31 de enero de 2008

Más de un millón de iraquíes han muerto desde el comienzo de la guerra desencadenada por EEUU en marzo del 2003 en Irak.

El estudio, elaborado por el instituto británico Opinion Research Business (ORB) y el Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACSS), se basa en entrevistas realizadas principalmente en áreas urbanas del país árabe, aunque también recoge muestras de algunas zonas rurales del territorio iraquí.
Un total de 2.414 personas, mayores de 18 años, respondieron a la cuestión planteada por el ORB relativa a determinar el número de personas muertas en sus respectivos hogares, si es que los hay, desde que comenzó la guerra hasta agosto del pasado año. Los resultados de la investigación cifraron en más de un millón el número de iraquíes, concretamente 1.033.239, que han perdido la vida como consecuencia del conflicto iniciado en marzo de 2003 por parte de Estados Unidos y una coalición internacional, según apunta el instituto en un comunicado.
Los datos finales de la encuesta señalan que el 20,2 por ciento de los entrevistados confirmaron la muerte de al menos un familiar en sus hogares, con un promedio de 1,26 muertes por núcleo familiar, por causas relacionadas con la violencia que asuela a todo el país. El censo completo más reciente en Irak se remonta a 1997 y cifra en 4.050.597 el total de hogares en el país, subraya la institución británica.
El estudio, realizado entre agosto y septiembre del 2007, tiene un margen de error de en torno al 1,7 por ciento y cubre 15 de las 18 provincias del país, entre las que sobresale la ausencia de muestras de las regiones de Kerbala y Al Anbar por motivos de seguridad, afirma la organización. La ORB sostiene que debido a la violencia en estas dos provincias, la cifra de fallecidos podría ser aún mayor, sin tener en cuenta, además, los datos de la región septentrional de Irbil cuyas autoridades rehusaron colaborar con los investigadores.
El Opinion Research Business (ORB) es miembro del Consejo de Investigación Británico mientras que el IIACSS es un instituto de opinión establecido en Irak en el 2003 que ha realizado diversas encuestas en todo el territorio iraquí.

11 de enero de 2008

Contratan a nueva directora en escuela de idioma árabe de Nueva York tras destitución de fundadora

En Nueva York, una nueva directora fue contratada en la primera escuela pública de idioma árabe de la ciudad cinco meses después de que la directora fundadora fue obligada a renunciar. Holly Reichert asumió su cargo en la Academia Internacional Khalil Gibran en Brooklyn el miércoles. Su predecesora, Debbie Almontaser, fue forzada a renunciar poco antes de que la escuela abriera luego de que fue citada explicando que la palabra “intifada” literalmente significa “agitación” en árabe. Almontaser fue criticada por no denunciar la utilización de remeras con la palabra “intifada” inscripta. Almontaser presentó una demanda federal contra la ciudad por su despido

NSA: “No ocurrió ningún ataque” en el Golfo de Tonkin

Documentos recientemente desclasificados proporcionaron más pruebas de que el gobierno de Johnson fingió el incidente del Golfo de Tonkin para intensificar la Guerra de Vietnam. El presunto ataque de 1964 contra buques de guerra estadounidenses perpetrado por vietnamitas del norte fue utilizado como excusa para incrementar los bombardeos y el despliegue de soldados en Vietnam. No obstante, un informe de la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional (NSA, por sus siglas en inglés) concluye: “esa noche no ocurrió ningún ataque”.

