By Jim Lobe* | Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (IPS) – Eighteen U.S. human rights groups Thursday joined a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a retired top diplomat in calling on President Barack Obama to appoint a non-partisan commission of leading citizens to examine and report on the treatment of detainees held by the United States during President George W. Bush’s “global war on terror.”
In a joint statement, the groups, which included Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Human Rights First (HRF), said members of such a commission “should be persons of irreproachable integrity, credibility, and independence” with “reputation for putting the truth and the respect for our nation’s founding principles ahead of any partisan advantage.”
Such a commission should also report on the consequences of alleged abuses committed by U.S. officials against detainees and “make recommendations for future policy in this area,” according to the statement, which was also signed by ret. Maj. General Antonio Taguba, the senior military officer whose 2004 report and subsequent Congressional testimony on abuses committed by U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq drew headlines and outrage around the world.
The statement comes amid a growing public clamour, particularly from Obama’s Democratic base, for some forum that will determine responsibility for some of the more notorious abuses sanctioned or committed by U.S. official personnel during Bush’s war on terror and help inform the detention and interrogation policies of the new administration.
“The abuses carried out over the past eight years have not only undermined America’s moral authority, but also jeopardised its national security,” said Jennifer Daskal, senior counter-terrorism counsel at HRW. “We need to understand exactly what happened in order to protect our fundamental freedoms and keep the country safe.”
To date, Obama and his top officials, including his attorney general, Eric Holder, have been ambiguous about their views on the question. Obama has said he believes that “nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen, but that, generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.”
Democratic lawmakers, led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, have made a number of suggestions, including creating a “truth commission” that could summon witnesses, including high-ranking Bush administration officials who authorised interrogation techniques that rights groups consider to be torture, and make recommendations, but could not bring criminal charges.
The plan appears, at least in theory, to enjoy not insubstantial public support. A Gallup poll conducted late last month found that nearly two-thirds of respondents favoured some form of investigation into alleged administration abuses, including the torture of detainees. While a quarter of respondents said they favoured investigations without criminal charges, almost 40 percent indicated support for criminal prosecutions if the investigations found evidence that laws had been violated.
“There’s a growing sense both in Washington and the country at large that people don’t want these abuses swept under the carpet,” said Tom Parker, policy director for terrorism, counter-terrorism and human rights for Amnesty International USA, one of the statement’s signatories. “They want to know what’s been done in their name; and, if they don’t approve of what was done in their name, they want to see people held accountable.”
Republicans, however, appear united in strongly opposing the creation of any independent forum, least of all one that could result in criminal prosecutions.
They have argued that Congress has already held a number of hearings on detainee abuse and that appointing an independent commission would amount to a “political vendetta” that would not only make bipartisanship more difficult but could also set a damaging precedent.
“If every administration started to re-examine what every prior administration did, there would be no end to it,” warned Sen. Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee who had himself frequently complained about the Bush administration’s denial of habeas corpus and authorisation of aggressive interrogation techniques for detainees, last month. “This is not Latin America,” he added.
But rights groups have long claimed that Congress’s hearings that have looked into the alleged abuses have been far too limited in their scope and have provided only a partial picture of how specific policies authorising the alleged abuses were derived and implemented. Moreover, the hearings were mostly conducted in a highly politicised context.
The signatories of the new statement stressed that the president should solicit recommendations from both parties’ Congressional leaders before choosing members of the commission.
Among the kinds of members who should be considered, according to the statement, are “leading academics, retired judges and government officials, retired military officers and intelligence officials, and human rights experts.”
“We need people of the stature of John McCain or John Kerry who have knowledge of military service, people with a great deal of experience with the intelligence community,” said Parker. “It isn’t just about morality; it’s about the right policy, whether these kinds of methods worked. We don’t think they do,” he added.
In addition to Taguba, who last year accused the Bush administration of having committed war crimes in its treatment of detainees, individual signatories of the statement included ret. U.S. Amb. Thomas Pickering, who served as Washington’s envoy to the United Nations under President George H.W. Bush and is among the highest-ranking and most-decorated diplomats of his generation; and Judge Williams Sessions, who served as FBI director under both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Also signing was Juan Mendez, president of the New York-based International Centre for Transitional Justice and former president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organisation of American States. Mendez, an Argentine native who gained asylum in the United States, has advised truth commissions that were established in Latin America and elsewhere around the world to investigate abuses committed by military and other authoritarian governments.
