The "New" Egypt: "Virginity Tests" for Protesters

Originally posted at MyFDL/Firedoglake

While I've little time to blog today, this particular story seemed especially worthy of promotion. Amnesty International has sent the following mailing to its supporters (emphasis in original):

The Egyptian military may have just hit a disturbing, new low: at least 18 women who were arrested during a peaceful protest in Tahrir Square on March 9 said they were forced to take "virginity tests".

Those women were threatened with charges of prostitution if they "failed" the tests. One woman, who said she was a virgin but whose test supposedly proved otherwise, was beaten and given electric shocks.

Journalist William Fisher at The Public Record rightly notes, "I know this sounds like something out of Torquemada in the 15th Century or Mengele in the 20th. But it’s neither. It’s post-Mubarak Egypt in the second decade of the 21st Century."

Twenty-year-old Salwa Hosseini told Amnesty International that after she was arrested and taken to a military prison in Heikstep, she was made, with the other women, to take off all her clothes to be searched by a female prison guard, in a room with two open doors and a window. During the strip search, Hosseini said male soldiers were looking into the room and taking pictures of the naked women.

The women were then subjected to ‘virginity tests’ in a different room by a man in a white coat....

According to information received by Amnesty International, one woman who said she was a virgin but whose test supposedly proved otherwise was beaten and given electric shocks.

‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.

Amnesty International is asking people to write to Hillary Clinton to get her "to use her influence to demand immediate action." I am less sanguine that she will either a) do that, or b) really give a damn.

Those who thought the "revolution" was over don't understand that it's hardly begun, and can easily be derailed onto the same old paths. The military in Egypt is not to be trusted, and those who think it will reform that country are terribly mistaken. What will it take to end illusions in such ideas?

The Long Torture of NYC/Manhattan Prisoner, Syed Fahad Hashmi

Veteran InterPress News Service reporter Bill Fisher has an impassioned article detailing the horrendous treatment meted out to U.S. citizen prisoner, Syed Fahad Hashmi. Mr. Hashmi has spent approximately three years in prison, on 23 hr. lockdown in the isolation unit at the federal prison at Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in lower Manhattan. He goes on trial on April 28 "for conspiring to send money and military gear -- socks and rainproof ponchos -- to al Qaeda associates in Pakistan."

The conditions of Mr. Hashmi's incarceration are onerous, as he is held under what are called special administrative measures (SAMs). Prior to his extradition from Britain in 2007, he was held in cells with other prisoners with no incidents. Why is he held in such barbaric conditions?

[H]ashmi is held under Justice Department rules known as SAMs - Special Administrative Measures. He is held so he won't escape. He is held so he can't contact any Al Qaeda operatives.

Now, I have no idea whether Hashmi is guilty or not. That's why we have trials.

But what about the Constitution? What about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty? What about the Constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial? And an attorney of our choice?

Those rules are evidently abandoned the instant someone utters the words Al Qaeda.

And how about the proscription against cruel and unusual punishment? Does three years in solitary sound "cruel" and "unusual?"

Well, the medical testimony presented in this case concluded that "after 60 days in solitary people's mental state begins to break down." According to Bill Quigley of the Center for Constitutional Rights, "That means a person will start to experience panic, anxiety, confusion, headaches, heart palpitations, sleep problems, withdrawal, anger, depression, despair, and over-sensitivity. Over time this can lead to severe psychiatric trauma and harms like psychosis, distortion of reality, hallucinations, mass anxiety and acute confusion. Essentially, the mind disintegrates."

Solitary confinement and isolation are among the cruelest punishments that can be inflicted on a human being. It attacks the nervous system, as well as the core humanity of the individual. It is a pernicious form of sensory and social deprivation, which has cytotoxic effects upon the brain.

One study out of the University of Chicago in 2007 showed that essential enzymes in the brain that regulate the GABA neurotransmitter that helps modulate stress and anxiety is reduced by half under conditions of isolation. The result is the person is unable to cope with fears, aggression, and loneliness. Even the CIA, in their 1983 Latin American torture manuals, called "a powerful stressor", and explained its purpose as producing a psychological regression in the victim. People in long-term isolation, like Mr. Hashmi, can suffer from depression, panic attacks, hallucinations, and have great difficulty adjusting to a normal social life after incarceration. Isolation was the preferred form of torture used by the KGB and the East European Stalinist governments. It is one of the worst forms of psychological torture that can be inflicted on a human being, who is a social creature, and needs the stimulation of social contact to survive. When inflicted by people over whom the victim feels he has no control, or in an atmosphere of fear, control, and dominance, the effects of isolation are worsened tremendously. Most people can stand only a few months of such treatment before they break down, much less the years Mr. Hashmi has endured.

