"The United States Begins to Worry"
    By Baptiste Legrand
    Le Nouvel Observateur

    Wednesday 15 February 2006

An interview with Genevi ve Sevrin, President of Amnesty France.

    A UN report recommends that the American camp at Guant a1namo be closed? Why only now?

    The United Nations' silence over the question was altogether abnormal. But numerous factors have brought the UN to publish this report: the lawless situation in which the prisoners find themselves, the arbitrary detentions, torture, the business of secret flights and prisons ... Their cup was full!

    For us, the report's contents are no surprise. Amnesty International had denounced the practices current in Guant a1namo on several occasions. We reach the same conclusions: the imprisoned combatants' status must be acknowledged as that of prisoners of war and the Geneva Conventions applied. The charges weighing against the prisoners must be made known and a real trial organized. And in the cases where there is no conviction, the prisoners must be freed and indemnified.

    It's important to us that the UN uses the term "torture" in its report. There's a new vocabulary today that aims to trivialize these acts, by talking, for example, about "sensory deprivation" or "environmental constraint."

    But we really are talking about torture. There are "classic" tortures: permanent inescapable light, very loud music, which by their nature bring about psychological disturbances. There were also sexual tortures, with animals or military women simulating intercourse, which is particularly humiliating for Muslim prisoners. And we should not forget that American soldiers confirmed that the Koran was fouled. So these tortures did not always consist of acts of physical violence, but of numerous psychological tortures.

    Finally, when the United States itself can't practice torture, its allies can take over - in Egypt, for example. That a democracy like the United States, a bearer of the values of freedom, should revert to torture and encourage it seems symptomatic to us. In this vein, the American Attorney General himself has asserted that it was desirable to circumvent the Geneva Conventions.

    The American administration contests the existence of torture, while its lawyers have intervened to defend the theory that "a foreign combatant detained outside the United States (...) does not enjoy Constitutional protection."

    The battle is taking place over the law. Isn't that a good sign?

    The authors of the UN report did not have access to Guant a1namo. They based their report on the testimony of freed prisoners. If there had been only one testimony, we'd be allowed to doubt it. But the studies are based on dozens of prisoners who are unconnected with one another, living in different countries, and who denounce the identical acts of torture. There are dozens of corroborating testimonies! Moreover, there's no reason why the Americans would respect human rights at Guant a1namo, sheltered from any view, when photographs have shown that tortures were practiced at Bagram prison in Afghanistan and at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. And then, if the United States is so confident there's no torture, let it open Guant a1namo!

    Several factors indicate that the United States is beginning to worry. They've revealed that half the Guant a1namo prisoners were on hunger strike, with consequent risk of death, which would be bad press. The fact that the prisoners were able to depose their case before the American Supreme Court is also an important turning point.

    The administration is trying to prevent them from going forward: it's a sign of deep malaise. The fact that a Supreme Court might eventually recognize that the administration violated the Geneva Conventions would signal a climax.

    Do these developments produce awareness in American society of the reality of Guant a1namo?

    Yes, since the appearance of Amnesty International's May 2005 report, there's been a certain dawning awareness. We talked about a "Gulag," [a term] which landed like a bomb. In fact, Guant a1namo approaches the Soviet Gulag, in the sense that it's a lawless system, hidden from view, with no official status. Moreover, associating Guant a1namo with an archipelago of secret prisons as well as the business of secret flights - which produced protests from several governments, including those of France and Germany - has also had an impact. A certain number of Democratic Congress people, but also Republicans, have called for a halt by the American government. And behind these Congress people, there's a citizen impulse. But the situation is complex. For the moment, it remains difficult to say I'm optimistic.