By William Fisher
A Justice Department proposal to limit lawyers’ access to the nearly 400 detainees at Guantanamo Bay is drawing sharp criticism from much of the legal community in the US.
In a court filing, the DOJ claimed that the lawyers’ use of mail to communicate with their clients had “enabled detainees’ counsel to cause unrest on the base by informing detainees about terrorist attacks.” The mail system has been “misused” to inform detainees about military operations in Iraq, activities of terrorist leaders, efforts to fight terrorism, a Hezbollah attack on Israel, and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, the department said in the filing.
The DOJ is seeking to narrow the definition of “legal mail” and set a three-visit limit on face-to-face meetings once a detainee agrees at an initial meeting to let a lawyer represent him.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is expected to hear arguments on the proposal on May 15.
"Creating a legal black hole where rights are denied is as un-American as it is illegal," said Anthony Romero, of the American Civil Liberties Union.
And Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA told Truthout, “The right to a fair trial is one of the universally applicable principles recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the U.S. is a signatory. The U.S. took a huge step away from this standard with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. And now the proposal to limit attorneys' access to their clients at Guantanamo Bay will further hinder detainees' right to full equality under the law.”
“How a person is treated when accused of a crime provides a concrete demonstration of how far a state respects human rights. Amnesty International strongly urges the Congress and the Bush administration take immediate steps to restore our traditional American values of justice, rule of law, and human dignity. Otherwise the ‘war on terror’ is merely a war on rights,” she said.
Lawyers are predicting more suicides and despair at Guantanamo if the Justice Department prevails. They point out that lawyers are virtually the only contact inmates have with the outside world. If their visits are limited, detainee
desperation will deepen and more will try to kill themselves, they say.
On June 10, 2006, two Saudi detainees and one Yemeni hanged themselves with sheets, the first and only suicides since the 2002 opening of the detention center that now holds about 380 inmates.
Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney for several Guantanamo detainees, said
curtailing lawyer visits would likely lead more prisoners to attempt suicide.
"The level of depression is soaring, I am afraid," he said.
He added that many detainees are kept in isolation in small cells with no natural light. With no prison sentence having been pronounced — except for one Australian detainee — the detainees do not know when they will get out, if ever. Many have been there for more than five years.
Attorney Stephen Oleskey, who represents six Algerians, said more suicides are
"a real risk" if the court restricts lawyer-client contacts.
"I've seen firsthand the mental conditions of my clients deteriorate in isolation," Oleskey said. "And I think the impact of further restrictions would be dramatic."
Many human rights and legal authorities view the DOJ move to restrict attorney access as an attempt to seal the facility from critics. "If we cannot come in, the only news getting out of here will be the government's carefully crafted version," said one of them.
They say it is the attorneys who provide the world with information about hunger strikes, solitary confinement and other details about the detainees. Journalists can visit but are barred by the military from interviewing detainees. The Red Cross, which occasionally visits, keeps its findings confidential.
But military commanders at Guantanamo and the Justice Department have always viewed the lawyers with suspicion. Navy Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Associated Press the military has been giving broad lawyer access to many detainees — even though they are accused of having al-Qaida or Taliban links and the United States is still at war.
Barry M. Kamin, president of the New York City Bar, called the assertions
"astonishing and disingenuous" in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales.
The president of the group asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to abandon the Justice Department proposal to limit lawyers’ access.
In his letter to Mr. Gonzales, the bar association’s president said, “This is an astonishing and disingenuous assertion.”
“Blaming counsel for the hunger strikes and other unrest is a continuation of a
disreputable and unwarranted smear campaign against counsel,” the letter said.
The 137-year-old New York City Bar, with more than 23,000 members, is one of the oldest and largest lawyers’ organizations in the country. It says the Bush administration is trying to evade responsibility for problems at the Guantánamo Bay prison by falsely blaming defense lawyers.
The American Bar Association has also criticized the DOJ move to place "arbitrary restrictions concerning the number of times and the ways that lawyers may confer with their clients in Guantanamo." ABA President Karen J. Mathis said such practices at Guantanamo or in a court "would threaten competent representation without at all advancing national security."
Meanwhile, a number of US senators have vowed to restore to foreign terrorism suspects the right to challenge their imprisonment. They say Congress made an historic blunder by stripping them of that right last year. Hundreds of suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members held at Guantanamo could be affected.
Last year's Congress, with a Republican majority, passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA), which sets specific rules for US military tribunals. It included a ban on non-citizens labeled "enemy combatants" from using "habeas corpus" petitions to challenge the legality of their detention in court, asserting that military panels at Guantanamo were a substitute for court review.
The new law was hurriedly passed in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision striking down the Bush Administration’s position because it lacked legislative authority from Congress.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, warned, "This new law means that any of these people can be detained forever without any ability to challenge their detention in federal court, or anywhere else, simply on the government's say-so that they are awaiting determination as to whether they are enemy combatants," he said.
"This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American," Leahy said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which would share jurisdiction on changing the law.
A Defense Department lawyer and some committee Republicans said the law should be allowed to work and be examined by US courts before Congress acts again.
Thus far, there have been no trials and only two prisoners charged under the MCA. An Australian detainee, David Hicks, pled guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting terrorists and was given a seven-year sentence with all but nine months suspended. A prisoner for almost five years, Hicks will serve his sentence in Australia, and is barred from talking to the media for a year.
Another group of what the Bush Administration characterizes as “high value” detainees has been sent to Guantanamo from secret prisons, whose existence President Bush admitted for the first time in announcing the transfers. It is believed these “black site” facilities were run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and located in former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe as well as some in the Middle East.
But whether any of these defendants will come to trial remains an open question because at least some of the evidence against them may have been obtained using “cruel and inhumane” treatment, which is prohibited under the Geneva Conventions.
Sen. Leahy, along with the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has introduced legislation to restore habeas corpus right to detainees. With the help of Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, "I hope we can fix this serious and corrosive problem by this summer," Leahy said.
Levin, a Michigan Democrat, agreed. "We have an obligation to act now to establish a process that we can defend."
Similar legislation has also been introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat and candidate for his party’s nomination for the presidency in the 2008 election.
The writ of habeas corpus – a Latin phrase meaning "you have the body" - has been a centerpiece of Anglo-American jurisprudence since it was first developed over 300 years ago in Britain. It gives defendants the right to have their imprisonment reviewed by a court.
In a related development, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, has introduced legislation to close the military prison at Guantánamo.
Guantánamo Bay has become a lightning rod for international condemnation," Feinstein said. "Rather than make the United States safer, the image projected by this facility puts us at greater risk," she said.
Feinstein's bill would require the DOD to close the Guantánamo Bay prison 100 days after the bill's enactment. Feinstein laid out several options as to where the detainees would go.
They could be transferred to civilian or military prisons in the US and charged before civilian courts or military tribunals, or they could be handed over to international tribunals authorized to try them.
Detainees cleared for release would be sent either to their home countries or, if those countries have a history of prisoner torture, to third-party countries that e agree to take them.
Feinstein said she opposes releasing any terrorists, but adds that the US would be better served holding them elsewhere.
"Conducting trials elsewhere, either in the US or before internationally recognized tribunals, will give these proceedings a credibility that they would not likely have if they were conducted at Guantánamo Bay," Feinstein said.
In 2002, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to Guantanamo prisoners as "the worst of the worst." In June 2005, he said, "If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, (Osama bin Laden's) bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."
Other Bush Administration officials have been equally certain. For example, now retired Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "They were so vicious, if given the chance they would gnaw through the hydraulic lines of a C-17 while they were being flown to Cuba."
Nevertheless, of the approximately 760 prisoners brought to Guantanamo since 2002, the Pentagon reports that the military has now released all but approximately 385. Some were released to their home countries and imprisoned or freed. Others have been accepted by third countries.
But reliable evidence shows that, of the original number, many were not captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan, but kidnapped off the streets of Europe and various locations in the Middle East, and many others were "sold" to US authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan for bounties. It has also become clear that others were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Last year, the United Nations called on the US to close Guantánamo, opposing the Bush administration's claims that suspected terrorists were not entitled to treatment prescribed by the Geneva Conventions or the habeas corpus right to challenge the legality of their detentions.
More recently, President Bush has also said he would like to close Guantanamo if alternative arrangements can be made for the prisoners. The government says it is working hard to find countries willing to accept released prisoners, but is finding most of them either reluctant or unacceptable.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
CORRUPTION, SHODDY WORK, MISMANAGEMENT, CRIPPLE IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION
By William Fisher
Evidence of widespread corruption, shoddy work, and poor management, has called into question the claims of the Bush Administration that sabotage by insurgents is responsible for the failure of its multi-billion dollar Iraq reconstruction effort.
The new and growing body of evidence comes from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) (www.sigir.mil), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) (www.gao.gov), the investigative arm of Congress, and CorpWatch, (www.corpwatch.org), a non-partisan not-for-profit monitoring organization.
The head of SIGIR, Stuart Bowen, reports that his agency sampled eight projects that the Administration had touted as successes, and found that seven were no longer operating because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment never used.
The GAO tells Congress Iraqi government institutions are undeveloped and confront significant challenges in staffing a competent, non-partisan civil service, effectively fighting corruption, using modern technology; and managing resources effectively.
And CorpWatch reports that smugglers are suspected of diverting billions of dollars worth of crude oil onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of (oil terminals) has not worked since the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
With all of the approximately $30 billion in US reconstruction money now spent, future projects will become largely the responsibility of the Iraqi government. But, SIGIR’s April 23 report to Congress, says, “The Iraqi government has had difficulty operating and sustaining the aging oil infrastructure, maintaining the new and rehabilitated power generation facilities, and developing and sustaining the logistics systems for the Ministries of Defense and Interior.”
“Iraqi government institutions are undeveloped and confront significant challenges in staffing a competent, non-partisan civil service; effectively fighting corruption; using modern technology; and managing resources effectively,” says the report.
The GAO agrees. It tells Congress, “Iraqi capacity and commitment to manage and fund reconstruction and security efforts remains limited. Since 2003, the United States has obligated about $29 billion to help Iraq rebuild its infrastructure and develop Iraqi security forces to stabilize the country. However, key goals have not been met. The Iraqi government has not sustained reconstruction and security efforts, in part because Iraqi government institutions are undeveloped and lack needed management and human resource skills according to U.S. officials.
GAO adds, “The inability of the Iraqi government to spend its 2006 capital budget also increases the uncertainty that it can sustain the rebuilding effort.”
The Bush Administration, usually under pressure from federal inspectors or press accounts, has reluctantly acknowledged that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But the most recent inspections by the Inspector General reveal for first time the failure of projects officially declared successes.
Examples include:
· The Baghdad International Airport, where $11.8 million was spent on new electrical generators, but $8.6 million worth is no longer functioning.
· A maternity hospital in the northern city of Erbil, where a newly built water purification system is not functioning and an expensive incinerator for medical waste is padlocked and medical waste including syringes, used bandages, and empty drug vials are clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating the water system.
· At the same hospital, a system for distributing oxygen has been ignored by the medical staff, which told inspectors they distrusted the sophisticated new equipment and had gone back to using tried-and-true oxygen tanks — which are stored unsafely throughout the building.
· Expensive generators are missing from the Camp Ur military base, having been hauled off to another post. Also at Camp Ur, three modular buildings constructed at a cost of $1.8 million were dismantled and removed with no explanation given.
· Barracks renovated for enlisted soldiers are already in disrepair just a year after being handed over to the Iraqi Army. Electrical wiring is pieced together to accommodate retrofitted lights and appliances that were not in the original design. Newly installed fixtures, hardware and appliances have been pilfered or abused. A number of electrical generation systems were not adequately maintained and were inoperable at the time of the SIGIR's inspections. Leaks from the upstairs floor had damaged floor tiles and ceilings on the ground floors. An inadequate design, combined with low-quality fixtures and poor workmanship, made the facilities too fragile for the volume of use they experienced. The problem was compounded by poor maintenance and abuse by the tenants.
SIGIR acknowledged that the eight projects it inspected did not represent a full statistical measure of the thousands of projects in the American rebuilding program. But inspectors said their findings raised serious new concerns about the effort.
The projects visited by SIGIR teams were located throughout Iraq. The agency’s inspections were limited to a small sampling because many locations were considered too dangerous for inspectors to visit.
The reconstruction effort was originally touted to be almost as high a priority as the military “surge” to stabilize Iraq, allow the government to function and business to flourish, and promote good will toward the US.
But “These first inspections indicate that the concerns that we and others have had about the Iraqis sustaining our investments in these projects are valid,” SIGIR’s Bowen told the New York Times. Bowen said that because he suspected that completed projects were not being maintained, he had ordered his inspectors to undertake a wider program of returning to examine projects that had been completed for at least six months, a phase known as “sustainment.”
The American reconstruction program has been repeatedly criticized for not including in its rebuilding budget enough of the costs for spare parts, training, stronger construction and other elements that would enable projects continue to function once they have been built.
The new reports provide support for that position: Bowen says the Iraqis appear to share responsibility for the latest problems, which surfaced after the US turned the projects over to the Iraqi government. Still, the new findings show that the enormous American investment in the reconstruction program is at risk, Bowen said.
The United States has spent billions of dollars rebuilding the infrastructure and developing Iraqi security forces. However, the Iraqi government has had difficulty operating and sustaining the aging oil infrastructure, maintaining the new and rehabilitated power generation facilities, and developing and sustaining the logistics systems for the Ministries of Defense and Interior. Neither ministry is considered self-sufficient in logistics, command and control, or intelligence.
As a result:
Iraq's oil production and exports have consistently fallen below their respective program goals. In 2006, oil production averaged 2.1 million barrels per day, compared with the U.S. goal of 3.0 million barrels per day. The Ministry of Oil has had difficulty operating and maintaining the refineries. According to U.S. officials, Iraq lacks qualified staff and expertise at the field, plant, and ministry level, as well as an effective inventory control system for spare parts.
In 2006, electrical output reached 4,317 megawatts of peak generation per day, falling short of the U.S. goal of 6,000 megawatts. Prewar electrical output averaged 4,200 megawatts per day. Production also was outpaced by increasing demand, which has averaged about 8,210 megawatts per day. The Iraqi government has had difficulty sustaining the existing facilities. Problems include lack of training, inadequate spare parts, and an ineffective asset management and parts inventory system. Moreover, plants are sometimes operated beyond their recommended limits, resulting in longer downtimes for maintenance.
Although the US-led coalition plans to begin turning over certain support functions to Iraqi ministerial control in the spring of 2007, it is unlikely that the Ministry of Defense will achieve complete self-sufficiency in logistics, command and control, or intelligence before mid-2008, the Special IG reported.
The Ministry of Interior, which also receives critical support from the coalition, is also not self-sufficient in logistics, command and control, or intelligence. Because the ministry is unable to provide maintenance for vehicles of the national police, the coalition has let several contracts to train Iraqi mechanics, provide spare parts to contractors, and repair police vehicles. In addition, the ministry is not able to self-sufficiently operate or maintain its communications networks.
Furthermore, according to the SIGIR report, the coalition estimates that, if the security environment in Baghdad improves, the ministry's intelligence organization will be self-sufficient by mid-2008. However, if this self-sufficiency depends on improved security, there may be cause for concern, given that the average total attacks per day have increased, rising from about 70 per day in January 2006 to a record high of about 180 per day in October 2006.
