www.pi-media.co.uk
I November 2014
LOCAL / WORLD NEWS
I 13
UK Govt ignores gitmo Brit abuse continued from front page
have for some time been emerging from the prison. In a letter to William Hague in May of this year, Clive Stafford Smith sent testimony from Mr Aamer that he is sometimes FCEd up to eight times a day. He also included an excerpt from a recent letter of Mr Aamer’s, which said, “Last night, as I came back from my legal call, I was FCEd in much the same way I always am, as I peacefully refused to cooperate with them again. This time they did not just force me down on the floor of the room. They apparently decided that they had to get me dirty, so they threw me down in the passage way […]” A recent trial in Washington D.C to assess the legality of force-feeding and FCE methods used at Guantanamo in the case of cleared Syrian Abu Wa’el Dhiab, revealed further levels of abuse. Giving evidence in court, Dr Steven
Miles, a bioethicist, decried the use of olive oil to force-feed prisoners and said that “it’s a form of punishment that is wrapped around the business” of force feeding the detainee.? Prior to the trial, Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the US Government to release video footage showing force-feedings and FCEs being carried out against Syrian detainee Abu Wa’el. Lawyers at Reprieve wrote to the then-Foreign Secretary William Hague in May, asking that the British government request any video footage that the US may hold of Mr Aamer being FCEd, but Mr Hague responded that: “we do not view that it is necessary for the UK Government to ask the US Government to release cctv footage from Guantanamo Bay.” Mr Aamer, whose British wife and their four children live in South London, has been cleared for release
from Guantanamo since 2007. It has long been stated British policy that Mr Aamer should be returned to his family in the UK. Clive Stafford Smith, who is one of Mr Aamer’s lawyers, said: “The US military is not telling Mr Hammond the truth about the abuse of Mr Aamer, any more than they did to Judge Kessler, who had the good sense to demand to see the video footage. I have just returned from a visit and the brutal nature of the FCEing – to which Shaker is subjected probably more than any other prisoner – is only getting worse. Mr Hammond says that the UK is doing all it can to help Shaker but if it were his son or brother being beaten up every day, he would show a little more interest in evidence, and a little less in bland and false denials. It is far past time that Shaker was home with his wife and children.”
UN watchdog slams Israel abuses, demands Gaza war probe
A UN human rights watchdog urged Israel to respect the rights of Palestinians, and demanded the country probe violations committed during repeated assaults on Gaza. With tensions soaring in East Jerusalem and months of almost daily clashes, the UN Human Rights Committee published conclusions from its review earlier this month of Israel’s human rights record. The committee lamented continued punitive demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, excessive force by the Israeli military and decried reports of the use of torture and illtreatment of Palestinians, including children, in Israeli detention facilities. It also slammed the “continuing
confiscation and expropriation of Palestinian land and restrictions on access of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” The body, which oversees global rules on civil and political rights, and submits governments to regular reviews, also voiced concern over alleged human rights abuses during three Israeli military operations in Gaza since late 2008, including the nearly two-month war this summer that killed nearly 2,200 mainly civilian Palestinians and 73 people in Israel, mostly soldiers. Israel “should ensure that all human rights violations committed during its military operations in the Gaza Strip
in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 are thoroughly, effectively, independently and impartially investigated,” the Geneva-based committee said in its conclusions. It demanded that perpetrators, especially those in positions of command, be “prosecuted and sanctioned” and that the victims and their families be provided “effective remedies.” And it criticised Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza, lamenting that the blockade continues to “negatively impact Palestinians’ access to all basic and life-saving services such as food, health, electricity, water and sanitation.” The committee’s comments came as tensions raging since the Gaza war started in July swelled after Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian Thursday suspected of an assassination attempt on a hardline campaigner for Jewish prayer rights at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque. In a bid to avoid further tensions, Israel ordered the closure of the AlAqsa compound to all visitors, drawing a furious response from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who described it as “a declaration of war.”