| Today's Feature Halloween On the
Square.
The Chamber of Commerce has
announced that the traditional gathering on the
Carthage Square for Halloween will take place on
Wednesday, October 28. The scheduling was
adjusted to coincide with the Carthage R-9 School
system which will have Halloween parties on that
day. The gathering on the Square will commence as
soon as school lets out. The official hours are
to be from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m.
Costume contests will be held
for five different age groups with awards for the
first, second, and third place winners. The
contests will be held on the Courthouse lawn.
Historically, over 1,000
youngsters participate in the event each year,
going door to door to businesses on the Square
for treats. Typically a like number of parents
negotiate the sidewalks along with younger
participants. Many of the parents also break out
in costume for the community gathering.
Almost the entire cost of the
promotion is borne by the business community on
the Square, mainly to supply the endless chain of
outstretched hands eager to fill their coffers
with sweets and their minds with memories of the
Historic Carthage Square.
Judge’s
Finding Highlights Risks of Abusive
Interrogations at Gitmo
by Christopher Flavelle, ProPublica
A few weeks ago, the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia
released a declassified version of a judge’s
ruling in the case of Al Rabiah, a Kuwaiti
citizen who has been held at Guantanamo for seven
years. The judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, found
that the government could not credibly support
its allegation that Al Rabiah was part of the
Taliban or al-Qaida, and that the evidence
against him wasn’t sufficient to justify his
continued detention. She ordered the government
to release Al Rabiah "forthwith."
But the judge’s opinion is
more than a legal document; it’s also a
window into the interrogation process at
Guantanamo and the risk that "enhanced
interrogation techniques" will produce false
information. Excerpts from the opinion are below.
Al Rabiah’s background.
Kollar-Kotelly describes Al
Rabiah as a 50-year-old father of four, who
graduated from the Air Service Training school at
Perth College, Scotland, with a degree in
aviation maintenance in 1981. He then went to
Kuwait Airways, where he worked until his
detention in 2001. At the time Al Rabiah was
captured, he was an overweight man in his 40s,
with "various medical ailments such as high
blood pressure and chronic pain in his neck and
lower back" and no military training, save
for two weeks of compulsory training in the
Kuwait Army until he was discharged for a knee
injury.
Al Rabiah often used his
vacations to perform humanitarian work in
impoverished or war-torn countries, the judge
writes, and it was to perform the same kind of
work that he traveled to Afghanistan in October
2001—an explanation that Kollar-Kotelly
writes is supported by the evidence. After he
tried to leave the country via Iran, whose border
guards denied him entry, Al Rabiah tried instead
to cross the Pakistani border, but he was
captured by villagers and turned over to the
Americans, who later transferred him to
Guantanamo.
The government’s evidence
against Al Rabiah was "surprisingly
bare."
The government’s case
against Al Rabiah initially rested on two main
pillars: allegations made against him by fellow
detainees and his own confessions. But in the
judge’s opinion, neither held any weight.
The judge’s ruling cites
four detainees who made allegations against Al
Rabiah. The names of his accusers are redacted,
as are the specifics of their allegations, but
Kollar-Kotelly explains her reasons for rejecting
them. The first accuser made statements that were
incorrect; the second made statements that
changed over time, and which the judge called
"demonstrably false"; the third seems
to have made statements about someone who was not
Al Rabiah; and the fourth made his allegations
only after one week of sleep deprivation,
exceeding the military’s own guideline
prohibiting sleep deprivation for more than four
days, "and he did not repeat this allegation
either before or after."
Kollar-Kotelly notes that the
government itself "withdrew most of its
reliance" on the witnesses against Al Rabiah
during the course of the trial. She writes that
their allegations are unreliable, writing,
"the Court finds that none of the alleged
eyewitnesses have provided credible allegations
against Al Rabiah." However, she calls it
"very significant that Al Rabiah’s
interrogators apparently believed these
allegations at the time they were made, and
therefore sought to have Al Rabiah confess to
them." That brings her to those confessions.
Al Rabiah’s confessions
were obtained only after his interrogators began
using "aggressive interrogation
tactics," at least one of which was
apparently used without proper authorization.
