First ‘narco-terrorism’ case against al-Qaeda to be tried in US

The wars on drugs and al-Qaeda are being jointly prosecuted in an American courtroom for the first time, following last month’s arrest of three Malians charged with “narco-terrorism” by the US Attorney’s Office.

The term “narco-terrorism” has been used for decades to describe the tactics of drug traffickers in the 1980s – mainly in Latin America.  However, the two concepts were merged in Section 960a of Title 21, US Code, which imposes additional charges on drug traffickers who attempt or conspire to traffic drus while “knowing or intending to provide, directly or indirectly, anything of pecuniary value to any person or organization that has engaged or engages in terrorist activity.”

The first such prosecution of accused associates of al-Qaeda was launched last month against three men who allegedly conspired to transport cocaine with the intent of supporting al-Qaeda and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

According to the indictment, the men told an undercover agent that their association with al-Qaeda could ensure secure transport of the cocaine through selected routes controlled by the organisation and that the profits would go towards “the cause”.

“Today’s arrests are further proof of the direct link between dangerous terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, and international drug trafficking that fuels their violent activities,” said DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart.

The indictment states that the official charge against Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure and Idriss Abelrahman, is “narco-terrorism conspiracy.”  The three were arrested in Ghana and transferred to the custody of the US Attorney.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years to life prison.

Arbitrary detention, sexual violence and torture in Cambodia’s drug detention centres

People who use drugs in Cambodia are at risk of arbitrary detention in centers where they suffer torture, physical and sexual violence, and other forms of cruel punishment, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Detention centers, mandated to treat and ‘rehabilitate’ drug users, instead subject them to electric shocks, beatings with electrical wire, forced labor, and harsh military drills.

In the 93-page report, “Skin on the Cable,” Human Rights Watch documents detainees being beaten, raped, forced to donate blood, and subjected to painful physical punishments such as “rolling like a barrel” and being chained while standing in the sun. Human Rights Watch also reported that a large number of detainees told of receiving rotten or insect-ridden food and symptoms of diseases consistent with nutritional deficiencies.

“Individuals in these centers are not being treated or rehabilitated, they are being illegally detained and often tortured,” said Joseph Amon, director of the Health and Human Rights division at Human Rights Watch. “These centers do not need to be revamped or modified; they need to be shut down.”

According to the report, people are frequently arbitrarily arrested without a warrant or without reasonable cause, often on the request of a relative or as part of periodic police round-ups of people considered “undesirable.” They are often lied to – or simply not informed – about the reasons of their arrest. They have no access to a lawyer during their period in police custody or during the subsequent period of detention in the centers.

Military drills, sweating while exercising, and laboring are the most common means used to “cure” drug dependence in these centers, which are operated by various government entities, including military police and civilian police forces. “Vocational training” activities which take place in some centers appear motivated by benefits to the center staff as opposed to detainees. The report highlighted the large number of children and individuals with mental illnesses also detained within the centers. Both groups, according to the report, were subject to similar physical abuses.

Human Rights Watch called on the Royal Cambodian Government to permanently close its drug detention centers and conduct a thorough investigation of acts of torture, ill treatment, arbitrary detention, and other abuses occurring in them. Torture and inhuman treatment are prohibited by both the government’s international human rights obligations and the Constitution of Cambodia.

“The government of Cambodia must stop the torture occurring in these centers” said Amon. “Drug dependency can be addressed through expanded voluntary, community-based, outpatient treatment that respects human rights and is consistent with international standards.”

Selected accounts from individuals interviewed for “Skin on the Cable”:

“I think this is not a rehab center but a torturing center.” – Kakada, former detainee

“[A staff member] would use the cable to beat people…On each whip the person’s skin would come off and stick on the cable…” – M’noh, age 16, describing whippings he witnessed in the Social Affairs “Youth Rehabilitation Center” in Choam Chao

“[After arrest] the police search my body, they take my money, they also keep my drugs…They say, ‘If you don’t have money, why don’t you go for a walk with me?…[The police] drove me to a guest house…. How can you refuse to give him sex? You must do it. There were two officers. [I had sex with] each one time. After that they let me go home.” – Minea, a woman in her mid 20’s who uses drugs, explaining how she was raped by two police officers

“[Shortly after arrival] I was knocked out. Other inmates beat me….They just covered me with a blanket and beat me…They beat me in the face, my chest, my side. I don’t know how long it lasted…The staff had ordered the inmates to beat me. The staff said, ‘The new chicken has arrived, let’s pluck its feathers and eat it!’” – Duongchem, former detainee

At War With Ourselves: Letter to the Independent on Sunday (UK), 23 January 2010

Sir,

Hugh O’Shaughnessy notes recent shifts in the American policy on drugs, but there is an ongoing move towards greater securitisation of the drug “threat” and fusion with the “war on terror” (”US waves white flag in disastrous ‘war on drugs’”, 17 January). The New York Times reports that the US attorney for Manhattan is to combine the units tasked with prosecuting international narcotics and terrorism cases. Last summer, it was revealed that the US had placed 50 drug traffickers suspected of financing the Taliban on a “kill list“, equating smugglers with insurgents. And while some US agents may have been removed from Latin America, US-funded aerial fumigation of coca continues, with spray planes accompanied by military helicopters.

