Feed aggregator

August 29, 2017 (JUBA) – The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday announced the appointment of Alain Noudéhou from Benin as his Deputy Special Representative in the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).

Alain Noudéhou, the Deputy Special Representative in the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (Getty)

Noudéhou will, in his new post, also serve as United Nations Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator and Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The new deputy head of South Sudan mission succeeds Eugene Owusu of Ghana, who completed his assignment in July 2017.

The Secretary-General, in a statement, said he was grateful for Owusu's dedicated service with the United Nations in South Sudan.

Currently the Chief of Staff and Director of the Executive Office of UNDP in New York, Noudéhou reportedly brings to the position experience in international development and humanitarian affairs.

He previously served as the UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in the People's Republic of China (2014-16) and UN Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Zimbabwe (2010-2014), the UN said.

The official, had in the past, also served as UNDP Country Director in Tanzania in 2007 and served as UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Rwanda in 2004.

However, prior to joining the United Nations, he reportedly worked in senior positions from 1996 to 2002 for then CHF International Inc., an international non-governmental entity, currently named Global Communities, Partners for Good.

(ST)

By Mahmoud A. Suleiman

This is a review article. The restive region of Darfur in western sudan is no stranger for the NCP regime‘s unabated targeting. This time the regime decided to declare a frenzied campaign to collect arms from the Sudanese civilians in the region, who have suffocated woes of endless civil wars of attrition. The purpose of the term review study is to look at what was recently written about the intention of the National Congress Party (NCP) regime's timing to collect weapons from the citizens of Sudan in the Darfur region to address some of the written views on this subject so far.

People wonder and ask the President of the regime of the (NCP), Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, as to which one is of a top priority at this very time, the cholera epidemic that has spread throughout Sudan and hit eleven states or the arms collection campaign in the Darfur region? The current situation so-called arms collection is threatening fierce tribal war woes and causing bitterness among the regime's two militias groups led by Musa Hilal, leader of the Border Guards Forces (BGF) and Muhammad Hamdan Dogolo Hamedti, head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Omar Bashir and his entourage, led by his Janjaweed Vice President Hassabo Abdul Rahman, remain blind and live in the darkness of their regime, which has failed to properly manage the country and its people. The elements of this regime seem suffering from a syndrome of Immunity against learning from deadly repeated mistakes despite the rule of three lean decades. We seek refuge and resort to God from the evils of the elements in the ruling regime of the (NCP) and their inhumane feelings towards the people of Sudan generally and to the people of Sudan in Darfur in particular.

Furthermore, it was a priority that the (NCP) regime sought to address the floods that swept through Sudan, including Khartoum International Airport, and made the planes sink into the mud! There are lots issues of important priority in Sudan that needs to be addressed, but Omar al-Bashir has chosen instead the awesome intertribal warfare of a catastrophic apocalyptic scale.

As for saying that the source of arms in Darfur is the regime in Khartoum comes from the interest of the regime in weapons, which led to the use of Iran and North Korea in developing its program aimed at developing the manufacture of weapons locally and then the establishment of the Yarmouk factory bombed by Israeli air force. Iran played a major role in the manufacture of Sudanese weapons.

Observes ask as to why the bombing of the Yarmouk factory in Sudan and why the Israeli attempted to weaken Khartoum militarily? The possible answer is that the Yarmouk factory bombardment in the Sudanese capital Khartoum targeted by Israel for an alleged sophisticated weapons shipments was underway at the time.

The Yarmouk military complex located near Khartoum, which was bombed by four Israeli warplanes after 5 minutes on midnight on Oct. 24, 2012 was finally producing Iranian Shihab-type surface-to-surface ballistic missiles under a license from Tehran, military and intelligence sources told the Israeli website Deepak Vaile. But the sources of Western intelligence did not specify what kind of Shahab missiles produced by Sudan ... But it is believed that the purpose of the production of the Yarmouk plant is to serve Iran's strategic stockpile of these missiles in the event of ballistic arsenal suffered an Israeli air strike ???? https://www.facebook.com/TWMDS/posts/611479558935283

Furthermore, China has invested more than $20 billion in Sudan mostly in the oil sector during the past two decades. Beijing provides low-interest loans and weapons transfers in return for oil. This is an extract from the news item regarding China's Vice-Premier arrives in Khartoum to discuss debt settlement. http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article63341

The (NCP) regime has begun reaping the disastrous results of armament of some tribes in Darfur and sending some of them to the holocaust war in Yemen. The situation in Darfur has been strained as a result of the conflict between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Border Guards Forces (BGF) as well as the growing tension in the Libyan and Chadian borders.

It is difficult to imagine how on earth that the Administration of US President Donald Trump would make an informed decision and issuing an Executive Order (EO) on 12/13 October 2017 to remove all economic and trade sanctions imposed by former US President Bill Clinton since the year 1997 with the pre-conditions to desist hostilities without independent monitors on the ground. The pre-conditions for permanent sanction removal include: Sudan to allow more humanitarian aid and unfettered access across war zones, counterterrorism cooperation with the United States, an end to hostilities against armed groups in Sudan and halting support for insurgents in neighbouring South Sudan.

Ironically, Sudan under the (NCP) regime Continues to Import and Export Arms despite Embargoes, according to informed sources. https://nubareports.org/sudan-insider-sudan-continues-to-import-and-export-arms-despite-embargoes/

As Salah Jalal, writing in the Hurriyat electronic Newspaper said that the weapons that the National Congress Party (NCP) regime wants to collect from the Darfur region is Achilles' heel! One would endorse that opinion and reiterate it as nothing but a fait accompli at best and pouring the dust into the eyes at worst. http://www.hurriyatsudan.com/?p=227829

It is noteworthy before going further to pinpoint the following prior to delving into the depth of the upcoming article:
• The blokes in ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) did not occur to their mind during the length of their stay on the helm of Sudan as to why the arms have spread in the Darfur region and how to remove those reasons before starting to collect the alleged weapons.
• We must consider the reasons that led ordinary citizens to acquire and carry arms, and ask ourselves as to whether those reasons have disappeared, and if they still exist, how best to remove them.
• The ruling regime must respond to these questions, which impose themselves before jumping into the dark and trying to collect weapons recklessly lacking scientific and practical outcome.
• The logical question is: Have the right circumstances been created to collect weapons; the logical question posed by an article in the electronic Newspaper of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) dated 24.08.20.2017.
http://www.sudanjem.com/2017/08/%D9%87%D9%84-%D8%AA%D9%87%D9%8A%D8%A3%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B8%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%81-%D9%84%D8%AC%D9%85%D8%B9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AD%D8%9F/#more-134765

