Iraqi Salaheddin Sallet paints a public protest against interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib on a wall in the al-Sadr district of Baghdad. EPA/EMPICS

Hidden torture – new maps of hell

A February 2004 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that some incidents recorded at US prisons in Iraq were 'tantamount to torture'. As well as being beaten and threatened, Iraqi prisoners had been stripped naked, handcuffed to the bars of their cells – forcing them into uncomfortable positions – and hooded. The techniques of sensory deprivation, humiliation and 'self-inflicted pain' are familiar from accounts of detainees in US facilities in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

In April 2004, pictures from Abu Ghraib prison showed that, in at least one prison, an additional range of bizarre and grotesque treatments had been carried out. As well as being stripped, hooded and made to stand in 'stress positions', prisoners at Abu Ghraib were subjected to psychological torture, being forced to act out bizarre orgy-like scenes. A US Army report into Abu Ghraib blames mismanagement and lack of training, implying that the abuses were the work of 'a few bad apples'. However, similar abuses have since been reported at British bases. Former detainees at Guantanamo Bay have also alleged British government complicity in their treatment. One British special forces veteran has revealed that treatments similar to those seen at Abu Ghraib were part of his training in resisting interrogation.

Many suspect that a repertoire of 'authorised' tortures is quietly developing. A key exhibit is a memorandum written in 2002 by Jay Bybee of the US justice department, giving an official opinion on the US government's liability for prosecution under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Bybee carefully distinguishes 'torture' from the less extreme 'cruel and inhuman treatment', arguing that torture 'encompasses only extreme acts'. Specifically, for Bybee 'torture' implies the purposeful infliction of physical pain equivalent to that of serious injury, or of mental trauma serious enough to cause long-term psychological damage. 'Cruel and inhuman treatment' short of this extreme definition was effectively legitimised. Moreover, Bybee argued, the President's powers to conduct a war overrode the Convention: even torture could legally be ordered by the President, if he believed it a military necessity. Bybee's opinion was made public in 2004 and has since been disowned by the justice department.

Both the victims and the location of torture have also been redefined. In January 2002, as Taliban prisoners were transferred from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that they were not prisoners of war but 'unlawful combatants'. The effect of this redefinition was to deprive them of the protection of both the first Geneva Convention (covering soldiers) and the fourth (covering civilians): the US could detain them indefinitely and was not legally obliged to treat them humanely. Guantanamo Bay was also a legal anomaly. Since the site is a US military base within Cuban territory, the US government argued that US law did not apply there. This argument was rejected in 2004 by the US Supreme Court. However, while Guantanamo Bay prisoners now have access to lawyers, many prisoners continue to be held in US military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some cases of torture are hidden even more thoroughly. Many US prisoners are known to be subjected to what one human rights organisation has described as 'Rumsfeld Processing' – detention in undocumented locations by CIA or military intelligence. It has been alleged that many such prisoners are now being held on Diego Garcia, a British military base leased by the US on an Indian Ocean island.

The ultimate in concealed torture is 'extraordinary rendition': farming out torture to another country, relying on the fact that the Convention Against Torture is only binding on nations that have ratified it. In the words of one (anonymous) US intelligence official, 'We don't kick the shit out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the shit out of them.' Prisoners can be subjected to the harshest treatment in countries such as Egypt and Syria, while the US remains innocent of carrying out torture.

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