SIGIR reports that the Iraqi civil service remains hampered by inadequately trained or unskilled staff whose political and sectarian loyalties jeopardize the ministries' ability to provide basic services and build credibility among Iraqi citizens. Government ministries and their budgets are being used as sources of power for political parties with ministry positions staffed with party cronies as
rewards for political loyalty.
According to US officials, patronage leads to staff instability as many are replaced when the government changes or a new minister is named. Some Iraqi ministries, including the Ministries of Interior, Agriculture, Health, Transportation, and Tourism, are led by ministers whose allegiance is to political parties hostile to US goals. These ministers use their positions to pursue partisan agendas that conflict with the goal of building a government that represents all ethnic groups. US officials have expressed reservations about working in some of these ministries, noting that the effectiveness of programs is hampered by the presence of unresponsive or anti-US officials.
Corruption in Iraq is reportedly widespread – as it tends to be throughout the Middle East -- and also poses a major challenge to building an effective Iraqi government.
Says SIGIR: “Corruption jeopardizes future flows of needed international assistance and reportedly undermines the government's ability to make effective use of current reconstruction assistance.”
According to US government and World Bank reports, there are several reasons for corruption in Iraq. These include an ineffective banking system that leaves the government dependent on cash transactions; nontransparent, obsolete ministry procurement systems; and ineffective, inadequately resourced accountability institutions, such as the ministries' inspectors general.
GAO and SIGIR are both working with Iraq's accountability organizations -- the Board of Supreme Audit, Commission on Public Integrity, and inspectors general of the ministries -- to strengthen their capabilities.
The Iraqi Government has budgeted some $10 billion for reconstruction projects, but Iraqi ministries lack adequate information technology and have difficulty managing their resources, according to US officials and an international assessment. This further contributed to the corruption problem.
For example, US officials said that the Ministry of Interior relies on manual processes such as hand-written ledgers and a cash-based payroll system that has resulted in Iraqi police leaving their posts to deliver cash to their families. US officials also estimated that 20 to 30 percent of the Ministry of Interior personnel are "ghost employees" -- nonexistent staff paid salaries that are collected by other officials.
Unclear budgeting and procurement rules have affected Iraq's efforts to spend capital budgets effectively and efficiently, according, to US officials. The inability to spend the money raises serious questions for the government, which has to demonstrate to skeptical citizens that it can improve basic services and make a difference in their daily lives. The US government has launched a series of
initiatives in conjunction with other donors to address this issue and improve the Iraqi government's budget execution.
As of August 2006, the government of Iraq had spent, on average, only eight percent of its annual capital goods budget and 14 percent of its annual capital projects budget. Some of the weakest spending occurs at the Ministry of Oil, which relies on damaged and outdated infrastructure to produce the oil that provides nearly all of the country's revenues.
The Ministry of Oil's $3.5 billion 2006 capital project's budget targeted key enhancements to the country's oil production, distribution, and export facilities. However, as of August 2006, the ministry had spent less than one percent of these budgeted funds.
Moreover, the key ministries of Interior and Defense have multiple rules and regulations. The lack of procurement and budgeting rules creates opportunities for corruption and mismanagement.
The Pentagon’s (DOD) contracting policies and practices share significantly in the failure of reconstruction efforts. According to the GAO, DOD relies heavily on contractors for reconstruction projects and faces significant management and oversight challenges. For example, military commanders and senior DOD officials do not have visibility over contractors; this prevents DOD from knowing the extent to which it is relying on contractors for support in Iraq. DOD also lacks clear and comprehensive guidance and leadership for managing and overseeing contractors. Key contracting issues -- including unclear requirements and failure to reach agreement on key terms and conditions in a timely manner -- have prevented DOD from achieving successful acquisition outcomes. Finally, DOD does not have a sufficient number of oversight personnel to ensure that the contracts that are in place are carried out efficiently and according to the contract requirements, and military commanders and contract oversight personnel do not receive sufficient training to effectively manage contracts and contractors in Iraq.
GAO’s December 2006 review of DOD's use of contractors in Iraq found that DOD's limited visibility unnecessarily increased contracting costs to the government and introduced unnecessary risk.
It said, “Without visibility over where contractors are deployed and what government support they are entitled to, costs to the government may increase. For example, at a contractor accountability task force meeting we attended in 2006, an Army Material Command official stated that an Army official estimated that about $43 million is lost each year on free meals provided to contractor employees at deployed locations who also receive a per diem food allowance.”
Also, the GAO reports, “when senior military leaders began to develop a base consolidation plan, officials were unable to determine how many contractors were deployed and therefore ran the risk of over-or under-building the capacity of the consolidated bases.”
Meanwhile, Pratap Chatterjee of CorpWatch has raised the question, “How much crude oil is Iraq actually exporting?” He says, “Nobody really knows how much is potentially being stolen by corrupt officials because the contractors in charge of fixing the meters have yet to calibrate them, four years after the invasion.”
Chatterjee has recently reported that “Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at two oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing boats, while “right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of (the oil terminals) has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The two offshore terminals -- Al Basra Oil Terminal (ABOT) and the smaller Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT) deliver some 1.6 million barrels of crude oil, at least 85 percent of Iraq's output, to buyers from all over the world.
Chatterjee reports, “Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on ‘security problems’. Others point to the failed efforts of the two US companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California.
He reports, “Rumors are rife among suspicious Iraqis about the failure to measure the oil flow. A May 2006 study of oil production and export figures by Platt's Oilgram News, an industry magazine, showed that up to $3 billion a year is unaccounted for.
"Iraqi oil is regularly smuggled out of the country in many different ways," an oil merchant in Amman told The Nation magazine last month, Chatterjee says.
"Emir al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is spending all his time in Basra selling oil as if it were his own. People there call him Uday al-Hakim, meaning he is behaving the same way Uday Saddam Hussein was acting.
The smuggling and black market operations bear striking parallels to Saddam Hussein's tactics for circumventing the UN embargo. Saddam was accused of selling some $5.7 billion worth of petroleum products on the black market over the six years of the Oil-for-Food program while United Nations inspectors turned a blind eye. Today, his successors stand accused of similar abuses, Chatterjee reports.
He adds, “Iraq sits on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia and Canada). From a society that once used its oil revenue to create a social welfare state that provided education, health care and social services, the country has plummeted into the ranks of the poorest countries of the world. Economists call this the ‘resource curse’. Those blessed with non-renewable resources often benefit the least, because a few wealthy people control the resources, or war prevents almost anyone from the benefiting.”
Chatterjee points out that US contractors have played a key role in the repair and upgrading of Iraq's oil infrastructure and expected the industry to pay for reconstruction. “In January 2004, under project Restore Iraqi Oil II (RIO II), the Bush administration contracted with Halliburton to fix southern Iraq's oil fields and with Parsons to handle the northern fields. The two companies were supposed to be supervised by yet another contractor, New Jersey-based Foster Wheeler.”
Halliburton and Parsons have long histories in Iraq, going back more than 40 years. Brown & Root, which is now part of Halliburton, began work in Iraq in 1961, while Parsons dipped into Iraq's oil sector in the 1950s. Foster Wheeler dates its work in Iraq to the 1930s.
But, Chatterjee reports, “With billions of dollars to spend and extensive experience with oil infrastructure and Iraqi ports, Halliburton and Parsons seem unable to deal with the routine problem of broken meters at the Southern Iraq terminals. The kinds of meters they were supposed to repair or replace at ABOT are commonly found at hundreds of similar sites around the world. Because they are custom-built, shipped, then assembled and calibrated on site, the process can take up to a year. But the problem has persisted for four years.”
He adds, “After the 2003 invasion, the meters appear to have been turned off and there have since been no reliable estimates of how much crude has been shipped from the southern oil fields.”
"I would say probably between 200,000 and 500,000 barrels a day is probably unaccounted for in Iraq," Chatterjee reports, quoting Mikel Morris, who worked for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Organization (IRMO) at the US embassy in Baghdad.
Neither US officials nor contractors have provided good reasons why, four years into the US occupation, the meters have not been calibrated, repaired, or replaced, Chatterjee says.
Today no government officials have been able to establish conclusively whether oil is being smuggled or not. Even the future of the oil metering remains unclear. The report issued by SIGIR in January 2007 notes that repair and rehabilitation work at ABOT was scheduled to be finished by May 2007, but "it is unclear whether this project will be completed” because the funding could be cut.
Evidence of widespread corruption, shoddy work, and poor management, has called into question the claims of the Bush Administration that sabotage by insurgents is responsible for the failure of its multi-billion dollar Iraq reconstruction effort.
The new and growing body of evidence comes from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) (www.sigir.mil), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) (www.gao.gov), the investigative arm of Congress, and CorpWatch, (www.corpwatch.org), a non-partisan not-for-profit monitoring organization.
The head of SIGIR, Stuart Bowen, reports that his agency sampled eight projects that the Administration had touted as successes, and found that seven were no longer operating because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment never used.
The GAO tells Congress Iraqi government institutions are undeveloped and confront significant challenges in staffing a competent, non-partisan civil service, effectively fighting corruption, using modern technology; and managing resources effectively.
And CorpWatch reports that smugglers are suspected of diverting billions of dollars worth of crude oil onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of (oil terminals) has not worked since the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
With all of the approximately $30 billion in US reconstruction money now spent, future projects will become largely the responsibility of the Iraqi government. But, SIGIR’s April 23 report to Congress, says, “The Iraqi government has had difficulty operating and sustaining the aging oil infrastructure, maintaining the new and rehabilitated power generation facilities, and developing and sustaining the logistics systems for the Ministries of Defense and Interior.”
“Iraqi government institutions are undeveloped and confront significant challenges in staffing a competent, non-partisan civil service; effectively fighting corruption; using modern technology; and managing resources effectively,” says the report.
The GAO agrees. It tells Congress, “Iraqi capacity and commitment to manage and fund reconstruction and security efforts remains limited. Since 2003, the United States has obligated about $29 billion to help Iraq rebuild its infrastructure and develop Iraqi security forces to stabilize the country. However, key goals have not been met. The Iraqi government has not sustained reconstruction and security efforts, in part because Iraqi government institutions are undeveloped and lack needed management and human resource skills according to U.S. officials.
GAO adds, “The inability of the Iraqi government to spend its 2006 capital budget also increases the uncertainty that it can sustain the rebuilding effort.”
The Bush Administration, usually under pressure from federal inspectors or press accounts, has reluctantly acknowledged that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But the most recent inspections by the Inspector General reveal for first time the failure of projects officially declared successes.
Examples include:
· The Baghdad International Airport, where $11.8 million was spent on new electrical generators, but $8.6 million worth is no longer functioning.
· A maternity hospital in the northern city of Erbil, where a newly built water purification system is not functioning and an expensive incinerator for medical waste is padlocked and medical waste including syringes, used bandages, and empty drug vials are clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating the water system.
· At the same hospital, a system for distributing oxygen has been ignored by the medical staff, which told inspectors they distrusted the sophisticated new equipment and had gone back to using tried-and-true oxygen tanks — which are stored unsafely throughout the building.
· Expensive generators are missing from the Camp Ur military base, having been hauled off to another post. Also at Camp Ur, three modular buildings constructed at a cost of $1.8 million were dismantled and removed with no explanation given.
· Barracks renovated for enlisted soldiers are already in disrepair just a year after being handed over to the Iraqi Army. Electrical wiring is pieced together to accommodate retrofitted lights and appliances that were not in the original design. Newly installed fixtures, hardware and appliances have been pilfered or abused. A number of electrical generation systems were not adequately maintained and were inoperable at the time of the SIGIR's inspections. Leaks from the upstairs floor had damaged floor tiles and ceilings on the ground floors. An inadequate design, combined with low-quality fixtures and poor workmanship, made the facilities too fragile for the volume of use they experienced. The problem was compounded by poor maintenance and abuse by the tenants.
SIGIR acknowledged that the eight projects it inspected did not represent a full statistical measure of the thousands of projects in the American rebuilding program. But inspectors said their findings raised serious new concerns about the effort.
The projects visited by SIGIR teams were located throughout Iraq. The agency’s inspections were limited to a small sampling because many locations were considered too dangerous for inspectors to visit.
The reconstruction effort was originally touted to be almost as high a priority as the military “surge” to stabilize Iraq, allow the government to function and business to flourish, and promote good will toward the US.
But “These first inspections indicate that the concerns that we and others have had about the Iraqis sustaining our investments in these projects are valid,” SIGIR’s Bowen told the New York Times. Bowen said that because he suspected that completed projects were not being maintained, he had ordered his inspectors to undertake a wider program of returning to examine projects that had been completed for at least six months, a phase known as “sustainment.”
The American reconstruction program has been repeatedly criticized for not including in its rebuilding budget enough of the costs for spare parts, training, stronger construction and other elements that would enable projects continue to function once they have been built.
The new reports provide support for that position: Bowen says the Iraqis appear to share responsibility for the latest problems, which surfaced after the US turned the projects over to the Iraqi government. Still, the new findings show that the enormous American investment in the reconstruction program is at risk, Bowen said.
The United States has spent billions of dollars rebuilding the infrastructure and developing Iraqi security forces. However, the Iraqi government has had difficulty operating and sustaining the aging oil infrastructure, maintaining the new and rehabilitated power generation facilities, and developing and sustaining the logistics systems for the Ministries of Defense and Interior. Neither ministry is considered self-sufficient in logistics, command and control, or intelligence.
As a result:
Iraq's oil production and exports have consistently fallen below their respective program goals. In 2006, oil production averaged 2.1 million barrels per day, compared with the U.S. goal of 3.0 million barrels per day. The Ministry of Oil has had difficulty operating and maintaining the refineries. According to U.S. officials, Iraq lacks qualified staff and expertise at the field, plant, and ministry level, as well as an effective inventory control system for spare parts.
In 2006, electrical output reached 4,317 megawatts of peak generation per day, falling short of the U.S. goal of 6,000 megawatts. Prewar electrical output averaged 4,200 megawatts per day. Production also was outpaced by increasing demand, which has averaged about 8,210 megawatts per day. The Iraqi government has had difficulty sustaining the existing facilities. Problems include lack of training, inadequate spare parts, and an ineffective asset management and parts inventory system. Moreover, plants are sometimes operated beyond their recommended limits, resulting in longer downtimes for maintenance.
Although the US-led coalition plans to begin turning over certain support functions to Iraqi ministerial control in the spring of 2007, it is unlikely that the Ministry of Defense will achieve complete self-sufficiency in logistics, command and control, or intelligence before mid-2008, the Special IG reported.
The Ministry of Interior, which also receives critical support from the coalition, is also not self-sufficient in logistics, command and control, or intelligence. Because the ministry is unable to provide maintenance for vehicles of the national police, the coalition has let several contracts to train Iraqi mechanics, provide spare parts to contractors, and repair police vehicles. In addition, the ministry is not able to self-sufficiently operate or maintain its communications networks.
Furthermore, according to the SIGIR report, the coalition estimates that, if the security environment in Baghdad improves, the ministry's intelligence organization will be self-sufficient by mid-2008. However, if this self-sufficiency depends on improved security, there may be cause for concern, given that the average total attacks per day have increased, rising from about 70 per day in January 2006 to a record high of about 180 per day in October 2006.