Blackwater arrojó toxina contra punto de control colmado de gente

La empresa militar privada Blackwater Worldwide está afrontando nuevas acusaciones de actividades ilegales en Irak, esta vez por lanzar un gas antidisturbios altamente prohibido contra un punto de control colmado de personas en Bagdad en mayo de 2005. Según el New York Times, el gas CS arrojado por un helicóptero y un vehículo blindado de Blackwater cegó temporalmente a los conductores, los peatones y a por lo menos diez soldados estadounidenses. Blackwater está siendo vigilada de cerca por un tiroteo masivo en Bagdad que causó la muerte de 17 iraquíes en septiembre. Testigos militares dicen que los empleados de Blackwater aparentemente arrojaron el gas para abrirse paso en medio de un embotellamiento. Este gas solo puede ser utilizado en situaciones peligrosas. Dicho gas produce, entre otras cosas, ardor en los ojos y lagrimeo, irritación de la piel, tos y dificultades respiratorias, nauseas y vómitos. Blackwater dice que reportó el incidente a la Embajada de Estados Unidos y que el caso fue investigado. Sin embargo, oficiales estadounidenses no pudieron confirmar que la investigación de hecho se haya efectuado.

Único oficial acusado en escándalo de Abu Ghraib fue absuelto de su condena

El único oficial militar acusado en el escándalo de abuso en Abu Ghraib fue absuelto de su única condena. El Teniente Coronel Steven Jordan fue absuelto el año pasado de los cargos de abusar personalmente de prisioneros y entrenar a otros soldados acusados de malos tratos. Jordan fue declarado culpable del cargo de desobedecer órdenes al hablar de la investigación en curso cuando se le había ordenado no hacerlo. No obstante, esta semana el General de División Richard Rowe desechó esa condena. En un momento Jordan podría haber sido condenado hasta a 16 años de prisión.

10 de enero de 2008

Blackwater Dropped Toxin on Crowded Checkpoint

The private military firm Blackwater Worldwide is facing new allegations of unlawful activity in Iraq, this time for dropping a heavily-restricted riot-control gas on a crowded Baghdad checkpoint in May 2005. According to the New York Times, the release of the CS gas by a Blackwater helicopter and armored vehicle temporarily blinded drivers, pedestrians and at least ten American soldiers. Blackwater is already under scrutiny for a mass shooting in Baghdad that killed seventeen Iraqis last September. Military witnesses say Blackwater personnel appeared to release the gas as a way to clear a traffic jam that was blocking their route. The gas is only authorized for use in dangerous situations. Its effects include burning and watering eyes, skin irritation, coughing and breathing difficulties, nausea and vomiting. Blackwater says it reported the incident to the U.S. Embassy and that the case was investigated. But U.S. officials could not confirm that an investigation occurred.

8 de enero de 2008

Evidence of Israel's "cowardly blending" comes to light

Evidence of Israel's "cowardly blending" comes to light
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Lebanon, 7 January 2008


It apparently never occurred to anyone in our leading human rights organizations or the Western media that the same moral and legal standards ought be applied to the behavior of Israel and Hizballah during the war on Lebanon 18 months ago. Belatedly, an important effort has been made to set that right.

A new report, written by a respected Israeli human rights organization, one representing the country's Arab minority not its Jewish majority, has unearthed evidence showing that during the fighting Israel committed war crimes not only against Lebanese civilians -- as was already known -- but also against its own Arab citizens. This is an aspect of the war that has been almost entirely neglected until now.

The report also sheds a surprising light on the question of what Hizballah was aiming at when it fired hundreds of rockets on northern Israel. Until the report's publication last month, I had been all but a lone voice arguing that the picture of what took place during the war was far more complex than generally accepted.

The new report follows a series of inquiries by the most influential human rights groups, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to identify the ways in which international law was broken during Israel's 34-day assault on Lebanon. However, both organizations failed to examine, except in the most cursory and dismissive way, Israel's treatment of its own civilians during the war. That failure may also have had serious repercussions for their ability to assess Hizballah's actions.

Before examining the report's revelations, it is worth revisiting the much-misrepresented events of summer 2006 and considering what efforts have been made subsequently to bring the two sides to account.

The war was the culmination of a series of tit-for-tat provocations along the shared border following Israel's withdrawal from its two-decade occupation of south Lebanon in 2000. Almost daily for those six years Israel behaved as though the occupation had not ended, sending war planes into Lebanese air space to create terrifying sonic booms and spy on the country. (After the war, it resumed these flights almost immediately.)