In addition to HRW, HRF, and AIUSA, other institutional signatories included the National Institute of Military Justice, the Centre for Victims of Torture, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Open Society Institute, and Physicians for Human Rights, among others.
The Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) also called this week for the Obama administration to conduct an investigation into abuses against terrorism suspects.
“Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies enacted in recent years,” former Irish President Mary Robinson told reporters. “Human rights and international humanitarian law provide a strong and flexible framework to address terrorist threats.”
Robinson was one of several members of an ICJ panel that looked into abuses committed during the war on terror. The panel also included Stella Rimington, the former head of Britain’s MI5.
*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
Peace and Justice Post 
Gaza: Death’s Laboratory
February 14, 2009Conn Hallinan | Foreign Policy In Focus, February 11, 2009
Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist, worked in Gaza hospitals during the recent war.”It was as if they had stepped on a mine,” he says of certain Palestinian patients he treated. “But there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before.”
Dr. Fosse was describing the effects of a U.S. “focused lethality” weapon that minimizes explosive damage to structures while inflicting catastrophic wounds on its victims. But where did the Israelis get this weapon? And was their widespread use in the attack on Gaza a field test for a new generation of explosives?
DIMEd to Death
The specific weapon is called a Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME). In 2000, the U.S. Air Force teamed up with the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The weapon wraps high explosives with a tungsten alloy and other metals like cobalt, nickel, or iron in a carbon fiber/epoxy container. When the bomb explodes the container evaporates, and the tungsten turns into micro-shrapnel that is extremely lethal within a 13–foot radius. Tungsten is inert, so it doesn’t react chemically with the explosive. While a non-inert metal like aluminum would increase the blast, tungsten actually contains the explosion to a limited area.
Within the weapon’s range, however, it’s inordinately lethal. According to Norwegian doctor Mad Gilbert, the blast results in multiple amputations and “very severe fractures. The muscles are sort of split from the bones, hanging loose, and you also have quite severe burns.” Most of those who survive the initial blast quickly succumb to septicemia and organ collapse. “Initially, everything seems in order…but it turns out on operation that dozens of miniature particles can be found in all their organs,” says Dr. Jam Brommundt, a German doctor working in Kham Younis, a city in southern Gaza. “It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles…that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically.” According to Brommundt, the particles cause multiple organ failures.
If by some miracle victims resist those conditions, they are almost certain to develop rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a particularly deadly cancer that deeply embeds itself into tissue and is almost impossible to treat. A 2005 U.S. Department of health study found that tungsten stimulated RMS cancers even in very low doses. All of the 92 rats tested developed the cancer.
While DIMEs were originally designed to avoid “collateral” damage generated by standard high-explosive bombs, the weapon’s lethality and profound long-term toxicity hardly seem like an improvement.
It appears DIME weapons may have been used in the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, but not enough to alarm medical workers. But in Gaza, the ordinance was widely used. Al-Shifta alone has seen 100 to 150 victims of these attacks.
Gaza as Test
Dr. Gilbert told the Oslo Gardermoen, “there is a strong suspicion…that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons.”
DIME is a U.S. invention. Did the Israelis get the weapons from the United States, or did they design similar ones themselves? Given the close relations between the two militaries, it isn’t unlikely that the U.S. Air Force supplied the weapons or, at least, the specifications on how to construct them. And since the United States has yet to use the device in a war, it would certainly benefit from seeing how these new “focused lethality” weapons worked under battlefield conditions.
Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch’s senior military advisor, says “it remains to be seen how Israel has acquired the technology, whether they purchased weapons from the United States under some agreement, or if they in fact licensed or developed their own type of munitions.”
DIME weapons aren’t banned under the Geneva Conventions because they have never been officially tested. However, any weapon capable of inflicting such horrendous damage is normally barred from use, particularly in one of the most densely populated regions in the world.
