Neither the victims of abuse, nor alleged abusers, can expect fairness
She was photographed holding a long dog lead that was fastened around the neck of a naked prisoner who was grimacing on the prison floor.
In another photograph she was smiling, with a cigarette hanging from her mouth as she pointed at the genitals of a hooded Iraqi prisoner who was otherwise naked and being compelled to masturbate. She is accused of 13 counts of abusing prisoners and six counts of possessing sexually explicit photographs - apparently of herself having sex with one of the guards by whom she became pregnant.
There are indications that what happened in the Iraq was already going on in the American prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, where suspected terrorists arrested in Afghanistan were being held. They were imprisoned there in an apparent attempt to give the authorities a free hand.
In the past week, two French and three British citizens who were held at Guantanamo have denounced their treatment. During their two years at the prison, they say they were tortured by being beaten; shackled in painful positions; subjected to loud noise; deprived of sleep; urinated upon by guards, taunted by naked or half-naked women soldiers; forced to watch pornographic movies, and compelled to sodomise fellow prisoners.
They say that their treatment got worse after Major Gen Geoffrey D Miller took over as camp commander in the autumn of 2002. He was later sent to Abu Ghraib as commander in August 2003.
One would have to be mentally challenged to be so gullible as to think that Private Lynndie England could organise what went on in Abu Ghraib. The issue is not just whether more senior personnel were responsible, but how high it goes. Among the witnesses that England’s legal team hopes to call are vice president Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Of course, don’t expect much from the current hearings. Military justice is essentially about protecting the brass. It is an even greater oxymoron than military intelligence. The treatment of prisoners has ramifications that could lead right to the White House. What happened was a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. But then, President George W Bush insists that the terms of that conventions apply to neither Iraqi prisoners nor those taken in Afghanistan.
What is happening now in the United States is hauntingly reminiscent of the election of 1972, and not just because the Vietnam War is again being raised as an issue.
Back then, people were clamouring for an investigation into the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building. The White House claimed that the President and the Republican Party had nothing to do with the break-in, but we now know they were involved, not only with the break-in but also in the subsequent cover-up which sought to keep the truth from the American people, especially before the November elections. Richard Nixon won one of the greatest landslides in history. He carried every state with the exception of Massachusetts but less than two years later he chose to resign when faced certain impeachment.
Will Americans insist on a serious effort to get to the truth about what was happening at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib before the November elections?
Dream on!
Americans authorities do not give a damn about the human rights of prisoners.
IN Massachusetts, which is supposedly liberal, Fr John Geoghan was sentence to 10 years in prison in early 2002 for child abuse. The archdiocese later paid out $10m in settling 84 claims alleging molestation by the priest. Yet he was charged and convicted of only one incident that happened in the autumn of 1991 at a public swimming pool. A 10-year-old boy was learning to dive and he said that Fr Geoghan gave him some instructions. “As I dived into the pool, Father Geoghan grabbed my butt,” the victim testified.
He promptly swam away and went home and told his mother. What Fr Geoghan did was not “the most egregious act of sexual touching”, the prosecutor admitted in her closing argument to the jury. “But when a grown man puts his hand inside the shorts of a 10-year-old boy and touches skin on skin, it is wrong,” she said. “It is indecent. And it is a crime.”
The defence contended that the boy and his mother only came forward a decade later after filing a civil suit for damages, seeking compensation for the emotional pain of his alleged abuse.
Fr Geoghan was convicted and received the maximum sentence. The judge made it clear that she knew that his abuse of others went far beyond the swimming pool incident and she was imposing the sentence on the 68-year-old priest to ensure he would not be a threat to any young boy “who may have the misfortune to be in contact with him”.
He denied the accusations and he was not charged with any other offence, so how did she know? It was treacherous to sentence anyone on the basis of mere presumption.
For Geoghan, it proved to be a death sentence. He was strangled in prison in August 2003 by a self-described neo-Nazi serving a life sentence for murder.
“Your days are over,” the murderer said as he strangled the defrocked priest. “No more children for you, pal.”
Whether Geoghan was a sick pervert who was guilty of heinous crimes, what happened to him was a perversion of the adage that justice must be seen to be done. The case that was brought against him was about a relatively minor offence; it was really about money, not justice.
THE Americans and British tried to justify their behaviour in Iraq as part of a search for weapons of mass destruction. Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle on Israel’s weapons of mass destruction, but few appeared to give a damn about his human rights when he was kidnapped in Italy and held in solitary confinement for over a decade in an Israeli prison.
Although out of prison, he is still confined to Israel where his life is in danger.
We could strike a blow for human rights by offering him political asylum in this country. Congratulations to Michael D Higgins for speaking out this week.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