SIGIR reports that the Iraqi civil service remains hampered by inadequately trained or unskilled staff whose political and sectarian loyalties jeopardize the ministries' ability to provide basic services and build credibility among Iraqi citizens. Government ministries and their budgets are being used as sources of power for political parties with ministry positions staffed with party cronies as
rewards for political loyalty.
According to US officials, patronage leads to staff instability as many are replaced when the government changes or a new minister is named. Some Iraqi ministries, including the Ministries of Interior, Agriculture, Health, Transportation, and Tourism, are led by ministers whose allegiance is to political parties hostile to US goals. These ministers use their positions to pursue partisan agendas that conflict with the goal of building a government that represents all ethnic groups. US officials have expressed reservations about working in some of these ministries, noting that the effectiveness of programs is hampered by the presence of unresponsive or anti-US officials.
Corruption in Iraq is reportedly widespread – as it tends to be throughout the Middle East -- and also poses a major challenge to building an effective Iraqi government.
Says SIGIR: “Corruption jeopardizes future flows of needed international assistance and reportedly undermines the government's ability to make effective use of current reconstruction assistance.”
According to US government and World Bank reports, there are several reasons for corruption in Iraq. These include an ineffective banking system that leaves the government dependent on cash transactions; nontransparent, obsolete ministry procurement systems; and ineffective, inadequately resourced accountability institutions, such as the ministries' inspectors general.
GAO and SIGIR are both working with Iraq's accountability organizations -- the Board of Supreme Audit, Commission on Public Integrity, and inspectors general of the ministries -- to strengthen their capabilities.
The Iraqi Government has budgeted some $10 billion for reconstruction projects, but Iraqi ministries lack adequate information technology and have difficulty managing their resources, according to US officials and an international assessment. This further contributed to the corruption problem.
For example, US officials said that the Ministry of Interior relies on manual processes such as hand-written ledgers and a cash-based payroll system that has resulted in Iraqi police leaving their posts to deliver cash to their families. US officials also estimated that 20 to 30 percent of the Ministry of Interior personnel are "ghost employees" -- nonexistent staff paid salaries that are collected by other officials.
Unclear budgeting and procurement rules have affected Iraq's efforts to spend capital budgets effectively and efficiently, according, to US officials. The inability to spend the money raises serious questions for the government, which has to demonstrate to skeptical citizens that it can improve basic services and make a difference in their daily lives. The US government has launched a series of
initiatives in conjunction with other donors to address this issue and improve the Iraqi government's budget execution.
As of August 2006, the government of Iraq had spent, on average, only eight percent of its annual capital goods budget and 14 percent of its annual capital projects budget. Some of the weakest spending occurs at the Ministry of Oil, which relies on damaged and outdated infrastructure to produce the oil that provides nearly all of the country's revenues.
The Ministry of Oil's $3.5 billion 2006 capital project's budget targeted key enhancements to the country's oil production, distribution, and export facilities. However, as of August 2006, the ministry had spent less than one percent of these budgeted funds.
Moreover, the key ministries of Interior and Defense have multiple rules and regulations. The lack of procurement and budgeting rules creates opportunities for corruption and mismanagement.
The Pentagon’s (DOD) contracting policies and practices share significantly in the failure of reconstruction efforts. According to the GAO, DOD relies heavily on contractors for reconstruction projects and faces significant management and oversight challenges. For example, military commanders and senior DOD officials do not have visibility over contractors; this prevents DOD from knowing the extent to which it is relying on contractors for support in Iraq. DOD also lacks clear and comprehensive guidance and leadership for managing and overseeing contractors. Key contracting issues -- including unclear requirements and failure to reach agreement on key terms and conditions in a timely manner -- have prevented DOD from achieving successful acquisition outcomes. Finally, DOD does not have a sufficient number of oversight personnel to ensure that the contracts that are in place are carried out efficiently and according to the contract requirements, and military commanders and contract oversight personnel do not receive sufficient training to effectively manage contracts and contractors in Iraq.
GAO’s December 2006 review of DOD's use of contractors in Iraq found that DOD's limited visibility unnecessarily increased contracting costs to the government and introduced unnecessary risk.
It said, “Without visibility over where contractors are deployed and what government support they are entitled to, costs to the government may increase. For example, at a contractor accountability task force meeting we attended in 2006, an Army Material Command official stated that an Army official estimated that about $43 million is lost each year on free meals provided to contractor employees at deployed locations who also receive a per diem food allowance.”
Also, the GAO reports, “when senior military leaders began to develop a base consolidation plan, officials were unable to determine how many contractors were deployed and therefore ran the risk of over-or under-building the capacity of the consolidated bases.”
Meanwhile, Pratap Chatterjee of CorpWatch has raised the question, “How much crude oil is Iraq actually exporting?” He says, “Nobody really knows how much is potentially being stolen by corrupt officials because the contractors in charge of fixing the meters have yet to calibrate them, four years after the invasion.”
Chatterjee has recently reported that “Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at two oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing boats, while “right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of (the oil terminals) has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The two offshore terminals -- Al Basra Oil Terminal (ABOT) and the smaller Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT) deliver some 1.6 million barrels of crude oil, at least 85 percent of Iraq's output, to buyers from all over the world.
Chatterjee reports, “Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on ‘security problems’. Others point to the failed efforts of the two US companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California.
He reports, “Rumors are rife among suspicious Iraqis about the failure to measure the oil flow. A May 2006 study of oil production and export figures by Platt's Oilgram News, an industry magazine, showed that up to $3 billion a year is unaccounted for.
"Iraqi oil is regularly smuggled out of the country in many different ways," an oil merchant in Amman told The Nation magazine last month, Chatterjee says.
"Emir al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is spending all his time in Basra selling oil as if it were his own. People there call him Uday al-Hakim, meaning he is behaving the same way Uday Saddam Hussein was acting.
The smuggling and black market operations bear striking parallels to Saddam Hussein's tactics for circumventing the UN embargo. Saddam was accused of selling some $5.7 billion worth of petroleum products on the black market over the six years of the Oil-for-Food program while United Nations inspectors turned a blind eye. Today, his successors stand accused of similar abuses, Chatterjee reports.
He adds, “Iraq sits on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia and Canada). From a society that once used its oil revenue to create a social welfare state that provided education, health care and social services, the country has plummeted into the ranks of the poorest countries of the world. Economists call this the ‘resource curse’. Those blessed with non-renewable resources often benefit the least, because a few wealthy people control the resources, or war prevents almost anyone from the benefiting.”
Chatterjee points out that US contractors have played a key role in the repair and upgrading of Iraq's oil infrastructure and expected the industry to pay for reconstruction. “In January 2004, under project Restore Iraqi Oil II (RIO II), the Bush administration contracted with Halliburton to fix southern Iraq's oil fields and with Parsons to handle the northern fields. The two companies were supposed to be supervised by yet another contractor, New Jersey-based Foster Wheeler.”
Halliburton and Parsons have long histories in Iraq, going back more than 40 years. Brown & Root, which is now part of Halliburton, began work in Iraq in 1961, while Parsons dipped into Iraq's oil sector in the 1950s. Foster Wheeler dates its work in Iraq to the 1930s.
But, Chatterjee reports, “With billions of dollars to spend and extensive experience with oil infrastructure and Iraqi ports, Halliburton and Parsons seem unable to deal with the routine problem of broken meters at the Southern Iraq terminals. The kinds of meters they were supposed to repair or replace at ABOT are commonly found at hundreds of similar sites around the world. Because they are custom-built, shipped, then assembled and calibrated on site, the process can take up to a year. But the problem has persisted for four years.”
He adds, “After the 2003 invasion, the meters appear to have been turned off and there have since been no reliable estimates of how much crude has been shipped from the southern oil fields.”
"I would say probably between 200,000 and 500,000 barrels a day is probably unaccounted for in Iraq," Chatterjee reports, quoting Mikel Morris, who worked for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Organization (IRMO) at the US embassy in Baghdad.
Neither US officials nor contractors have provided good reasons why, four years into the US occupation, the meters have not been calibrated, repaired, or replaced, Chatterjee says.
Today no government officials have been able to establish conclusively whether oil is being smuggled or not. Even the future of the oil metering remains unclear. The report issued by SIGIR in January 2007 notes that repair and rehabilitation work at ABOT was scheduled to be finished by May 2007, but "it is unclear whether this project will be completed” because the funding could be cut.
Friday, April 27, 2007
PENTAGON BACK-PEDALS AS ADVOCACY GROUPS CRITICIZE CITIZENSHIP DELAYS, ETHNIC PROFILING
By William Fisher
As a new report charged that the US Department of Homeland Security is illegally delaying the citizenship applications of thousands of immigrants by profiling Muslims and subjecting them to indefinite security checks, a major Arab-American advocacy group launched a campaign to end a controversial post-9/11 program it says discriminates against Muslim visitors to the US and, in a surprise move, the Pentagon itself announced it wants to close a domestic terrorism spying venture that has drawn heated criticism from civil and humans rights advocates.
The Pentagon program, known as TALON -- Threat and Local Observation Notice -- has been attacked by civil and human rights organizations for collecting information on peaceful activists inside the United States.
According to a Pentagon spokesman, the new undersecretary of defense for intelligence, James Clapper, found “disappointing results” during a review of the TALON database.
Clapper "has assessed the results of the TALON program and does not believe they merit continuing the program as currently constituted, particularly in light of
its image in Congress and the media," Ryder said.
The Pentagon acknowledged last year that part of the information collected in the database "either should have been purged, or was data that was not appropriate for reporting in that system."
The TALON program began in 2003 to track suspects with possible links to terrorists as part of the post-9/11 "war on terror."
But information leaked to news reporters revealed that the Pentagon was collecting information on peace activists and monitoring anti-war protests across the country.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last year filed several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking to uncover the identities of peace groups being spied on by the Pentagon.
The filing was on behalf of several national groups and seven Florida-based peace activist groups, including Florida members of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker religious-based peace group.
"We found there were any number of things with respect to that program where there were data that was maintained in a database where they probably should have not been maintained there," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates reportedly has not yet made a formal decision to shut down the program.
TALON has also attracted the wrath of influential members of Congress. For example, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says, "There are ways to protect defense facilities and military personnel without this kind of overreaching." He lauded the Pentagon's will to put an end to the program.
"Talon was another costly, controversial and poorly focused venture that did not make us any safer," Leahy said.
"Without clear rules and close oversight, databases like this can easily be abused to violate the public's constitutional and privacy rights," he added.
At the same time, a new report from the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at the New York University School of Law charges that the US government is illegally delaying the naturalization applications of thousands of immigrants by profiling individuals it perceives to be Muslim and documents the impact of expanded security checks on the lives of those experiencing citizenship delays, often for years.
The report -- “Americans on Hold: Profiling, Citizenship, and the War on Terror” – analyzes these delays and their impact within an international human rights framework, and offers specific policy recommendations to help end discrimination in access to citizenship and other human rights violations.
“Citizenship delays are not just bureaucratic inconveniences; they are the result of discriminatory, ineffective, and undemocratic policies that violate fundamental human rights,” said Prof. Smita Narula, CHRGJ’s Faculty Director.
In the name of fighting a ‘war on terror,’ the government is breaking up families, engendering fear and insecurity, and disenfranchising entire communities,” he says.
The report contends that since the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, “US immigration policy has been heavily influenced by counter-terorism eforts. The government has folded immigration bodies into national security institutions and has institutionalized a policy of discrimination against immigrants perceived to be Muslim on the basis of their name, race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin.”
It says, “Increased security checks in the citizenship application process, manifested in a substantial expansion of FBI name check procedures, have illegally delayed the processing of applications from Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian men.”
The result, the report says, is that “Thousands of immigrants have chosen the United States as their new home; they abide by U.S. laws, pay U.S. taxes, contribute to our nation’s economy, and strengthen its multi-cultural foundations. They have passed every test, and fulfilled every requirement related to the naturalization process, but continue to wait for security clearance on their application. In response to repeated inquiries to immigration authorities, applicants are simply told that their applicationis pending security clearance.
The organization quotes one applicant as saying, “They only have two words for us: ‘security check.’ That’s it.” Another is quoted as recounting, “I have been to Federal Plaza (ten times), and the supervisor there told me, ‘It could be one day or it can be 99 years.’
The report alleges that individuals experiencing citizenship delays are unable to file visa petitions for their immediate relatives, are greatly hindered in their ability to travel to see sick relatives, and often endure restrictions on their ability to work or receive life-saving benefits.
Federal law requires US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to grant or deny citizenship within 120 days of an applicant’s examination. USCIS has also set a policy goal of processing applications within six months from the time of filing.
But the CHRGJ report says that DHS data “reveals that more than two-thirds of the over 2.2 million applications filed since April 1, 2001 were not processed within 180 days; more than 776,000 applicants had been waiting for more than a year; approximately 158,000 applicants had been waiting for more than two years; while approximately 41,000 had been waiting for three years or more.”
According to the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, prolonged name checks “significantly delay adjudication of immigration benefits for many applicants, hinder backlog reduction efforts, and rarely, if ever, achieve their intended national security objectives,” the report says.
Jayne Huckerby, CHRGJ’s Research Director, says, “Discriminatory profiling is illegal under international law and is a poor substitute for real intelligence work.
Taking years to identify individuals who are security threats does not make us safer. Ensuring timely and good faith completions of background checks will help the US advance its national security goals.”
Huckerby adds, “As a State party to the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights the U.S. is obligated to ensure non-discrimination in access to citizenship as well as other human rights. A number of expert human rights bodies have affirmed that the “war on terror” cannot be invoked to deny non-citizens’ rights.”
She points out that profiling affects a number of human rights, including the right to liberty of movement, the right to profess and practice religion, and the right to non-discrimination in access to public health and social services.
“Profiled immigrants may be stopped, delayed, detained, and subjected to extended and unnerving security checks while traveling. Prior to September 11,2001 the list of individuals suspected of terrorism and banned from air travel contained only 16 names; as of October 2006, the “no-fly” list contained 44,000 names. Airport officials are reportedly required to stop anyone with a “Muslim name” and name-check that individual against the list. Airport computers throw up red flags even when names are merely similar to those found on the list,” the CHRGJ report charges.
“Muslim immigrants or those perceived to be Muslims (such as members of the Sikh community) have also altered their physical appearance for fear of being profiled. Many immigrants have curtailed the extent to which they pray or worship publicly, and some have even changed their names – the very hallmark of their religious and cultural identity. Delays also affect the ability of naturalization applicants to receive life saving benefits, and inurn their aces to healthcare and food.”
Meanwhile, other advocacy groups are demanding an end to what they describe as DHS-sponsored anti-Muslim programs. One of them is known as NSEERS -- the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System.
For example, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has launched an advertising campaign called, "End the Shame of NSEERS." Its objective is “to shed light on the continuing problems faced by thousands of individuals as a result of the discriminatory and poorly constructed and implemented ‘Special Registration Program’."
ADC’s ads are appearing this month in the Arab American News, the largest and oldest Arab American newspaper in the United States, Washington Monthly Magazine, and the program of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 2007 Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Awards Dinner.
In the ads, ADC calls on President George W. Bush, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to terminate the NSEERS program and address its negative residual effects.
