May 28, 2012
Sasuie Leghari

Nine days after the Sept 11 attacks George W Bush announced the launching of his “war on terror,” which he said “will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” Thus began what was a veritable war on human rights which continues to this day. Those suspected of being enemy combatants in the “war on terror” are detainable without trial. The United States has been responsible for torture and maintenance of secret prisons, and gulags such as Guantanamo Bay.

On October 7, 2001, the United States declared war on Afghanistan and thereafter opened the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The purpose of such a facility outside of US territory was for the US government to avoid extension of human rights to the prisoners there, which are guaranteed under the American constitution. On June 6, 2002, the United States imprisoned two of its own citizens, Jose Padilla and Yasser Esam Hamdi, as “enemy combatants,” denying them the right to legal counsel and the right of habeas corpus. On June 28, 2004, the US Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdi vs Rumsfeld case that the designation of US citizens as “enemy combatants” and their indefinite detention without trial was unconstitutional.

In 2004 world media published photographs documenting torture and inhumane and degrading treatment carried out by US soldiers and contractors against inmates of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In September 2006 President Bush admitted that the CIA had used “an alternative set of procedures” in interrogation of suspected terrorists. Under a ruling by the US Supreme Court on June 29, 2006, it was illegal for the Bush administration to create a third category of persons, namely “enemy combatants,” who enjoyed neither the protections afforded to civilians nor those afforded to non-civilians under the Fourth Geneva Conventions.

The existence of secret CIA prisons, which Bush referred to in a speech on September 6, 2006, was the ultimate breach of detainees’ human rights. In those prisons, as the US president euphemised, “alternative” interrogation methods were adopted. Meanwhile in Britain, the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair issued an order on November 11, 2001 suspending suspects’ right to liberty in cases falling under terrorism. That right is protected by Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The following day the British parliament passed the Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act (2001). Section 4 of the act allows for indefinite detention without trial of foreign nationals suspected of terrorism. At the same time, their deportation to their own countries was ruled out under the pretext that they could be tortured or killed there.

Three years after their detention, the House of Lords ordered the release of three foreign nationals in 2004. It was the same Section 4 which had enabled the Blair government to imprison them without trial, or without even charges. At their trial the defendants were represented by two teams of lawyers. One of the teams was given security clearance to see evidence presented as grounds for the prisoners’ detention, but its members were not allowed access to the prisoners themselves. On the other hand, the second team of lawyers was allowed access to the detainees but not to the evidence.

The House of Lords ruled that the British government had acted in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights when it issued the order suspending the prisoners’ right to liberty. It also ruled that Section 4 of the 2001 Act was incompatible with the right to liberty protected by Article 5 of the Human Rights Act of 1998. The government responded by repealing Section 4 and replacing it with a regime of Control Orders, which was sharply criticised by human rights organisations. The Control Orders have now been replaced with the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures, which impose fewer controls on suspects but allow for greater surveillance.

The British government was complicit in many of the illegal actions against detainees by the Americans. These actions were in direct contravention of international human rights laws, specifically of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The question of human rights has assumed new urgency in the face of a war allegedly conducted to defeat terror. This time the atrocities have taken an “alternative” form.

The writer works at the Islamic Human Rights Commission in London.
-The News