While the US may have taken the lead in the drug war, it has taken the complicity of almost every state on the planet to carry it off. In country after country, people who are drug dependent are routinely denied treatment, to fight the same “threat” that justifies, in some places, torture, imprisonment without trial, and executions. The macro-economic scale of the drug trade – the basis of its ability to pose a global threat – is an unavoidable function of prohibition. The global fight against drugs goes on. But the enemy is not “invisible”. We are at war with ourselves.

Damon Barrett

International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/iiosi-letters-emails–online-postings-24-january-2010-1877075.html

Drugs: towards a global tolerance regime, Mick Moore, Open Democracy, 22 January 2010

This is a clear and accessible introduction to many of the problems facing and, indeed, caused by, the international drug control system.

It also raises the enduring question of the legal regulation of currently illicit drugs. The question of whether human rights law supports such a move remains open.

Drugs: towards a global tolerance regime, Mick Moore

The once closed debate on drugs policy shows signs of opening up. But liberalisation would require the international restrictions on narcotics which do untold harm to the developing world to be relaxed

Full article

Canadian Court of Appeals supports Vancouver Safe Injecting Facility

The British Columbia Court of Appeal has rejected the Canadian government’s attempt to shut down the first safe injecting site in North America.  The facility, called Insite, has operated since 2003 under a constitutional exemption to the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. As the exemption was due to expire, Insite successfully obtained a permanent exemption, which the Conservative government challenged.

Two of the three appeals court judges supported Insite’s continued exemption.

INSITE Court of Appeals Decision

Narcophobia: drugs prohibition and the generation of human rights abuses, Fernanda Mena and Dick Hobbs

Trends in Organised Crime, December 2009

Abstract This paper is concerned with the negative aspects of global drugs prohibition. The paper argues that prohibition, which is driven by moralism rather than empirical research, creates a black market that is regulated by violent entrepreneurs, and particular in developing countries where there is a lack of economic opportunities for the poor, offers the only feasible employment options. The paper suggests that the results of experimental legislation should be taken seriously. The militarisation of prohibition enforcement has hindered the advancement of democracy and led to violence and increases in human rights abuses. In conclusion it is argued that the current system of global prohibition creates more problems than it solves, and that issues of drug production and trade need to be dealt with by regulation from within a development perspective.

Available for download via Springerlink

New Human Rights Watch report on compulsory drug treatment and forced labour in China

(New York) – Chinese authorities are incarcerating drug users in compulsory drug detention centers that deny them access to treatment for drug dependency and put them at risk of physical abuse and unpaid forced labor, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Half a million people are confined within compulsory drug detention centers in China at any given time, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

The 37-page report, “Where Darkness Knows No Limits” based on research in Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, documents how China’s June 2008 Anti-Drug Law compounds the health risks of suspected illicit drug users by allowing government officials and security forces to incarcerate them for up to seven years. The incarceration is without trial or judicial oversight.  The law fails to clearly define mechanisms for legal appeals or the reporting of abusive conduct, and does not ensure evidence-based drug dependency treatment.

“Instead of putting in place effective drug dependency treatment, the new Chinese law subjects suspected drug users to arbitrary detention and inhumane treatment,” said Joe Amon, the Health and Human Rights Division director at Human Rights Watch. “The Chinese government has explained the law as a progressive step towards recognizing drug users as ‘patients,’ but they’re not even being provided the rights of ordinary prisoners.”

The report documents how individuals detained in some drug detention centers are routinely beaten, denied medical treatment, and forced to work up to 18 hours a day without pay. Although sentenced to “rehabilitation,” they are denied access to effective drug dependency treatment and provided no opportunity to learn skills to reintegrate into the community.

Human Rights Watch said that over the past decade, the Chinese government has promoted progressive policies that embrace some harm reduction strategies as part of a pragmatic response to high rates of drug use and HIV/AIDS. Partnering with local and international nongovernmental organizations, the Chinese government has expanded community-based methadone therapy and piloted needle exchange programs in some areas with high HIV/AIDS rates. A statement released by the Office of China National Narcotics Control Commission in June 2008 declared that “drug treatment and rehabilitation is in accordance with human-centered principles.” In March 2009 a high-ranking government official stated, “The Chinese Government maintains that drug treatment and rehabilitation should proceed in a people-oriented way.”

However, Human Rights Watch said that in practice, the new law is compounding the health risks, social marginalization, and stigmatization of suspected drug users.

Although the implementation of the Anti-Drug Law ended the practice of sentencing suspected drug users to Re-Education Through Labor (RTL), the Anti-Drug Law expands the sentence in a compulsory drug detention center to a minimum of two years, up from the previously mandated six to twelve month sentence. These drug detention centers permit the same abuses of unpaid forced labor, physical abuse, and the denial of basic health care common under the RTL system.