Launched by the Department of Justice in late 2002, and later transferred to the newly organized Department of Homeland Security, NSEERS requires male visitors to voluntarily comply with the program. But ADC says, “Failure to adequately publicize the program and to train immigration officers sufficiently led to poor implementation of NSEERS. Thousands of men who were required to register failed to do so many, no doubt, due to lack of notice, and are now vulnerable to NSEERS penalties.”
The organization charges that “Hundreds of individuals who had voluntarily appeared to register at Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) offices around the country were arrested and detained without reasonable justification.”
The program was initially portrayed as an anti-terrorism measure that required male visitors to the US (from 25 Arab and Muslim countries, and North Korea) to be fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned by immigration officers. At the time, INS officials acknowledged they were ill prepared to carry out this special call in registration and acknowledged numerous shortcomings. However, despite DHS’s suspension of a few requirements in 2004, there were and still are criminal and civil penalties associated with failure to comply with NSEERS, including arrest, detention, monetary fines and/or removal from the United States.
INS was renamed and became part of the Department of Homeland Security upon its founding after the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
Civil liberties organizations have said that NSEERS was so poorly conceived and badly managed that it created chaos and fear. Trust between the immigrant community and law enforcement was severely strained, and in the end, there was no evidence that any terrorists were apprehended as a result of the effort.
ADC has noted that “Approximately 84,000 Arabs and Muslims registered voluntarily and subsequently about 14,000 were subjected to deportation hearings for voluntarily complying with the program. Yet, no registrants were charged with terrorism. In December 2004, the NSEERS program was modified by DHS, but many elements remain and are subject to abuse including: departure registration; registration at ports of entry; as well as the potential for the re-initiation of the call-in phase.”
The organization says, “It seems clear that NSEERS has become just another tool used in immigration enforcement and law enforcement in general, which raises serious constitutional issues as the program clearly discriminates on the basis of national origin.”
ADC adds that several members of Congress, including key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and numerous civil libertarians and immigrants rights advocates, have taken issue with the constitutional legality of NSEERS discrimination based on national origin.
As a new report charged that the US Department of Homeland Security is illegally delaying the citizenship applications of thousands of immigrants by profiling Muslims and subjecting them to indefinite security checks, a major Arab-American advocacy group launched a campaign to end a controversial post-9/11 program it says discriminates against Muslim visitors to the US and, in a surprise move, the Pentagon itself announced it wants to close a domestic terrorism spying venture that has drawn heated criticism from civil and humans rights advocates.
The Pentagon program, known as TALON -- Threat and Local Observation Notice -- has been attacked by civil and human rights organizations for collecting information on peaceful activists inside the United States.
According to a Pentagon spokesman, the new undersecretary of defense for intelligence, James Clapper, found “disappointing results” during a review of the TALON database.
Clapper "has assessed the results of the TALON program and does not believe they merit continuing the program as currently constituted, particularly in light of
its image in Congress and the media," Ryder said.
The Pentagon acknowledged last year that part of the information collected in the database "either should have been purged, or was data that was not appropriate for reporting in that system."
The TALON program began in 2003 to track suspects with possible links to terrorists as part of the post-9/11 "war on terror."
But information leaked to news reporters revealed that the Pentagon was collecting information on peace activists and monitoring anti-war protests across the country.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last year filed several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking to uncover the identities of peace groups being spied on by the Pentagon.
The filing was on behalf of several national groups and seven Florida-based peace activist groups, including Florida members of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker religious-based peace group.
"We found there were any number of things with respect to that program where there were data that was maintained in a database where they probably should have not been maintained there," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates reportedly has not yet made a formal decision to shut down the program.
TALON has also attracted the wrath of influential members of Congress. For example, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says, "There are ways to protect defense facilities and military personnel without this kind of overreaching." He lauded the Pentagon's will to put an end to the program.
"Talon was another costly, controversial and poorly focused venture that did not make us any safer," Leahy said.
"Without clear rules and close oversight, databases like this can easily be abused to violate the public's constitutional and privacy rights," he added.
At the same time, a new report from the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at the New York University School of Law charges that the US government is illegally delaying the naturalization applications of thousands of immigrants by profiling individuals it perceives to be Muslim and documents the impact of expanded security checks on the lives of those experiencing citizenship delays, often for years.
The report -- “Americans on Hold: Profiling, Citizenship, and the War on Terror” – analyzes these delays and their impact within an international human rights framework, and offers specific policy recommendations to help end discrimination in access to citizenship and other human rights violations.
“Citizenship delays are not just bureaucratic inconveniences; they are the result of discriminatory, ineffective, and undemocratic policies that violate fundamental human rights,” said Prof. Smita Narula, CHRGJ’s Faculty Director.
In the name of fighting a ‘war on terror,’ the government is breaking up families, engendering fear and insecurity, and disenfranchising entire communities,” he says.
The report contends that since the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, “US immigration policy has been heavily influenced by counter-terorism eforts. The government has folded immigration bodies into national security institutions and has institutionalized a policy of discrimination against immigrants perceived to be Muslim on the basis of their name, race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin.”
It says, “Increased security checks in the citizenship application process, manifested in a substantial expansion of FBI name check procedures, have illegally delayed the processing of applications from Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian men.”
The result, the report says, is that “Thousands of immigrants have chosen the United States as their new home; they abide by U.S. laws, pay U.S. taxes, contribute to our nation’s economy, and strengthen its multi-cultural foundations. They have passed every test, and fulfilled every requirement related to the naturalization process, but continue to wait for security clearance on their application. In response to repeated inquiries to immigration authorities, applicants are simply told that their applicationis pending security clearance.
The organization quotes one applicant as saying, “They only have two words for us: ‘security check.’ That’s it.” Another is quoted as recounting, “I have been to Federal Plaza (ten times), and the supervisor there told me, ‘It could be one day or it can be 99 years.’
The report alleges that individuals experiencing citizenship delays are unable to file visa petitions for their immediate relatives, are greatly hindered in their ability to travel to see sick relatives, and often endure restrictions on their ability to work or receive life-saving benefits.
Federal law requires US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to grant or deny citizenship within 120 days of an applicant’s examination. USCIS has also set a policy goal of processing applications within six months from the time of filing.
But the CHRGJ report says that DHS data “reveals that more than two-thirds of the over 2.2 million applications filed since April 1, 2001 were not processed within 180 days; more than 776,000 applicants had been waiting for more than a year; approximately 158,000 applicants had been waiting for more than two years; while approximately 41,000 had been waiting for three years or more.”
According to the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, prolonged name checks “significantly delay adjudication of immigration benefits for many applicants, hinder backlog reduction efforts, and rarely, if ever, achieve their intended national security objectives,” the report says.
Jayne Huckerby, CHRGJ’s Research Director, says, “Discriminatory profiling is illegal under international law and is a poor substitute for real intelligence work.
Taking years to identify individuals who are security threats does not make us safer. Ensuring timely and good faith completions of background checks will help the US advance its national security goals.”
Huckerby adds, “As a State party to the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights the U.S. is obligated to ensure non-discrimination in access to citizenship as well as other human rights. A number of expert human rights bodies have affirmed that the “war on terror” cannot be invoked to deny non-citizens’ rights.”
She points out that profiling affects a number of human rights, including the right to liberty of movement, the right to profess and practice religion, and the right to non-discrimination in access to public health and social services.
“Profiled immigrants may be stopped, delayed, detained, and subjected to extended and unnerving security checks while traveling. Prior to September 11,2001 the list of individuals suspected of terrorism and banned from air travel contained only 16 names; as of October 2006, the “no-fly” list contained 44,000 names. Airport officials are reportedly required to stop anyone with a “Muslim name” and name-check that individual against the list. Airport computers throw up red flags even when names are merely similar to those found on the list,” the CHRGJ report charges.
“Muslim immigrants or those perceived to be Muslims (such as members of the Sikh community) have also altered their physical appearance for fear of being profiled. Many immigrants have curtailed the extent to which they pray or worship publicly, and some have even changed their names – the very hallmark of their religious and cultural identity. Delays also affect the ability of naturalization applicants to receive life saving benefits, and inurn their aces to healthcare and food.”
Meanwhile, other advocacy groups are demanding an end to what they describe as DHS-sponsored anti-Muslim programs. One of them is known as NSEERS -- the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System.
For example, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has launched an advertising campaign called, "End the Shame of NSEERS." Its objective is “to shed light on the continuing problems faced by thousands of individuals as a result of the discriminatory and poorly constructed and implemented ‘Special Registration Program’."
ADC’s ads are appearing this month in the Arab American News, the largest and oldest Arab American newspaper in the United States, Washington Monthly Magazine, and the program of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 2007 Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Awards Dinner.
In the ads, ADC calls on President George W. Bush, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to terminate the NSEERS program and address its negative residual effects.
Launched by the Department of Justice in late 2002, and later transferred to the newly organized Department of Homeland Security, NSEERS requires male visitors to voluntarily comply with the program. But ADC says, “Failure to adequately publicize the program and to train immigration officers sufficiently led to poor implementation of NSEERS. Thousands of men who were required to register failed to do so many, no doubt, due to lack of notice, and are now vulnerable to NSEERS penalties.”
The organization charges that “Hundreds of individuals who had voluntarily appeared to register at Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) offices around the country were arrested and detained without reasonable justification.”
The program was initially portrayed as an anti-terrorism measure that required male visitors to the US (from 25 Arab and Muslim countries, and North Korea) to be fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned by immigration officers. At the time, INS officials acknowledged they were ill prepared to carry out this special call in registration and acknowledged numerous shortcomings. However, despite DHS’s suspension of a few requirements in 2004, there were and still are criminal and civil penalties associated with failure to comply with NSEERS, including arrest, detention, monetary fines and/or removal from the United States.
INS was renamed and became part of the Department of Homeland Security upon its founding after the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
Civil liberties organizations have said that NSEERS was so poorly conceived and badly managed that it created chaos and fear. Trust between the immigrant community and law enforcement was severely strained, and in the end, there was no evidence that any terrorists were apprehended as a result of the effort.
ADC has noted that “Approximately 84,000 Arabs and Muslims registered voluntarily and subsequently about 14,000 were subjected to deportation hearings for voluntarily complying with the program. Yet, no registrants were charged with terrorism. In December 2004, the NSEERS program was modified by DHS, but many elements remain and are subject to abuse including: departure registration; registration at ports of entry; as well as the potential for the re-initiation of the call-in phase.”
The organization says, “It seems clear that NSEERS has become just another tool used in immigration enforcement and law enforcement in general, which raises serious constitutional issues as the program clearly discriminates on the basis of national origin.”
ADC adds that several members of Congress, including key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and numerous civil libertarians and immigrants rights advocates, have taken issue with the constitutional legality of NSEERS discrimination based on national origin.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
US ATTORNEY UNDER ATTACK FOR “TERROR TROPHY” PROSECUTIONS
By William Fisher
A small but increasingly vocal group of protesters is charging that a United States Attorney in northern New York has pursued a series of terror-related “political prosecutions” to enhance his reputation as “a loyal Bushie” and thus avoid the fate of eight of his colleagues recently fired by Alberto Gonzales’ Department of Justice.
A spokesman for the group, Madis Senner, claims that US Attorney Glenn Suddaby prosecuted Dr. Rafil Dhafir, Yassin Muhiddin Aref and his
co-defendant, Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, and the so-called St. Patrick’s Four, to win “political trophies” in the Global War on Terror.
The group has been holding a series of “witnesses” in Syracuse, NY, and other upstate communities to register their opposition to what they label “terror trophy” prosecutions by Suddaby.
“We are hoping to get (Sen. Charles) Schumer (D-NY) and (Rep. John) Conyers (D-MI) to look beyond the firing of those that would not play ball with the Bush administration, and to focus on those such as Suddaby who were all too willing to do whatever their master asked. If we can do that, it will help free Dhafir, Aref, Hossain and a lot of other Muslim and Arab Americans that have been unjustly punished since 9/11, “ Senner told Truthout.
Suddaby has repeatedly denied that any of the prosecutions were politically motivated. He was not immediately available for comment.
The prosecution of Dr. Dhafir, an oncologist from Manlius, NY, a community near Syracuse, was arguably the most high-profile of these prosecutions. Dhafir was arrested in February 2003 in a raid that drew nationwide media coverage. Long before his trial began, he was labeled “a terrorist” by then Attorney General John Ashcroft and New York Gov. George Pataki. But reference to terrorism or to Dhafir’s Muslim faith was not permitted in court, and no terrorism charges were ever brought against him. His supporters claim he was “selectively prosecuted.”
Dhafir was convicted in February 2005 of 59 criminal counts, including money laundering, conspiracy to violate US sanctions against Iraq, misusing $2 million that donors contributed to his unlicensed charity, Help the Needy, spending $544,000 for his own purposes, defrauding Medicare out of $316,000, and evading $400,000 in federal income tax payments by writing off the illegal charity donations.
Prosecutors said Dhafir's Syracuse-based charity solicited more than $5 million over the Internet and by mail between 1995 and February 2002, claiming it would help starving Iraqi orphans and poor children. The government was able to trace only about $160,000 in Iraq.
But according to Dhafir’s attorney, Deveraux L. Cannick, “When the government failed to link him to any terrorists or terrorist groups, it charged him with fraud to save face. Other individuals and corporations that sent money to Iraq received only civil penalties, not criminal charges,” he said.
Dhafir was denied bail four times -- he was deemed a flight risk -- and held for nearly two years while awaiting trial. Cannick said Dhafir's detention hindered his defense and violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
Civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union protested Dhafir’s conviction and sentence. He is currently appealing. His supporters have set up several websites, including www.loyalbushie.com, and www.jubileeinitiative.org/FreeDhafir.htm.
Now 60, Dhafir is serving his 22-year prison sentence in the recently created Communications Management Unit, or CMU, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Most of the unit's initial group of inmates are Arab Muslims, including five members of the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni nationals who pleaded guilty in 2003 to attending an al-Qaeda training camp.
The CMU closely monitors all telephone calls and mail and limits the number of phone calls and visits. Inmate conversations must be conducted in English unless otherwise negotiated.
"The government targeted Dr. Dhafir to be a trophy in the war on terror," said protester Madis Senner.
"They called him a terrorist. They denied him bail. They made it so he couldn't even defend himself properly. This was all done on Mr. Ashcroft's watch. We want to hear his explanation," Senner said.
"We have to wonder whether the Bush administration selected, orchestrated and directed Dr. Dhafir's prosecution," Senner told the Associated Press.
Ashcroft recently spoke at Syracuse University's Goldstein Auditorium at the invitation of the school's College Republicans organization. The former US Senator was Attorney General from 2001 to 2005, orchestrated the round-ups and detention of hundreds of Muslims and South Asians following the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, and played a leading role in passage of the USA Patriot Act.
Suddaby also prosecuted a group that came to be known as the St. Patrick’s Four, because their arrest took place on St. Patrick’s Day of 2003. The four peace activists from Ithaca, New York, poured their own blood on the walls, posters, windows, and a US flag at a military recruiting center in order to try to stop the imminent invasion of Iraq.
The group admitted their actions, which claimed they were based on international law, then knelt in prayer and waited to be arrested.
Charged in state court, they convinced nine jurors that their actions were consistent with international law. Daniel Burns, 43, Clare Grady, 45, Teresa Grady 38, and Peter DeMott, 57, are all members of the Magnificat Catholic Worker community in Ithaca, NY.
