2011-08-08 Torture Charges Go Forward Against Bush-Era Defense Secretary (from Nation of Change)

“A state of war is not a blank cheque for se­nior of­fi­cials to au­tho­rise tor­ture. The in­tegrity and se­cu­rity of our armed forces are [only] safe­guarded when those who vi­o­late our core prin­ci­ples and val­ues are held to ac­count,” Mi­lazzo told IPS.  

From cor­rup­tion to in­tel­li­gence to “in­ter­ro­ga­tion”

The Vance-Er­tel case ex­poses the myr­iad links be­tween pri­vate con­trac­tors, U.S. forces, U.S. gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and in­tel­li­gence agen­cies that often con­verge in the dark cells of de­ten­tion cen­tres such as Abu Ghraib, Guan­tanamo Bay and Camp Crop­per. 

Ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments, both Vance and Ertel were em­ploy­ees of the pri­vate U.S. gov­ern­ment con­trac­tor Shield Group Se­cu­rity at the time of their ar­rest, sta­tioned just out­side the so-called safe or ‘Green’ Zone in Bag­dad. 

In 2005 and 2006, Vance and Ertel be­came in­creas­ingly aware of cor­rup­tion within Shield Group Se­cu­rity, not­ing, among other sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­ity, that the com­pany was mak­ing pay­ments to Iraqi sheikhs – likely to “ob­tain in­flu­ence” with pow­er­ful local play­ers – and ac­cu­mu­lat­ing a cache of weapons that was flow­ing steadily to of­fi­cials from the Iraqi In­te­rior Min­istry, which had ties to armed mili­tias and death squads. 

Alarmed by sit­u­a­tion, Vance and Ertel began pass­ing in­for­ma­tion on the com­pany, some­times on a bi­weekly basis, to the Fed­eral Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion – until they were whisked away to Camp Crop­per in early April 2006 for “work[ing] for a busi­ness en­tity that pos­sessed weapons… on its premises and [being] in­volved in the pos­si­ble dis­tri­b­u­tion of these weapons to in­sur­gent/ter­ror­ist groups,” Ertel’s de­ten­tion no­tice read. 

Ac­cord­ing to the Chicago court’s de­ci­sion, the men then en­dured con­di­tions that were “per­fectly con­sis­tent with tor­ture treat­ments ap­proved by Rums­feld’s De­fense De­part­ment,” in­clud­ing liv­ing in cells whose walls were smeared with feces, being de­prived of food and water, forcibly kept awake in brightly lit rooms, and made to en­dure “in­tol­er­a­bly” cold tem­per­a­tures. 

“Even Sad­dam Hus­sein had more legal coun­sel than I ever had,” Vance told the New York Times in 2006, adding that he and Ertel wrote a let­ter to the camp com­man­dant claim­ing that, “the same de­mo­c­ra­tic ideals we [the U.S.] are try­ing to in­still in the fledg­ling de­mo­c­ra­tic coun­try of Iraq, from sim­ple due process to the Magna Carta, we are ab­solutely, pos­i­tively re­fus­ing to fol­low our­selves.” 

At the same time, First Lieu­tenant Lea Ann Fra­casso, spokes­woman for the Pen­ta­gon’s de­ten­tion op­er­a­tions in Iraq, in­sisted that the men had been “treated fair and hu­manely”, adding that there was no record of their writ­ten com­plaints.  

U.S. gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse

Rums­feld’s at­tor­neys at­tempted to dis­miss the law­suit on the grounds that the sec­re­tary of de­fense should enjoy im­mu­nity from crim­i­nal ac­tions. 

Rums­feld also claimed that the plain­tiffs should be de­nied rec­om­pense, since the vi­o­la­tion of their con­sti­tu­tional rights oc­curred in a war zone. 

The court re­jected the claim that gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials should be above the law, stat­ing in its final de­ci­sion, “We see no per­sua­sive jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in … case law or oth­er­wise for [Rums­feld’s] most sweep­ing ar­gu­ment, which would de­prive civil­ian U.S. cit­i­zens of a civil ju­di­cial rem­edy for tor­ture or even cold-blooded mur­der by fed­eral of­fi­cials and sol­diers, at any level, in a war zone.” 

“United States law pro­vides a civil dam­ages rem­edy for aliens who are tor­tured by their own gov­ern­ments. It would be star­tling and un­prece­dented to con­clude that the United States would not pro­vide such a rem­edy to its own cit­i­zens,” the de­ci­sion said. 

Civil lib­er­ties and human rights ad­vo­cates say that while the court’s de­ci­sion sends out an ex­tremely hope­ful mes­sage about ac­count­abil­ity and jus­tice, it is a sober­ing re­minder of the de­tainees who are ei­ther still lan­guish­ing in de­ten­tion cells or have yet to re­ceive any com­pen­sa­tion for the months, or even years, of their lives that may have been stolen by U.S. in­ter­roga­tors. 

“This is a good first step, but it would be even bet­ter if the ad­min­is­tra­tion au­tho­rised a full crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion into over­whelm­ing ev­i­dence of other in­stances of de­ten­tion and tor­ture,” An­drea Pra­sow, se­nior coun­sel in Human Rights Watch’s Ter­ror­ism and Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Pro­gramme, told IPS. 

In July, HRW pub­lished a de­tailed re­port on the mis­treat­ment of de­tainees under the ad­min­is­tra­tion of for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, which the group said pre­sented more than suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to war­rant crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions into the pos­si­ble com­plic­ity of top U.S. of­fi­cials like Rums­feld, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Ch­eney and George Tenet, then-di­rec­tor of the CIA.