Political analysts say it would have been better for the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) regime to disarm its own militias. They also stressed the importance of taking the step to achieve comprehensive peace in Darfur and beyond prior to launching this campaign which will result in failure as the overall security projects of the regime in the past and perhaps in the future. The people of Sudan in Darfur support the collection of weapons in principle and call on the regime to begin to collect weapons from its militias. The Darfur armed movements will then collect weapons in the hands of their forces once comprehensive peace archived in Sudan, including Darfur. The cherry-picking project of the (NCP) regime is doomed for abject failure similar to its predecessors. Unfortunately, this regime does not take lessons from the repeated the failures of its security projects, which lack wisdom and rationality and have a disastrous outcome for the country and its people. It was also said that the regime of the (NCP), which emanates from the International Muslim Brotherhood Movement (MBM), is like the family of the French Bourbon kings who failed repeatedly to take lessons of their mistakes, as the European history told us.The House of Bourbon e -French Maison de Bourbon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Bourbon

This review article comes as a continuation to what we have started in the previous article on the decision of the NCP ruling regime to collect the alleged unlicensed weapons from the people of Sudan in Darfur. We will continue and try to expose the hidden agenda behind the campaign whose true motives are far from those announced. One of the most important factors for the epidemic proliferation of weapons in the Darfur region is the advent of the ill-fated National Islamic Front (NIF) which carried and brought with it all the disasters and woes that Sudan and its people suffered from.

The attempt by the ruling regime of the National Islamic Front (NIF) to take the militias and mercenaries from the neighbouring countries as a means of proxy war in Darfur has started from the very beginning of its disastrous arrival through the heinous military coup d'état. In order to do that, the regime had to provide the militias with military equipments in the form of machine guns, ammunition, vehicles, uniforms, food and drink and other forms of items subsistence including financial aid. At the same time, the regime under the auspices their member and Governor of the Greater Darfur, El-Tayeb Mohmed Kheir -aka Tayeb Sikha who launched a campaign for arms collection from the civilian population in Darfur at the time but Al-Tayeb Muhammad Khair armed the Arab tribes of Baggara to confront the revolutionary Dawood Yahya Bolad. The martyr Daoud Yahya Bolad has realized the mistake of belonging to the National Islamic Front (NIF). He decided to align to his marginalized people in Darfur that his people by joining the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) led by the late Dr. John Garang Mabior and led his troops to Darfur. However, through conspiracy by some of Darfuri traitors Daoud Yahya Bolad was captured and extra judicially killed. Those who assassinated Bolad had been armed by the (NIF) regime despite his past loyalty to the Muslim Brotherhood Movement (MBM). Ever since the (NCP) regime supplied the Arab militia with arms which it claims that going to collect. Thus the paradox continued unabated.

As early as the year 2007 Sudan under the reign of the National Islamic Front (NIF)/ National Congress Party (NCP) regime has been classified among the failed states. According to arthroscope website http://s1.zetaboards.com/anthroscape/topic/977436/1/ Sudan emerged as the world's most unstable country according to the 2007 Failed States Index, mainly due to its military dictatorship and the ongoing war in Darfur between farmers and nomadic settlers. In other words, 18 years of oppressive warmongering regime, Sudan had become one of the globally failed states. However, the degree of failure today of the Sudan under the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) led by the genocidal criminal, fugitive from the international justice, chased by the International Criminal Court (ICC) Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, will be very difficult if not impossible to determine the degree of failure in 2017 today.

The second stage of the racial hatred of Darfur people by the National Congress Party (NCP) regime surfaced when it decided to strip the Darfur Native Administration of its age long powers that kept the region safe place for all the inhabitants. As we know, the Tribal leaders in the region of Darfur's Civil Administration before the ill-fated coming of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement (MBM)/National Islamic Front (NIF) military coup d'état included Sultans, Kings, Shartay, Umdas(Mayors) and Sheikhs. The Friday 30th June 1989 Military coup d'état took place in the forefront of the goal of dismantling the traditional Darfurian structure and reformulating the Darfur society. It was the first to control the institutions of the local administration by removing the old ones to build the so-called “Umara” or ‘princes' system instead of the principals, aforementioned. The weakening of the authority of the civil administration in Darfur by the military ruling regimes has accelerated the spread of crime and security chaos and the proliferation of unauthorized weapons in the hands of the lawless individuals among the tribal groups.

The source of arms in Darfur
The flow of firearms into Darfur initially started as a result of the civil war in the neighbouring republic of Chad and the Chadian-Libyan conflict (Ben Omar forces). The quantities of weapons that were leaked were limited. Their influence was limited to the arrival of arms to some criminal gangs, which were used for armed robbery – the infamous Nahab Musallah.

At the beginning of 2002, the armed political conflict in the Darfur region erupted. The regime decided to confront popular violence with state institutions. For objective reasons, official government violence institutions have not been able to control the popular violence demanding justice in the distribution of wealth and power throughout the marginalized areas of Sudan. The National Salvation - the ruling regime of the National Islamic Front - after several defeats facing the SPLM mobilized counter-popular, and began arming the Arab tribes called Janjawid using the policy of divide the division of the tribes of Darfur to the Arabs and Africans, Arabs against black.

As a result of these political reasons, the tribes considered by the government loyal to the militias armed with the knowledge of the state, and the term of the Rizeigat militia Abla and other armed militias, this reality opened the appetite of the other tribes to arm themselves to defend their property, expanding the arms market and flourished in all the cities of Darfur, In its project, it codified the activity of militias as a legal activity protected by political power. The government formed and armed these militias with different factions, including for example the border guards force (BGF) led by Sheikh Musa Hilal of the Mahameed tribe Arab Mahameed clan, a branch of the Northern Rizeigat tribe many of them are Um Jalloul, Al-Muhajiriya, Al-Iteifat, Al-Ereigat and others from Abla, the camel herders. Musa Hilal is originally Um-Jalloul while Mohmed Hamdan Dogolo Hamitti is originally Mahariya. They maybe cousins descend from the Mahamid or the northern Rizeigat. Both are nomadic camel herders lived in the North Darfur District of Kutum. Generally speaking, the nomadic camel herders had no "hawakir" (land grants).

In addition to support given by the NCP ruling regime in the form of arms, ammunition and transportation for the Janjaweed militias, the (NCP) regime allowed the Janjaweed militias to have exclusive ownership of all the spoils of their ethnic warfare and all the invasions of the citizens' property, in addition to border trade and livestock trade and national mining. Historically, they are Bedouin engaged in nomadic herding. They are unlike the main Baggara Rizeigat tribes of Darfur were awarded "hawakir" (land grants) by the Fur Sultans in the 1750s.

But the ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP), which called itself the National Salvation Revolution, codified militia activity as a legal activity protected by political power. This reality opened the appetite of the rest of the tribes for armaments, the arms market expanded and flourished in all the cities of Darfur. The government entered into its project to commit crimes of genocide to put down the revolution of the people of Sudan in Darfur, who had been demanding only the rights of citizenship in the form of justice and equality.

Musa Hilal revealed his rejection of large amounts of money offered by foreign parties to leave the Sudan and said that the accusations of the Vice President of the Republic of the recruitment of 1,000 people from the Mahamid for the forces of Haftar in Libya malicious and its goal to discredit the Revolutionary Awakening Council.

