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Guantanamo Bay: Shaker's Story
UPDATE: SHAKER HAS BEEN RELEASED, BUT THIS STORY IS STILL AS TRUE AS IT IS SHOCKING.
‘I am dying here every day, mentally and physically’- Shaker Aamer
Meet Shaker Aamer. Although he puts on a brave face, Shaker is the last remaining British detainee in the notorious Guantanamo Bay, the US prison camp, which has illegally detained 779 men since 11 January 2002. Shaker was in fact one of the first detainees transferred to this hell-hole on that very day. He has never been charged with a crime or been given a trial. In 2007 Shaker was cleared for release from Guantanamo as a result of the unanimous agreement of various agencies of the US government. Despite this, Shaker remains detained, away from his wife and four children who live in London.
Amnesty International UK on behalf of Amnesty International, an international non-governmental organisation. Their vision is for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards. They are independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion.
They are concerned that Shaker Aamer, along with every single other human contained inside Guantanamo Bay is continuing to suffer the effects of years of brutal torture and solitary confinement, and the ongoing denial of adequate medical attention.
So what is Guantanamo bay?
Matt Pollard, Senior Legal Advisor for Amnesty International states quite rightly that, ‘Clearly in international armed conflicts, states can recognise people they capture as prisoners of war and hold them until the war is over. What’s happened in this case is the United States has defined for itself a kind of war that would seem to go on everywhere and forever, and then use that concept as the basis to assert the right to indefinitely detain people’
The war against terror, declared by George Bush, is not a legitimate war. Bush himself decried that the need to counter terrorism and keep people safe overrode the obligation to respect human rights.
We strongly disagree with this decision.
Guantánamo Bay was established in January 2002 as a place for the US authorities to hold people perceived to be ‘enemy combatants’ in this war on terror.
Amnesty International have no doubt that illegal detentions, unfair trials, torture, and degrading and inhuman treatment have taken place here.
779 men have been taken to the facility. Of these, only seven have been convicted, including five as a result of pre-trial agreements under which they pleaded guilty in return for the possibility of release from the base. These men took a leap of faith. This faith, along with all hope, was then dashed by the US government.
These men, including Shaker Aamer, faced trial by 'military commission'. The proceedings did not meet fair trial standards required by the ICRC customary rule Rule 100. This states that “no one may be convicted or sentenced, except pursuant to a fair trial affording all essential judicial guarantees.” Only one Guantánamo detainee has been transferred to the US mainland for trial in a civilian court.
Shaker is one of 16 men who remain in limbo at the camp. Like him, most of them have been denied their freedom despite never being charged, tried or convicted of any criminal offence. This is illegal.
To make matters worse, the treatment that Shaker and his fellow detainees are subjected to amounts to torture and inhuman treatment. There is no doubt about it.
The Justice Campaign has compiled a list of the torture techniques that are used on these men. This list reads as follows:
1. Sexual Assault/Humiliation
2. Sleep Deprivation
3. Sensory Deprivation
4. Solitary Confinement/Isolation
5. Mock Executions
6. Forced Medication
7. Use of Dogs to Scare Detainees
8. Temperature Extremes
9. Sensory Bombardment (Noise)
10. Watching Others Being Tortured
11. Psychological Techniques
Torture also occurred previous to Shaker’s detention in Guantanamo Bay. In fact, it is the reason he is there. After his abduction, Shaker was sold to various groups of soldiers before being transferred to US custody and rendered to Bagram Air Force Base in December 2001. There, he was tortured. Shaker was deprived of sleep and food, chained in excruciating positions for hours, doused in freezing water and had his head slammed against a wall for weeks on end. Desperate for the torture to end, Shaker confessed to whatever his captors accused him of. Satisfied with the confession of a man under torture, US forces transferred him to Guantanamo Bay on Valentine’s Day 2002 – the same day his youngest son was born.
The charity Reprieve report that while in Guantanamo, Shaker has often gone on hunger strike to peacefully protest the appalling conditions and brutal treatment to which he and other detainees are subjected. As a result of what the prison sees as his ‘non-compliance’, Shaker is confined to a 6 by 8 foot windowless cell and is frequently forced to undergo extended periods in solitary confinement.
Shaker’s treatment in Guantanamo has had a dire impact on his health. In 2014 independent doctor Emily Keram travelled to the prison to evaluate Shaker. In her subsequent report she described his debilitating headaches, asthma, and chronic urinary retention. Most recently, Cori Crider, Strategic Director at Reprieve and one of Shaker’s attorneys, also expressed her concerns, saying that he ‘cannot be recognized from the rotund photo of him with his children’.