In response Hizballah, a Shia militia that offered the only effective resistance during Lebanon's period of occupation, maintained its belligerent posture. It warned repeatedly that it would capture Israeli soldiers, should the chance arise, in the hope of forcing a prisoner exchange. Israel had held on to a handful of Lebanese prisoners after its pullback.

Hizballah also demanded that Israel complete its withdrawal from Lebanon in full by leaving a fertile sliver of territory, the Shebaa Farms. Israel argues that the area is Syrian territory, occupied by its army along with the Golan Heights in 1967, and will be returned one day in negotiations with Damascus. UN cartographers disagree, backing Hizballah's claim that the area is Lebanese.

The fighting began with a relatively minor incident (by regional standards) and one that was entirely predictable: Hizballah attacked a border post, capturing two soldiers and killing three more in the operation. Hizballah's leader Hassan Nasrallah proposed a prisoner swap. Israel declared war the very same day, unleashing a massive bombing campaign that over the next month killed nearly 1,200 Lebanese civilians.

An editorial in Israel's leading newspaper Haaretz noted again this week that, by rejecting Hizballah's overtures, "Israel initiated the war."

In the last days of the fighting, as a UN-brokered ceasefire was about to come into effect, Israel dropped more than a million cluster bombs on south Lebanon, of which several hundred thousand failed to detonate. Since the end of the war, 39 Lebanese civilians have been killed and dozens more maimed from these small landmines littering the countryside.

Israel's own inquiry into its use of the cluster munitions wrapped up last month by exonerating the army, even while admitting that many of the bombs had been directed at civilian population centers. In Israel's books, it seems, international law sanctions the targeting of civilians during war.

Veteran Israeli reporter Meron Rapoport recently noted that his newspaper, Haaretz again, has evidence that the army's use of cluster munitions was "pre-planned" and undertaken without regard to the location of Hizballah positions. The only reasonable conclusion is that Israel wanted south Lebanon uninhabitable at any cost, possibly so that another ground invasion could be mounted.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has carried out the most detailed examination of the war, was less forgiving than Israel's own investigators -- as might have been expected in the case of such a flagrant abuse of the rules of war. Still, it has failed to condemn Israel's actions unreservedly. In a typical press release it noted the wide dispersal of cluster bombs over civilian areas of south Lebanon but concluded only that their use by Israel "may violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law."

In this and other respects, HRW's reports have revealed troubling double standards.

Double standards

During the war two charges were leveled against Hizballah, mainly by Israel's supporters, and investigated by the human rights group: that the Shia militia fired rockets on northern Israel either indiscriminately or in a deliberate attempt to target civilians; and that it hid its fighters and weapons among its own Lebanese civilians (thereby conveniently justifying Israel's bombing of those civilians).

Hizballah was found guilty of the first charge, with HRW arguing that it was irrelevant whether or not Hizballah was trying to hit military targets in Israel as its rockets were not precision-guided. All its rockets, whatever they were aimed at, were therefore considered indiscriminate by the organization and a violation of international law. Worthy of note is that HRW expressed certainty about the impermissibility of Hizballah firing imprecise rockets but not about Israel's use of even less precise cluster bombs.

On the second charge Hizballah was substantially acquitted, with HRW failing to find evidence that, apart from in a handful of isolated instances, the militia hid among the Lebanese population.

Regarding Israel, the human rights organizations investigated the charge that it violated international law by endangering Lebanese civilians during its bombing campaigns. Given that Israel's missiles and bombs were supposed to have pinpoint accuracy, the large death toll of Lebanese civilians provided indisputable evidence of Israeli war crimes. HRW agreed.

Strangely, however, after submitting both Israel and Hizballah to the same test of whether their firepower targeted civilians, HRW deemed it inappropriate to investigate Israel on the second allegation faced by Hizballah: that it committed a war crime by blending in with its own civilian population. Was there so little prima facie evidence of such behavior on Israel's side that the organization decided it was not worth wasting its resources on such an inquiry?

