Evidence obtained under torture is no way to seek justice, MF warns
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| Picture courtesy of US Department of Defense |
Pursuing military tribunals against the suspected 9/11 attackers pushes aside basic principles of human rights and makes a mockery of open and honest justice, the MF warns.
As the US government presses ahead with military commissions against the six men suspected of orchestrating the 2001 attacks, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture has cautioned against using evidence obtained under torture.
In its first open admission of resorting to interrogation methods banned under international law, the CIA last week said it had used waterboarding against at least one of the six suspects. However, it maintains that this is not torture. Details of the interrogation of another suspect reveal that he was subjected to sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and sexual humiliation.
However, the political debate has focused on the semantics of waterboarding - where the victim is strapped down as water is poured over a cloth into their nose and mouth simulating drowning and causing suffocation. The failure to admit that waterboarding is tantamount to torture by the US government continues to obfuscate the need for a full inquiry into who authorised this method of interrogation.
The military procedures under which the commissions will be conducted are controversially overseen by a judge appointed by the military and deny the detainees the right of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained under ‘coercion' will be allowed, contrary to article 15 of the UN Convention Against Torture, which obliges signatory states to ensure that "any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings".
"To allow evidence obtained under torture into any legal proceedings makes an absolute mockery of justice," said an MF spokesperson. "It is also ineffective and unreliable because as hundreds of our clients can testify, when ‘confessing' is the only way to stop the torture, people will say anything."
All six suspects - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh, Walid Bin Attash, Ali Abd Al-Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahma Al-Hawsawi and Mohammed Al-Qahtani - have been unlawfully detained in Guantánamo Bay, where US troops are believed to have resorted to other forms of ill treatment banned under the UN Convention Against Torture.
Hooding, short shackling, noise bombardment, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, stress and distress techniques and force feeding are all methods alleged to have been used against detainees held at Guantánamo.
The MF has consistently called for doctors to be allowed access to detainees to investigate the extent to which doctors and other health professionals have been complicit in torture. However, the US's refusal to grant independent medical experts' access to the detainees has meant the claims cannot be corroborated.
Click here to read the MF's letter to the Guardian following recent denials by President George Bush that waterboarding is torture.
Click here to read MF Dr William Hopkins' clinical refutation of arguments pedalled in favour of waterboarding, as reported on the Guardian Comment is free site.
Click here to read how waterboarding irrefutably constitutes torture.
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