Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 12 2005 (IPS) — The United States, which pursues a widely-criticised policy of transferring terrorist suspects to countries known to routinely torture prisoners, has come under fire from U.N. diplomats and human rights organisations.

”If (U.S. President George W.) Bush’s ambitious proposal to convert the world’s repressive regimes to multi-party democracies becomes a reality,” one Asian diplomat who declined to be named said sarcastically, ”the United States will run out of countries where prisoners could be tortured.”

Until then, he said, ”we should name and shame governments that outsource torturing.”

The New York-based Human Rights Watch did precisely that on Wednesday, when it singled out the United States for its policy of ”rendition.”

Under this policy, terrorist suspects have been transferred to countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Yemen and Uzbekistan – all candidates for U.S. multiparty democracy – for ”aggressive methods of persuasion” that are considered illegal in the United States.

Meanwhile a coalition of eight human rights organisations Thursday accused seven Western countries – the United States, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Sweden – of either transferring or attempting to transfer some of their prisoners to countries described in a coalition statement as ”the most abusive (of human rights) in the world.”

These transfers are to be made based on diplomatic assurances- sought specifically from Syria, Egypt and Uzbekistan- that prisoners will not be tortured or ill-treated.

But the coalition points out that the perceived need for assurances is in itself an acknowledgment that a risk of torture and ill treatment exists in the receiving country.

Moreover, the assurances are based on trust that a receiving state will uphold its promise not to ill-treat the person upon return when the state’s record of torture demonstrates there is no basis for such trust, it added.

The eight non-governmental organisations – including Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, Association for the Prevention of Torture, and International Federation for Human Rights – said that Western governments are undermining the global ban on torture by transferring prisoners to abusive countries.

The two most cited cases are those of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian engineer, and Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian holding Australian citizenship.

Arar was arrested as a suspected terrorist at New York’s Kennedy airport and deported to Syria while transiting to Canada. Subsequently released by the Syrian authorities, Arar accused the Syrians of brutal interrogation, including torture.

Habib, the second alleged terrorist suspect, has accused the United States of not only torturing him at the U.S. detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba but also of transferring him to Egypt where he was beaten up in prison.

HRW, in its report released Wednesday, documented over 63 cases in which so-called Islamic militants were transferred to Egypt for detention and interrogation. The practice dates back to 1994 but has accelerated since the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the report said.

Since the attacks, it added, the total number sent to Egypt could be as high as 200.

HRW’s Veronika Szente Goldston told IPS that the coalition has appealed for action by the U.N. Committee Against Torture, in session in Geneva through May 20.

”This is a longstanding concern of ours,” Goldston said, pointing out that Canada, one of the countries accused of this practice, is due to submit its own periodic report on torture to the U.N. committee’s current session.

She said if the charges came to be proved, the seven countries would be in violation of the 1994 U.N. convention against torture, a legally binding treaty.

Last week, the United States submitted its own periodic report to the committee saying it is opposed to torture, despite the widespread abuse of prisoners in the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Torture could be justified ”under no circumstance whatsoever, including war, the threat of war, internal political stability,” the U.S. report said.

Goldston said the 200-page U.S. report would be discussed when the U.N. committee meets again in November. ”We are studying the report and we will have a lot to comment on,” she added.

In a newspaper interview last January, U.S. President George W. Bush was unequivocal in denying U.S. use of torture and outsourcing of torture. ”Torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture,” he said.

But several delegates at the recently-concluded meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, said the United States had lost is moral authority to criticise other nations, judging by the widely publicised torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay.

In Thursday’s joint statement, the advocates’ coalition also called on governments to cease reliance on diplomatic assurances by governments receiving ”rendered” U.S. detainees as a safeguard against torture and abuse. It described these as ”empty promises of humane treatment upon return, sought only from governments with well-known records of torture.”

The statement further urged the international community to make clear that the use of diplomatic assurances in the face of risk of torture violates the absolute prohibition in international law against torture and ill treatment.

”This prohibition includes the obligation not to transfer people to places where they face a risk of such abusive treatment,” the coalition said.

No exceptions are allowed, even in times of war or public emergency, it added.