And since Sheikh Musa Hilal and his militia have some independence in the administration of the establishment of the interests it established, this independence of course did not satisfy the ruling regime of the National Congress Party, which decided to converge on one of the soldiers of Musa Hilal, Muhammad Hamdan Dogolo, -aka Hamitti. Now, Mohammed Hamdan Dogolo, famously known as Hmidty is of the guerrilla of the guerrillas in the official newspapers which published that the commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) made a donation of about twenty Landcruzer l vehicles to the elders of the civil administration, and donated to build schools and other maintenance. It is known that Hmidty has been promoted to the military rank of Lieutenant –General. And thus he became part of the Sudan army Force (SAF) he and his militia and take orders only from the President of the ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) Marshal Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir. Today, Hamedti and his (RSF) militias are only responsible in front of Omar al-Bashir and are considered a red line!
Political observers indicate that the government of the National Congress Party (NCP) decided to step closer to Mohammed Hamdan Dogolo and set up the Rapid Support Force (RSF) led by Hamidati In an attempt to offend the leader of the Border Guard militia, Sheikh Musa Hilal. Al-Bashir's government chose one of Musa Hilal's former boys to become a leader of the new militia, to send a message that says in a clear way to Sheikh Moses I am the one who makes the king! According to the press, Moussa Hilal himself came to the spotlight when the former First Vice-President of the National Congress Party, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, released him from Kober Prison where he was imprisoned for the crime in which he was convicted in 1998 for leading armed robbery against the Central Bank of Nyala in which one policeman was killed. As the Sudan Tribune electronic Newspaper on TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2008 stated and said “Musa Hilal from a convicted felon to a government official”! http://www.sudantribune.com/PROFILE-Musa-Hilal-from-a,25660

The foregoing excerpts depict the intensity and high degree of rapprochement between the Janjaweed militias that committed the most heinous crimes against the Sudanese citizens in the Darfur region and the genocidal criminal Omer al-Bashir; what happened and continues happening on the ground in Darfur is without a doubt the greatest witness before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Nevertheless and according to the recent newspaper outlet reports an armed confrontation on the horizon between the government army and Musa Hilal. Matters between the tribal leader, Musa Hilal, and the regime led by Omer al-Bashir have reached the point of no return, amid strong fears of an armed confrontation between the two sides. Al-Bashir's Vice President Hassabo Abdel Rahman accused Hilal of conspiring with Libyan General Khalifa Haftar to undermine the Khartoum regime. Hassabo has been reported as saying (if we had to face Musa Hilal, we will not leave his conspiring with Haftar).

Musa Hilal, head of the Revolutionary Awakening Council (RAC) told Radio Aafia Darfur station on that he would strongly oppose a government plan aimed at disarming his forces and merging them into the Rapid Support militia. Hilal has been reported as continued describing the members of the Rapid Support (RSF) Militia, as mercenaries coming from outside the border (as he put it). On August 23, 2017 The Sudanese regime President Omer al-Bashir has been reported as has instructed the governor of North Darfur State, Abdul Wahid Yousef Ibrahim to deal decisively with any attempts to destabilize security and saying that the collection of illegal arms is a top priority for the government.

In a situation similar to show of force, thousands of supporters of Musa Hilal gathered in his stronghold of Misteriha in North Darfur state and announced in a speech campaign of readiness to confront the government armies head-on. The parade featured hundreds of four-wheel-drive vehicles loaded with guns. The Sudanese Revolutionary Awakening Council led by Sheikh Musa has been reported to have called on the “sons of the Rizeigat” in the Sudanese government army to join Sheikh Musa Hilal in his area, Misteriha.

For its part, the Sudanese army conducted the largest internal maneuver in its history, under the banner in the name (Meram Taja, the sister Sultan Ali Dinar) near the strongholds of Musa Hilal, with the participation of tanks and the air force. Furthermore, to escalate its campaign of muscle flexion, the (NCP) regime launched the decision to collect arms from citizens in the troubled Darfur region since 2003 amid deep suspicion that the main objective of the government's campaign is to weaken Musa Hilal and form new power centers.

Thus, on these days Moussa Hilal and the ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) have reached a boiling point where Moussa Hilal led a campaign against the vice-president of the National Congress Party. Musa Hilal, the head of the Awakening Council, continued his attack on government symbols, in particular Hassabo Mohammed Abdul Rahman who is tasked with the collection of weapons from the Darfur region. Moreover, Hilal started his attacks against the commander of the Rapid Support Force (RSF) Mohammed Hamdan Hamiditi. He said that Hamidati and his gang looted millions of dollars allocated by Gulf States to the Rapid Support Forces. As the popular Sudanese proverb says, if the thieves disagree, the stolen one appears. And thus each one of the militia leaders is insulting the other with obscene words that cannot be mentioned in this field. Nevertheless, this is evidence that the relationship between them reached the level of enmity and the point of no return. As they say that the so-called Barragesh committed the crime against itself! The ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) has a habit of finding something that can cause the distraction of the Sudanese people away from the real issues of concern. By doing so, the regime thinks that can help to overcome its endless problems, its chronic failures and its inability to run the country. Moreover, these dilemmas stem from the fossilized mentality that does not take lessons from the history of repeated fatal mistakes, despite the length of time that Omar al-Bashir remained on the helm of Sudan for three decades as absolute dictator. The (NCP) rule of Sudan is without any doubt is a true era of the decadence characterised by hatred, racism, tyranny, Corruption, failure, looting and plundering of the people's money and heinous crimes against humanity, war crimes and on top the crimes of genocide in Darfur. As they say it is witnessed by a witness from his family: the electronic newspaper – Hurriyat reported that, Brigadier General Salah Mohammed Ahmed Karrar - nicknamed Salah Dollar - One of the leaders who carried out the coup d'état of Friday June 30, 1989, led by the National Islamic Front (NIF) confirmed the validity of the slogan which says “Kizan are thieves and I am among them!” The Sudanese Arabic Kizan is an acronym meaning members of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement (MBM) in Sudan. There is no way out of the chronic dilemmas and the crises in Sudan without the demise of the (NCP) regime by all means available to the people of Sudan.

Oscar Wilde Oscar the Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel has been quoted as saying: “I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/hypocrisy

Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman is an author, columnist and a blogger. His blog is http://thussudan.wordpress.com/

L'Organisation internationale pour les migrations (OIM) œuvre avec les autorités libyennes pour davantage venir en aide à de migrants secourus au large des côtes de la Libye.

The United Nations migration agency is working with Libyan authorities to help rescue more migrants off the Libyan coast.

Amid a funding shortage that has forced the reduction of rations for some 320,000 refugees in north-west Tanzania, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today said that it urgently requires $23.6 million to guarantee the food and nutritional needs through December.

