‘War on terror’
In its international campaign against abuses in the “war on terror”, AI exposed and denounced hundreds of cases of torture and other grave violations of human rights claimed by states to be a necessary response to security threats. AI also strongly condemned deliberate attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks by armed groups.
AI convened a two-day gathering of human rights organizations from the Middle East in Lebanon in January. The participants concluded that no detainees should be transferred from one country to another on the basis of mere diplomatic assurances that they would not be tortured or otherwise ill-treated after transfer, and that memorandums of understanding to that effect between the UK government and governments in the Middle East and North Africa undermined the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment.
AI and other human rights groups submitted a brief to the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Ramzy v. the Netherlands, seeking to uphold the absolute prohibition in law against transferring a person to a state where they risk torture.
The US programme of renditions – the secret transfer of individuals from one country to another, bypassing judicial and administrative due process – was analysed in April in USA: Below the radar – Secret flights to torture and “disappearance” (AI Index: AMR 51/051/2006). Since 2001, hundreds of terror suspects have been transferred to states where physical and psychological brutality and coercion feature prominently in interrogations. Many detainees have been subjected to enforced disappearance, a crime under international law.
Three Yemenis detained for more than 18 months by the USA or at its behest, then for over nine months without charge in Yemen – Muhammad Abdullah al Assad, Muhammad Faraj Bashmilah and Salah Nasser Salim ‘Ali Qaru – provided unique insights into the workings of covert US-run detention centres known as “black sites”. AI members campaigned for their trial or release, and AI delegates observed the trial that eventually took place in February 2006, leading to the final release of all three men in March.
The active involvement of European states in US rendition flights, or their denial of any knowledge about them, was spotlighted in AI’s June report, Partners in crime: Europe’s role in US renditions(AI Index: EUR 01/008/2006). AI lobbied Council of Europe (CoE) member states to investigate these abuses themselves and to cooperate fully with CoE investigations, and called for CoE guidelines on controls of domestic and foreign secret services and of transiting air traffic.
AI France created an online viral campaign to spread the message against renditions, also working closely with rap artist Leeroy Kesiah (www.terrorairlines.com). AIUSA hosted an online discussion in August after Peter Bauer and other former interrogators told the US Congress that torture and other ill-treatment were unnecessary to win the “war on terror”. In December, AI Jordan campaigned with cartoonist Khaldoon Gharaibeh and former detainee Khaled Al-Asmar for the closure of the US detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
In Terror and counter-terror: Defending our human rights (AI Index: ACT 40/009/2006), published in August, AI detailed how the widespread backlash against human rights in the “war on terror” has been vigorously challenged by AI and other activists around the world. The report drew attention to the conflicts and other contexts in which human rights abuses are ignored as states concentrate on national security issues.
“He is now again in the circle of his family. Their joy at embracing their lost son again is indescribable,” said the lawyer for Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish national and resident of Germany released from Guantánamo in August 2006. Murat Kurnaz was detained without charge or trial for nearly five years before the German authorities acted on his behalf following intense and sustained pressure by his family, lawyers and AI members.