Posted on 08/05/2002 3:16:49 PM PDT by kattracks
MIAMI (Reuters) - Human rights advocates raised concerns on Monday over Pakistani intelligence agents interrogating Afghan war prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying Pakistan authorities have a "track record" of torture.
A six-member Pakistani team left for the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last week to interview 40 Pakistani prisoners and collect details about alleged links with al Qaeda and other militant organizations, a Pakistani government spokesman said.
Pakistani government sources said the team was led by a Foreign Office official and included representatives from civilian and military agencies, including the department responsible for dealing with terrorist threats and Pakistan's military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.
London-based human rights group Amnesty International, which has frequently criticized U.S. handling of the Guantanamo prisoners, said the questioning by Pakistani officials was "of particular concern given the track record the Pakistanis have on torture."
"The Pakistani authorities have a fairly atrocious record. In 1997, we documented more than 100 cases of death in custody resulting from torture," Amnesty spokesman Alistair Hodgett said.
Amnesty cited a State Department report on Pakistan's human rights, which said in March that Pakistani police "regularly torture, beat, and otherwise abuse persons" and "routinely use force to elicit confessions."
Asked if Amnesty believed the visiting delegates would physically abuse prisoners with U.S. military officials looking on, Hodgett said the concern was with subtler abuse, "for example threats against family members who remain in home countries."
"The number of violations that could take place depends on the imagination of the interrogator," he said.
Amnesty urged the United States to safeguard prisoners' rights by keeping careful transcripts showing who was present at the interrogations, how long and how frequently they were conducted and whether all present understood the language they were conducted in.
U.S. MILITARY DECLINES COMMENT
Lt. Col. Dennis Fink, a spokesman for the U.S. military task force conducting the interrogations at Guantanamo, declined to confirm or comment on the Pakistanis' visit.
Thirty-four more prisoners were sent to Guantanamo on Monday, putting the number held there at 598. Most were captured during the U.S.-led war against the al Qaeda network and Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, which sheltered the group blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
President Bush has authorized military tribunals that could be used to try some of the prisoners but none has been charged with a crime. Pentagon officials said their focus for now is to "get as much information out of them as possible to prevent further attacks on the United States."
Several other nations have said they sent delegations to visit their citizens held at Guantanamo, including Kuwait, Australia, Britain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. It was unclear whether the visits were strictly consular or whether they also participated in interrogations.
Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross meet with the prisoners and monitor their conditions. But in keeping with long-standing policy, an ICRC spokesman declined to comment publicly on the interrogations or the prisoners' treatment.
Members of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch spoke with some of those officials after they visited Guantanamo and said none had suggested their nationals were being physically mistreated, spokesman Tom Malinowski said.
"The larger concern that we've had and others have had is not so much the way these people are being treated ... it's the prospect of indefinite detention without charge."
Human Rights Watch supports prosecution of any Guantanamo prisoners if there is evidence linking them to the Sept. 11 attacks or other acts of terrorism, Malinowski said.
"What we don't want to see is for any one to disappear into a black hole and increasingly the administration seems to be arguing that Guantanamo is a black hole. It's a place beyond the reach of any law," Malinowski said.
The Bush administration has said the prisoners are "enemy combatants" with no rights under the U.S. legal system. U.S. courts have repeatedly agreed, saying they have no jurisdiction over foreign citizens held at Guantanamo because the base is outside U.S. sovereign territory.
Copyright 2002 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved.
Well, so is the rest of Cuba. Why are you outraged now?
That sounds like the right type of people who 'should be' interrogating these pieces of debris IMO.Besides, they'll be using their own methods to get info out of these guys,not necessarily ones the US approves of.(at least in public I mean)
HELLO? ANYONE HOME?
These are Pakistanis interviewing Pakistanis, under U.S. auspices. Give it a friggin' rest already!! Pahleeze.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.