The matter of which IHL instruments apply in this situation depends greatly upon how the relevant conflict may be classified under international humanitarian law. It is generally accepted that fighters of Al- Qaeda and the Taliban cannot be protected under the Third Geneva Convention since it only applies to properly uniformed military personnel and guerrillas who are part of a chain of command, wear distinctive insignia, bear arms openly, and abide by the rules of war.
The Third Geneva Convention deals with the treatment of prisoners of war, and article 4 of that Convention provide a definition for the individuals who are entitled to prisoner of war status. The general principle is that any member of the armed forces of a Party to a conflict is a combatant and any combatant captured by an adverse Party is a prisoner of war. The United States have not given the status of prisoners of war to the detainees. Amnesty Internnational agrees that these men are not PoW, but we assert this because this is not a legitimate war.
On this basis, the US use the argument that “terrorists who are not recognized as soldiers don’t deserve to be treated as soldiers”. Moreover, Bush Administration has declared that all practices employed for the purpose of combating and preventing terrorist acts to be “war on terror”. Amnesty International strongly disagrees with these statements, since the US uses them as a shield for treating the detainees in an inhumane manner contrary to basic standards of international human rights law.
The detainees are at least entitled to the protections afforded by the Fourth Geneva Convention or the Protection of Civilians. Furthermore, international human rights law will apply to all categories of prisoners, regardless of the status given to them by national governments.
The detainees are protected on the basis of Article 75 of Protocol I which states that no person in the power of a Party to an international armed conflict is outside the protection of international humanitarian law. Moreover, it reiterates the general rule that although combatants are obliged to comply with international humanitarian law, violations of those laws shall not deprive them from their status as combatants or from the right afforded to them to be regarded as prisoners of war. Moreover, Article 45 (3) of Additional Protocol I states that even if the person detained is not entitled to PoW status, but have taken part in the hostilities, then is still entitled to the basic protection provided in article 75.
Furthermore, article 14 (4) GC III states that any form of torture, physical or psychological is prohibited, and emphasizes that the overall duty to treat all prisoners of war humanely continues throughout the period of internment or detention. This only applies to PoW, but the general principle still stands.
Article 9 ICCPR prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention; and more precisely article 9 (4) states that anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that the court may decide on the lawfulness of the detention and order his release if the detention is unlawful.
Since the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities, there has been evidence of cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees, including acts of torture. “Torture or inhuman treatment” and “wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health” constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and are war crimes under the Statute of the International Criminal Court. Additionally, The Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg included “ill-treatment” of civilians and prisoners of war as a war crime.
Additionally, Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Subsequently, the Red Cross has created Rule 90 of IHL Customary Law, stating “torture, cruel or inhuman treatment and outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, are prohibited.”
Both Amnesty International and the Red Cross have released reports relating to the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Both reports contain evidence of torture methods used by US custodians. The 2007 Red Cross report focused around the treatment of 14 “high value detainees” and included clear evidence of torture and inhuman treatment.
Prolonged stress standing is an act in which the detainee is often naked, held with the arms extended and chained above the head, for periods from two or three days continuously, and for up to two or three months intermittently, during which period toilet access was sometimes denied resulting in allegations from four detainees that they had to defecate and urinate over themselves.
Exposure to cold temperature sees detainees subject to extremely cold cells or interrogation rooms, and by the use of cold water poured over the body or, held around the body by means of a plastic sheet to create an immersion bath with just the head out of the water.
Most of the high value detainees confirmed that they were subjected to these methods of torture during their captivity at Guantanamo Bay, along with continuous solitary confinement, suffocation by water, beatings by use of a collar, beating and kicking, confinement in a box, prolonged nudity, sleep deprivation and use of loud music, prolonged use of handcuffs and shackles, threats, forced shaving and deprivation/restricted provision of solid food.
Article 75 of Protocol 1 clearly states that torture of all kinds, whether physical or mental shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever, whether committed by civilian or by military agents. Furthermore, this same article offers protection for all detainees under the article, until their final release, regardless of their status as a protected person. Moreover, basic human rights afforded under Article 5 of the UDHR prohibit torture of any kind.
Thus, there is a clear violation of both IHL and basic human rights. This enforces the need to monitor the conditions within Guantanamo Bay in order to comply with IHL, and subsequently release such detainees as Shaker Aamer in order to grant them some basic human dignity and uphold their human rights.
I would like to end by emploring the US government to bring Shaker Aamer, and indeed the rest of the detainees, home. Shaker wants nothing more than to be able to go home to London and to meet his youngest son for the first time. How would you feel if this was you?