They testified that they risked arrest in order to protect members of the US military and civilians in Iraq.
Following their acquittal, the local District Attorney announced he would not re-prosecute them. But the US Attorney, Glenn Suddaby, stepped into the case and pressed four federal charges arising from the same incident: Federal conspiracy "by force, intimidation, and threat" to impede an officer of the United States - a felony charge punishable by up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine – and criminal damage to property and two counts of trespass, charges punishable by up to an additional two years in prison.
A jury acquitted the four of the felony charges but convicted them of the lesser misdemeanor charges. They served prison sentences ranging from four to eight months. All have since been released.
According to Senner, the St. Patrick's Four (www.stpatricksfour.org) “were also selectively prosecuted.” After a local jury could not convict them, “Suddaby's office brought federal conspiracy charges against them. Bill Quigley, the defense lawyer for the four, said he could find no similar case of federal conspiracy charges, going back to the Nixon era. He called it an attempt to ‘hyper-criminalize dissent’."
In nearby Albany, NY, the state’s capital, US Attorney Suddaby also led the prosecution of Yassin Muhiddin Aref, 36, of Albany, and Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, 51, both of Albany. Aref was a local part-time ambulette driver and the imam, or spiritual leader, of the Central Avenue mosque. Hossain was an Albany pizzeria owner who also owned rental properties in the community.
The men were charged with promoting terrorism and conspiring to launder money with an FBI informant who baited both men with a phony scheme to purchase a surface-to-air rocket launcher for a fictitious plot to assassinate a Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations.
They were denied bail as flight risks, despite a declaration by the judge in the case that there was "less than overwhelming evidence" against them.
The judge said that the question of whether or not entrapment comes into play in the case is a matter for a jury to decide. However, he said, the "weight of evidence" against both defendants on their willingness to "associate themselves" with the rocket purchase and terrorist plot is another story entirely.”
Hossain's attorney, Kevin Luibrand, said the government’s entire case was based on entrapment and that his client had been a hard-working American citizen for 10 years and had no criminal past over the 20 year he's spent in this country.
"Entrapment is the central issue here. ... They (FBI) didn't go to a church or synagogue, they went to Muslims," said Luibrand. "This guy is an American citizen who works like a dog and could give a damn about terrorism."
"The Albany Muslim community finds the allegations against Yasin Aref and Mohammed Hossain deeply troubling," said Faisal Ahmed, a teacher at Masjid-As-Salam. "The idea that such (men) could be deliberately involved in violent activity is unbelievable."
After a month-long trial that ended in October 2006, both were found guilty of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, money laundering, conspiracy to provide material support in connection with an attack with a weapon of mass destruction, two substantive acts of material support in connection with an attack involving a weapon of mass destruction, conspiracy to provide material support to a known terrorist organization, two acts of material support to a designated terrorist organization, and one count of lying to the FBI.
Each was sentenced to a to a 15-year prison term.
US Attorney Suddaby contended there was “ample justification to initiate a sting operation.” He added, “The FBI has an obligation to use all available investigative tools, including a sting operation, to remove those ready and willing to help terrorists from our streets. The jury’s verdict – representing the jury’s thoughtful consideration of testimony and evidence presented during the month-long trial – makes clear that both Aref and Hossain fall into this category.”
Suddaby denies he ever felt any pressure from the Justice Department to bring, or to decline to bring, any prosecution. But he readily acknowledges that counter-terrorism has been the number one DOJ priority.
In a recent interview, Syracuse Post-Standard reporter Hart Seely asked Suddaby how the 9/11 terrorist attacks affected the priorities and track record of his office.
Suddaby responded, “It changed everything. The FBI, the major federal investigative agency, all of a sudden, became a terrorism prevention agency... A majority of their investigative resources have been focused on terrorism, and that includes a lot of times doing 'intel.' They don't generate cases, but they're out there, pounding the pavement, trying to develop sources, talking to people, trying to get the information flow of what's going on in the community of the Northern District. If there is a threat, they want to feel confident that they're going to hear about it, that they're going to get tipped off in some way.”
But some legal authorities point out that there have been very few terrorism convictions since 9/11.
Independent activist Katherine Hughes, one of the leaders of the “Free Dhafir” movement, (http://www.dhafirtrial.net/) told Truthout, “When (Attorney General John) Ashcroft announced his resignation in November of 2004, he gave as evidence of success in the war on terror 211 criminal prosecutions, 478 deportations, and $124 million in frozen assets. But what he neglected to mention was that virtually none of these cases were actual terrorism convictions. Like Dhafir, other charity associates were convicted of white-collar crime and sanctions violation. Indeed, at the time of Ashcroft’s resignation there was only one bona fide terrorism conviction, that of the shoe-bomber Richard Reid.”
A former prosecutor who declined to be identified but who is familiar with the inner workings of Justice Department told Truthout, “US Attorneys are well aware of their bosses’ priorities. Since 9/11, all of them have been under pressure to bring terrorism prosecutions. In many cases, that has led them, and their superiors as well as prominent politicians, to call high-profile press conferences where they announce terrorism charges against people, but when they show up in court, there are no actual terrorism charges.”
US Attorneys “are instead prosecuting cases against people for providing material support for terrorists or terrorist organizations. There’s nothing illegal about that – it’s authorized by the Patriot Act. The question is always whether they’re stretching the evidence, or intentionally exploiting people’s fears of another 9/11, or being over-zealous to the point of committing prosecutorial misconduct. Just look at Jose Padilla – he was accused of being ‘the dirty bomber’ who was going to blow up an American city. But, after years in custody without charges, by the time he appeared in an actual courtroom, the dirty bomb charge had vanished.”
Citizen pushback against over-zealous prosecutors appears to be on the rise, and comes at a time when the controversy over the firings of US Attorneys has become a contentious political issue that threatens to trigger the early departure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The DOJ’s credibility has been further damaged by accounts of increasing departures of DOJ lawyers. The National Law Journal reported this week, “The number of attorneys defecting from the US Department of Justice to private practice is mounting as the head of the agency continues to fend off calls for his ouster over the firing of eight US Attorneys. In the last month alone, several attorneys in key posts at the DOJ have taken jobs at prominent law firms.”
.
A small but increasingly vocal group of protesters is charging that a United States Attorney in northern New York has pursued a series of terror-related “political prosecutions” to enhance his reputation as “a loyal Bushie” and thus avoid the fate of eight of his colleagues recently fired by Alberto Gonzales’ Department of Justice.
A spokesman for the group, Madis Senner, claims that US Attorney Glenn Suddaby prosecuted Dr. Rafil Dhafir, Yassin Muhiddin Aref and his
co-defendant, Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, and the so-called St. Patrick’s Four, to win “political trophies” in the Global War on Terror.
The group has been holding a series of “witnesses” in Syracuse, NY, and other upstate communities to register their opposition to what they label “terror trophy” prosecutions by Suddaby.
“We are hoping to get (Sen. Charles) Schumer (D-NY) and (Rep. John) Conyers (D-MI) to look beyond the firing of those that would not play ball with the Bush administration, and to focus on those such as Suddaby who were all too willing to do whatever their master asked. If we can do that, it will help free Dhafir, Aref, Hossain and a lot of other Muslim and Arab Americans that have been unjustly punished since 9/11, “ Senner told Truthout.
Suddaby has repeatedly denied that any of the prosecutions were politically motivated. He was not immediately available for comment.
The prosecution of Dr. Dhafir, an oncologist from Manlius, NY, a community near Syracuse, was arguably the most high-profile of these prosecutions. Dhafir was arrested in February 2003 in a raid that drew nationwide media coverage. Long before his trial began, he was labeled “a terrorist” by then Attorney General John Ashcroft and New York Gov. George Pataki. But reference to terrorism or to Dhafir’s Muslim faith was not permitted in court, and no terrorism charges were ever brought against him. His supporters claim he was “selectively prosecuted.”
Dhafir was convicted in February 2005 of 59 criminal counts, including money laundering, conspiracy to violate US sanctions against Iraq, misusing $2 million that donors contributed to his unlicensed charity, Help the Needy, spending $544,000 for his own purposes, defrauding Medicare out of $316,000, and evading $400,000 in federal income tax payments by writing off the illegal charity donations.
Prosecutors said Dhafir's Syracuse-based charity solicited more than $5 million over the Internet and by mail between 1995 and February 2002, claiming it would help starving Iraqi orphans and poor children. The government was able to trace only about $160,000 in Iraq.
But according to Dhafir’s attorney, Deveraux L. Cannick, “When the government failed to link him to any terrorists or terrorist groups, it charged him with fraud to save face. Other individuals and corporations that sent money to Iraq received only civil penalties, not criminal charges,” he said.
Dhafir was denied bail four times -- he was deemed a flight risk -- and held for nearly two years while awaiting trial. Cannick said Dhafir's detention hindered his defense and violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
Civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union protested Dhafir’s conviction and sentence. He is currently appealing. His supporters have set up several websites, including www.loyalbushie.com, and www.jubileeinitiative.org/FreeDhafir.htm.
Now 60, Dhafir is serving his 22-year prison sentence in the recently created Communications Management Unit, or CMU, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Most of the unit's initial group of inmates are Arab Muslims, including five members of the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni nationals who pleaded guilty in 2003 to attending an al-Qaeda training camp.
The CMU closely monitors all telephone calls and mail and limits the number of phone calls and visits. Inmate conversations must be conducted in English unless otherwise negotiated.
"The government targeted Dr. Dhafir to be a trophy in the war on terror," said protester Madis Senner.
"They called him a terrorist. They denied him bail. They made it so he couldn't even defend himself properly. This was all done on Mr. Ashcroft's watch. We want to hear his explanation," Senner said.
"We have to wonder whether the Bush administration selected, orchestrated and directed Dr. Dhafir's prosecution," Senner told the Associated Press.
Ashcroft recently spoke at Syracuse University's Goldstein Auditorium at the invitation of the school's College Republicans organization. The former US Senator was Attorney General from 2001 to 2005, orchestrated the round-ups and detention of hundreds of Muslims and South Asians following the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, and played a leading role in passage of the USA Patriot Act.
Suddaby also prosecuted a group that came to be known as the St. Patrick’s Four, because their arrest took place on St. Patrick’s Day of 2003. The four peace activists from Ithaca, New York, poured their own blood on the walls, posters, windows, and a US flag at a military recruiting center in order to try to stop the imminent invasion of Iraq.
The group admitted their actions, which claimed they were based on international law, then knelt in prayer and waited to be arrested.
Charged in state court, they convinced nine jurors that their actions were consistent with international law. Daniel Burns, 43, Clare Grady, 45, Teresa Grady 38, and Peter DeMott, 57, are all members of the Magnificat Catholic Worker community in Ithaca, NY.
They testified that they risked arrest in order to protect members of the US military and civilians in Iraq.
Following their acquittal, the local District Attorney announced he would not re-prosecute them. But the US Attorney, Glenn Suddaby, stepped into the case and pressed four federal charges arising from the same incident: Federal conspiracy "by force, intimidation, and threat" to impede an officer of the United States - a felony charge punishable by up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine – and criminal damage to property and two counts of trespass, charges punishable by up to an additional two years in prison.
A jury acquitted the four of the felony charges but convicted them of the lesser misdemeanor charges. They served prison sentences ranging from four to eight months. All have since been released.
According to Senner, the St. Patrick's Four (www.stpatricksfour.org) “were also selectively prosecuted.” After a local jury could not convict them, “Suddaby's office brought federal conspiracy charges against them. Bill Quigley, the defense lawyer for the four, said he could find no similar case of federal conspiracy charges, going back to the Nixon era. He called it an attempt to ‘hyper-criminalize dissent’."
In nearby Albany, NY, the state’s capital, US Attorney Suddaby also led the prosecution of Yassin Muhiddin Aref, 36, of Albany, and Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, 51, both of Albany. Aref was a local part-time ambulette driver and the imam, or spiritual leader, of the Central Avenue mosque. Hossain was an Albany pizzeria owner who also owned rental properties in the community.
The men were charged with promoting terrorism and conspiring to launder money with an FBI informant who baited both men with a phony scheme to purchase a surface-to-air rocket launcher for a fictitious plot to assassinate a Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations.
They were denied bail as flight risks, despite a declaration by the judge in the case that there was "less than overwhelming evidence" against them.
The judge said that the question of whether or not entrapment comes into play in the case is a matter for a jury to decide. However, he said, the "weight of evidence" against both defendants on their willingness to "associate themselves" with the rocket purchase and terrorist plot is another story entirely.”
Hossain's attorney, Kevin Luibrand, said the government’s entire case was based on entrapment and that his client had been a hard-working American citizen for 10 years and had no criminal past over the 20 year he's spent in this country.
"Entrapment is the central issue here. ... They (FBI) didn't go to a church or synagogue, they went to Muslims," said Luibrand. "This guy is an American citizen who works like a dog and could give a damn about terrorism."
"The Albany Muslim community finds the allegations against Yasin Aref and Mohammed Hossain deeply troubling," said Faisal Ahmed, a teacher at Masjid-As-Salam. "The idea that such (men) could be deliberately involved in violent activity is unbelievable."
After a month-long trial that ended in October 2006, both were found guilty of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, money laundering, conspiracy to provide material support in connection with an attack with a weapon of mass destruction, two substantive acts of material support in connection with an attack involving a weapon of mass destruction, conspiracy to provide material support to a known terrorist organization, two acts of material support to a designated terrorist organization, and one count of lying to the FBI.
Each was sentenced to a to a 15-year prison term.
US Attorney Suddaby contended there was “ample justification to initiate a sting operation.” He added, “The FBI has an obligation to use all available investigative tools, including a sting operation, to remove those ready and willing to help terrorists from our streets. The jury’s verdict – representing the jury’s thoughtful consideration of testimony and evidence presented during the month-long trial – makes clear that both Aref and Hossain fall into this category.”
Suddaby denies he ever felt any pressure from the Justice Department to bring, or to decline to bring, any prosecution. But he readily acknowledges that counter-terrorism has been the number one DOJ priority.
In a recent interview, Syracuse Post-Standard reporter Hart Seely asked Suddaby how the 9/11 terrorist attacks affected the priorities and track record of his office.
Suddaby responded, “It changed everything. The FBI, the major federal investigative agency, all of a sudden, became a terrorism prevention agency... A majority of their investigative resources have been focused on terrorism, and that includes a lot of times doing 'intel.' They don't generate cases, but they're out there, pounding the pavement, trying to develop sources, talking to people, trying to get the information flow of what's going on in the community of the Northern District. If there is a threat, they want to feel confident that they're going to hear about it, that they're going to get tipped off in some way.”
But some legal authorities point out that there have been very few terrorism convictions since 9/11.
Independent activist Katherine Hughes, one of the leaders of the “Free Dhafir” movement, (http://www.dhafirtrial.net/) told Truthout, “When (Attorney General John) Ashcroft announced his resignation in November of 2004, he gave as evidence of success in the war on terror 211 criminal prosecutions, 478 deportations, and $124 million in frozen assets. But what he neglected to mention was that virtually none of these cases were actual terrorism convictions. Like Dhafir, other charity associates were convicted of white-collar crime and sanctions violation. Indeed, at the time of Ashcroft’s resignation there was only one bona fide terrorism conviction, that of the shoe-bomber Richard Reid.”
