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Usa Crimes and Impunity Full Senate Committee Report on Cia Secret Detentions Must Be Released, and Accountability for Crimes Under International Law Ensured

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Usa Crimes and Impunity Full Senate Committee Report on Cia Secret Detentions Must Be Released, and Accountability for Crimes Under International Law Ensured USA CRIMES AND IMPUNITY FULL SENATE COMMITTEE REPORT ON CIA SECRET DETENTIONS MUST BE RELEASED, AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CRIMES UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW ENSURED Amnesty International Publications First published in April 2015 by Amnesty International Publications International Secretariat Peter Benenson House 1 Easton Street London WC1X 0DW United Kingdom www.amnesty.org ≤ Copyright Amnesty International Publications 2015 Index: AMR 51/1432/2015 Original Language: English Printed by Amnesty International, International Secretariat, United Kingdom All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers. Amnesty International is a global movement of 3 million people in more than 150 countries and territories, who campaign on human rights. Our vision is for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments. We research, campaign, advocate and mobilize to end abuses of human rights. Amnesty International is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion. Our work is largely financed by contributions from our membership and donations Table of contents Foreword: A deafening silence on accountability .............................................................. 1 Summary: ‘Watch America. Watch how we deal with this’ ................................................. 2 ‘Do Not Open, Do Not Access’: Full report still buried ...................................................... 5 Black on black: redactions and classification ................................................................... 7 A de facto amnesty for crimes under international law .................................................... 11 Recommendations ...................................................................................................... 17 PART 1 – JOINING THE DOTS ..................................................................................... 20 1.1 Senate Committee adds to existing picture .............................................................. 20 1.1a Cash for disappearances. Secret sites and ‘foreign governments’ ....................... 23 1.1b Involvement of Federal Bureau of Prisons in secret detention ............................ 28 1.1c Death of Gul Rahman and interrogator training ................................................ 29 1.1d ‘Enhanced’ interrogation in CIA ‘safehouse’ .................................................... 30 1.1e Consequences of torture and other ill-treatment ............................................... 32 1.1f Waterboarding-plus ....................................................................................... 37 1.1g ‘We can never let the world know what I have done to you’ ............................... 40 1.1h ‘Let’s roll with the new guy’: Insights from CIA communications........................ 42 1.1i From CIA Torture to CIA Transfer to torture? .................................................... 43 1.1j No CIA ‘enhanced’ interrogation due to ‘US person status’ ................................ 44 1.1k Lobbying other governments to hide detainees ................................................. 45 1.1l Little or no ‘accountability’ ............................................................................ 46 PART 2 – TWO HUBS OF SHAMEFUL SECRETS ........................................................... 48 2.1 Bagram and beyond: CIA detentions in Afghanistan ................................................. 48 2.1a Multiple detainees, multiple locations ............................................................ 51 2.1b The case of Redha al-Najar ........................................................................... 56 2.1c What about CIA activities in Bagram? ............................................................. 59 2.2 Confirming Guantánamo as a CIA ‘black site’ .......................................................... 61 2.2a Rendition to torture, Guantánamo, and Morocco? ............................................. 66 2.2b Green to Cobalt to Guantánamo and beyond: Interrogation ‘templates’ ............... 69 2.2c Injustice compounded: A quarter of CIA detainees still at Guantánamo .............. 74 2.2d CIA retains ‘operational control’ of detainees at Guantánamo in 2006 ............... 79 USA: CRIMES AND IMPUNITY. Full Senate Committee report on CIA secret detentions must be released, and accountability for crimes under international law ensured PART 3 – EXECUTIVE POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY ................................................... 80 3.1 ‘Each of us must answer for what we have done’ ...................................................... 80 3.2 ‘So it begins’: President approves a disappearance ................................................... 87 3.3 ‘Plausible deniability’ or a ‘stand-up guy’? ............................................................... 92 3.4 Green light 2003: ‘Executing administration policy’ .................................................. 97 3.4a The case of Janat Gul .................................................................................. 100 3.5 New CIA Director in 2004, crimes continue ........................................................... 102 3.5a Abu Faraj al-Libi ......................................................................................... 103 3.6 Ghost train: military/CIA disappearances 2005-2006 ............................................. 106 3.6a Abu Ja’far al-Iraqi and Ibrahim Jan ............................................................... 107 3.6b Ali Jan and Hassan Ghul ............................................................................. 109 3.7 Failure to end programme after April 2006 briefing ................................................ 110 3.8 Executive order timed for ‘enhanced’ interrogation ................................................. 111 3.8a Muhammad Rahim al Afghani ...................................................................... 113 PART 4 – FAR FROM TRUTH AND JUSTICE ................................................................ 116 4.1 Limits of Senate Intelligence Committee landmark ................................................. 116 4.1a What about ‘the dark side’? Rendition to ‘liaison’ custody ............................... 117 4.1b Based on CIA documents provided by CIA, no interviews ................................. 125 4.1c Emphasis on ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques .......................................... 126 4.1d Focus on ‘effectiveness’ distracts from human rights ...................................... 128 4.1e No reference to a systematic crime, enforced disappearance ........................... 131 4.1f Little or no reference to USA’s international obligations ................................... 132 4.2 Where was Congress? .......................................................................................... 136 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 139 Index: AMR 51/1432/2015 1 Amnesty International 21 April 2015 USA: CRIMES AND IMPUNITY. Full Senate Committee report on CIA secret detentions must be released, and accountability for crimes under international law ensured FOREWORD: A DEAFENING SILENCE ON ACCOUNTABILITY In the end truth will out William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene II This Amnesty International report responds to a document issued by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on 9 December 2014. That 500-page document is itself the summary of the Committee’s report, some 13 times longer, about the programme of secret detention operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2002 to 2009 under presidential authority granted six days after the crime against humanity committed in the USA on 11 September 2001 (9/11). The full report remains classified Top Secret. The Committee focussed its attention on whether the programme was effective in gaining information from detainees and whether the CIA accurately represented to other parts of government the programme’s operational details and intelligence outputs. However, these questions are being asked to the exclusion of a fundamental one – when will the USA end the impunity and stop blocking redress for the crimes under international law committed in the programme, as well as revealing the full truth about these human rights violations? Over four months after release of the summary, the administration’s answer would seem to be “never”. Returning to the Senate Committee’s summary four months on, Amnesty International does not address whether the CIA programme was or was not effective, or whether an agency described by a former Deputy Secretary of Defense as one that “thrives on deception” was economical with the truth. Rather, the organization extracts detail from the summary and sets it into a human rights frame. For the summary is not a human rights report, and makes no pretence to be. It does not assess the CIA’s conduct against the USA’s international human rights obligations, and its overarching focus on effectiveness and CIA reporting frequently relegates case details to footnotes or directs the reader to Volume III of the full report for “additional information”, which the public cannot see because it is classified. The Committee
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