The United Nations Security Council has strongly condemned the latest ballistic missile launch by the Democratic People&#39s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which flew over Japan, as well as the series of launches that took place on 25 August.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has urged all countries to sign and ratify a global treaty that bans nuclear explosions on the Earth&#39s surface, in the atmosphere, underwater and underground.

Alarmed at renewed fighting and incitement in the wake of the attacks on Myanmar security forces in northern areas of Rakhine state, the top United Nations human rights official today urged all sides to renounce the use of violence and called on State authorities to ensure they abide by their obligations under international human rights law.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today reiterated his call for a political solution to the Middle East conflict that would end Israel&#39s occupation of Palestinian land and would create an independent Palestinian state, living side by side with Israel in peace and security.

The United Nations migration agency is working with Libyan authorities to help rescue more migrants off the Libyan coast.

The United Nations aid chief released today $45 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to four countries &#8220struggling in crises away from the headlines&#8221 &#8211 Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Chad and Sudan &#8211 where more than 21 million people need urgent humanitarian assistance.

The United Nations is reacting to the devastating images from Tropical Storm Harvey, which has affected an area the size of Spain in the southern United States, and which is likely to worsen in the coming hours as the rain continues.

August 28, 2017 (JUBA) - The head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan has expressed sympathy to the family and friends of Christopher Allen, an American freelance journalist killed during fighting in Kaya, a South Sudan town near the Ugandan border.

Christopher Allen (The War Zone Freelance Project)

“We would like to pass on our deepest condolences to the family, colleagues, and friends of Christopher Allen for their loss. His death while reporting on the conflict in South Sudan is a tragedy,” said David Shearer, also Special Representative of the Secretary-General.

Allen is the tenth journalist to have died in South Sudan since 2012.

“UNMISS has repeatedly stated that any attacks on journalists are unacceptable and it calls on all parties to the ongoing conflict in South Sudan to respect the freedom of the press,” stressed Shearer.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned last week's killing of the American freelance journalist in South Sudan, urging authorities in the war-torn nation to investigate the incident and ensure those responsible are held accountable.

Jehanne Henry, a senior Africa researcher at the rights body, described Allen's killing as a violation of international humanitarian law.

A 2013 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Allen was reportedly involved with Sudan's rebel forces for the past week. Before his South Sudan visit, however, he covered the war in Ukraine.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in South Sudan since the conflict broke out in 2014, and over a million have fled across the border into Uganda because of the fighting within the border area.

(ST)

August 28, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - The Sudan People's Liberation Movement/North led by Abdel-Aziz al-Hilu (SPLMN al-Hilu) said it has dispatched a delegation to meet with the African mediation in Addis Ababa.

Mbeki speaks to participants at the inaugral session of Strategic Consultations Meeting in Addis Ababa on 18 March 2016 (AUHIP Photo)

In a statement extended to Sudan Tribune, SPLMN-al-Hilu spokesperson Arnu Ngutulu Lodi said the delegation has arrived in Addis Ababa on Monday to meet with the African Union High Implementation Panel (AUHIP).

According to Lodi, the delegation is comprised of Amar Amon Daldoum as chairman, Abdallah Ibrahim Abas as deputy chairman, Ahmed Abdel-Rahman Saeed as rapporteur as well as Kuku Gagdoul, Sila Musa Kangi and Al-Jack Mahomud as members.

He stressed the delegation doesn't intend to negotiate with the regime as reported in some media, saying its task is to update the AUHIP on the situation in areas under the Movement's control in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan states in particular and the Sudanese crisis in general.

“The delegation also will correct some misinformation and clarifies the facts that others [SPLMN-Agar] are trying to distort and blur. In addition, the delegation will explain the procedures and preparations process for the upcoming extraordinary national convention,” he said.

The head of the African Union office in Khartoum Mahmoud Kan said on Wednesday that an expert-level meeting with the SPLMN al-Hilu will be held in Addis Ababa on 28 August.

The Sudanese army has been fighting the SPLM-N rebels in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan, also known as the Two Areas since 2011.

Talks between the two sides for a cessation of hostilities and humanitarian access are stalled since last August. The SPLM-N demands to deliver 20% of the humanitarian assistance through a humanitarian corridor from Asosa, an Ethiopian border town.

But the government rejects the idea saying it is a breach of the state sovereignty and a manoeuvre from the rebels to bring arms and ammunition to their locked rebel-held areas in the Two Areas.

The SPLM-N is now divided into two factions: one in the Nuba Mountains led by al-Hilu and the other in the White Nile State led by Malik Agar. The rift emerged several months ago over the right of self-determination and other issues.

SPLMN al-Hilu vowed not to engage in any talks with the government before to hold a general conference scheduled for next October and restructure the group.

On the other hand, Agar's group said they are only ready for talks on the humanitarian assistance but refuses any discussions on the political agenda.

The meditation met recently with Agar and his group's secretary general Yasir Arman to discuss ways to resume peace talks.

(ST)

August 28, 2017 (JUBA) - South Sudan President Salva Kiir may have granted general amnesty to all his political opponents, their supporters and those who participated in the country's civil war, but the pardon did not apply to rebel leader Riek Machar's former spokesperson, James Gatdet Dak who is in jail.

James Gatdet Dak, Riek Machar's spokesperson 'Reuters photo)

The presidential spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny told Sudan Tribune that the amnesty does not cover Dak because he did not respond to it and came to the South Sudan capital, Juba under a different circumstance.

“Gatdet is not covered by the general amnesty. He came to Juba under different circumstance. The case is already before the court, so the president can not intervene before the court makes a decision,” said Ateny.

“It is within the jurisdiction of the court to either convict or acquit him”, he added.

The former rebel spokesperson was kidnaped in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi in November last year and deported to Juba after Kenyan authorities approved his deportation, despite outcries and protests.

Last week, Dak appeared in a court restricted to the public and charges brought against him include; inciting violence (Article 52), treason (Article 64), disseminating false information to the detriment of South Sudanese national security (Article 75), and insulting the president (Article 76) under the South Sudanese Penal Code of 2008.

Barely a month ago, South Sudan released at least 30 political prisoners following an amnesty President Kiir had declared in May to facilitate the national dialogue initiated to reconcile warring parties.

Analysts say the move to free detainees without any precondition demonstrated Kiir's determination to resolve the country's civil war.

South Sudan has experienced violence since December 2013 when political disagreements between President Kiir and the country's former First Vice-President saw the nation split along ethnic dimensions.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and over two million displaced in the country's worst ever violence in its post-independence period.

(ST)

August 28, 2017 (WASHINGTON) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is planning to end the position of special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan disclosed CNN in a report released on its website on Monday.

According to the cable news network, the special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan " will be subsumed under the Bureau of African Affairs".