HRW produced two lengthy reports in August 2007, one examining events in Lebanon and the other events in Israel. But the report on what happened inside Israel, "Civilians under Assault," failed to examine Israel's treatment of its own civilians and focused instead only on proving that Hizballah's firing of its rockets violated international law.

HRW did make a brief reference to the possibility that Israeli military installations were located close to or inside civilian communities. It cited examples of a naval training base next to a hospital in Haifa and a weapons factory built in a civilian community. Its researchers even admitted to watching the Israeli army firing shells into Lebanon from a residential street of the Jewish community of Zarit.

This act of "cowardly blending" by the Israeli army -- to echo the UN envoy Jan Egeland's unwarranted criticism of Hizballah -- was a war crime. It made Israeli civilians a potential target for Hizballah reprisal attacks.

So what was HRW's position on this gross violation of the rules of war it had witnessed? After yet again denouncing Hizballah for its rocket attacks, the report was mealy-mouthed: "Given that indiscriminate fire [by Hizballah], there is no reason to believe that Israel's placement of certain military assets within these cities added appreciably to the risk facing their residents."

In other words, Israel's culpability in hiding its war machine inside civilian communities did not need to be assessed on its own terms as a violation of international law. Instead Israel was let off the hook based on the assumption that Hizballah's rockets were incapable of hitting such positions. It is dubious, to put it mildly, whether this is a legitimate reading of international law.

An additional criticism, one that I made on several occasions during the war, was that Israel failed to protect its Arab communities from rocket attacks by ensuring they had bomb shelters or early warning systems -- unlike Jewish communities. On this issue, the HRW report had only this to say: "Human Rights Watch did not investigate whether Israel discriminated among Jewish and Arab residents of the north in the protection it provided from Hizballah attacks."

Of Hizballah's indiscrimination, HRW was certain; of Israel's discrimination, it held back from judgment.

New evidence

Fortunately, we no longer have to rely on Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International for a full picture of what took place during what Israelis call the Second Lebanon War. Last month the Arab Association for Human Rights, based in Nazareth, published its own report, "Civilians in Danger," covering the ground its much bigger cousins dared not touch.

The hostile climate in Israel towards the fifth of the population who are Arab has made publication of the report a risky business. Azmi Bishara, Israel's leading Arab politician and a major critic of Israel's behavior during the Lebanon war, is currently in exile under possible death sentence. Israel has accused him of treason in helping Hizballah during the fighting, though the secret services have yet to produce the evidence they have supposedly amassed against him. Nonetheless they have successfully intimidated most of the Arab minority into silence.

Also, much of the report's detail, including many place-names and maps showing the location of Hizballah rocket strikes, has had to be excised to satisfy Israel's strict military censorship laws.

But despite these obstacles, the Human Rights Association has taken a brave stand in unearthing the evidence to show that Israel committed war crimes by placing much of its military hardware, including artillery positions firing into Lebanon, inside and next to Arab towns and villages. These were not isolated instances but a discernible pattern.

The threat to which this exposed Arab communities was far from as theoretical as HRW supposes. Some 660 Hizballah rockets landed on 20 Arab communities in the north, apparently surprising Israeli officials, who believed Hizballah would not target fellow Arabs. Of the 44 Israeli civilians killed by the rockets, 21 were Arab citizens.

Israel has cited these deaths as further proof that Hizballah's rocket fire was indiscriminate. The Human Rights Association, however, reaches a rather different conclusion, one based on the available evidence. Its research shows a clear correlation between an Arab community having an Israeli army base located next to it and the likelihood of it being hit by Hizballah rockets. In short, Arab communities targeted by Hizballah were almost exclusively those in which the Israeli army was based.

"The study found that the Arab towns and villages that suffered the most intensive attacks during the war were ones that were surrounded by military installations, either on a permanent basis or temporarily during the course of the war," the report states.

