Obama blocks probe on terrorist prisoner torture in US: No to public hearing in Congress

The news desk here in the United States of this Online Daily Newspaper has been following developments and events that connect the U.S. and Sri Lanka since the military defeat of the separatist Tamil Tigers in May 2009; the lawmakers in Washington, officials in the State Department and top staffers of Obama White House calling Sri Lanka for accountability and transparency of what took place during the five critical months (January through May) in the last stages of the ‘national security battle’ alleging war crimes, atrocities, civilian deaths and genocide.

The call by Washington is to allow an international commission to probe into alleged war crimes of both the Government of Sri Lanka and Tamil Tigers. The latter is in no position to answer any global query because the LTTE movement with its entire top leadership has perished due to the intense military battle waged by the GSL.

The War Crimes Issues division of the US State Department last October released an unsubstantiated, distorted and near-vituperative report alleging Sri Lanka of war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide.

The US has supported the UN Secretary-General- appointed three member advisory committee to investigate the allegation of war crimes.

In the presence of Sri Lanka’s external affairs minister Prof. Pieris in Washington last month US secretary of State Clinton applauded the GSL’s appointment of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Committee reiterating that ‘transparency and accountability process’ should be the corner stone of the commission’s deliberations, a very clear message from the sole Super Power.

Refuting US and EU allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide Sri Lanka has continuously said that the battle between the Tamil Tiger separatist fighting cadre and Sri Lanka military during the final months was so intense that it was the Tigers that caused the deaths of innocent civilians as they disallowed them to move onto ‘safe zone’ created by the government. Sri Lanka has not totally dismissed that there weren’t any civilian deaths during those turbulent months of intense fighting between the Tiger separatist and Sri Lankan national military.

In this developing atmosphere calling an international probe into Sri Lanka’s alleged crimes against humanity and genocide by the lawmakers in the US Congress, State Department officials and Obama White House advisors the Obama administration currently refuses to allow the Justice Department to launch a full-fledged investigation into the Bush administration's torture policies and has also pressured Congress not to hold public hearings delving into the matter.

President Obama said last year that "those who [carried] out their duties relying in good faith upon the legal advice from the Department of Justice" should not be subject to prosecution.

US Attorney General Eric Holder added, "with regard to those members of the intelligence community who acted in good faith and in reliance with Justice Department opinions that were shared with them, it is not our intention to prosecute those individuals."

However, Bybee's testimony, in which he acknowledges that abusive techniques were used that OLC did not approve, changes the picture since it suggests that interrogators were not relying upon the legal memos when they abused some detainees.

It has now been revealed that Jay Bybee, who as a senior Justice Department lawyer signed two memos in 2002 authorizing CIA interrogators to torture "war on terror" prisoners, told a congressional panel in May that more than a half dozen other brutal methods were used by the CIA without legal approval.

In a closed-door interview with members of the US House Judiciary Committee on May 26, Bybee said his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) did not allow the CIA to use diapering, water dousing, blackout goggles, extended solitary confinement, daily beatings, forcing a detainee to defecate on himself, hanging a detainee from ceiling hooks or subjecting prisoners to loud music or noise.

Despite many revelations of prisoner abuses, torture and degrading treatment of those who were under the US custody in the process of combating terrorism the Obama administration has flatly refused to initiate any investigation into these abuses and bring those who are responsible for those heinous crimes before justice. The White House has even blocked its Department of Justice to undertake any probe on the matter, and has advised the US Congress, both the Senate and the House, not to have any public hearings on the issue.

This is how the United States endeavors to protect its image abroad. It needs to because the US State Department throughout the year sits on judgment on human rights abuses of other countries and connect those incidents to the US Foreign Assistance Program. The accountability process the US advocates to other countries like Sri Lanka is way back in its agenda.

The testimony of former Justice Department official who was attached to its Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) who wrote two memoranda on the issue of useable techniques of ‘enhanced interrogations’ Jay Bybee was done as ‘close-door interview’ by the House Judiciary Committee on May 26.