The CNN said Tillerson detailed his plan to eliminate or reduce special envoy positions at the State Department in a letter sent to Senator Bob Corker, the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

"I believe that the Department will be able to better execute its mission by integrating certain envoys and special representative offices within the regional and functional bureaus," Tillerson wrote in his letter to Corker, adding "and eliminating those that have accomplished or outlived their original purpose," CNN reported.

The cancellation of the Bureau of the Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan may not affect the engagement of the U.S. administration in the two troubled countries where Washington used to play a significant role in the ongoing efforts to end the armed conflict there.

However, it may send a wrong a wrong message to the governments in Khartoum and Juba, because it may be perceived as an expression of Washington's disengagement from the peace processes in the region.

The move includes several other special envoys position in Africa, Syria, North Korean human rights issues and others. However, Tillerson will keep many of the 70 special envoys at the State Department. Even, he will expand three offices dealing with religious freedom, HIV/AIDS and Holocaust issues.

Last February, 12 Congressmen including senators and representatives have called on President Donald Trump to appoint a special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan to back the regional efforts for peace in the two countries.

"United States leadership is critical to helping bring about a lasting peace in Sudan and South Sudan. Your swift action on this matter will make a difference in millions of lives," they said.

(ST)

August 28, 2017 (EL-FASHER) - The governor of North Darfur Abdel-Wahid Youssef Monday has discussed with the head of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mark Green the security and humanitarian situation in the state.

Green has arrived in the Sudanese capital Khartoum Sunday to assess the progress in the delivery of humanitarian assistance in the conflict areas.

Youssef has briefed the visiting U.S. official on the efforts exerted by his government to maintain security and humanitarian stability in the state.

He pointed to the efforts made to collect illegal weapons, addressing the effects of war, improving IDPs conditions, supporting voluntary return as well as mending the social fabric.

For his part, Green said his visit comes within the framework of his government's interest in the humanitarian, development and services aspects in Sudan.

He expressed hope that the government would facilitate humanitarian access, pointing to government efforts to convince the holdout armed groups to join the peace process.

The U.S. official also mentioned government plan to collect illegal arms, pointing to its efforts to resolve land disputes in Darfur.

Green further pointed to the steps taken to hand over sites of the hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) to Sudanese forces, saying “it is important that the Sudanese police protect civilians and secures humanitarian assistance”.

He stressed the visit also aims to discuss the lifting of U.S. sanctions imposed on Sudan.

“My visit to North Darfur state comes within the framework of the ongoing dialogue between the United States and Sudan and at a time when President Trump is working in critical conditions until October to lift sanctions on Sudan,” he said.

“My visit to Sudan and to this region [Darfur] was not intended only to inspect USAID projects, but also to see the situation on the ground and assess the needs of the state,” he added.

Green stressed they would continue to support peace efforts in Sudan, expressing hope that the visit would pave the road for further cooperation on all levels.

Following the meeting, Green told Sudan Tribune that he intends to visit Zam Zam camp for IDPs to assess the needs of the residents.

The visit of the high-level humanitarian official comes six weeks before a U.S. decision on the permanent lift of economic sanctions on the east African nation.

The unfettered access to aid groups was one of the issues agreed in the five-track agreement reached by the two countries for the normalisation of bilateral relations.

The Sudanese army has been fighting a group of armed movements in Darfur since 2003. UN agencies estimate that over 300,000 people were killed in the conflict, and over 2.5 million were displaced.

(ST)

A landmark case in the United States means that, for the first time, two of those responsible for the CIA’s post-2001 torture programme, have been held accountable in the courts. Much of this torture programme was carried out on Afghan soil. The two psychologists who designed and implemented the programme, have paid compensation to two survivors and to the family of Gul Rahman, an Afghan who died of hypothermia after being left semi-naked on a bare concrete floor in a CIA black site near Kabul in November 2002. US courts had thrown out previous attempts at litigation on the grounds of ‘national security’. As AAN’s Kate Clark reports, the successful case may open the door to other claims, including against government officials.

Gul Rahman, an Afghan living in Pakistan, had been driven up to Islamabad for a medical check-up and was staying with Ghairat Bahir, son-in-law of Hezb-e Islami leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, when on 29 October 2002, both men were kidnapped by US agents and Pakistani security forces and rendered to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. Both were tortured. Bahir survived (for details, see the appendix), but Rahmat Gul froze to death on the bare concrete floor of a cell in CIA custody after interrogators ordered his clothes removed because he was being “uncooperative.” A CIA review listed contributing factors leading to his death: “dehydration, lack of food, and immobility due to ‘short chaining’ [ie being held on a short chain]”

The US never informed Gul Rahman’s family of his death. Nor did they return his body. It was only many years later, in 2010, that an investigation by the Associated Press revealed he had been killed in Afghanistan.

Now, two architects of the CIA torture programme have agreed to pay an undisclosed sum in compensation to Gul Rahman’s family and two men who survived the programme, Tanzanian Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Libyan Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud (spellings for these and others mentioned in this dispatch are as per the official US spelling). The case, brought on behalf of the two men and Gul Rahman’s family by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was against two psychologists, James Mitchell and John ‘Bruce’ Jessen, who had been contracted by the CIA to create and implement its torture programme. The two men decided to settle before the case went to court, after failing repeatedly to get it thrown out. The ACLU explained why this is such a landmark case:

Until now, every lawsuit trying to hold people accountable for the CIA torture program has been dismissed at initial stages because the government successfully argued that letting the cases proceed would reveal state secrets. But unlike previous cases, this time the Justice Department did not try to derail the lawsuit. The defendants attempted to dismiss the case multiple times, but the court consistently ruled that the plaintiffs had valid claims.

A change in the legal landscape

What changed matters was the release of a redacted summary of an investigation by the US Senate Intelligence Committee into the CIA’s rendition and torture programme in December 2014 (read it here and our analysis of its contents here). Even though much of the information had already been in the public domain (in investigations by human rights groups and journalists who spoke to survivors and, in some cases, personnel), the fact that it was the US Senate that had published the report and that it was based on the CIA’s own files meant the information was now both public and incontrovertible. The US courts – and the government – could no longer argue so easily that scrutinising the CIA’s programme would jeopardise state secrets – the grounds on which two earlier cases had been thrown out.

In May 2006, a US court turned down a claim against the former director of the CIA, George Tenet, brought by the ACLU on behalf of a German-Lebanese man, Khaled El-Masri. He was kidnapped in Macedonia in December 2003 and rendered to Afghanistan. He was drugged, beaten, stripped and given “putrid water” to drink (read here). El-Masri was held for five months even after his innocence became clear and then, said the ACLU, “deposited at night, without explanation, on a hill in Albania,” without apology or the means to get home. Nevertheless, the court accepted a US government intervention in the case which argued that allowing it to proceed would jeopardise state secrets.