A former prosecutor who declined to be identified but who is familiar with the inner workings of Justice Department told Truthout, “US Attorneys are well aware of their bosses’ priorities. Since 9/11, all of them have been under pressure to bring terrorism prosecutions. In many cases, that has led them, and their superiors as well as prominent politicians, to call high-profile press conferences where they announce terrorism charges against people, but when they show up in court, there are no actual terrorism charges.”
US Attorneys “are instead prosecuting cases against people for providing material support for terrorists or terrorist organizations. There’s nothing illegal about that – it’s authorized by the Patriot Act. The question is always whether they’re stretching the evidence, or intentionally exploiting people’s fears of another 9/11, or being over-zealous to the point of committing prosecutorial misconduct. Just look at Jose Padilla – he was accused of being ‘the dirty bomber’ who was going to blow up an American city. But, after years in custody without charges, by the time he appeared in an actual courtroom, the dirty bomb charge had vanished.”
Citizen pushback against over-zealous prosecutors appears to be on the rise, and comes at a time when the controversy over the firings of US Attorneys has become a contentious political issue that threatens to trigger the early departure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The DOJ’s credibility has been further damaged by accounts of increasing departures of DOJ lawyers. The National Law Journal reported this week, “The number of attorneys defecting from the US Department of Justice to private practice is mounting as the head of the agency continues to fend off calls for his ouster over the firing of eight US Attorneys. In the last month alone, several attorneys in key posts at the DOJ have taken jobs at prominent law firms.”
.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
GUANTANAMO DETAINEES IN LEGAL, DIPLOMATIC LIMBO
By William Fisher
A top human rights advocate is characterizing as “a self-inflicted wound” the failure of the Bush Administration to find countries willing to grant asylum to Guantanamo prisoners it has cleared for release.
“The administration created this problem by repeatedly describing all Guantanamo detainees as ‘the worst of the worst’. “A lot of people are working very hard to find countries to take these people,” says Jumana Musa of Amnesty International USA in an exclusive interview with Truthout. But, she adds, “Given the misleading rhetoric our government has used to describe these prisoners, we shouldn’t be surprised that no one wants to take them.”
Musa, who is Amnesty’s director of domestic human rights and international justice programs, told Truthout that the Bush Administration has also failed to seek help in relocation from groups such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
“In fact,” she says, “these groups have largely been shut out of any involvement in the relocation issue, despite their years of experience.”
In 2002, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to Guantanamo prisoners as "the worst of the worst." In June 2005, he said, "If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, (Osama bin Laden's) bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."
Other Bush Administration officials have been equally certain. For example, now retired Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "They were so vicious, if given the chance they would gnaw through the hydraulic lines of a C-17 while they were being flown to Cuba."
Nevertheless, of the approximately 760 prisoners brought to Guantanamo since 2002, the Pentagon reports that the military has now released all but approximately 385. Reliable evidence shows that, of the original number, many were not captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan, but kidnapped off the streets of Europe and various locations in the Middle East, and many others were "sold" to US authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan for bounties. It has also become clear that others were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The fiercely nonpartisan National Journal magazine reported, "Notwithstanding Rumsfeld's description, the majority of (Guantanamo prisoners) were not caught by American soldiers on the battlefield. They came into American custody from third parties, mostly from Pakistan, some after targeted raids there, most after a dragnet for Arabs after 9/11."
And a February 2006 report by Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux and attorney Joshua Denbeaux found that 55 percent of the detainees were determined by the government to have committed no hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies. Their report also asserted that only 8 percent of the detainees were classified by the government as al Qaeda fighters.
Not even the CIA bought into Rumsfeld's "worst of the worst" characterization. Michael Scheuer, who headed the agency's bin Laden unit through 1999 and resigned in 2004, said, "By the fall of 2002, it was common knowledge around CIA circles that fewer than 10 percent of Guantanamo's prisoners were high-value terrorist operatives ... Most of the men were probably foot soldiers at best" who were "going to know absolutely nothing about terrorism."
The Center for Constitutional Rights, whose lawyers represent many of the Guantanamo detainees, characterizes as “myth” the notion that “The US wants to transfer detainees to the custody of other countries, but no country will take them. “ The CCR says the fact is that countries are willing to accept detainees but many are not willing to unlawfully detain them, as the US is requesting they do.”
Of the prisoners who have been released, some have been jailed by their new host countries “pending investigations”, while others have simply been freed. In all cases, US authorities have sought “diplomatic assurances” that the released prisoners will not be subjected to torture in custody. But many have been released to countries repeatedly cited by the US State Department for their long histories of prisoner abuse.
The bottom line, Musa says, is that 385 people are still in detention, many having been held for years, designated as enemy combatants, but without charges or trials. “Many of these have long been approved for release, but they are still incarcerated,” she declares.
Musa also asserts that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) “fails to provide any credible legal framework for assessing the status of these detainees, much less providing them with a fair trial.”
The Act, hurriedly passed by Congress after the Supreme Court struck down the administration’ s detention and adjudication policies because they lacked Congressional authorization, allows the use of hearsay testimony and evidence obtained through coercion and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions to challenge their detention in federal court.
But not everyone agrees with the positions taken by Amnesty and by other human rights and legal organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. For example, James Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, stated that he had heard the same kind of criticisms about U.S. policy during the Cold War.
"They were vacuous then and they are vacuous now," he told Cybercast News Service. "It is criticism without context or content. Carping from the sidelines by those who have no responsibility to do the job and have no respect for the magnitude of the challenge is not productive," Carafano added. "The challenge in any long war is to provide for security, promote economic growth, protect the liberties of your citizens, respect those of your allies, and promote human rights for all -- and win the war of ideas. Accomplishing all those tasks well is no easy challenge, but vital," he said. "US policies are trying hard to do all these equally."
The first legal action under the MCA was the “trial” of David Hicks, an Australian originally alleged to have conspired with the Taliban in Afghanistan to murder American soldiers. Hicks pled guilty to providing material support to terrorists and was given a given a seven year sentence with all but nine months suspended because of the plea agreement. His sentence will be served in an Australian prison. He also agreed to refrain from describing his detention to the media for a year.
Amnesty and many other human rights groups point out that because of his guilty plea, Hicks never had a trial.
And Amnesty’s Musa also questions the timing of the Hicks case. She told Truthout that it’s “curious” that Hicks “will be sitting in an Australian jail, barred from talking to the media, until well after the election of the next Australian prime minister.”
The case has become an election issue for Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a stalwart ally of President George W. Bush. He has been criticized for not doing more to secure Hicks’ release from Guantanamo.
Meanwhile, the MCA remains a contentious political issue in the US. A number of legislators have drafted measures to repeal the Military Commissions Act and to restore habeas corpus rights to detainees. The effort is being led by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and the committee’s top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Similar legislation has also been introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Amnesty’s Musa declined to predict the outcome of this proposed legislation. She told Truthout, “We see politicians acting like politicians, and the degree of resolve of the full Congress remains unclear.”
Musa’s comments came on the heels of Amnesty’s release of a new report on detainee conditions at Guantanamo.
The report charges that many detainees who remain at Guantánamo Bay are “held in cruel conditions of isolation.”
“Most detainees have suffered harsh treatment throughout their detention, confined to mesh cages or maximum security cells. Moreover, a new facility that opened in December 2006, known as Camp 6, has created even harsher and apparently more permanent conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation,” the report alleges.
Guantánamo Bay, it says, “is the festering symbol of the Bush administration’s continued contempt for international law and disregard for human rights - further diminishing our country’s moral standing," says Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA executive director.
"The administration continues to think that it can justify ongoing human rights violations in the name of national security. Perhaps President Bush needs to think again, because the voices calling for the closure of this disgrace to American values are only getting louder," Cox adds.
According to the Amnesty report, “Detainees are reportedly confined for 22 hours a day to individual, enclosed, steel cells where they are almost completely cut off from human contact. The cells have no windows to the outside or access to natural light or fresh air. No activities are provided, and detainees are subjected to 24-hour lighting and constant observation by guards through the narrow windows in the cell doors. They exercise alone in a high-walled yard where little sunlight filters through; detainees are often only offered exercise at night and may not see daylight for days at a time.
US authorities have described Camp 6 as a "state of the art modern facility" that is safer for guards and "more comfortable" for the detainees, Amnesty says. But the advocacy group believes that the conditions, as shown in photographs and described by detainees and their attorneys, “contravene international standards for humane treatment. In some respects, they appear more severe than the most restrictive levels of ‘super-maximum’ custody on the US mainland, which have been criticized by international bodies as incompatible with human rights treaties and standards.”
Amnesty’s report says, “It appears that around 80 percent of the approximately 385 men currently held at Guantánamo are in isolation - a reversal of earlier moves to ease conditions and allow more socializing among detainees.”
According to the Pentagon, 165 detainees had been transferred to Camp 6 from other facilities on the base by mid-January 2007. A further 100 detainees are held in solitary confinement in Camp 5, another maximum security facility, the report asserts.
“As many as 20 detainees are also believed to be held in solitary confinement in Camp Echo, a facility set apart from others on the base, where conditions have been described by the International Committee of the Red Cross as "extremely harsh."
The report concludes, “While the United States has an obligation to protect its citizens and those living within its borders from attacks by armed groups, that does not relieve the United States from its responsibilities to comply with human rights and the rule of law. By rounding up men from all over the world and transporting them to an isolated penal colony, holding them without charge or trial, the United States has violated several US and international laws and treaties.”
Statements by the Bush administration that these men are "enemy combatants," "terrorists" or "very bad people" do not justify the complete lack of due process rights,” Amnesty says.
Says Jumana Musa, "It seems that detainees are being placed in extreme lockdown conditions not because of their individual behavior, but because of harsher camp operating procedures. Even men who have been cleared for release are being held in isolation."
Amnesty is urging the Bush administration to close the facility and either charge and try detainees under international fair trial norms or else release them. “US authorities must take immediate steps to ensure that no detainee is subjected to prolonged isolation in conditions of reduced sensory stimulation and allow detainees more association and activities as well as regular contact with their families with opportunities for phone calls and visits,” the organization declares.
It is also calling for independent health care professionals and human rights experts to be able to examine and visit detainees in private.
"Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is the latest US official, including President Bush, to say that Guantánamo should be closed. There's no reason to dawdle ... there's no reason to delay ... but there are many reasons to end one of the worst blemishes on the United States' human rights record," says Amnesty’s Larry Cox.
Asked by Truthout if closing Guantanamo might lead to its current detainees being transferred to ‘secret prisons’, Amnesty’s Musa says, “It’s hard to ‘disappear’ people whose names we already know. Now that the existence of the CIA’s ‘black sites’ has been acknowledged by President Bush, it is unlikely that any Guantanamo prisoner could be spirited away without public scrutiny.”
A top human rights advocate is characterizing as “a self-inflicted wound” the failure of the Bush Administration to find countries willing to grant asylum to Guantanamo prisoners it has cleared for release.
“The administration created this problem by repeatedly describing all Guantanamo detainees as ‘the worst of the worst’. “A lot of people are working very hard to find countries to take these people,” says Jumana Musa of Amnesty International USA in an exclusive interview with Truthout. But, she adds, “Given the misleading rhetoric our government has used to describe these prisoners, we shouldn’t be surprised that no one wants to take them.”
Musa, who is Amnesty’s director of domestic human rights and international justice programs, told Truthout that the Bush Administration has also failed to seek help in relocation from groups such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
“In fact,” she says, “these groups have largely been shut out of any involvement in the relocation issue, despite their years of experience.”
In 2002, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to Guantanamo prisoners as "the worst of the worst." In June 2005, he said, "If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, (Osama bin Laden's) bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."
Other Bush Administration officials have been equally certain. For example, now retired Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "They were so vicious, if given the chance they would gnaw through the hydraulic lines of a C-17 while they were being flown to Cuba."
Nevertheless, of the approximately 760 prisoners brought to Guantanamo since 2002, the Pentagon reports that the military has now released all but approximately 385. Reliable evidence shows that, of the original number, many were not captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan, but kidnapped off the streets of Europe and various locations in the Middle East, and many others were "sold" to US authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan for bounties. It has also become clear that others were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The fiercely nonpartisan National Journal magazine reported, "Notwithstanding Rumsfeld's description, the majority of (Guantanamo prisoners) were not caught by American soldiers on the battlefield. They came into American custody from third parties, mostly from Pakistan, some after targeted raids there, most after a dragnet for Arabs after 9/11."
And a February 2006 report by Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux and attorney Joshua Denbeaux found that 55 percent of the detainees were determined by the government to have committed no hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies. Their report also asserted that only 8 percent of the detainees were classified by the government as al Qaeda fighters.
Not even the CIA bought into Rumsfeld's "worst of the worst" characterization. Michael Scheuer, who headed the agency's bin Laden unit through 1999 and resigned in 2004, said, "By the fall of 2002, it was common knowledge around CIA circles that fewer than 10 percent of Guantanamo's prisoners were high-value terrorist operatives ... Most of the men were probably foot soldiers at best" who were "going to know absolutely nothing about terrorism."
The Center for Constitutional Rights, whose lawyers represent many of the Guantanamo detainees, characterizes as “myth” the notion that “The US wants to transfer detainees to the custody of other countries, but no country will take them. “ The CCR says the fact is that countries are willing to accept detainees but many are not willing to unlawfully detain them, as the US is requesting they do.”
Of the prisoners who have been released, some have been jailed by their new host countries “pending investigations”, while others have simply been freed. In all cases, US authorities have sought “diplomatic assurances” that the released prisoners will not be subjected to torture in custody. But many have been released to countries repeatedly cited by the US State Department for their long histories of prisoner abuse.
The bottom line, Musa says, is that 385 people are still in detention, many having been held for years, designated as enemy combatants, but without charges or trials. “Many of these have long been approved for release, but they are still incarcerated,” she declares.
Musa also asserts that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) “fails to provide any credible legal framework for assessing the status of these detainees, much less providing them with a fair trial.”
The Act, hurriedly passed by Congress after the Supreme Court struck down the administration’ s detention and adjudication policies because they lacked Congressional authorization, allows the use of hearsay testimony and evidence obtained through coercion and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions to challenge their detention in federal court.
But not everyone agrees with the positions taken by Amnesty and by other human rights and legal organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. For example, James Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, stated that he had heard the same kind of criticisms about U.S. policy during the Cold War.
"They were vacuous then and they are vacuous now," he told Cybercast News Service. "It is criticism without context or content. Carping from the sidelines by those who have no responsibility to do the job and have no respect for the magnitude of the challenge is not productive," Carafano added. "The challenge in any long war is to provide for security, promote economic growth, protect the liberties of your citizens, respect those of your allies, and promote human rights for all -- and win the war of ideas. Accomplishing all those tasks well is no easy challenge, but vital," he said. "US policies are trying hard to do all these equally."
The first legal action under the MCA was the “trial” of David Hicks, an Australian originally alleged to have conspired with the Taliban in Afghanistan to murder American soldiers. Hicks pled guilty to providing material support to terrorists and was given a given a seven year sentence with all but nine months suspended because of the plea agreement. His sentence will be served in an Australian prison. He also agreed to refrain from describing his detention to the media for a year.
