US Involvement in Torture Destroys Its Image in the World - Ex-GTMO Prisoner

Moazzam Begg, a former prisoner of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp who has published evidence of the abuse of a Qatari businessman in prisons on US soil which implicates high-ranking federal agents, spoke on the issue in an interview with Sputnik.

Sputnik: So details released today show that Ali al-Marri was detained and tortured over his 13 years of incarceration on US territory. Logs show that he had his head and beard shaved and was subjected to sleep deprivation and regular isolation. Ali al-Marri was innocent but was convicted as a sleeper terrorist linked to the 9/11 planners. How significant is this, and have al-Marri's interrogators been brought to account? 

Moazzam: This is an extremely important case for many reasons. He was one of 3 captives held on US soil itself among the enemy combatants. These prisoners didn’t have rights under the Geneva Conventions and could be degraded and tortured, the same standard operation procedures used on us as prisoners in Guantanamo were used on these 3 individuals, including him. With Al-Marri himself, when I’ve read his details, spoken to him and when my colleagues went through over 35,000 documents, almost all of them confirm his own allegations. 

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The really key thing is that the FBI was involved; now previously the US had accepted that the CIA was involved in torture, they did the Senate report on torture and estimated they had tortured over 112 people, but what they never expected was the involvement of the FBI. That’s something again that we’ve said: that the FBI were physically involved in all the different torture sites, benefiting from the torture and so forth but they passed themselves off as the good guys who were against the torture. Crucially one of the individuals, Ali Soufan, who modeled himself as someone who opposes torture and has constantly spoken out against torture, Ali al-Marri said that Soufan was physically present when he had socks stuffed in his mouth before being tapped to force gagging.  Here we have someone who is apparently against torture but has taken part in it himself. 

Sputnik: For decades we've known about the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay and US interrogations, yet still people are tortured and abused in the name of US national security. What affect does this have on how the US is perceived abroad?

Moazzam: It’s completely destructive. If any American really had a sense, and I’ve met people who do, of how the rest of the world views America… It's not because other countries don’t torture, its because America says it doesn’t, saying it's illegal under international law and American law, and yet it does this and not only do they do it, they have a president who says he agrees with waterboarding and signs an order to keep Guantanamo open. Of course the rest of the world will turn around and call America a hypocritical nation. It cannot practice what it preaches because it does the opposite. It is no moral position to do anything to any other country that does practice torture or believes in practicing torture, and here’s the irony. 

You can’t tell the rest of the world that you’re the good guys when in fact not only in offshore prisons are you torturing those you suspect have done wrong, but in Ali al-Marri’s case, you’re doing it on your own soil and there is no accountability. On top of that the FBI, has the audacity to say they all against torture because it is counterproductive. It beggars belief. 

Sputnik: Despite accounts such as Ali al-Marri's and other instances of human rights violations and torture, Guantanamo still operates to this day. In January 2018, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep the prison camp open indefinitely, marking a continuation of aggressive US domestic policy. Essentially what do groups and individuals need to do to ensure these violations can no longer continue in the future?

Moazzam: First of all, America doesn’t deny its involvement in torture, which is shocking. Generally we understand that torture in the context of war is a war crime. Essentially those individuals; CIA, FBI or military, who have been involved in these war crimes need to held to account. They need to be prosecuted and people that understand the concept of the rule of law need to push for that prosecution so that the world and America primarily, can establish themselves as a country that does believe in the rule of law. If they can’t do that, then the rest of us are duty bound to ensure that the cases of people like Ali ali-Marri are documented, and justice is sorted for them and not forgotten. As you said this doesn’t just destroy America’s reputation in the world, it destroys families. They have to go back home to see children who they haven’t seen before. This all has a knock-on affect in society and it breeds this anti-America sentiment around the world. It is in America’s own interests for anyone who calls themselves a friend of America, to reign them in before they do anymore damage to the world. 

Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.