A second case was also dismissed, in February 2008. This was against a subsidiary of Boeing, Jeppesen DataPlan, Inc, which had been used by the CIA to render detainees. The ACLU which filed the lawsuit argued on behalf of five detainees that “Jeppesen knowingly participated in these renditions by providing critical flight planning and logistical support services to aircraft and crews used by the CIA to forcibly disappear these five men to torture, detention and interrogation.” Three of the five plaintiffs were flown to Afghanistan where they were tortured (see details in footnote 1). Again, the court accepted a government intervention asserting “state secrets privilege” and claiming that further litigation would undermine national security interests.

This time, in the case against Mitchell and Jessen, the government chose not to try to shut the case down and the court also rejected various attempts by the two men to halt proceedings. Rather, just as the case was about to go to jury trial, the pair decided to settle the claims. By this point, the court had already decided some important questions of law.

“First,” ACLU attorney Dror Laden told AAN, “there is the series of decisions the court issued that torture committed by the government and the executive branch is a question for the courts. Judges have the power and the responsibility to decide if war crimes or torture were committed.” Secondly, he said, “This case shows how national security litigation can be conducted without jeopardising national security.” He described how dozens of lawyers were present in the court room with the government side speaking up if they were concerned that questions of national security were about to be disclosed. “The answer,” he said, “is not to shut down lawsuits from the beginning, but to creatively look at how the parties can move forward in conjunction with each other.”

What the psychologists did

The Senate report revealed (or in many instances confirmed), not only the extent of the CIA’s torture programme, but also the pivotal role played by Mitchell and Jessen. As the ACLU writes:

Drawing on their experience as psychologists and relying on experiments conducted on dogs in the 1960s… [they] proposed that CIA prisoners should be psychologically destroyed through the infliction of severe mental and physical pain and suffering. They theorized that inducing a state of “learned helplessness” in captives would eradicate any resistance they might have to interrogation. This theory had never been – and could not legally or ethically be – tested, and their program involved not only torturing prisoners but experimenting on them in violation of the international ban on non-consensual human experimentation.

Despite the CIA having previously adopted a position that torture did not work, attitudes changed following the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Worries that the agency would be committing war crimes were assuaged by a Justice Department decision to define the methods proposed as not torture. President Bush’s assertion that ‘war on terror’ detainees were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, which expressly outlaw torture, also eased the way. As ACLU has written: “the decision to torture was made deliberately, in a program characterized by human experimentation, intentional brutality, and the painstaking manipulation of the law. It was as clinical as it was cruel.” The two psychologists were contracted to design the programme of interrogation and torture, despite the fact that, as the Senate report noted, “Neither psychologist had experience as an interrogator, nor did either have specialized knowledge of al-Qa’ida, a background in terrorism, or any relevant regional, cultural, or linguistic expertise.”

The Senate report named 119 men as having been subject to CIA rendition and 39 of those as victims of torture. Most of the torture described in the report took place in black sites on Afghan soil and five of the 39 named torture victims are Afghan, including Gul Rahman (see the appendix for detail on the other four men). Many more men were tortured than are named in the report, however, including by the CIA and also, after CIA methods spread, by the US military, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Practices included: prolonged sleep deprivation (for more detail on why this is so extremely destructive, see footnote 2), forced nudity, starvation, beating, water dousing, waterboarding and extreme forms of sensory deprivation. The ACLU said the two psychologists:

… designed the abusive procedures, conditions, and cruel treatment imposed on captives during their rendition and subsequent detention, devised the torture instruments and protocols, personally tortured detainees, and trained CIA personnel in administering torture techniques. In a clear conflict of interest later acknowledged by the CIA, the two men were also tasked with evaluating the “effectiveness” of the program from which they reaped enormous profits.

Mitchell and Jessen received 1.5 and 1.1 million dollars respectively from the CIA in fees and, after they formed a company in 2005 to supply the CIA with personnel and to expand the programme, a further 81 million US dollars in the years up till 2010.

The two survivors

The two men, who along with the family of Gul Rahman, brought the case against Mitchel and Jessen were a Libyan dissident and a Tanzanian fisherman. Both had been rendered to Afghanistan. Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud had fled Libya in 1991 and was living in Pakistan when he was kidnapped in a joint US-Pakistani operation in April 2003 and taken to Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch revealed that the then Libyan president, Muammer Gaddafi, had passed his and other names on to the US claiming they were terrorists. For much of the next year, said ACLU, the CIA kept Ben Soud “naked and chained to the wall in one of three painful stress positions designed to keep him awake. He was held in complete isolation in a dungeon-like cell, starved, with no bed, blanket, or light,” not allowed to wash for five months. CIA agents forced Ben Soud into a box less than half a metre wide, hanged him from a rod and submerged him in icy water, until a doctor would decide his temperature was dangerously low. In August 2004, he was rendered to Libya where he was sentenced to life in prison, only released in 2011, a day after the start of the revolution that led to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a Tanzanian citizen, was working as a fisherman and trader in Somalia when, in March 2003, the CIA and Kenyan security forces abducted him and rendered him first to Kenya and then to Afghanistan. He was beaten, slammed into walls, hung from a rod and chained into painful stress positions for days on end. The CIA also subjected him to sleep deprivation and forced him into small boxes. He was finally freed in 2008, long after his family had given him up for dead.

More lawsuits?

The decision by Jessen and Mitchel to pay compensation may open the door to future claims. In the United States, only the state can bring a criminal lawsuit, but individuals can bring civil claims for damages. What would be even better, Human Rights Watch’s Guantanamo expert, Laura Pitter told AAN, would be if the US government acted proactively without the need for victims to go to court.

… these suits are extremely expensive. So either an NGO like the ACLU or perhaps the Center for Constitutional rights willing to make the investment necessary to pursue the case like this has to take it on, or law firms or other private attorneys do in the hopes that if they win they can recover attorneys’ fees. But that is a big risk and a big investment. The risk is lower now that the ACLU case settled because they got some good rulings, and admissions, from the defendants, but it’s still a risk so we will see. 

Up till now, the state has chosen not to prosecute anyone for the many crimes committed under the CIA’s torture programme. President George Bush authorised the programme and although President Obama banned torture as soon as he took office in 2009, his administration also decided not to prosecute. “We tortured some folks,” said Obama (quoted here) a few months before the release of the Senate torture report. “You know, it is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.” It is impossible to see this situation changing under President Trump.

As the Office of the Prosecutor in the International Criminal Court has pointed out, the scope of the Department of Justice’s preliminary review (August 2009 to June 2011) of allegations of CIA abuse of detainees, “appears to have been limited to investigating whether any unauthorised interrogation techniques were used by CIA interrogators, and if so, whether such conduct could constitute violations of any applicable criminal statutes.” (emphasis added) In other words, there has been no criminal investigation into the use of authorised torture techniques, a point highlighted by the Office of the Prosecutor which quoted the US Attorney General:

“…the Department of Justice (DOJ) will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees.”

There have been no prosecutions of anyone involved in the killing of Gul Rahman. His case, along with that of the Iraqi, Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in CIA custody in 2003 at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was referred to the Justice Department. It decided not to bring charges and, in 2012, the US Attorney General prosecutors announced that the investigation would be closed because “the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt” (see here and here).

