Detainees’ handling criticized

By Elizabeth Murtaugh

Associated Press

SEATTLE — Amnesty International leaders are vowing to keep pressuring the U.S. government to improve treatment of hundreds of detainees and prisoners of war held since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"Amnesty does not in any way suggest that the United States government does not have the right to arrest and prosecute those responsible for the crime against humanity that took place on Sept. 11," Charles Brown, who oversaw the organization’s crisis response following the terrorist attacks, said Sunday at the final day of Amnesty International USA’s annual meeting.

"But what we have made very clear," Brown said, "is that the United States has the responsibility to do that consistent with international and humanitarian law."

According to a recent Amnesty International report, more than 1,200 non-U.S. nationals — mostly Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent — were taken into custody in a sweep of arrests during the two months following the hijackings.

About 300 of those arrested are believed to remain in Immigration and Naturalization Service custody, a number that has been difficult to confirm, the report said, because "There continues to be a disturbing level of secrecy surrounding the detentions, which has made it difficult to monitor the situation.

"To date, the government has provided only limited data, which includes neither the names nor the places of detention of those held in post-Sept. 11 INS custody, and immigration proceedings in many such cases have been ordered closed to public scrutiny," the report said.

The U.S. Justice Department contends that releasing the names could endanger national security and the safety of the detainees themselves.

Headquartered in London, Amnesty International has more than 1 million members in 162 countries and territories. Its New York-based U.S. chapter has more than 300,000 members, and about 800 attended the Seattle meeting.

The group has long pressured governments around the world to ensure humane treatment of prisoners.

Rachel Ward, a researcher for Amnesty International USA’s executive director, read a letter Sunday written by an Egyptian man who has spent several months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since being arrested on a marriage-related immigration violation shortly after the attacks.

"I have now been in solitary confinement for 3 1/2months, and by the time of the next hearing, I will have been here for 4 months. If it hadn’t been for the (Koran) and prayer, I would have lost my mind or had a nervous breakdown.

"Why am I imprisoned? Why in solitary confinement? And why under maximum security measures? I have many questions and no answers. What are they accusing me of? Nobody knows."

The man still has not been released, Ward said, and the government has denied Amnesty International’s requests to visit him.

"Most of the detainees were cleared long ago by the FBI, and yet they’re languishing for months in facilities where their most basic rights are being violated," Ward said.

About 100 of the detainees have been charged with immigration violations, though none of those charged have been linked to any terrorist activity, Ward said.

Amnesty International also has voiced concerns about prison conditions at the Camp X-Ray facility at Guantanamo Naval Base.

During a 25-hour flight from Afghanistan to Cuba, prisoners were shackled, handcuffed and forced to wear mittens, surgical masks and ear muffs and goggles obscured with tape, and had their beards forcibly shaved, said Alex Arriaga, Amnesty International USA’s director of government relations.

In its report, Amnesty International also criticized the small, wire-mesh, open-air cells in which detainees are held for as much as 23 hours a day, as well as a requirement that detainees wear shackles whenever they are not confined to their cells.

"If the United States is in fact going to be a leader on human rights," Arriaga said, "we need to set a standard that we treat all individuals as we want to be treated."

U.S. Officials maintain that the detainees have been treated humanely.

Kathy Smith, an Amnesty International member from San Diego, said she has been disturbed hearing some people suggest that locking people up is the best way to ensure public safety in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

"The detainees … they are us," Smith said. "We should care about the human rights of others … because we want human rights for us when we travel abroad."

Because of the fear and furor that followed the attacks, Amnesty International officials say it’s often been challenging to convince government leaders that human rights are as important as national security.

After Sept. 11, Brown said, "in their grief and agony, many Americans responded by demanding violence. … What Amnesty had to do was note that the response needed to be measured. It needed to be considered and it had to be done in the context of human rights law."

"No one was ready to hear that message," Brown added. "And in many ways, people are still not ready to hear that message."