FindLaw – Guantanomo Prison Abuse Lawsuit

Here is the text of the $40 million lawsuit by detainees at Guantanomo against Rumsfeld and others.

The complaint cites violations of the Alien Tort Statute, the Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – and names Donald Rumsfeld, Air Force General Richard Myers, Army Major General Geoffrey Miller, Army General James T. Hill, Army Major General Michael E. Dunlavey, Army Brig. General Jay Hood, Marine Brig. General Michael Lehnert, Army Colonel Nelson J. Cannon, Army Colonel Terry Carrico, Army Lt. Colonel William Cline, Army Lt. Colonel Diane Beaver and John Does 1-100.

Here is the introduction:

1. Plaintiffs are citizens and residents of the United Kingdom. They are not now and have never been members of any terrorist group. They have never taken up arms against the United States.

2. Plaintiffs Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed were detained in Northern Afghanistan on November 28, 2001, by General Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord temporarily allied with the United States as part of the Northern Alliance. Thereafter, General Dostum placed Plaintiffs Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed in the custody of the United States military. Because Plaintiffs Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed were unarmed and not engaged in any hostile activities, neither General Dostum nor any of his troops ever could have or did observe them engaged in combat against the United States, the Northern Alliance or anyone else. On information and belief, General Dostum detained Plaintiffs Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed and numerous other detainees who were not combatants; he handed detainees including Plaintiffs Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed to the custody of the United States in order to obtain bounty money from the United States; and the United States took custody of Plaintiffs Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed without any independent good faith basis for concluding that they were or had been engaged in activities hostile to the United States.

3. Plaintiff Jamal Al-Harith works as an internet web designer in Manchester, England. Intending to attend a religious retreat, Plaintiff Al-Harith arrived in Pakistan on October 2, 2001, where he was advised to leave the country because of animosity toward British citizens. Heeding the warning, he planned to return to Europe by traveling overland through Iran to Turkey by truck. While in Pakistan, the truck in which Plaintiff Al-Harith was riding was stolen at gunpoint by Afghans; he was then forced into a jeep which crossed the border into Afghanistan. Plaintiff Al-Harith was then handed over to the Taliban. Plaintiff Al-Harith was beaten by Taliban guards and taken for interrogation. He was accused of being a British special forces military spy and held in isolation. After the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban released Plaintiff Al-Harith into the general prison population. When the Taliban government fell and the new government came to power, Plaintiff Al-Harith and others in the prison were told that they were free to leave and Plaintiff Al-Harith was offered transportation to Pakistan. Plaintiff Al-Harith thought it would be quicker and easier to travel to Kabul where there was a British Embassy. Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (“ICRC”) instructed Al-Harith to remain at the prison and they offered to make contact with the British Embassy to fly him home. Plaintiff Al-Harith also spoke directly to British Embassy officials who indicated that they were making arrangements to fly him to Kabul and out of the country. After Plaintiff Al-Harith had been in contact with the British Embassy in Kabul for approximately a month discussing the logistics of evacuating him, American Special Forces arrived and questioned Plaintiff. The ICRC told Plaintiff Al-Harith that the Americans would fly Plaintiff Al-Harith to Kabul; two days before he was scheduled to fly to Kabul, American soldiers told Plaintiff Al-Harith, “You’re not going anywhere. We’re taking you to Kandahar airbase.”

4. All four Plaintiffs were first held in United States custody in Afghanistan and later transported to the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba (“Guantanamo”), where Defendants imprisoned them without charge for more than two years. During Plaintiffs’ imprisonment, Defendants systematically and repeatedly tortured them in violation of the United States Constitution and domestic and international law, and deprived them of access to friends, relatives, courts and counsel. Defendants repeatedly attempted to extract confessions from Plaintiffs without regard to the truth or plausibility of these statements through the use of the illegal methods detailed below.

5. Plaintiffs were released without charge in March 2004 and have returned to their homes in the United Kingdom where they continue to suffer the physical and psychological effects of their prolonged arbitrary detention, torture and other mistreatment as hereinafter alleged.

6. In the course of their detention by the United States, Plaintiffs were repeatedly struck with rifle butts, punched, kicked and slapped. They were “short shackled” in painful “stress positions” for many hours at a time, causing deep flesh wounds and permanent scarring. Plaintiffs were also threatened with unmuzzled dogs, forced to strip naked, subjected to repeated forced body cavity searches, intentionally subjected to extremes of heat and cold for the purpose of causing suffering, kept in filthy cages for 24 hours per day with no exercise or sanitation, denied access to necessary medical care, harassed in practicing their religion, deprived of adequate food, deprived of sleep, deprived of communication with family and friends, and deprived of information about their status.

