RIGHTS-U.S.:
Latest Abuse Investigation Report, a Whitewash - Groups
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 11 (IPS) - Human rights groups and some senators are expressing growing
frustration over the Pentagon's failure to hold senior officers or civilian leaders accountable for
widespread abuses by U.S. forces against detainees in Washington's ''war on terror''.
The latest report on abuses, released at a Senate hearing Thursday, drew new calls for Congress
or the administration to set up an independent commission. Also, calls were made for the
appointment of a special prosecutor to carry out a comprehensive investigation that would
include the responsibility, if any, of senior officers and officials.
''There's been no assessment of accountability of any senior officials, either within or outside of
the Department of Defense, for policies that may have contributed to abuses of prisoners,'' said
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
''I can only conclude that the Defense Department is not able to assess accountability at senior
levels, particularly when investigators are in the chain of command of the officials whose
policies and actions they are investigating,'' he added.
Levin was joined by criticism from several human rights and civil liberties groups who said the
latest investigation, which was headed by Vice Adm. Albert Church, had ignored the question of
command responsibility for the abuses, even as it raised new questions about the role of
civilian officials, in particular.
''The gaps in the Church Report underscore the need for an independent investigation into our
nation's policy on treatment of detainees,'' said Michael Posner, executive director of Human
Rights First (HRF), previously known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
Last week HRF joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in filing a lawsuit against
Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld for his responsibility in the abuse scandal and particularly in
failing to stop the abuses once they came to his attention.
The report, Posner added, ''reveals an ongoing unwillingness by the civilian leadership of the
military to examine the full scope of the problem or assign responsibility for what went wrong
in order to prevent further abuse.''
For his part, Church, the Navy's Inspector General, defended the report as a ''thorough,
exhaustive look'' at 71 confirmed cases of criminal abuse that took place in Afghanistan, Iraq,
and the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
He concluded that Pentagon policies ''did not authorise or condone abusive treatment'' of
detainees and that there was ''no single overarching explanation'' for the abuse. He blamed the
general pressure on the military to acquire more intelligence, a breakdown in discipline caused
in part by the demoralisation of U.S. troops in Iraq, and the failure to establish clear
interrogation policies as contributing factors.
At the same time, the report states that senior officers failed to react to early reports by the
International Red Cross, among others, of abuses. As a result, opportunities to address the
problem were missed over a fairly lengthy period of time, according to Church, who stressed to
lawmakers that ''I was not tasked to assess personal responsibility at senior levels''.
Rights groups assailed Church's testimony and his report not only for their failure to address
command responsibility, but also for their superficiality - particularly in light of recent
revelations, made possible by the release of thousands of email messages and other documents
obtained by the ACLU in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. This concerned the much more
widespread and serious abuses, including at Guantanamo - that had yet to be disclosed by any
Pentagon investigation.
''While the Church findings help shed further light on policy failures that led to hundreds of
cases of abuse and torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond, substantial gaps in the
investigations to date remain - gaps that make it difficult to identify who bears responsibility
for the widespread torture and abuse, and make it impossible to ensure that such abuse never
happens again," said Posner.
He added that Church never interviewed a single detainee or other key officials connected to
detainee interrogations. He also ignored interrogations and detentions carried out by the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Posner and several senators also expressed incredulity that Church had not interviewed Paul
Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) from July, 2003, until late June,
2004, and that, during his testimony Thursday, he admitted that he was not aware that Bremer
reported to the Pentagon, rather than the State Department.
Church had also failed to interview officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who
witnessed and complained about abuses at Guantanamo, in particular. The FBI's complaints
were disclosed by the ACLU, which obtained FBI emails from its lawsuit. Church said his
investigation had concluded before the emails came to light in December.
''These are stunning omissions,'' said Democratic Sen. Jack Reed. ''This is not the thorough,
complete, no-holds-barred report that many of us expected.''
Of particular interest was the disclosure in the report of the existence of a previously
undisclosed March 2003 memo, apparently on interrogation policy, by Assistant Attorney
General John Yoo in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Yoo has been
identified previously as a key advocate for using aggressive methods against detainees.
According to Church's testimony, the Pentagon's general counsel, William Haynes - like Yoo, a
political appointee - forbade military lawyers from applying their own analysis of domestic and
international laws against torture and insisted that they rely entirely on Yoo's still-classified
memo. Haynes is currently awaiting Senate confirmation for an appeals court judgeship.
Rights groups and others have called for the release of all memos bearing on the development
of the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies as part of an independent
comprehensive investigation that would have the power to compel current or former officials,
like Yoo, to testify about their roles. Those appeals have thus far been rejected.
Even the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner, showed
some frustration over the failure of any investigation to date to examine the responsibility of
senior officers and officials.
''There has not been finality as the assessment of accountability,'' he said Thursday. ''More work
has to be done by this committee."
''The Church report appears to continue the cover-up of high-level involvement in the abuses
and torture that were carried out from Afghanistan to Iraq to Guantanamo'', the Center for
Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents more than 500 detainees currently and formerly
held at Guantanamo.
The U.S. section of Amnesty International echoed that charge, calling for the Church Report to
be ''published in full, and the record of senior officials thoroughly examined by an independent
commission of inquiry, empowered to investigate all aspects of the U.S. detention and
interrogation policies and practices''. (END/2005)
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