Kollar-Kotelly found that Al
Rabiah initially denied any involvement with
al-Qaida, even after he was told that
eyewitnesses had made allegations to the
contrary. Al Rabiah’s confessions began only
after his interrogators "began using more
aggressive interrogation tactics."
At least one of those tactics
"did not become authorized by the Secretary
of Defense for use at Guantanamo until April 16,
2003." The techniques approved by
then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on that
date included isolation, "dietary
manipulation," "attacking or insulting
the ego of a detainee" and
"environmental manipulation," including
"adjusting temperature or introducing an
unpleasant smell."
Whatever tactic was initially
used by Al Rabiah’s interrogators, they may
have broken the Defense Department’s rules
in applying it. The judge writes that at least
one of the tactics used on Al Rabiah "could
not be used on a detainee until ‘the
SOUTHCOM Commander ma[de] a determination of
‘military necessity’ and notif[ied] the
Secretary in advance’ of its use."
According to the judge, "the Government was
unable to produce any evidence that [REDACTED]
obtained authorization to use the [REDACTED]
technique," despite requests from the court
to produce that evidence.
Kollar-Kotelly writes that Al
Rabiah told the court that he made his
confessions "to reduce the abuse meted out
by his interrogators ‘to obtain confessions
that suited what [they] thought they knew or what
they wanted [him] to say.’" According
to the judge, Al Rabiah "maintained his
confessions over time because ‘the
interrogators would continue to abuse [him]
anytime [he] attempted to repudiate any of these
false allegations.’" The judge found
that Al Rabiah’s interrogators supported his
belief that if he did not confess, "his life
would become increasingly miserable."
Al Rabiah’s confessions
frustrated his interrogators, leading them to use
tactics that violated both the Army Field Manual
and the Geneva Conventions.
Instead of making his situation
easier, Al Rabiah’s confessions made it
worse. The judge writes that once Al
Rabiah’s interrogators decided his
confessions were implausible, they "became
increasingly frustrated … [A]s a result, Al
Rabiah’s interrogators began using abusive
techniques that violated the Army Field Manual
and the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the
Treatment of Prisoners of War."
The first of those techniques,
writes the judge, included "threats of
rendition to places where Al Rabiah would either
be tortured and/or would never be
found"—a violation of the Army Field
Manual’s prohibition on "threatening or
implying physical or mental torture."
To reinforce those threats,
Kollar-Kotelly writes, Al Rabiah’s
interrogators put him in the "frequent flier
program," which the judge describes
elsewhere in her opinion as a technique that
"prevented a detainee … from resting
due to frequent cell movements."
Kollar-Kotelly writes that this technique, like
threats of torture, violated the Army Field
Manual and the Geneva Conventions. Indeed, the
judge highlights the fact that the Army Field
Manual states that such techniques "can
induce the source to say what he thinks the
interrogator wants to hear."
Kollar-Kotelly writes that Al
Rabiah’s lead interrogator "was
disciplined for making similar threats during the
same period" toward another
detainee—one of the ones who was an alleged
eyewitness against Al Rabiah, in fact.
Al Rabiah was made to believe
that he needed to confess in order to go home.
Later in the opinion,
Kollar-Kotelly writes that "the evidence in
the record suggests that Al Rabiah repeated these
confessions in the false belief that it would
allow him to return to Kuwait." Al Rabiah
didn’t come to that conclusion by accident
alone. According to the judge, "there is
substantial evidence in the record that Al Rabiah
was led to believe that he needed to confess
something in order to be eligible to be returned
to Kuwait."
The judge’s rebuke.
Kollar-Kotelly writes that Al
Rabiah’s interrogators repeatedly concluded
that his confessions were not believable, and she
chides the government for using those confessions
as the basis for justifying his continued
detention at Guantanamo.
"Far from providing the
Court with credible and reliable evidence as the
basis for Al Rabiah’s continuous
detention," she writes, "the Government
asks the Court to simply accept the same
confessions that the Government’s own
interrogators did not credit."
"If there exists a basis
for Al Rabiah’s indefinite detention, it
most certainly has not been presented to this
Court. Al Rabiah’s petition for habeas
corpus is GRANTED."
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