7. Plaintiffs’ detention and mistreatment were in plain violation of the United States Constitution, federal statutory law and United States treaty obligations, and customary international law. Defendants’ treatment of Plaintiffs and other Guant‡namo detainees violated various provisions of law including the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution forbidding the deprivation of liberty without due process; the Eighth Amendment forbidding cruel and unusual punishment; United States statutes prohibiting torture, assault, and other mistreatment; the Geneva Conventions; and customary international law norms prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

8. Plaintiffs’ torture and other mistreatment was not simply the product of isolated or rogue actions by individual military personnel. Rather it was the result of deliberate and foreseeable action taken by Defendant Rumsfeld and senior officers to flout or evade the United States Constitution, federal statutory law, United States treaty obligations and long established norms of customary international law. This action was taken in a misconceived and illegal attempt to utilize torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading acts to coerce nonexistent information regarding terrorism. It was misconceived because, according to the conclusion of the US military as expressed in the Army Field Manual, torture does not yield reliable information, and because Plaintiffs-along with the vast majority of Guant‡namo detainees-had no information to give. It was illegal because, as Defendants well knew, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees is not permitted under the United States Constitution, federal statutory law, United States treaty obligations, and customary international law.

9. On or about December 2, 2002, Defendant Rumsfeld signed a memorandum approving numerous illegal interrogation methods, including putting detainees in “stress positions” for up to four hours; forcing detainees to strip naked, intimidating detainees with dogs, interrogating them for 20 hours at a time, forcing them to wear hoods, shaving their heads and beards, keeping them in total darkness and silence, and using what was euphemistically called “mild, non-injurious physical contact.” As Defendant Rumsfeld knew, these and other methods were in violation of the United States Constitution, federal statutory law, the Geneva Conventions, and customary international law as reflected in, inter alia, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“CAT”). This memorandum of December 2, 2002, authorizing torture and other mistreatment, was originally designated by Defendant Rumsfeld to be classified for ten years but was released at the direction of President George W. Bush after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal became public.

10. After authorizing, encouraging, permitting, and requiring the acts of torture and other mistreatment inflicted upon Plaintiffs, Defendant Rumsfeld, on information and belief, subsequently commissioned a “Working Group Report” dated March 6, 2003, to address “Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy and Operational Considerations.” This report, also originally classified for a period of ten years by Defendant Rumsfeld, was also released after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal became public. This report details the requirements of international and domestic law governing interrogations, including the Geneva Conventions; the CAT; customary international law; the torture statute, 18 U.S.C. ¤2340; assault within maritime and territorial jurisdiction, 18 U.S.C. ¤113; maiming, 18 U.S.C. ¤114; murder, 18 U.S.C. ¤1111; manslaughter, 18 U.S.C. ¤1112; interstate stalking, 18 U.S.C. ¤2261a; and conspiracy 18 U.S.C. ¤2 and ¤371. The report attempts to address “legal doctrines under the Federal Criminal Law that could render specific conduct, otherwise criminal not unlawful.” Working Group Report at p. 3 (emphasis in original). The memorandum is on its face an ex post facto attempt to create arguments that the facially criminal acts perpetuated by the Defendants were somehow justified. It argues first that the President as Commander-in-Chief has plenary authority to order torture, a proposition that ignores settled legal doctrine from King John at Runnymede to Youngstown Sheet & Tube, 343 U.S. 579 (1952). It next tries to apply common law doctrines of self-defense and necessity, arguing the erroneous proposition that the United States has the right to torture detained individuals because it needs to defend itself or because it is necessary that it do so. Finally, it suggests that persons inflicting torture and other mistreatment will be able to defend against criminal charges by claiming that they were following orders. The report asserts that the detainees have no Constitutional rights because the Constitution does not apply to persons held at Guant‡namo. However, the report acknowledges that U.S. criminal laws do apply to Guantanamo, and further acknowledges that the United States is bound by the CAT to the extent that conduct barred by that Convention would also be prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. On June 22, 2004, the conclusions of this report and other memoranda attempting to justify torture were repudiated and rescinded by President Bush.

11. In April 2003, following receipt of the Working Group Report, Defendant Rumsfeld issued a new set of recommended interrogation techniques, requiring approval for four techniques. These recommendations recognized specifically that certain of the approved techniques violated the Geneva Conventions and customary international law, including the use of intimidation, removal of religious items, threats and isolation. The April 2003 report, however, officially withdrew approval for unlawful actions that had been ongoing for months, including hooding, forced nakedness, shaving, stress positions, use of dogs and “mild, non-injurious physical contact.” Nevertheless, on information and belief these illegal practices continued to be employed against Plaintiffs and other detainees at Guantanamo.

12. Defendants well knew that their activities resulting in the detention, torture and other mistreatment of Plaintiffs were illegal and violated clearly established law-i.e., the Constitution, federal statutory law and treaty obligations of the United States and customary international law. Defendants’ after-the-fact attempt to create an Orwellian legal facade makes clear their conscious awareness that they were acting illegally. Therefore they cannot claim immunity from civil liability.