Amnesty and many other human rights groups point out that because of his guilty plea, Hicks never had a trial.
And Amnesty’s Musa also questions the timing of the Hicks case. She told Truthout that it’s “curious” that Hicks “will be sitting in an Australian jail, barred from talking to the media, until well after the election of the next Australian prime minister.”
The case has become an election issue for Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a stalwart ally of President George W. Bush. He has been criticized for not doing more to secure Hicks’ release from Guantanamo.
Meanwhile, the MCA remains a contentious political issue in the US. A number of legislators have drafted measures to repeal the Military Commissions Act and to restore habeas corpus rights to detainees. The effort is being led by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and the committee’s top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Similar legislation has also been introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Amnesty’s Musa declined to predict the outcome of this proposed legislation. She told Truthout, “We see politicians acting like politicians, and the degree of resolve of the full Congress remains unclear.”
Musa’s comments came on the heels of Amnesty’s release of a new report on detainee conditions at Guantanamo.
The report charges that many detainees who remain at Guantánamo Bay are “held in cruel conditions of isolation.”
“Most detainees have suffered harsh treatment throughout their detention, confined to mesh cages or maximum security cells. Moreover, a new facility that opened in December 2006, known as Camp 6, has created even harsher and apparently more permanent conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation,” the report alleges.
Guantánamo Bay, it says, “is the festering symbol of the Bush administration’s continued contempt for international law and disregard for human rights - further diminishing our country’s moral standing," says Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA executive director.
"The administration continues to think that it can justify ongoing human rights violations in the name of national security. Perhaps President Bush needs to think again, because the voices calling for the closure of this disgrace to American values are only getting louder," Cox adds.
According to the Amnesty report, “Detainees are reportedly confined for 22 hours a day to individual, enclosed, steel cells where they are almost completely cut off from human contact. The cells have no windows to the outside or access to natural light or fresh air. No activities are provided, and detainees are subjected to 24-hour lighting and constant observation by guards through the narrow windows in the cell doors. They exercise alone in a high-walled yard where little sunlight filters through; detainees are often only offered exercise at night and may not see daylight for days at a time.
US authorities have described Camp 6 as a "state of the art modern facility" that is safer for guards and "more comfortable" for the detainees, Amnesty says. But the advocacy group believes that the conditions, as shown in photographs and described by detainees and their attorneys, “contravene international standards for humane treatment. In some respects, they appear more severe than the most restrictive levels of ‘super-maximum’ custody on the US mainland, which have been criticized by international bodies as incompatible with human rights treaties and standards.”
Amnesty’s report says, “It appears that around 80 percent of the approximately 385 men currently held at Guantánamo are in isolation - a reversal of earlier moves to ease conditions and allow more socializing among detainees.”
According to the Pentagon, 165 detainees had been transferred to Camp 6 from other facilities on the base by mid-January 2007. A further 100 detainees are held in solitary confinement in Camp 5, another maximum security facility, the report asserts.
“As many as 20 detainees are also believed to be held in solitary confinement in Camp Echo, a facility set apart from others on the base, where conditions have been described by the International Committee of the Red Cross as "extremely harsh."
The report concludes, “While the United States has an obligation to protect its citizens and those living within its borders from attacks by armed groups, that does not relieve the United States from its responsibilities to comply with human rights and the rule of law. By rounding up men from all over the world and transporting them to an isolated penal colony, holding them without charge or trial, the United States has violated several US and international laws and treaties.”
Statements by the Bush administration that these men are "enemy combatants," "terrorists" or "very bad people" do not justify the complete lack of due process rights,” Amnesty says.
Says Jumana Musa, "It seems that detainees are being placed in extreme lockdown conditions not because of their individual behavior, but because of harsher camp operating procedures. Even men who have been cleared for release are being held in isolation."
Amnesty is urging the Bush administration to close the facility and either charge and try detainees under international fair trial norms or else release them. “US authorities must take immediate steps to ensure that no detainee is subjected to prolonged isolation in conditions of reduced sensory stimulation and allow detainees more association and activities as well as regular contact with their families with opportunities for phone calls and visits,” the organization declares.
It is also calling for independent health care professionals and human rights experts to be able to examine and visit detainees in private.
"Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is the latest US official, including President Bush, to say that Guantánamo should be closed. There's no reason to dawdle ... there's no reason to delay ... but there are many reasons to end one of the worst blemishes on the United States' human rights record," says Amnesty’s Larry Cox.
Asked by Truthout if closing Guantanamo might lead to its current detainees being transferred to ‘secret prisons’, Amnesty’s Musa says, “It’s hard to ‘disappear’ people whose names we already know. Now that the existence of the CIA’s ‘black sites’ has been acknowledged by President Bush, it is unlikely that any Guantanamo prisoner could be spirited away without public scrutiny.”
Thursday, April 12, 2007
GIVE US YOUR HUDDLED TRANSLATORS – BUT NOT TOO MANY
By William Fisher
As the numbers of Iraqi refugees continue to grow exponentially, the American president who earned a reputation as a bumbler who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time is increasingly being hailed as the hero who dealt effectively with a similar crisis forty years ago.
The president was Gerald R. Ford, and the similar crisis was in Vietnam. On the evening of April 10, 1975, President Ford appealed to a joint session of Congress to act to ensure the safety of “tens of thousands of South Vietnamese employees of the United States Government, of news agencies, of contractors and businesses for many years, whose lives, with their dependents, are in very grave peril. There are tens of thousands of other South Vietnamese intellectuals, professors, teachers, editors, and opinion leaders who have supported the South Vietnamese cause and the alliance with the United States to whom we have a profound moral obligation.”
Only a month later, Congress passed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act. As a result, more than 131,000 Vietnamese refugees were rescued from the chaos of South Vietnam, and brought to the security of the US.
Today, the refugee crises are largely in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. Thus far, more than two million Iraqi refugees have fled from persecution and sectarian violence. They have mostly traveled to Jordan and Syria. In addition, at least 1.8 million are displaced within Iraq.
According to Human Rights First, tens of thousands of these refugees have been targeted because of their work for the US government, non-governmental organizations or the media. Iraqis who have served as translators for the US forces, for example, have frequently been attacked and threatened.
Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch and author of an extensive report on the situation, says, "As it turns out, many of the people who are fleeing are fleeing because of their associations with the United States."
The chances are President Ford would not have been proud of the US response to the current refugee crisis. At a January 2007 oversight hearing on “The Plight of Iraqi Refugees,” Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) expressed concern that the US admitted only 202 Iraqi refugees to the country during fiscal 2006 and that a special immigrant visa program for Iraqi and Afghan translators already had a six-year wait list. Since April 2003, the Bush Administration has admitted exactly 692 Iraqi refugees, and the number of those in need is growing by an estimated 50,000 a month.
In February 2007, under considerable pressure from congress and the media, the State Department announced that the US would admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees in through its resettlement program; create special programs to assist Iraqis who are at risk because of their employment or close association with the United States government; and contribute $18 million to the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees. But at the same time, the Bush Administration admitted that it probably would not be able to move more than two or three thousand Iraqis by the end of September, a period of eight months.
What accounts for this admittedly constipated performance? In 1975, President Ford confronted a public weary of an unpopular, unsuccessful war, but got Congress to deliver anyway. Today, President Bush faces similar sentiments regarding the five-year-plus US intervention in Iraq.
The difference, according to national security, human rights and governmental sources, is 9/11. Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, Americans have lived in an environment of fear. At the top of their fear list are Middle Eastern immigrants, who are seen as potential terrorists.
As a consequence of 9/11, the DHS established rigorous criteria for granting asylum to those from all other countries – and these criteria apply to people who have become refugees because of the American invasion of their country. The DHS, however, lacked and still lacks the resources to carry out its mandated security checks on would-be asylum-seekers. Each Iraqi must be interviewed individually, including translators, truck drivers and others who have worked for the US military, which presumably carried out its own security checks before they were hired.
Because of security concerns, they cannot be interviewed at the American Embassy in Baghdad. If they have fled to Jordan, Syria, or other countries in the region, they must be interviewed there. This means dispatching DHS or State Department screeners overseas, where few wish to go. And before interviews can take place, applicants must be referred to American authorities by the UN. That process calls for resources the UN doesn’t have, and predictably involves a mountain of bureaucratic paperwork.
For example, last year Congress passed legislation to offer special immigrant status to persons serving as translators with the US Armed Forces. Under this statute, a limited number of translators and their immediate family may immigrate to the United States in each fiscal year.
But applicants are required to jump through multiple bureaucratic hoops to qualify. They must be able to prove they have worked directly with the US Armed Forces as a translator for a period of at least 12 months; obtain a favorable written recommendation from a General or Flag Officer in the chain of command of the US Armed Forces unit that was supported by the translator; cleared a background check and screening as determined by a General or Flag Officer; is otherwise eligible to receive an immigrant visa and is otherwise admissible to the US for permanent residence.
Spouses and children of the translator may be able to follow or join after the translator has adjusted status or been issued an immigrant visa.
The bill specifies that the US Armed Forces unit is the “advocate” on behalf the translator and his/her immediate family. The translator must file the petition and related documents directly with the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
There are clearly problems with this legislation. For one thing, for people who have fled their country in fear of their lives frequently have no access to the extensive documentation required by this law. Nor, if they have already left Iraq for another country, do they have access to the Generals or Flag Officers of the units they worked for.
But the most consequential provision of the legislation is its limited scope. The total number of Iraqi and Afghani translators who may be provided special immigrant translator status during each fiscal year cannot exceed 50. The Department of Homeland Security’s Nebraska Service Center is mandated to track this numerical cap. As of January, this cap was exceeded by more than 6,000 applicants.
This situation has produced major heartburn for Ellen R. Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, who has been grilled by both House and Senate oversight committees. Many of the members of these bodies strongly opposed her nomination to her current post based on lack of experience.
Ms. Sauerbrey was a recess appointment in January 2006. She is a two-time failed gubernatorial candidate in Maryland and previously served as US envoy on women's issues to the United Nations, where she opposed ratification of the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women.
Sauerbrey has also worked as a Republican National Committeewoman, and is former Minority Leader of the Maryland House of Delegates. She was a Republican member of the House of Delegates from 1978 to 1994 and was candidate for governor in 1994 and 1998.
A former public school teacher, Sauerbrey has no prior experience dealing with refugee populations. She also has no experience dealing with human disasters.
Given that a large percentage of refugees tend to be women and children, Sauerbrey's stance on reproductive rights is relevant. According to Planned Parenthood, she is anti-abortion and believes that it is not a legitimate element of reproductive health assistance. She also approves withholding funding to the United Nations Population Fund and has denied that adolescents have any right to exercise autonomous control over their reproductive health.
With Democrats now in control of both the House and the Senate, Sauerbrey and the Bush Administration’s policies on Iraqi and Afghan refugees find themselves subjected to robust oversight for the first time. But even if Congress is able to bring about positive policy changes, and adopt regulations to streamline refugee processing, it remains unclear whether the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have the resources and the professional know-how to implement the changes efficiently.
As the numbers of Iraqi refugees continue to grow exponentially, the American president who earned a reputation as a bumbler who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time is increasingly being hailed as the hero who dealt effectively with a similar crisis forty years ago.
The president was Gerald R. Ford, and the similar crisis was in Vietnam. On the evening of April 10, 1975, President Ford appealed to a joint session of Congress to act to ensure the safety of “tens of thousands of South Vietnamese employees of the United States Government, of news agencies, of contractors and businesses for many years, whose lives, with their dependents, are in very grave peril. There are tens of thousands of other South Vietnamese intellectuals, professors, teachers, editors, and opinion leaders who have supported the South Vietnamese cause and the alliance with the United States to whom we have a profound moral obligation.”
Only a month later, Congress passed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act. As a result, more than 131,000 Vietnamese refugees were rescued from the chaos of South Vietnam, and brought to the security of the US.
Today, the refugee crises are largely in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. Thus far, more than two million Iraqi refugees have fled from persecution and sectarian violence. They have mostly traveled to Jordan and Syria. In addition, at least 1.8 million are displaced within Iraq.
According to Human Rights First, tens of thousands of these refugees have been targeted because of their work for the US government, non-governmental organizations or the media. Iraqis who have served as translators for the US forces, for example, have frequently been attacked and threatened.
Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch and author of an extensive report on the situation, says, "As it turns out, many of the people who are fleeing are fleeing because of their associations with the United States."
The chances are President Ford would not have been proud of the US response to the current refugee crisis. At a January 2007 oversight hearing on “The Plight of Iraqi Refugees,” Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) expressed concern that the US admitted only 202 Iraqi refugees to the country during fiscal 2006 and that a special immigrant visa program for Iraqi and Afghan translators already had a six-year wait list. Since April 2003, the Bush Administration has admitted exactly 692 Iraqi refugees, and the number of those in need is growing by an estimated 50,000 a month.
In February 2007, under considerable pressure from congress and the media, the State Department announced that the US would admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees in through its resettlement program; create special programs to assist Iraqis who are at risk because of their employment or close association with the United States government; and contribute $18 million to the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees. But at the same time, the Bush Administration admitted that it probably would not be able to move more than two or three thousand Iraqis by the end of September, a period of eight months.
What accounts for this admittedly constipated performance? In 1975, President Ford confronted a public weary of an unpopular, unsuccessful war, but got Congress to deliver anyway. Today, President Bush faces similar sentiments regarding the five-year-plus US intervention in Iraq.
The difference, according to national security, human rights and governmental sources, is 9/11. Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, Americans have lived in an environment of fear. At the top of their fear list are Middle Eastern immigrants, who are seen as potential terrorists.
As a consequence of 9/11, the DHS established rigorous criteria for granting asylum to those from all other countries – and these criteria apply to people who have become refugees because of the American invasion of their country. The DHS, however, lacked and still lacks the resources to carry out its mandated security checks on would-be asylum-seekers. Each Iraqi must be interviewed individually, including translators, truck drivers and others who have worked for the US military, which presumably carried out its own security checks before they were hired.
Because of security concerns, they cannot be interviewed at the American Embassy in Baghdad. If they have fled to Jordan, Syria, or other countries in the region, they must be interviewed there. This means dispatching DHS or State Department screeners overseas, where few wish to go. And before interviews can take place, applicants must be referred to American authorities by the UN. That process calls for resources the UN doesn’t have, and predictably involves a mountain of bureaucratic paperwork.
For example, last year Congress passed legislation to offer special immigrant status to persons serving as translators with the US Armed Forces. Under this statute, a limited number of translators and their immediate family may immigrate to the United States in each fiscal year.
But applicants are required to jump through multiple bureaucratic hoops to qualify. They must be able to prove they have worked directly with the US Armed Forces as a translator for a period of at least 12 months; obtain a favorable written recommendation from a General or Flag Officer in the chain of command of the US Armed Forces unit that was supported by the translator; cleared a background check and screening as determined by a General or Flag Officer; is otherwise eligible to receive an immigrant visa and is otherwise admissible to the US for permanent residence.
Spouses and children of the translator may be able to follow or join after the translator has adjusted status or been issued an immigrant visa.
The bill specifies that the US Armed Forces unit is the “advocate” on behalf the translator and his/her immediate family. The translator must file the petition and related documents directly with the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
There are clearly problems with this legislation. For one thing, for people who have fled their country in fear of their lives frequently have no access to the extensive documentation required by this law. Nor, if they have already left Iraq for another country, do they have access to the Generals or Flag Officers of the units they worked for.