Such findings lend credibility to complaints made during the war by Israel's Arab legislators, including Bishara himself, that Arab communities were being used as "human shields" by the Israeli army -- possibly to deter Hizballah from targeting its positions.

In early August 2006, Bishara told the Israeli Maariv newspaper: "What ordinary citizens are afraid to say, the Arab Knesset members are declaring loudly. Israel turned the Galilee and the Arab villages in particular into human shields by surrounding them with artillery positions and missile batteries."

Such violations of the rules of war were occasionally hinted at in reporting in the Israeli media. In one account from the front line, for example, a reporter from Maariv quoted parents in the Arab village of Fassuta complaining that children were wetting their beds because of the frightening bark of tanks stationed outside their homes.

According to the Human Rights Association's report, Israel made its Arab citizens vulnerable to Hizballah's rockets in the following ways:

  • Permanent military bases, including army camps, airfields and weapons factories, as well as temporary artillery positions that fired thousands of shells and mortars into southern Lebanon were located inside or next to many Arab communities.
  • The Israeli army trained soldiers inside northern Arab communities before and during the war in preparation for a ground invasion, arguing that the topography in these communities was similar to the villages of south Lebanon.
  • The government failed to evacuate civilians from the area of fighting, leaving Arab citizens particularly in danger. Almost no protective measures, such as building public shelters or installing air raid sirens, had been taken in Arab communities, whereas they had been in Jewish communities.
  • Under the protocols to the Geneva Conventions, parties to a conflict must "avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas" and must "endeavor to remove the civilian population ... from the vicinity of military objectives." The Human Rights Association report clearly shows that Israel cynically broke these rules of war.

Tarek Ibrahim, a lawyer and the author of the Association's report, says the most surprising finding is that Hizballah's rockets mostly targeted Arab communities where military installations had been located and in the main avoided those where there were no such military positions.

"Hizballah claimed on several occasions that its rockets were aimed primarily at military targets in Israel. Our research cannot prove that to be the case but it does give a strong indication that Hizballah's claims may be true."

Although Hizballah's Katyusha rockets were not precision-guided, the proximity of Israeli military positions to Arab communities "are within the margin of error of the rockets fired by Hizballah," according to the report. In most cases, such positions were located either inside the community itself or a few hundred meters from it.

In its recommendations, the Human Rights Association calls for the removal of all Israeli military installations from civilian communities.

(Again noteworthy is the fact that Israel has built several weapons factories inside Arab communities, including in Nazareth. Arab citizens are almost never allowed to work in Israel's vast military industries, so why build them there? Part of the reason is doubtless that they provide another pretext for confiscating Arab communities' lands and "Judaizing" them. But is the criticism by Arab legislators of "human shielding" another possible reason?)

The report avoids dealing with the wider issue of whether the Israeli army located in Jewish communities too during the war. Ibrahim explains: "In part the reason was that we are an Arab organization and that directs the focus of our work. But there is also the difficulty that Israeli Jews are unlikely to cooperate with our research."

Israel has longed boasted of its "citizen army," and in surveys Israeli Jews say they trust the military more than the country's parliament, government and courts.

Nonetheless, the report notes, there is ample evidence that the army based itself in some Jewish communities too. As well as the eyewitness account of the Human Rights Watch researcher, it was widely reported during the war that 12 soldiers were killed when a Hizballah rocket struck the rural community of Kfar Giladi, close to the northern border.

A member of the kibbutz, Uri Eshkoli, recently told the Israeli media: "We deserve a medal of honor for our assistance during the war. We opened our hotel to soldiers and asked for no compensation. Moreover, soldiers stayed in the kibbutz throughout the entire war."

In another report, in The Guardian newspaper, a 19-year-old British Jew, Danny Young, recounted his experiences performing military service during the war. He lived on Kibbutz Sasa, close to the border, which became an army rear base. "We were shooting missiles from the foot of this kibbutz," he told the paper. "We were also receiving Katyushas."

