urine buckets or

> against a wall for hours on end in

> " stress-positions " ; they were

> deprived of sleep, denied food and drinking water as

> punishment and

> locked away in isolation. They were prohibited from

> washing even in the

> sea, and had to endure repeated interrogations and

> " self-criticism " .

> They were called " bandits " , " scum " , " traitors " ,

> " enemies of the state " .

 

> In effect, Stalin's methods were being used by the

> State Security

> Service against those suspected of being

> " pro-Stalin " . No one knows how

> many went mad, how many died, or how many attempted

> suicide. In Tito's

> time, this was a " State Secret " .

> All the survivors of Goli Otok (the island had a

> camp for men as well)

> agree that under prolonged conditions of torture,

> they would do

> anything, say anything, write anything and sign

> anything that was

> demanded of them in the hope of being released.

 

> I have also just finished reading the 115-page

> document Detention in

> Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay compiled by Birnberg

> Pierce & Partners,

> lawyers for the three British citizens released from

> Guantanamo Bay

> without charge in March. Their accounts of detention

> are horrifyingly

> similar to the conditions in Goli Otok. In both

> cases, the denial of a

> trial, and a specified date of release added to the

> physical torture the

> three endured.

 

> Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed were

> captured in northern

> Afghanistan in November 2001. All three state that

> they were physically

> tortured in Sherbagan, Kandahar, before being

> consigned to the

> psychological and physical hell of Guantanamo Bay.

 

> In March this year

> they were sent back to England and released without

> charges.

> Asif and Shafiq say they were interrogated by an SAS

> officer in Kandahar

> before they were flown to Guantanamo. Rhuhel states

> that he was

> questioned in Kandahar by MI5 and separately by

> someone from the Foreign

> Office.

 

He was in a terrible state from prolonged

> sleep deprivation,

> starvation and dehydration. The MI5 officer told him

> he would be sent

> home if he agreed to " admit to everything " that was

> put to him. " I just

> said 'OK' to everything they said to me. I agreed

> with everything,

> whether it was true or not. I just wanted to get out

> of there. "

 

During their two years of incarceration in

Guantanamo M15 officers and a

> representative of the British embassy in Washington

> made six or seven

> visits/interrogations. All three men made complaints

> about the

> conditions under which they were being held; and

> about the

> interrogations by US military intelligence and other

> US agencies. The

> British intelligence services and the Foreign Office

> appear therefore to

> be complicit in the conditions of psychological and

> physical torture in

> Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

 

> The document depicts a Kafkaesque nightmare combined

> with a barbaric

> system of punishments, including " short-shackling "

> for hours on end. Any

> decent person, British or American, could only feel

> the utmost shame and

> revulsion that such methods should be used.

 

> It is clear from the accounts of the three British

> detainees that many

> prisoners have gone mad and many have attempted

> suicide. The Foreign

> Office has evaded the requests of family lawyers to

> allow independent

> doctors to see the British citizens and UK residents

> who still remain in

> Guantanamo.

> Torture is morally repugnant, degrading both the

> tortured and the

> torturers. It is also wholly destructive of

> security, which in part

> depends on intelligence. Torture produces

> dysfunctional intelligence

> since the suspect is being forced to give only the

> answers the

> interrogators want.

 

> Article 2 of the UN Convention on Torture, 1984,

> states: " No exceptional

> circumstances whatsoever, whether a war or a threat

> of war, internal

> political instability or any other public emergency,

> may be invoked as a

> justification of torture. " Both the UK and the US

> signed and ratified

> this convention. Yet our Appeal Court has upheld our

> Government's case

> for accepting evidence extracted under torture.

> In the name of security, our Government is

> destroying the principles and

> the laws which are the foundations of the security

> of all citizens;

> these principles were proclaimed by the American

> Patriots in their

> Declaration of Independence and after the war, in

> their constitution

> which also prohibits cruel and degrading treatment.

 

> It is a

> spine-chilling disgrace that the Blair government

> has supported the

> Guantanamo torture regime, and agreed to the

> pre-tribunal hearings that

> have been repudiated by US civil rights lawyers and

> human-rights NGOs.

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