Disappearing Acts
“…the Pentagon led an intense one-day tour of the detention camp last month... The purpose of the trip...was for the military leadership to convince the ethicists, psychiatrists, psychologists and others...that what was occurring there did not violate medical ethics and was necessary to strengthen the nation’s security... [Participants] spent a few hours viewing the facility and speaking with officers [but] did not talk with any detainees and saw them only from a distance.”
- Neil A. Lewis, on
“I’ve been there six times. But the military exercises extreme control. They let you see only what they want you to see. On any of the tours of the camp, we can see prisoners being held in the medium-security section of the camp. These are the most compliant detainees who have more freedom than the others. They’re allowed more recreation time, they live in more of a dorm-type building. But we can’t talk to them. Every interaction between the media and prisoners is scripted by the military. The same restrictions apply to politicians who go there to investigate the conditions at
- Jackie Northam, “Q & A About
- Art. 1, par. 1: “Any act of enforced disappearance is an offence to human dignity.”
- Art. 2, par. 1: “No State shall practise, permit or tolerate enforced disappearances.”
- Art. 3: “Each State shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent and terminate acts of enforced disappearance in any territory under its jurisdiction.”
- Art. 4, par. 1: “All acts of enforced disappearance shall be offences under criminal law punishable by appropriate penalties which shall take into account their extreme seriousness.”
- Art. 5: “In addition to such criminal penalties as are applicable, enforced disappearances render their perpetrators and the State or State authorities which organize, acquiesce in or tolerate such disappearances liable under civil law, without prejudice to the international responsibility of the State concerned in accordance with the principles of international law.”
- Art. 6, par. 1: “No order or instruction of any public authority, civilian, military or other, may be invoked to justify an enforced disappearance. Any person receiving such an order or instruction shall have the right and duty not to obey it.”
- Art. 7: “No circumstances whatsoever, whether a threat of war, a state of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked to justify enforced disappearances.”
- Art. 8, par. 1: “ No State shall expel, return ( refouler ) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds to believe that he would be in danger of enforced disappearance.”
- Art. 9, par. 2: “… No State shall expel, return ( refouler ) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds to believe that he would be in danger of enforced disappearance.”
- Art. 10, par. 1: “Any person deprived of liberty shall be held in an officially recognized place of detention and, in conformity with national law, be brought before a judicial authority promptly after detention.”
- Art. 14: “Any person alleged to have perpetrated an act of enforced disappearance in a particular State shall, when the facts disclosed by an official investigation so warrant, be brought before the competent civil authorities of that State for the purpose of prosecution and trial unless he has been extradited to another State wishing to exercise jurisdiction in accordance with the relevant international agreements in force.”
- Art. 16, par. 1: “Persons alleged to have committed any of the acts referred to in article 4, paragraph 1, above, shall be suspended from any official duties during the investigation”; Art. 2: “They shall be tried only by the competent ordinary courts in each State, and not by any other special tribunal, in particular military courts.”
- Art. 19: “The victims of acts of enforced disappearance and their family shall obtain redress and shall have the right to adequate compensation…”
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