In March 2003, said the Senate report, “just four months after the death of Gul Rahman, the CIA Station in Country recommended that [redacted] CIA officer receive a “cash award” of $2,500 for his “consistently superior work.” The manger of the detention side stayed in position and “was formally certified as a CIA interrogator in April 2003 after the practical portion of his training requirement was waived because of his past experience with interrogations” at the site.

Other avenues to seek justice

Some victims of the CIA have sought other avenues of redress, although no-one, before the current case has been able to touch any of the Americans involved in the torture programme. Two men who are still held in Guantanamo, Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubayda, sued Poland at the European Court of Human Rights. It ruled on 24 July 2014 that Poland had violated the European Convention on Human Rights when it co-operated with the CIA in their renditions, allowing the unlawful detention and torture of the two men on its territory in 2002–2003. The court ordered the Polish government to pay each of the men 100,000 Euros (118 USD) in damages (read here and here). On 13 December 2012, the same court found in favour of Khaled El-Masri against the government of Macedonia which had aided the CIA in his rendition (see here and here). German authorities, though, terminated their inquest against 13 CIA staff accused of involvement in the case in April 2017. On 20 September 2012, the highest court in Italy upheld convictions against 23 CIA agents and a US air force officer, in absentia, over the abduction in February 2003 of an Egyptian imam, Abu Omar. Two Italians were also earlier convicted. Abu Omar was held in Egypt where he was tortured, including with the use of electric shocks, and held until February 2007 when he was released without charge.

Some countries have given compensation to victims. They include the UK which chose to give the nine British nationals and six British residents released from Guantanamo around one and a half million dollars each, settling civil damages claims rather than, reported AFP, “contest in court allegations that Britain’s security services were complicit in what happened.”  One of the child prisoners at Guantanamo, Canadian Omar Khadr, was given damages by his government amounting to an equivalent of eight million US dollars.

Up till the Mitchell and Jessen case, however, only claims against those tangentially involved in torture had succeeded, largely the countries which aided the CIA in its rendition programme. The pay outs by the two psychologist torturers does make future civil claims in the United States more likely. However, there is still no prospect of criminal prosecutions of American torturers in America itself. This fact, that successive US governments have chosen to give officials impunity for some of the most serious crimes possible, means the International Criminal Court (ICC) could take up this case. As AAN has reported, (3) the ICC has already decided that there is a case to answer for CIA and US military torture. It is currently pondering whether or not to proceed with building cases against specific alleged perpetrators.

 

Appendix: Other Afghan victims of CIA torture

There are many published accounts of Afghans having been tortured by the US military and by the CIA. They include the following:

Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: American, the Taliban and the War through Afghan Eyes, New York, Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company

Abdul Salaam Zaeef, My Life with the Taliban, London, Hurst 2011

Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition, Open Society Foundations, February 2013

Enduring Freedom Abuses by U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch, March 2004

There have also been official US investigations into torture by US personnel, including: United States Senate Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, Committee on Armed Services, 20 November 2008

Other official US reports (up till 2008) are listed by the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) here: Research Brief: Selected examples of Defence, Intelligence and Justice Investigative Reports into detention and interrogation practices, 2 November 2008

There have also been numerous reports by journalists, including for example by Craig Pyes and Kevin Sack, ‘Two Deaths Were a “Clue That Something’s Wrong”’, The Los Angeles Times, 25 September 2006 and, ‘U.S. Probing Alleged Abuse of Afghans’, The Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2004

As well as Gul Rahman, four Afghans are named by the Senate as having been tortured by the CIA. The four are:

Ghairat Bahir, son-in-law of Hekmatyar, kidnapped with Gul Rahman in October 2002 and held in the CIA’s Salt Pit for six months. “’I was left naked, sleeping on the barren concrete,’” Bahir told AP. He said his interrogators would tie him to a chair and sit on his stomach. They also hung him naked, he said, for hours on end. Bahir was subsequently moved to US military custody in Bagram and released in May 2008.

Arsala Khan, when in his mid-50s, was captured in 2003 and accused of having guided Osama bin Laden through the mountains of Tora Bora to safety in 2001. Kept in a CIA black site in Afghanistan, the Senate report said:

After 56 hours of standing sleep deprivation, Arsala Khan was described as barely able to enunciate, and being “visibly shaken by his hallucinations depicting dogs mauling and killing his sons and family.” According to CIA cables, Arsala Khan “stated that [the interrogator] was responsible for killing them and feeding them to the dogs.” Arsala Khan was subsequently allowed to sleep. Two days later, however, the interrogators returned him to standing sleep deprivation. After subjecting Khan to 21 additional hours of sleep deprivation, interrogators stopped using the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.

Khan was kept at Bagram for a further four years, despite the US coming to believe he was innocent, after, the Senate report said, “the development of significant intelligence indicating that the source who reported that Arsala Khan had aided Usama bin Laden had a vendetta against Arsala Khan’s family.”

Janat Gul (also known as Hammidullah), former president of Ariana Airline, was captured in January 2003 in Lashkargar, Afghanistan. He was held in a secret CIA prison in Bucharest, Romania, in 2004 where he was subject, said the Senate report to “continuous sleep deprivation, facial holds, attention grasps, facial slaps, stress positions, and walling until he experienced auditory and visual hallucinations. Janat Gul was subsequently transferred to Guantánamo Bay and was finally released to Afghanistan on April 18, 2005.

Muhammad Rahim was detained by the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, and handed over to the US in 2007. It seems Pakistan had told the US he might know the whereabouts of bin Laden and, as AAN has written, while held in a CIA black site in Afghanistan, Rahim was subject to slapping, hooding, solitary confinement, dietary manipulation and prolonged bouts of sleep deprivation:

Rahim was forcibly kept awake by being shackled in a standing position; he was also made to wear a diaper so that toilet breaks would not interrupt the sessions and, probably, as a further means of humiliation. After a first session of 104.5 hours – more than four days – without sleep, he started suffering hallucinations and was allowed to sleep for eight hours. Then, after a psychiatrist determined he had been faking the hallucinations, he was forcibly prevented from sleeping for another two and a half days. In all, he suffered eight sessions of sleep deprivation, including three which lasted for more than four days and one, the last, which lasted for almost six (138.5 hours).

The CIA interrogators, said the Senate Report, produced no disseminated intelligence report. Even so, the US believed and continues to believe it had captured a senior associate of bin Laden. He was transferred to Guantanamo and remains there till this day. He is the last known detainee of any nationality to be rendered and tortured by the CIA and the last Afghan to be taken to Guantánamo Bay. Because the US military has classified Rahim as a ‘high value’ detainee which means the detail and much of the substance of the US case is secret. His lawyer has said he cannot publically say why he believes Rahim is innocent because to do so would reveal classified information. He has been deemed a ‘forever prisoner’, ie not suitable for release or criminal trial. (For more on this case and the many questions surrounding the US assertions of Rahim’s al Qaeda membership, see this longer AAN report).