In August 2008, according to the New York Daily News, "Some 500 academics have penned a letter protesting the harsh, post-9/11 conditions keeping accused terror suspect and Brooklyn College grad Syed Hashmi under 23-hour-a-day lockdown."

The SAMs are even more restrictive than most people realize. Jeanne Theoharis, a former professor of Hashmi (who studied violations of civil rights and liberties in the United States of Muslims and various groups), and who has written on his case, described the procedures in an interview with Dissident Voice:

Family visits are limited to one person every other week for one and a half hours and cannot involve physical contact. While his correspondence to members of Congress and other government officials is not restricted, he may write only one letter (of no more than three pieces of paper) per week to one family member. He may not communicate, either directly or through his attorneys, with the news media. He may read only designated portions of newspapers – and not until thirty days after their publication – and his access to other reading material is restricted. He may not listen to or watch news-oriented radio stations and television channels. He may not participate in group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring inside and outside his cell – including when he showers or relieves himself – and 23-hour lockdown. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation – when it is given – inside a cage.

Bill Fisher is right. This is an outrage. What kind of country has the United States become? One that has shredded its very founding documents for a simulacrum of security and a mishmash of police measures aimed at crushing dissent, and making justice a quaint artifact of the past.

"DoD Releases Records of Illegal Surveillance"

William Fisher has an important post up at Truthout. Apparently, the Department of Defense has a difficult time sticking to the law when it comes to surveillance of the American people. Once upon a time, this would have been a scandal for days and weeks across the pages of U.S. newspapers and network news broadcasts. Today, it's left to intrepid journalists, like Fisher, and brave human rights and civil liberties watchdogs, like Electronic Frontier Foundation.

From Fisher's story, DoD Releases Records of Illegal Surveillance:

Defense Department agencies improperly collected and disseminated intelligence on Planned Parenthood and a white supremacist group called the National Alliance, an Air Force briefing improperly included intelligence on an antiwar group called Alaskans for Peace and Justice, and Army Signals Intelligence in Louisiana unlawfully intercepted civilian cell phone conversations.

These are among the disclosures made this week in the release of more than 800 heavily-redacted pages of intelligence oversight reports, detailing activities that the Defense Department's (DoD) Inspector General has "reason to believe are unlawful."

The reports are the latest in an ongoing document release by more than a half-dozen intelligence agencies in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The reports, submitted to the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) by the Inspectors General of the various Department of Defense components, cover the period from 2001 through 2008. The IOB's role within the Executive Office of the President is to ensure that each component of the intelligence community works within the Constitution and all applicable laws....

This new release comes from various DoD components, including the Army and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Much of the improper activity consisted of intelligence gathering on so-called "US Persons," including citizens, permanent residents and US-based organizations.

See the article for all the eye-opening details.

A Journalist Reports the Truth About Appendix M

William Fisher has written an outstanding yet brief article summarizing the case against the use of abusive techniques of interrogation in the Army Field Manual. The worst methods appear in the last pages of the manual, labeled Appendix M.

John Bradshaw, Director of PHR’s [Physicians for Human Rights] office in Washington, DC, told IPS [Inter Press Service], “The technique of separation allowed by Appendix M sounds innocuous, but in reality it allows the use of sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and isolation.”

“Particularly when used in combination, these techniques amount to psychological torture. The Obama Administration must close this loophole in the Army Field Manual by eliminating Appendix M, which leaves the door open to torture,” he said.

Legal experts agree. Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild, told IPS, “President Obama’s announcement that the United States will not engage in torture is commendable. But cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment also violate U.S. law, as specified by three treaties we have ratified. The new administration should not use the Army Field Manual as the gold standard for interrogations since Appendix M sanctions techniques, including isolation and prolonged sleep deprivation, that amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

The bulk of the article concentrates on the use of medical professionals in the U.S. torture program. Fisher notes, for instance, that the International Committee of the Red Cross called the participation of doctors and other health professionals, such as psychologists, as part of the interrogation program at Guantanamo a “flagrant violation of medical ethics.”

I should note, that Bill Fisher quotes this blog and some statements of mine favorably, for which I am grateful. It gives one hope that thoughtful and careful journalists are increasingly asking questions about the current proposals to make the AFM the "single standard" for U.S. interrogations. What they are finding is that the important medical, legal, and human rights activists and organizations find the AFM's interrogation techniques to amount, in toto, to torture.

Thank you, Bill Fisher, for helping further the cause of purging torture for good in this country, by critically examining the statements of President Obama about the supposedly humane procedures of the Army Field Manual, and the alarmist, crackpot views of ex-Bush administration officials, like John Yoo, who wrote in today's Wall Street Journal that the AFM doesn't go far enough in allowing freedom to use "coercive interrogation techniques,"