So far the Human Rights Association's report has received minimal coverage in the Hebrew media. "We are facing a very difficult political atmosphere in Israel at the moment," Ibrahim told me. "Few people inside Israel want to hear that their army and government broke international law in such a flagrant manner."

It seems few in the West, even the guardians of human rights, are ready to hear such a message either.

Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest book "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" will be published next month. His website is www.jkcook.net.

(republished with permission from Electronic Intifada http://electronicintifada.net)

4 de enero de 2008

Mueren nueve palestinos en ataque israelí contra Gaza

En Israel y los Territorios Ocupados, al menos nueve palestinos fueron asesinados el jueves en un ataque israelí contra Gaza. Entre las personas que murieron se encontraban cuatro civiles. Tres de ellos eran integrantes de la misma familia, que murieron cuando tanques israelíes bombardearon su casa. Un pariente dijo que la familia estaba desayunando cuando la casa fue bombardeada. Muhammad Atiat dijo: “Ella estaba sentada aquí con su hija e hijos, estaban desayunando. De pronto tanques israelíes dispararon un cohete, luego mi tía murió, su hija y otras dos personas, cuatro personas resultaron heridas. Uno de ellos es mi primo, que ahora se encuentra en el hospital”. Los tanques israelíes también hirieron a varios palestinos, entre ellos tres niños de edad escolar. Un joven de catorce años se encuentra en estado crítico. Israel dice que está intentando detener los ataques con cohetes palestinos contra las localidades israelíes cercanas. Un cohete palestino impactó en Ashkelon el jueves, pero aparentemente no hubo heridos. Mientras tanto, soldados israelíes también invadieron la ciudad de Nablus, en Cisjordania. Diecinueve palestinos resultaron heridos, la mayoría de los cuales eran niños de edad escolar que estaban arrojando piedras.

3 de enero de 2008

Partidario de Giuliani pide el exterminio de los musulmanes

Un líder del grupo Veteranos de New Hampshire por Rudy renunció de la campaña de Giuliani luego de que pidió el exterminio de los musulmanes.
John Deady realizó los siguientes comentarios durante una entrevista grabada con el periódico The Guardian:
“Considero que tiene el conocimiento y el juicio para atacar uno de los problemas más difíciles en la historia actual y es el del crecimiento de los musulmanes, y no cometer errores al respecto, esto no ha sucedido en mil años. Estas personas son muy dedicadas y también extremadamente inteligentes a su manera. Debemos seguir presionándolos hasta que los derrotemos o los atrapemos y los mandemos de regreso a sus cuevas, o en otras palabras, hasta que nos deshagamos de ellos”.

1 de enero de 2008

Las torturas de Bush

El programa de secuestro y tortura del gobierno de Bush, con sus “vuelos de tortura” a bordo de jets privados y las "prisiones secretas" de la CIA, salió un poco más a la luz este semana. Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah fue víctima del llamado programa de “rendición extraordinaria” de la CIA, en el que personas son “arrestadas” en sus casas, en aeropuertos, en la calle, y son trasladadas, lejos de la vigilancia del Congreso de EE.UU., lejos de la prensa, lejos del alcance de los tribunales, a países en los que la tortura y los tratos crueles son rutina.

Bashmilah está siendo representado por la Unión Estadounidense por las Libertades Civiles (ACLU, por sus siglas en inglés) y por el Departamento de Derechos Humanos de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Nueva York en una demanda conjunta con otras cuatro víctimas del programa de rendición extraordinaria de la CIA. No han demandado al gobierno de EE.UU. ni a la CIA, sino a una compañía llamada Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., una subsidiaria de Boeing Corporation. Un ex empleado de Jeppesen, Sean Belcher, presentó una declaración jurada en apoyo a Bashmilah, en la que informaba que el ejecutivo de Jeppesen Bob Overby presumía de la siguiente forma: “hacemos todos los vuelos del programa de rendición extraordinaria”, y continuaba explicando al personal que se refería a “los vuelos de tortura”, y que estaban muy bien pagos.