 

(1) The following allegations were made (text from the 8 September 2010 decision by the Court of Appeal when it overturned its earlier ruling, made in April 2009 that the government could not invoke the state secrets privilege to dismiss an entire suit, only to dismiss specific evidence):

Plaintiff Binyam Mohamed, a 28-year-old Ethiopian citizen and legal resident of the United Kingdom, was arrested in Pakistan on immigration charges. Mohamed was allegedly flown to Morocco… where he claims he was transferred to the custody of Moroccan security agents. These Moroccan authorities allegedly subjected Mohamed to “severe physical and psychological torture,” including routinely beating him and breaking his bones. He says they cut him with a scalpel all over his body, including on his penis, and poured “hot stinging liquid” into the open wounds. He was blindfolded and handcuffed while being made “to listen to extremely loud music day and night.”

After 18 months in Moroccan custody, Mohamed was allegedly transferred back to American custody and flown to Afghanistan. He claims he was detained there in a CIA “dark prison” where he was kept in “near permanent darkness” and subjected to loud noise, such as the recorded screams of women and children, 24 hours a day. Mohamed was fed sparingly and irregularly and in four months he lost between 40 and 60 pounds. Eventually, Mohamed was transferred to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he remained for nearly five years. He was released and returned to the United Kingdom during the pendency of this appeal.

Plaintiff Bisher al-Rawi, a 39-year-old Iraqi citizen and legal resident of the United Kingdom, was arrested in Gambia while traveling on legitimate business. Like the other plaintiffs, al-Rawi claims he was put in a diaper and shackles and placed on an airplane, where he was flown to Afghanistan. He says he was detained in the same “dark prison” as Mohamed and loud noises were played 24 hours per day to deprive him of sleep. Al-Rawi alleges he was eventually transferred to Bagram Air Base, where he was “subjected to humiliation, degradation, and physical and psychological torture by U.S. officials,” including being beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with death. Al-Rawi was eventually transferred to Guantanamo; in preparation for the flight, he says he was “shackled and handcuffed in excruciating pain” as a result of his beatings. Al-Rawi was eventually released from Guantanamo and returned to the United Kingdom.

Plaintiff Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a 38-year-old Yemeni citizen, says he was apprehended by agents of the Jordanian government while he was visiting Jordan to assist his ailing mother. After a brief detention during which he was “subject[ed] to severe physical and psychological abuse,” Bashmilah claims he was given over to agents of the U.S. government, who flew him to Afghanistan in similar fashion as the other plaintiffs. Once in Afghanistan, Bashmilah says he was placed in solitary confinement, in 24-hour darkness, where he was deprived of sleep and shackled in painful positions. He was subsequently moved to another cell where he was subjected to 24-hour light and loud noise. Depressed by his conditions, Bashmilah attempted suicide three times. Later, Bashmilah claims he was transferred by airplane to an unknown CIA “black site” prison, where he “suffered sensory manipulation through constant exposure to white noise, alternating with deafeningly loud music” and 24-hour light. Bashmilah alleges he was transferred once more to Yemen, where he was tried and convicted of a trivial crime, sentenced to time served abroad and released.

Plaintiff Ahmed Agiza, an Egyptian national who had been seeking asylum in Sweden, was captured by Swedish authorities, allegedly transferred to American custody and flown to Egypt. In Egypt, he claims he was held for five weeks “in a squalid, windowless, and frigid cell,” where he was “severely and repeatedly beaten” and subjected to electric shock through electrodes attached to his ear lobes, nipples and genitals. Agiza was held in detention for two and a half years, after which he was given a six-hour trial before a military court, convicted and sentenced to 15 years in Egyptian prison. According to plaintiffs, “[v]irtually every aspect of Agiza’s rendition, including his torture in Egypt, has been publicly acknowledged by the Swedish government.”

Plaintiff Abou Elkassim Britel, a 40-year-old Italian citizen of Moroccan origin, was arrested and detained in Pakistan on immigration charges. After several months in Pakistani detention, Britel was allegedly transferred to the custody of American officials. These officials dressed Britel in a diaper and a torn t-shirt and shackled and blindfolded him for a flight to Morocco. Once in Morocco, he says he was detained incommunicado by Moroccan security services at the Temara prison, where he was beaten, deprived of sleep and food and threatened with sexual torture, including sodomy with a bottle and castration. After being released and re-detained, Britel says he was coerced into signing a false confession, convicted of terrorism-related charges and sentenced to 15 years in a Moroccan prison.

(2) As AAN has previously written, the effects of sleep deprivation are well documented, including by the US courts. Hernan Reyes, a specialist in the medical effects of detention working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), writing about psychological torture for the ICRC Journal quoted a 1944 case in America (Ashcraft v. Tennessee):

Although [the defendant] Ashraft was only subjected to 36 hours of sleep deprivation, the court ruled it to be both physical and mental torture. In a ruling not only categorizing sleep deprivation as torture but further emphasizing the unreliability of any information obtained in such a way, US Justice Hugo Black stated that ‘‘deprivation of sleep is the most effective torture, and certain to produce any confession desired.’’

After two nights without sleep, according to a psychoanalyst working with victims of torture who was quoted by Reyes, “the hallucinations start.” After three nights, people dream while awake, “a form of psychosis,” the psychoanalyst says. “By the week’s end, people lose their orientation in place and time – the people you’re speaking to become people from your past; a window might become a view of the sea seen in your younger days. To deprive someone of sleep is to tamper with their equilibrium and their sanity.”

(3) AAN wrote:

The information available, says the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), provides a reasonable basis to believe that during interrogations of security detainees and in conduct supporting those interrogations, members of the US armed forces and the CIA:

… resorted to techniques amounting to the commission of the war crimes of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape… Specifically:

Members of US armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity on the territory of Afghanistan between 1 May 2003 and 31 December 2014. The majority of the abuses are alleged to have occurred in 2003-2004.

Members of the CIA appear to have subjected at least 27 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape on the territory of Afghanistan and other States Parties to the Statute (namely Poland, Romania and Lithuania) between December 2002 and March 2008. The majority of the abuses are alleged to have occurred in 2003-2004.

Crucially, the OTP says, these “alleged crimes were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals,” but rather were part of a policy:

The Office considers that there is a reasonable basis to believe these alleged crimes were committed in furtherance of a policy or policies aimed at eliciting information through the use of interrogation techniques involving cruel or violent methods which would support US objectives in the conflict in Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

En Allemagne, les élections se suivent et se ressemblent. Contrairement aux derniers scrutins européens, du référendum britannique sur la sortie du pays de l'Union européenne en 2016 à l'élection présidentielle française en passant par les législatives aux Pays-Bas cette année, le...

Serbian Zastava M92 Compact Assault Rifle