The wrong side of history (Bagram, detainees)

[Thanas]

Politico.

[quote]As protesters challenge authoritarian regimes across the Middle East, the Obama administration needs to reassess its own policies and commitment to human rights in the Muslim world.

Consider Afghanistan, where the U.S. has its biggest footprint. As the war drags into its 10th year, violence has dramatically increased and the insurgency expanded. The U.S. practice of imprisoning large numbers of Afghans for years without charge or trial threatens to make matters worse.

The United States now has more than 1,500 Afghans and other countries’ nationals imprisoned at the Bagram Air Field, where I visited last week, at the invitation of the U.S. military. The administration has significantly improved conditions. — They have built a new prison to house the growing number of detainees – which has almost tripled since 2009.

The administration has also improved transparency — allowing journalists and human rights organizations to visit. Its means of determining whom to detain, however, has not kept pace with the physical improvements.

To be sure, detainees now get a hearing approximately every six months. This alone represents important progress. Under the Bush administration, detainees had no opportunity to make their case. They languished in a cramped, windowless Soviet-era prison for years — not even knowing the charges against them. Many were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including systematic sleep deprivation and stress positions. That practice appears to have been eliminated as well.

But these current hearings, known as Detainee Review Boards, still don’t offer the minimum required elements of due process. This is not only a violation of international law; it’s a major obstacle to the U.S. military’s critical campaign to win “the hearts and minds” of the Afghan people.

Take the case of Gulalet, whose hearing I saw at Bagram earlier this month. The U.S. military holds up to a dozen such hearings a day. I was permitted to sit in on four.

The prisoner, wearing a white shalwar kamiz and wrapped in a grey blanket, sat facing a board of three military officers in a Bagram hearing room. His hands and feet were shackled. He’d been imprisoned since last spring, and informed of the charges against him in June.

A military lawyer summarized the case, saying Gulalet owned a compound, which was raided by Afghan and NATO forces. The troops discovered explosives and bomb-making materials in the house next to his. Gulalet’s clothes did not test positive for explosive residue, but he was assessed to be a facilitator for improvised explosive devices.

When Gulalet spoke, however, this story unraveled. “Yes, that’s my house, where I was detained,” he said, through a Pashto interpreter. He explained that he lives there with his father, mother, uncles and his wife. “The other house I don’t know,” Gulalet said, “It doesn’t belong to me.”

The judge asked for clarification: “So do you own the house, or the compound?”

Gulalet said he owns only the house, not the compound — and not the other house where the explosives were found. That house is owned by “an old man who lives in Kandahar city.” Gulalet said he barely knows him.

The officer who read the charges then asked him a series of questions.

“What do you think of the Taliban? Do you like the Taliban, or do you hate the Taliban? Do you have friends who have engaged in anti-coalition activity?”

“I am busy with my family,” Gulalet replied. “I swear I don’t understand this business of Taliban. I am a farmer, this is the first time I am detained."

Gulalet was then asked questions about his neighbors — which he said he couldn’t answer because he doesn’t really know them. Then an officer assigned to act as his “personal representative” stood up.

“How have you been treated here?” the soldier asked.

“I’ve been treated very well,” Gulalet answered.

His personal representative had no further questions.

This is what passes for justice at the U.S. prison at Bagram. Though the detainee can make a statement, he is not represented by a lawyer and usually cannot see much of the evidence against him — because it’s classified. Though the review board can recommend his release, the commander of the detention facility can ignore that recommendation.

Many defense lawyers and former detainees I interviewed in Afghanistan said that, frequently, the classified “evidence” against a detainee consists of a false accusation made by an enemy of the detainee or his family — often based on a tribal feud or land dispute.

By not knowing the exact charges, or who made them, and unable to cross-examine the incriminating witness, the detainee cannot fully defend himself.

Meanwhile, the prisoner has no lawyer, only a “personal representative” — a uniformed U.S. soldier, who the detainee has little reason to trust. In the cases I observed, the personal representative asked a few questions at most, usually with no evident aim. One said nothing.

Under international law, a detainee in the Afghan armed conflict has the right to challenge the grounds for his detention to an impartial body with authority to enter final decisions on continued detention or release. The Detainee Review Board process does not meet that standard.

To comply with minimum international standards of due process, the U.S. government should provide detainees with lawyers trained to challenge the government’s evidence.

The military also needs to work harder to declassify the evidence presented; or to provide summaries of classified evidence or redacted versions of documents where declassification is not possible.

As the situation stands now, Afghans and others are being arrested and held for years in U.S. custody without knowing why. Their families, friends and neighbors don’t know why, either.

As various recently released detainees told me repeatedly, this is generating growing animosity against the United States military.

Protesters around the world are now objecting to arbitrary detentions by oppressive governments. The United States and President Barack Obama are standing up for the protestors and their calls for democracy — seeking to be on the right side of history. And given the growing insurgency in Afghanistan and its eagerness to portray U.S. actions in a negative light, the Obama administration should be careful to deny it that opportunity.

Now is the time for Washington to lead by example, and provide a more fair and transparent process for its own military detainees in Afghanistan.[/quoe]