Use of Hooding, Electrodes and a Stun Baton? · 18 May 2007, 13:18 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In November 2006 Dutch daily de Volkskrant reported about the possible use of torture of Iraqi prisoners by the Military Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands (‘Militaire Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst’, MIVD) in buildings of the Coalition Provisional Authority in the town of Al-Samawah in 2003. (The Dutch army had occupied the southern Iraqi province of al-Muthanna as part of the Stabilisation Force Iraq (SFI) from July 2003 till April 2005.) A lot of political turmoil ensued after the report and the then Dutch government was forced to set up an inquiry into the matter (‘Van den Berg-Committee’). Last Tuesday’s edition of Dutch current affairs program NOVA says it laid hands on some findings of this inquiry (‘Het Feitenrelaas’), which will probably be published by the Van den Berg-Committee only sometime in June. According to these findings, NOVA says, captured Iraqi prisoners were hooded and besides water and noise a stun baton (‘electrodestok’) was used during their interrogations, which were carried out by the MIVD. According to a witness, military jurist Misha Geeratz, possible 5 to 10 prisoners were subjected to those interrogation techniques, all probably no longer than a few hours.
Unfortunately, the NOVA report remains unclear on some important issues. First of all, on the use of water and noise. Were water and noise used to deprive the prisoners of sleep or ‘just’ to intimidate or humiliate them? The report, for instance, shows a fragment of a paper with the line ‘keeping detainees awake with water’ (‘het wakker houden van gedetineerden met water’) without discussing or showing the context of the line. Because of this the fragment doesn’t prove anything at all. It might, for example, be that the paragraph of which the line is part of discusses the possibilty that the MIVD applied the technique of sleep deprivation only to reject this possibility as unlikely a few lines further on. To continue, the report discusses a disturbing message from the British headquarters in Basra to the Dutch: a detainee told the British he was ill-treated by Dutch soldiers during his interrogation. According to him water was thrown upon him and sounds were used as well as electrodes. Especially the latter suggests the use of outright torture by the Dutch. But the report also shows fragments of paper with lines with the word ‘stun baton’ (‘electrodestok’) in it. Apparently, the inquiry committee found two different torture tools which were possibly used by the MIVD: electrodes and a stun baton. The report mentions that a prisoner said he was ill-treated with electrodes. But what about the use of a stun baton? Are testimonies available in which the use of a stun baton is mentioned and, if so, how and on what scale were they used?
To conclude, the following is worth mentioning. The interrogations of Iraqi prisoners were performed by an MIVD lieutenant-colonel, two non-commissioned officers, both of the MIVD too, and an interpreter. Officially the MIVD wasn’t allowed to perform interrogations without the presence of a ‘military jurist’. Nevertheless, on October 17, 2003 a message came from ‘the Hague’, in which the military jurists ‘were requested to acquiesce in’ the fact that the MIVD determines who are allowed to be present during their interrogations. And so did the three MIVD officers according the report: they forbade others to attend at least some of their interrogations. ‘Some of their interrogations’ because the report doesn’t explicitly states that others were denied access to all of the MIVD interrogations.
al-samawah,
coalition provisional authority,
dutch army,
electrodestok,
hooding,
iraq,
mivd,
netherlands,
sleep deprivation,
stabilisation force iraq,
stun baton,
torture,
volkskrant
On Torture and Torture Lite · 10 December 2006, 13:36 CET by Charles Vermeulen
This week’s edition of Dutch magazine Intermediar includes an interesting report on the use of torture and ‘torture lite’. Reporter Chris Sprangers discusses what is considered acceptable and to what extent torture is effective. A tricky subject, in my opinion, for as Dahlia Lithwick stated a few months ago in ‘Photo Finish. How the Abu Ghraib photos morphed from scandal to law’, an article in Slate: "[A]ll the legalistic jive talk—the brazen congressional hairsplitting over abuse that results in ‘severe’ vs. ‘serious’ vs. ‘extreme’ pain – [is] numbing us to the reality of what remains unconscionable conduct." Nonetheless some findings from the author:
Torture lite vs torture – To start with, Sprangers distinguishes countries which apply grave mutilation to mishandle their prisoners and more ‘advanced’ countries which avoid mutilation, because these countries expect grave mutilation to cause bad publicity and / or juridical problems for the interrogator and others involved. Psychological tricks to disorient and scare a prisoner and ‘torture lite’, on the other hand, don’t leave permanent traces behind. The ‘lite’ component in ‘torture lite’ is deceptive, by the way: prolonged exposure to heat, cold, glaring light, loud music, deprivation of sleep, putting detainees in stress positions for a prolonged period of time can likewise be extremely painful. According to a CIA report (!), forcing detainees to stay for 24 hours on end in some cases caused ankles and feet to swell up to twice their original size and the forming of enormous blisters. Because of it moving became extremely painful, the heart rate increased and in some cases kidneys started to malfunction.