In an investigative report published by the well-read Internet Blog Truthout on April 17, intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee captured after 9/11, was subjected to repeated sessions of "water dousing" prior to the issuance of the August 2002 torture memos. At the time interrogators used it on Zubaydah, water dousing was described by intelligence officials knowledgeable about Zubaydah's torture as spraying him with extremely cold water from a hose while he was naked and shackled by chains attached to a ceiling in the cell he was kept in at a black-site prison.

Water dousing was believed to have played a part in the November 2002 death of Gul Rahman, a detainee who was held at an Afghanistan prison known as The Salt Pit. He died of hypothermia hours after being doused with water and left in a cold prison cell.

Bybee's statements to the committee appeared to be an attempt to shift the blame for some illegal torturing onto the CIA.

Bybee told the close-door session of the House judiciary Committee that his OLC memos prohibited the "substantial repetition" of harsh techniques. In 2005, however, one of Bybee's successors, Steven Bradbury, permitted several of torture tactics to be used in combination.

The application of the torture techniques alone and in various patterns appears to have amounted to a form of human experimentation.

The Asian Tribune carried a report previously that in early June the international doctors' organization, Physicians for Human Rights, released a report that said waterboarding was monitored in early 2002 by CIA medical personnel who collected data about how detainees responded to the torture technique. The data was then used in a 2005 torture memo advising CIA interrogators how to refine the practice.

The doctors' report also noted that CIA medical personnel obtained experimental research data by subjecting more than 25 detainees to a combination of torture techniques as a way of understanding "whether one type of application over another would increase the subjects' susceptibility to severe pain."

That medical analysis then informed "subsequent [torture] practices," the report said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, whose Freedom of Information lawsuit helped make some of the interrogation documents public, said the criminal investigation should be expanded.

"Judge Bybee's testimony underscores what we've been saying for a long time: that the Justice Department should be conducting an investigation that encompasses not just low-level interrogators but senior government officials who authorized torture," said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director.

In the May 26 close-door interview given to the House Judiciary Committee, the former US Justice Department official and now a federal appeals court judge Jay Bybee confirmed that a number of techniques reportedly used on CIA detainees were not approved by OLC: These techniques include: Diapering a detainee or forcing a detainee to defecate on himself, forcing a detainee to wear blackout goggles, extended solitary confinement or isolation, hanging a detainee from ceiling hooks, daily beatings, spraying cold water on a detainee, and subjecting a detainee to high-volume music or noise.

Bybee further confirmed that the OLC memos did not permit “substantial repetition” of any interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, and acknowledged that the CIA Inspector General had found that “the waterboard was used with greater frequency and it was used in a different manner” than OLC had approved.

Despite the widespread, bipartisan criticism of the torture memos, Bybee continued to argue that the federal anti-torture statue would be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations ordered by the President as part of his “core” powers.

Question for Sri Lanka

The question Sri Lanka faces today is that the United States, itself not prepared to open any investigation on alleged prisoner abuses and torture under the previous Bush administration, is taking initiative to open a ‘war crimes-genocide’ investigation on it. The Obama White House has asked its own Justice Department to soften any probe on the issue. It has advised the US Congress, both the Senate and the House, not to initiate any public testimonies on the issue, and President Obama himself is not interested in ‘looking back’ instead ‘forward’, meaning no investigation into the past practices of prisoner torture and abuse.

The US News Desk of this Online Daily Newspaper which constantly monitors these developments is at loss to understand as to why the authorities in Sri Lanka take a defeatist attitude when it is very clear that the Obama administration, officials of the US State Department and even leading members of both the Senate and House endeavor to conceal the heinous crime of prisoner torture, and the use of medical experiments based on such abuses and torture which violate UN charter and international human rights standards, standards that the US constantly remind Sri Lanka and other Third World nations to strictly adhere.

- Asian Tribune -