Abuses have led to the death of detainees in some cases, according to former detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch. The law also adds an undefined “community-based rehabilitation” period of up to four years, effectively permitting incarceration without trial for up to seven years.

“The Chinese government should stop these abuses and ensure that the rights of suspected drug users are fully respected,” said Amon. “Addressing illicit drug use requires developing voluntary, community-based, outpatient treatment based upon effective, proven approaches to drug addiction. Warehousing large numbers of drug users and subjecting them to forced labor and physical abuse is not ‘rehabilitation.’”

Accounts from former detainees of China’s drug detention centers in Yunnan, 2009:

“I was leaving work when I was ambushed by several plainclothes police. They started beating me and put handcuffs on me. No one on the street tried to help because they just assumed I was a criminal. The police said if I didn’t give them 3,000 RMB [US$440] they would put me in a drug detention center. They brought me to my house and told me if I didn’t get the money they would keep beating me. They waited while I was inside and waited while my family found 3,000 RMB from relatives.”

“When we are on the street, in a restaurant, anywhere, the police can just grab us and make us do a urine test. Whenever we use the national identity card they can make us do a urine test.”

“The police stopped me and they wanted money. I said, ‘Please don’t use violence. Please don’t use violence.’ But they beat me.”

“I am a former drug addict. I started using in 1990. I’ve tried to get clean and have been in compulsory labor camps more than eight times. I just cannot go back to a forced labor camp – [it is] a terrifying world where darkness knows no limits.”

Amnesty International highlights human rights abuses in Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’

Mexican civilian authorities must investigate pattern of serious abuses by military – Amnesty International

New evidence of serious human rights violations carried out during military operations to combat organized crime and drug cartels in Mexico has been unveiled in a report published by Amnesty International.

“There is a disturbing pattern of crimes committed by the military in their security operations, abuse that is being denied and ignored by both the civilian and the military authorities in Mexico,” said Kerrie Howard, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Americas programme.

In its report, Mexico: Human rights violations by the military, Amnesty International accuses the authorities of failing to fully probe allegations of abuses committed by the military, including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial and unlawful killings, torture, ill treatment and arbitrary detentions.

By the end of June 2009, almost 2,000 complaints of abuse by the military had been received by the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico since the start of 2008.  Only 367 were received in 2007 and 182 in 2006.

Amnesty International believes that this information does not fully reflect the extent of abuses being carried out but that it is indicative of a growing trend of abuses.

A human rights organization in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, told Amnesty International they had received 70 complaints involving arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment by the military between January 2008 and September 2009.  But only 21 individuals lodged legal complaints.  The rest feared that threats against them would transform into attacks.

“The cases that we have been able to investigate are truly shocking.  But what is more shocking is that we know that this is only the tip of the iceberg.  We are able to go into specific detail on a number of cases whilst the government continues to deny that there are cases of human rights abuses that need to be investigated,” said Kerrie Howard.

Amnesty International’s report goes into detail on five cases of serious human rights violations committed by the military against 35 individuals between October 2008 and August 2009 in the states of Chihuahua,Tamaulipas and Baja California.

On 21 October 2008, witnesses saw 31 year-old Saúl Becerra Reyes and five other men arrested by soldiers in a car-wash in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state.

Five days later, the five men arrested with Saúl were transferred from a military base to the Federal Attorney General’s Office and charged with drug and firearm offences. Saul’s detention was never acknowledged and he was never seen alive again.

Several official complaints were made about Saúl ‘s disappearance but none led to an effective investigation by the authorities. Despite a petition from a federal judge, civilian and military authorities repeatedly denied knowledge of Saul’s whereabouts.

Saúl’s body was found in March 2009. His death certificate said he died one day after his detention of a cerebral hemorrhage from head trauma. The authorities carried out no further autopsy.

The federal judge closed the case and passed it to the Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office to be investigated as an ordinary murder with no reference to evidence of military involvement.

“Mexico is facing a major public security crisis and the government has a clear responsibility to combat organized crime and drug cartels by all legal means,” said Kerrie Howard.

“This is a difficult and dangerous job, but the severity of a crisis should not be used as a pretext for turning a blind eye when abuses are committed.”

Amnesty International also complained that the few cases of military abuse that are taken forward are dealt with in virtually closed military courts where victims and their relatives have no access to information or status on which they can challenge judicial or court proceedings.

The lack of independence and impartiality of military prosecutors and courts has repeatedly resulted in the denial of justice to victims and impunity for perpetrators.

“The abuses we have seen contribute to the deterioration of the security situation in Mexico,” said Kerrie Howard.

“By failing to take action to prevent and punish serious human rights violations the Mexican government could be seen to be complicit in these crimes.”

Amnesty International urged the Mexican authorities to recognize the seriousness and scale of the reports of human rights abuses committed by members of the military as well as the level of complicity of civilian authorities in covering up these abuses and to make the issue a government priority.

The government must take immediate steps to ensure prompt and impartial investigations by the civilian authorities so those responsible are brought before the civilian courts and victims receive reparations.

(c) Amnesty International, 8 December 2009

AI Report Mexico Dec 2009