Does torture work? – First of all, if the intention is to intimidate people and to spread fear, it is successful. But when the aim of torture is to acquire vital information this is much less certain. According to Sprangers the Israeli’s claim they have prevented many bomb attack by breaching the Geneva Conventions. On the other hand, as the CIA Training Manual (of 1983?) admits, torture involves the risk that a prisoner could make a false statement to be released from pain, causing enormous delay when attempts are made to verify the statement and when it appears to be a false statement. According to some research, Spranger continues, only three to six percent of the informtion acquired by torture is reliable. As such torture is a very inefficient way of of gaining information. What’s worse, furthermore, is that torturing corrupts the torturer, it turns him or her into a sadist, one Professor Darius Rejali, which Sprangers quotes, states. And that’s not all: sooner or later the practices of the interrogaters will find its way to civilian society, as was the case as a result of the French-Algerian War (1954 – 1962) when torture found its way to the French police in the sixties of the past century.
abu ghraib,
chris sprangers,
deprivation of sleep,
geneva conventions,
sleep deprivation,
stress positions,
torture,
torture lite
Torture or No Torture? (4) · 19 November 2006, 21:07 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In today’s edition of discussion program Buitenhof Chief of Staff of the Dutch armed forces Dick Berlijn described what has happened, to his knowlegde, in Al-Samawah, Iraq: no high tones were used by the MIVD, but ‘some of background noise’ in order to avoid that detainees could communicate with each other, detainees were put on a blinded goggle and ‘water was thrown’, but neither high pressure syringes nor fire-engines were used. The latter seems to be a red herring of Berlijn, for it wasn’t the question if high pressure syringes were used, but if the detainees were wetted to keep them awake.
al-samawah,
buitenhof,
dick berlijn,
iraq,
mivd,
netherlands,
torture
Torture or No Torture? (3) · 18 November 2006, 08:18 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In a previous posting I mentioned professor Willem van Genugten who states that the applied interrogation methods of the MIVD amounted to torture. I failed to mention on what grounds the methods should be labeled ‘torture’, according to Van Genugten. In de Volkskrant, however, he underpinned his statement by referring to three articles of the third Geneva Convention:
Article 3 forbids ‘violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture’ and (...) ‘outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment’.
Article 13: ‘Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated’ (...) Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.
Article 14: ‘Prisoners of war are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honour.’
Update – Professor Frits Kalshoven, which I mentioned in the same, previous posting, agrees that the Convention prohibits the MIVD conduct, but denies, on the other hand, that it amounts to torture. In today’s edition of Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad (AD) Kalshoven stresses that ’(...) [t]orture is ever so much worse’.
frits kalshoven,
geneva convention,
kalshoven,
mivd,
netherlands,
torture,
van genugten,
volkskrant,
willem van genugten
Torture or No Torture? (2) · 17 November 2006, 17:54 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad professor M.T. Kamminga, specialized in international law, says that the MIVD methods reminds him of the interrogation technics which the British applied during the conflict in Northern Ireland. On 18 January 1978 (Ireland vs. the United Kingdom) the European Court of Human Rights condemned these technics as a violation of article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, ‘prohibition of torture’. Not because the technics amounted to torture, but rather to ‘inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. The British technics involved comprised ‘hooding’, ‘wall-standing’, ‘subjection to noise’, ‘deprivation of sleep’ and ‘deprivation of food’. The Netherlands is one of the signatories of the Convention.
deprivation of sleep,
hooding,
human rights,
iraq,
kamminga,
m.t. kamminga,
mivd,
netherlands,
sleep deprivation,
torture
Torture or No Torture? · 17 November 2006, 11:30 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Should sleep deprivation, exposing prisoners to extremely high sounds and glaring light be considered as torture or not? On Healing Iraq for the first time I learned about the methods used by Iraqi militia’s to torture their prisoners which involved electric drills. No one would deny this is torture. The methods used by the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) as described above, on the other hand, are clearly less bloody and, I assume, less painful. Also in de Volkskrant two Dutch experts have already gave their opinion about the matter and disagree with each other. Frits Kalshoven, a Dutch retired professor specialized in war-law, says this isn’t torture. Willem van Genugten, a professor whose field of expertise comprises international law and human rights, on the other hand, says it is torture according to international law. Who’s right? I’m not sure. Nonetheless, if the allegations are correct it’s clear that the MIVD set foot on a very slippery slope and the least thing one could say is that torture looms ominously on the horizon.
frits kalshoven,
human rights,
iraq,
kalshoven,
mivd,
netherlands,
torture,
van genugten,
willem van genugten
Dutch Tortured Too in Iraq · 17 November 2006, 07:23 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Today Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reports that the Military Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands (‘Militaire Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst’, MIVD) tortured dozens of Iraqi prisoners in buildings of the Coalition Provisional Authority in the town of Al-Samawah in 2003. The Dutch army had occupied southern Iraq province of al-Muthanna as part of the Stabilisation Force Iraq (SFI) from July 2003 shortly after Gulf War II till April 2005. The prisoners were put on goggles, as a result of which they couldn’t see anything. Intermittently their glasses were put of after which they were exposed to glaring light. To keep them awake they were wetted and their hearing was exposed to extremely high sounds. According to de Volkskrant even now retired Chief of Staff Luuk Kroon was informed about what was going on at the time, but Kroon chose to ignore the advise of Kees Neisingh, major-general of the military police, to propound it to the Counsel for the Prosecution (‘Openbaar Ministerie’ or ‘OM’). Whether Defence Minister Henk Kamp was informed remains unsure for the time being. De Volkskrant furthermore reports that according to some ‘secret memo’ of a juridical department of the Ministery of Defence the Dutch forces in Iraq weren’t even allowed to interrogate any one at all.
al-muthanna,
henk kamp,
iraq,
luuk kroon,
mivd,
netherlands,
sfi,
stabilisation force iraq,
torture,
volkskrant
BBC Survey on the Acceptability of Torture · 20 October 2006, 12:20 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In a survey for the BBC World Service ‘27,000 people in 25 countries were asked if torture would be acceptable if it could provide information to save innocent lives’. The survey results can be found here.