Con la ayuda de un intérprete, a través del teléfono desde su casa en Yemen, Bashmilah describió cómo comenzó su calvario el 21 de Octubre de 2003, cuando fue arrestado en Amman, Jordania: “Duró aproximadamente seis días, pero lo que soporté allí equivale a años. Querían que confesara que tenía relaciones con algunos individuos de al-Qaeda. Intentaron varias veces que confesara, y cada vez que les decía que no, me daban una patada, me abofeteaban o me insultaban. Entonces dijeron que si no confesaba, traerían a mi esposa y la violarían delante de mí. Y por miedo a lo que podría pasarle a mi familia, grité hasta desmayarme. Después de recuperar la conciencia, les dije ‘por favor, no le hagan nada a mi familia. Cooperaré con ustedes de la manera en que quieran’”.

Tras firmar una confesión falsa, le anunciaron que iba a ser liberado. Mientras era conducido por las instalaciones de la inteligencia jordana se levantó la venda que le tapada los ojos. “Vi a otro hombre, que tenía aspecto occidental. Era blanco, con cierto sobrepeso y llevaba gafas de sol. Comprendí entonces que probablemente me estaban entregando a otra agencia, porque durante los interrogatorios a los que me habían sometido los jordanos, una de las amenazas era que, si no confesaba, me entregarían a la inteligencia estadounidense”. Fue preparado para el traslado, fue completamente desnudado. “Empezaron a fotografiarme por todas partes. También empezaron a golpearme por los costados y en los pies. Y después me pusieron en una postura parecida a la posición de postración en la oración musulmana, que es parecida a la posición fetal. Y en esa posición, uno de ellos metió el dedo en mi ano muy violentamente. Me dolía terriblemente, y empecé a gritar. Cuando empezaron a tomar fotos, pude ver que estaban enmascarados. Estaban vestidos de negro de pies a cabeza, y también llevaban guantes de cirujano”.

Bashmilah cuenta que le pusieron un pañal, que tenía los ojos y los oídos tapados, que le pusieron una bolsa sobre la cabeza y auriculares para bloquear el ruido exterior. Fue trasladado en avión a Kabul, Afganistán, donde estuvo detenido en aislamiento durante casi seis meses. Creía que estaba a cargo de estadounidenses. “Algunos de los interrogadores se me acercaban y me interrogaban en la sala de interrogatorios, y me decían: ‘Deberías calmarte y sentirte tranquilo, porque enviaremos toda esta información a Washington’. Y decían que en Washington determinarían si mis respuestas eran verdaderas o no”. Aunque fue aislado de otros prisioneros, logró escuchar a algunos de ellos comentando que podían estar en la base aérea de Bagram. Bashmilah siguió contando en el teléfono que lo mantenían despierto con música estridente y que permanecía sujeto con grilletes, que solamente le quitaban durante los periódicos interrogatorios.

Durante el período en que Bashmilah era interrogado y torturado, también era visitado por “psiquiatras”. “La terapia consistía principalmente en analizar mis pensamientos e intentar interpretarlos por mí, además de suministrarme tranquilizantes”.

Bashmilah intentó suicidarse tres veces, protagonizó una huelga de hambre que fue interrumpida de forma dolorosa cuando le introdujeron un tubo por la nariz para alimentarlo de manera forzosa, se le negó el acceso a un abogado, a entrevistarse con algún grupo de derechos humanos, y al Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja. En efecto, estaba desaparecido.

El 5 de mayo de 2005 fue trasladado a una prisión en Yemen, donde finalmente pudo comunicarse con su familia. Amnistía Internacional se involucró en el caso. Fue liberado en marzo de 2006, sin que se hayan presentado cargos por terrorismo en su contra.

Mohamed Bashmilah afirmó que había cámaras en sus celdas y en las salas de interrogatorio. Quizás su calvario fue registrado en video. Esperemos que la CIA no destruya también esas grabaciones.