On May 2

On this day in ...
... 1969 (40 years ago today), crackdowns across the country began to quell student protests launched on May Day. At Columbia University, for example, "200 students calling for educational reforms at Columbia University have given up their sit-in after a supreme court judge issued a warrant for their arrest." Parents whose children were named in the order were divided on the protests. And at Stanford University, a "hundred pacifists have also abandoned their demonstration ... after they were met with an equal number of police officers." (credit for photo of Stanford protests in "1960s and 1970s") Nonetheless, the BBC reported,

[M]any universities remain under siege with both black and white students demanding an end to alleged racial discrimination, on-campus military recruitment and a greater share in college government.

... 1969 (40 years ago today), at Southampton, England, the Cunard ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II embarked on its maiden voyage, bound for New York City. The vessel (right), which in 1982 was requisitioned for service in the Falklands/Malvinas War, "is currently docked permanently in Dubai," in the United Arab Emirates.

(Prior May 2 posts are here and here.)

Torture, 2008

As many of us look forward to a new administration that will move away from the unlawful and immoral practices of rendition and torture, Naji Hamdan reminds us that we've yet to make a clean break from the torturers of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret detention centers in unnamed locations. If his lawyers' allegations are true, Naji Hamdan holds the dubious distinction of being one of a few U.S. citizens known to have been detained and tortured abroad at the behest of his own government. Hamdan, pictured at left with his daugher Noor, was born in Lebanon and became a naturalized U.S. citizen after moving here to attend college on a scholarship. In 2006, Hamdan, his wife, and their three children, all of whom are U.S. citizens, moved to the United Arab Emirates primarily to avoid the drugs and other problems prevalent at the high school their son would soon attend in Los Angeles, but also due to Hamdan's frustration with the FBI scrutiny to which he'd been subject since 9/11.

On a return trip to the United States a few months later, Hamdan was placed under intense FBI surveillance. Then, early this year, Lebanese intelligence officers detained Hamdan at the Beirut airport, interrogating and physically abusing him. In early August 2008, two FBI agents who had flown in from Los Angeles interrogated Hamdan for several hours at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi. About three weeks later, U.A.E. State Security Forces took Hamdan from his home and held him incommunicado for three months. Despite tearful pleas from his wife (and subsequent evidence that U.S. Embassy officials were made aware of his detention the day it happened), U.S. consular officials didn't visit Hamdan in detention until mid-October. A month later, Hamdan's wife and brother filed a habeas corpus petition in D.C. court, claiming that the U.A.E. was holding Hamdan at the behest of the U.S. government.
Within a week, Hamdan was transferred from State Security custody to a prison in Abu Dhabi, and was charged with terrorism-related offenses. Last week, Hamdan was finally allowed to call his brother from prison. His stories were horrifying; Hamdan's captors kept him in a freezing underground room, where they beat and tortured him. Not only was Hamdan denied medication for his liver condition, but his torturers specifically beat him in the location of his liver. Hamdan's torturers beat him on the soles of his feet, subjected him to sleep deprivation, and tortured him so severely that he often passed out from the pain.
Hamdan's wife and brother insist "that he's never had any terrorism involvement or been charged with any crime despite the longtime FBI scrutiny." His wife continues, "Naji hates war. He hates what happened on September 11. He hates terrorism." The case is eerily reminiscent of the U.S. government's treatment of Maher Arar, the Syrian-Canadian who was rendered from JFK Airport to Syria, where he was brutally tortured. We've posted about the Arar case here and I've written about it here; after a Canadian commission of inquiry found that Arar had no connection to terrorism, Condoleeza Rice admitted that the U.S. government "didn't handle his case as it should have been." For those of us who had hoped that our government had learned its lessons and cleaned up its act, the Hamdan case is a sad reminder of how far we have to go. And for Naji Hamdan and his family, the outrageously senseless violence that destroyed their sense of security in their home, faith in their government, and trust in humankind will stay with them forever.

Globally Disappeared

Questions've been raised about the accuracy vel non of the term "Global War on Terror" almost since its inception. Is it correct, many ask, to label the campaign a "war"? Can one fight "terror"? Or ought the campaign target, rather, acts of terrorism? Though less has been said about the 1st word, 2 recent reports on persons who've been ghosted into secret detention counsel more consideration of the campaign's "global" nature.
Six NGOS -- Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve -- focus "Off the Record" on U.S. conduct. The report names more than 3 dozen persons -- including 1 woman and her 3 children, aged 6 months to 7 years -- whom they believe have been detained in secret. "'Enforced disappearances are illegal, regardless of who carries them out,'" said NYU's Meg Satterthwaite on release of the report, which points to violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and of the Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is party, as well as the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance opened for signature in February.
As remarkable as the role of the United States in in this account is the involvement of intelligence agencies from other states. Nearly 2/3 of the seizures cited occurred in Pakistan, where the issue of disappearance has sparked unrest. Other countries of capture: Somalia, Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Sudan, and Georgia.
That last country, of course, is in Europe -- and a report to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe indicates that Georgia was by no means the only European state involved in secret detention. Rapporteur Dick Marty named Poland and Romania as the location of CIA "black sites" for detainees believed to have high intelligence value. Neither country acted alone, in Marty's opinion; to the contrary, he concluded that they and other states aided the U.S. effort within the framework of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization "platform" agreement reached just weeks after the 9/11 attack (¶¶ 72-111). Marty attributed his ability to ferret out facts that states want to keep secret to the "dynamics of truth" -- often, a sense among Europeans that since President George W. Bush conceded the existence of the program he said he'd keep secret, they might as well tell the story, under promise of anonymity, from their perspective. He called for further inquiry, greater accountability, and a return to the rule of law:

We are fully aware of the seriousness of the terrorist threat and the danger it poses to our societies. ... The fight against terrorism must not serve as an excuse for systematic recourse to illegal acts, massive violation of fundamental human rights and contempt for the rule of law. ... [H]aving recourse to abuse and illegal acts actually amounts to a resounding failure of our system and plays right into the hands of the criminals who seek to destroy our societies through terror. ... [I]n the process, we give these criminals a degree of legitimacy -- that of fighting an unfair system .... (¶ 14)

(Next counterterrorism update: the status of accountability, at home and abroad.)