Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of being the Wikileaks source, was kept in solitary confinement for eight months in a Marine brig at Quantico, Virginia. He was subjected to 24-hour surveillance and was forced to relinquish his clothing before bedding down for the night, then made to stand naked at roll call, his lawyers said.
And in Atlanta, Ga., Judge Amanda F. Williams resigned on January 2 after being accused of acts of misconduct, among them jailing offenders in solitary confinement without access to lawyers.
A lengthy solitary confinement can cause serious mental and physical damage and be considered torture, according to Juan Mendez, the United Nations rapporteur (investigator) into torture. And most countries in the world practice it.
Locked up in Argentina
While Mendez did not concentrate on the United States (although he was denied a private interview with Manning), he knows something about the human cost of persecution. An Argentine lawyer, he was jailed for 18 months during the "Dirty War" in 1976, tortured with an electric prod and watched friends pulled from their cells and executed. He is now a visiting law professor at American University's Washington College of Law in D.C.
Compared to the United States where public protests are possible, there are many countries where prisoners are lost, Mendez said. But he noted that few in the United States investigate what happens to locked-up foreigners in the name of ferreting out terrorism.
Mendez has now added isolation in prison to his list of what constitutes torture. But he recognized there were cases where a prisoner needed to be protected from abuse by other inmates organized in gangs or out to get homosexuals.
Among his worst examples, in a report to the U.N. General Assembly and a news conference in October, Mendez cited a woman in China, locked in solitary confinement for two years of an eight-year sentence for "unlawfully supplying State secrets or intelligence to entities outside China."
"Solitary confinement is a harsh measure which may cause serious psychological and physiological adverse effects on individual regardless of their specific conditions."
Widespread abuse
Isolation of prisoners is subject to widespread abuse. Mendez proposed all solitary confinement longer than 15 days should be outlawed:
"It can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment when used as a punishment, during pretrial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for persons with mental disabilities or juveniles," he said.
But while solitary confinement is practiced in most countries in the world, studies show there are an estimated 20,000 and 25,000 individuals held in isolation in the United States.
U.S. ranks #1 in prisoners
Human Rights Watch in its just-released World Report says that the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, whether in jails in the United States or in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in what it called "abusive counterterrorism policies."
The imprisoned population is 2.3 million, which amounts to 752 inmates per 100,000 residents, the world's highest per capita incarceration, HRW said.
For a terrifying picture of how our prisons work, see journalist Alan Eisner's book, Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons, which among other details, take you inside prisons that deny human contact.
Juan Mendez, UN Photo
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Other civilized countries have laws that forbid the Police from releasing a suspects name to the Media until such time (if ever) the suspect has been legally charged with a crime.
America needs a No-Name Law to stop this "unholy alliance" of police and media from destroying innocent peoples lives.
FTR
Based on this description, Mr Manning was and is still clearly being tortured.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSe38dzJYkY
And 'round and 'round it goes as we hypocritically beat each other up on one hand while decrying that very same practice on another.
The notion that this treatment has anything in common with torture is simply laughable. As noted, Juan Mendez saw men executed and was repeatedly electrocuted himself. Classic examples of real torture involve thumb presses, tearing out fingernails, drawing and quartering, and tarring and feathering (which could result in gangrene; a slow death sentence). Locking someone in a room by himself isn't in the same ballpark; it's not in the same league, it ain't even the same sport. This is the kind of silly idea that is ultimately used to argue that locking criminals up in prison is a greater tragedy than the crimes they committed to justify their incarceration. Such notions should be roundly ridiculed and disparaged for the nonsense they are.
What is torture? According to the provision, "...torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
Therefore, the innocent Private Bradley Manning was under Bush, and is under Obama less so, being tortured. So you are wrong, likely lying because you may love to see Bradley suffer cruelly, inhumanly, and degradingly. This would make you into a sadistic human. Apologize.
First, the detainment of Pfc. Manning isn't for any of the purposes you describe in your torture definition (obtaining information or confession, punishment, coercion, or intimidation). He is being detained pursuant to a court martial. He is accused of serious crimes, for which release (i.e., bail) is unjustified.
Second, the act that is so heinous is merely confinement and the conditions set as necessary based on Pfc. Manning's own reactions thereto. If this is unacceptable mental torture, society would be unable to confine a claustrophobic man without committing torture. This is nonsense; society has the collective right to confine those it deems dangerous through a fair and open legal system (like the UCMJ).
Third, you claim that this makes me sadistic is just bizarre. Is the idea that it is unacceptable to detain a man who is accused of leaking thousands of classified documents until the facts can be ascertained and a court martial arranged is laughable. To argue otherwise is to pine for a society with no military order (in the military itself, no less), no functional government, and thus no future.
You seem to have taken your mistaken arguments to extreme conclusions, thereby maligning me. In fact, you owe me much more of an apology than I would ever owe to Pfc. Manning (though nobody should hold their breath waiting for one).
Everything about being held captive is torture!!! Being in prison IS torture. To say torture is not allowed is absurd. We just have to constantly re-define what we consider above and beyond and should not be allowed.
Meanwhile, and although I have great respect for the UN, it is not a very good organization to look to define such things as torture. Just as we should and do ignore its opinions on what constitute human rights. Paid vacation as a human right? Come on man! : )
If you cannot learn to assimilate, go to school to learn.
If you don't want to go to school to learn to assimilate, DO NOT expect to be welcomed with open arms into any law-abiding rational society.
If you find yourself in a numerical minority and do not like that, learn what you need to be included in a numerical majority.
If law abiding, rational co-existance with your fellowman is something you can't comprehend, then you have 2 choices. # 1 Isolate yourself # 2 Be isolated by your fellowman.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Torture/SRTorture/Pages/SRTortureIndex.aspx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15736895
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_E._M%C3%A9ndez
Is it done to protect this inmate from others, himself or others from him?
Or is it done with the entent of tormenting the prisoner?
fanned