For one thing, no one knows how long the tungsten remains in the environment or how it could affect people who return to homes attacked by a DIME. University of Arizona cancer researcher Dr. Mark Witten, who investigates links between tungsten and leukemia, says that in his opinion “there needs to be much more research on the health effects of tungsten before the military increases its usage.”
Beyond DIMEs
DIMEs weren’t the only controversial weapons used in Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) also made generous use of white phosphorus, a chemical that burns with intense heat and inflicts terrible burns on victims. In its vapor form it also damages breathing passages. International law prohibits the weapon’s use near population areas and requires that “all reasonable precautions” be taken to avoid civilians.
Israel initially denied using the chemical. “The IDF acts only in accordance with what is permitted by international law and does not use white phosphorus,” said Israel’s Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on January 13.
But eyewitness accounts in Gaza and Israel soon forced the IDF to admit that they were, indeed, using the substance. On January 20, the IDF confessed to using phosphorus artillery shells as smokescreens, as well as 200 U.S.-made M825A1 phosphorus mortar shells on “Hamas fighters and rocket launching crews in northern Gaza.”
Three of those shells hit the UN Works and Relief Agency compound on January 15, igniting a fire that destroyed hundreds of tons of humanitarian supplies. A phosphorus shell also hit Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City. The Israelis say there were Hamas fighters near the two targets, a charge that witnesses adamantly deny.
Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International said: “Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza’s densely-populated residential neighborhoods…and its toll on civilians is a war crime.”
Israel is also accused of using depleted uranium ammunition (DUA), which a UN sub-commission in 2002 found in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture, the Conventional Weapons Convention, and the Hague Conventions against the use of poison weapons.
DUA isn’t highly radioactive, but after exploding, some of it turns into a gas that can easily be inhaled. The dense shrapnel that survives also tends to bury itself deeply, leaching low-level radioactivity into water-tables.
War Crimes?
Other human-rights groups, including B’Tselem, Gisha, and Physicians for Human Rights, charge that the IDF intentionally targeted medical personal, killing over a dozen, including paramedics and ambulance drivers.
The International Federation for Human Rights called on the UN Security Council to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court for possible war crimes.
Although the Israelis dismiss the war-crimes charges, the fact that the Israeli cabinet held a special meeting on January 25 to discuss the issue suggests they’re concerned about being charged with “disproportionate” use of force. The Geneva Conventions require belligerents to at “all times” distinguish between combatants and civilians and to avoid “disproportionate force” in seeking military gains.
Hamas’s use of unguided missiles fired at Israel would also be a war crime under the Conventions.
“The one-sidedness of casualty figures is one measure of disproportion,” says Richard Falk, the UN’s human rights envoy for the occupied territories. A total of 14 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, three of them civilians killed by rockets, 11 of them soldiers, four of the latter by “friendly fire.” Some 50 IDF soldiers were also wounded.
In contrast, 1,330 Palestinians have died and 5,450 were injured, the overwhelming bulk of them civilians.
“This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare, which we ask to be investigated by the Commission of War Crimes,” a coalition of Israeli human rights groups and Amnesty International said in a joint statement. “The responsibility of the state of Israel is beyond doubt.”
Enter the Hague?
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann would coordinate the defense of any soldier or commander charged with a war crime. In any case, the United States would veto any effort by the UN Security Council to refer Israelis to the International Court at The Hague.
But, as the Financial Times points out, “all countries have an obligation to search out those accused of ‘grave’ breaches of the rules of war and to put them on trial or extradite them to a country that will.”
That was the basis under which the British police arrested Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998.
“We’re in a seismic shift in international law,” Amnesty International legal advisor Christopher Hall told the Financial Times, who says Israel’s foreign ministry is already examining the risk to Israelis who travel abroad.
“It’s like walking across the street against a red light,” he says. “The risk may be low, but you’re going to think twice before committing a crime or traveling if you have committed one.”
Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist.
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Tags:Dense Inert Metal Explosive, Dr Mad Gilbert, Dr. Jam Brommundt, Erik Fosse, Gaza as a test laboratory, Gaza hospitals, Hamas, human rights groups, Human Rights Watch, Palestinian patients, RMS, U.S. "focused lethality" weapon, war crimes
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