But the most consequential provision of the legislation is its limited scope. The total number of Iraqi and Afghani translators who may be provided special immigrant translator status during each fiscal year cannot exceed 50. The Department of Homeland Security’s Nebraska Service Center is mandated to track this numerical cap. As of January, this cap was exceeded by more than 6,000 applicants.
This situation has produced major heartburn for Ellen R. Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, who has been grilled by both House and Senate oversight committees. Many of the members of these bodies strongly opposed her nomination to her current post based on lack of experience.
Ms. Sauerbrey was a recess appointment in January 2006. She is a two-time failed gubernatorial candidate in Maryland and previously served as US envoy on women's issues to the United Nations, where she opposed ratification of the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women.
Sauerbrey has also worked as a Republican National Committeewoman, and is former Minority Leader of the Maryland House of Delegates. She was a Republican member of the House of Delegates from 1978 to 1994 and was candidate for governor in 1994 and 1998.
A former public school teacher, Sauerbrey has no prior experience dealing with refugee populations. She also has no experience dealing with human disasters.
Given that a large percentage of refugees tend to be women and children, Sauerbrey's stance on reproductive rights is relevant. According to Planned Parenthood, she is anti-abortion and believes that it is not a legitimate element of reproductive health assistance. She also approves withholding funding to the United Nations Population Fund and has denied that adolescents have any right to exercise autonomous control over their reproductive health.
With Democrats now in control of both the House and the Senate, Sauerbrey and the Bush Administration’s policies on Iraqi and Afghan refugees find themselves subjected to robust oversight for the first time. But even if Congress is able to bring about positive policy changes, and adopt regulations to streamline refugee processing, it remains unclear whether the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have the resources and the professional know-how to implement the changes efficiently.
Friday, April 06, 2007
HOUSE TACKLES “FEMICIDE” IN LATIN AMERICA
By William Fisher
While headlines in the mainstream media front-page such controversies as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria and lawmakers’ standoff with the White House on timelines for American withdrawal from Iraq, the more mundane – but arguably no less important – work of the Congress goes on. Much of it continues under the radar, receiving little or no attention in the press. Some of it is actually bipartisan!
One example is an obscure measure known as H. Res. 100. What is House Resolution 100?
It is an effort by a large bipartisan group of representatives to try to end a deadly phenomenon known as “femicide” in Guatemala and elsewhere in Central and South America.
Introduced by Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis (D-CA) and 84 co-sponsors, and unanimously approved by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the resolution urges the US Government to bring pressure on Guatemala to address the unsolved murders of more than 2,000 women and girls since 2001.
Rep. Solis says, “Very few of these crimes have been investigated and even fewer perpetrators have been brought to justice for their crimes. Families of victims deserve honest answers and investigations into the murders of their wives, mothers and daughters murders, instead of being ignored and intimidated.
H.Res. 100 will raise awareness of the growing murder rate of women and girls in Guatemala, and increase the international pressure that is needed to stop the violence against women in that country.”
It is not known whether President Bush raised the issue with Guatemalan leaders during his recent trip to Latin America.
Efforts to raise awareness of femicide have been spearheaded by numerous immigration and human rights organizations. Chief among them is the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, University of California, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, working in partnership with Guatemalan groups.
Asked by Truthout why the US Government should take in interest in this issue, the Center’s Advocacy Coordinator and Communications Director, Felecia Bartow, noted that, in addition to human rights concerns, “The U.S. has provided millions of dollars in aid for Rule of Law programs in Guatemala – and yet the murders and impunity persist. In 2006, the Guatemalan government created the National Institute of Forensic Science (INACIF) to improve criminal investigations and to prosecute those who commit crimes, including the murders of women. To date, the Guatemalan Congress has not provided INACIF with a budget and has not appointed any personnel – despite the fact that the State Department allocated $250,000 to INACIF in its FY2007 budget, and they have asked for another $250,000 that would come out of the FY2008 budget.
She added that the US Government has thus “not done enough” to address the issue of femicide. “The State Department needs to make it clear to the Guatemalan government that this situation cannot persist. There has been concern expressed about violence against women in Guatemala generally, but there have not been steps taken to hold the Guatemalan government accountable for the state of impunity that exists for those who murder women,” she told Truthout.
Femicide is also a problem elsewhere in Latin America. Last year, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala sent a delegation of activists to the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington to focus attention on the murders of innocent women.
The delegation asserted that, “In addition to the deaths in Guatemala, incomplete murder rates presented to the Commission cite 373 known murders of women in Bolivia from 2003 to 2004, and 143 in Peru during 2003. In Colombia, a woman is reportedly killed every six days by her partner or ex-partner. Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City, Mexico, two cities where the femicide trend was first widely noticed, have suffered the murder of more than 500 women from multiple causes since 1993, according to press and other sources. Dozens more remain missing. Globally, the problem is no less severe. In many parts of South Asia and the Middle East, for example, so-called ‘honor killings’ usually go unpunished.”
In a joint letter to prospective supporters of the Solis resolution, Karen Musalo, Director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, and Barb Gottlieb, Director of Outreach & Membership for the Women's Edge Coalition, said, “As of August 2006, 2,300 Guatemalan women had been murdered since the beginning of 2000, and only 17 cases had been resolved, including both convictions and exonerations. In fact, so few convictions have been handed down that there is almost complete impunity for those who murder women in Guatemala. Investigators mishandle crime scenes and officials blame the victims themselves, often deciding that their murders are not worth investigating because they are deemed to be ‘nobodies’."
The organizations said, “During Guatemala's decades of internal armed conflict, state-sponsored violence was widespread, and rape was commonly used as a weapon of war against women. Numerous investigations have concluded that the vast majority of these human rights violations were conducted by members of the Guatemalan Army or intelligence services. Today, a decade after the conflict's resolution, many of those responsible have escaped prosecution and now work with the police or private security forces. Perhaps it is no wonder that violence against women continues unabated, and that the perpetrators are virtually never brought to justice.”
The original cosponsors of the House Resolution include Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), the Chair of the full House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), the Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, and Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Rep. Burton introduced a similar resolution in the 109th Congress last year, but it did not come to a vote before the end of the year.
Consideration of the Solis resolution by the full House is expected in the coming months. A similar resolution is expected to be introduced in the Senate.
The Solis resolution is endorsed by numerous human rights and legal organizations, including Amnesty International, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), Human Rights First, and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.
The Hastings Center’s Karen Musalo told Truthout, “The brutal murders of thousands of women with total impunity has gone on for all too long, and we are grateful that the House of Representatives has now gone on record calling for the Guatemalan government to bring an end to this disgraceful impunity.”
The plight of women in Latin America and elsewhere is exacerbated by the absence of US immigration regulations that would grant asylum to victims of domestic violence.
In a highly publicized case, a Guatemalan refugee named Rodi Alvarado became the poster child for this immigration dilemma. Mrs. Alvarado’s husband, a former soldier in the Guatemalan military, brutally beat her over a period of 10 years while the Guatemalan police and courts ignored her repeated attempts to get help. When she ran away, her husband found her and beat her unconscious. Finally, in 1995, she fled to the U.S. in search of safety.
An immigration judge granted her asylum, but that decision was reversed by the Board of Immigration Appeals. Two successive Attorneys General – Janet Reno and John Ashcroft – have personally intervened, but her case has yet to be decided.
Ashcroft said a decision should await new regulations from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which supervises most immigration matters. But DHS and the Department of Justice have been unable to agree on a position.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Alvarado remains in legal limbo. She continues to work as a housekeeper at a convent in San Francisco. The DHS says it will not press for her deportation regardless of how much longer it may take the agency to finalize the new regulations. But while she can remain in the US, she cannot be reunited with her children, who remain in Guatemala.
The government started working on such regulations many years ago, long before the DHS was created. Under US law, asylum applicants have to show they can't go home because they face persecution because of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. In a regulation proposed during the Clinton Administration by Attorney General Janet Reno, battered women would have been considered members of a social group.
But with the change in administrations and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the proposal languished. Opponents have said new asylum rules would lead to a surge in claims, an assertion disputed by advocates.
According to Human Rights First, an advocacy group that has worked on this issue for several years, "DHS recognized, in Rodi Alvarado’s case, that women who have suffered these kinds of abuses are entitled to this country’s protection, if they can satisfy certain criteria.”
HRF adds, "Three years later, however, the Department of Justice and DHS have still not issued regulations consistent with the DHS position. Not only is this failure disturbing because of its impact on Ms. Alvarado and other women, but it is particularly inexplicable given the extensive bipartisan support, which includes support from conservative advocacy and religious groups."
While headlines in the mainstream media front-page such controversies as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria and lawmakers’ standoff with the White House on timelines for American withdrawal from Iraq, the more mundane – but arguably no less important – work of the Congress goes on. Much of it continues under the radar, receiving little or no attention in the press. Some of it is actually bipartisan!
One example is an obscure measure known as H. Res. 100. What is House Resolution 100?
It is an effort by a large bipartisan group of representatives to try to end a deadly phenomenon known as “femicide” in Guatemala and elsewhere in Central and South America.
Introduced by Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis (D-CA) and 84 co-sponsors, and unanimously approved by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the resolution urges the US Government to bring pressure on Guatemala to address the unsolved murders of more than 2,000 women and girls since 2001.
Rep. Solis says, “Very few of these crimes have been investigated and even fewer perpetrators have been brought to justice for their crimes. Families of victims deserve honest answers and investigations into the murders of their wives, mothers and daughters murders, instead of being ignored and intimidated.
H.Res. 100 will raise awareness of the growing murder rate of women and girls in Guatemala, and increase the international pressure that is needed to stop the violence against women in that country.”
It is not known whether President Bush raised the issue with Guatemalan leaders during his recent trip to Latin America.
Efforts to raise awareness of femicide have been spearheaded by numerous immigration and human rights organizations. Chief among them is the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, University of California, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, working in partnership with Guatemalan groups.
Asked by Truthout why the US Government should take in interest in this issue, the Center’s Advocacy Coordinator and Communications Director, Felecia Bartow, noted that, in addition to human rights concerns, “The U.S. has provided millions of dollars in aid for Rule of Law programs in Guatemala – and yet the murders and impunity persist. In 2006, the Guatemalan government created the National Institute of Forensic Science (INACIF) to improve criminal investigations and to prosecute those who commit crimes, including the murders of women. To date, the Guatemalan Congress has not provided INACIF with a budget and has not appointed any personnel – despite the fact that the State Department allocated $250,000 to INACIF in its FY2007 budget, and they have asked for another $250,000 that would come out of the FY2008 budget.
She added that the US Government has thus “not done enough” to address the issue of femicide. “The State Department needs to make it clear to the Guatemalan government that this situation cannot persist. There has been concern expressed about violence against women in Guatemala generally, but there have not been steps taken to hold the Guatemalan government accountable for the state of impunity that exists for those who murder women,” she told Truthout.
Femicide is also a problem elsewhere in Latin America. Last year, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala sent a delegation of activists to the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington to focus attention on the murders of innocent women.
The delegation asserted that, “In addition to the deaths in Guatemala, incomplete murder rates presented to the Commission cite 373 known murders of women in Bolivia from 2003 to 2004, and 143 in Peru during 2003. In Colombia, a woman is reportedly killed every six days by her partner or ex-partner. Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City, Mexico, two cities where the femicide trend was first widely noticed, have suffered the murder of more than 500 women from multiple causes since 1993, according to press and other sources. Dozens more remain missing. Globally, the problem is no less severe. In many parts of South Asia and the Middle East, for example, so-called ‘honor killings’ usually go unpunished.”
In a joint letter to prospective supporters of the Solis resolution, Karen Musalo, Director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, and Barb Gottlieb, Director of Outreach & Membership for the Women's Edge Coalition, said, “As of August 2006, 2,300 Guatemalan women had been murdered since the beginning of 2000, and only 17 cases had been resolved, including both convictions and exonerations. In fact, so few convictions have been handed down that there is almost complete impunity for those who murder women in Guatemala. Investigators mishandle crime scenes and officials blame the victims themselves, often deciding that their murders are not worth investigating because they are deemed to be ‘nobodies’."
The organizations said, “During Guatemala's decades of internal armed conflict, state-sponsored violence was widespread, and rape was commonly used as a weapon of war against women. Numerous investigations have concluded that the vast majority of these human rights violations were conducted by members of the Guatemalan Army or intelligence services. Today, a decade after the conflict's resolution, many of those responsible have escaped prosecution and now work with the police or private security forces. Perhaps it is no wonder that violence against women continues unabated, and that the perpetrators are virtually never brought to justice.”
The original cosponsors of the House Resolution include Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), the Chair of the full House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), the Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, and Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Rep. Burton introduced a similar resolution in the 109th Congress last year, but it did not come to a vote before the end of the year.
Consideration of the Solis resolution by the full House is expected in the coming months. A similar resolution is expected to be introduced in the Senate.
The Solis resolution is endorsed by numerous human rights and legal organizations, including Amnesty International, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), Human Rights First, and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.
The Hastings Center’s Karen Musalo told Truthout, “The brutal murders of thousands of women with total impunity has gone on for all too long, and we are grateful that the House of Representatives has now gone on record calling for the Guatemalan government to bring an end to this disgraceful impunity.”
The plight of women in Latin America and elsewhere is exacerbated by the absence of US immigration regulations that would grant asylum to victims of domestic violence.
In a highly publicized case, a Guatemalan refugee named Rodi Alvarado became the poster child for this immigration dilemma. Mrs. Alvarado’s husband, a former soldier in the Guatemalan military, brutally beat her over a period of 10 years while the Guatemalan police and courts ignored her repeated attempts to get help. When she ran away, her husband found her and beat her unconscious. Finally, in 1995, she fled to the U.S. in search of safety.
An immigration judge granted her asylum, but that decision was reversed by the Board of Immigration Appeals. Two successive Attorneys General – Janet Reno and John Ashcroft – have personally intervened, but her case has yet to be decided.
Ashcroft said a decision should await new regulations from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which supervises most immigration matters. But DHS and the Department of Justice have been unable to agree on a position.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Alvarado remains in legal limbo. She continues to work as a housekeeper at a convent in San Francisco. The DHS says it will not press for her deportation regardless of how much longer it may take the agency to finalize the new regulations. But while she can remain in the US, she cannot be reunited with her children, who remain in Guatemala.
The government started working on such regulations many years ago, long before the DHS was created. Under US law, asylum applicants have to show they can't go home because they face persecution because of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. In a regulation proposed during the Clinton Administration by Attorney General Janet Reno, battered women would have been considered members of a social group.
But with the change in administrations and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the proposal languished. Opponents have said new asylum rules would lead to a surge in claims, an assertion disputed by advocates.
According to Human Rights First, an advocacy group that has worked on this issue for several years, "DHS recognized, in Rodi Alvarado’s case, that women who have suffered these kinds of abuses are entitled to this country’s protection, if they can satisfy certain criteria.”
HRF adds, "Three years later, however, the Department of Justice and DHS have still not issued regulations consistent with the DHS position. Not only is this failure disturbing because of its impact on Ms. Alvarado and other women, but it is particularly inexplicable given the extensive bipartisan support, which includes support from conservative advocacy and religious groups."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
