UN Special Rapporteur on Torture's report on Manning

[EFerrari]

USA: Unmonitored access to detainees is essential to any credible enquiry into torture or cruel inhuman and degrading treatment, says UN Torture expert

12 July 2011

GENEVA - The Special Rapporteur on Torture today expressed concerns about restrictions placed by the United States Government on his interaction with detainees.

Commenting on his attempts to gain unrestricted access to Private first class Bradley Manning, a United States soldier detained for allegedly leaking classified US communications to the Wikileaks website, Mendez said: “I am assured by the US Government that Mr. Manning’s prison regime and confinement is markedly better than it was when he was in Quantico. However, in addition to obtaining first hand information on my own about his new conditions of confinement, I need to ascertain whether the conditions he was subjected to for several months in Quantico amounted to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. For that, it is imperative that I talk to Mr. Manning under conditions where I can be assured that he is being absolutely candid.”

At the Special Rapporteur’s request and after several meetings, the US Department of Defense has allowed Mendez to visit Pfc. Manning but warned him that the conversation would be monitored. Such a condition violates long-standing rules that the UN applies for prison visits and for interviews with inmates everywhere in the world. On humanitarian grounds and under protest, Mendez offered to Manning, through his counsel, to visit him under these restrictive conditions, an offer that Manning has declined.

The Special Rapporteur has, since the beginning of the year, been in negotiations with the US Government over unrestricted access to Manning. Last month, the Government informed him that it was not in a position to accede to the request for a private and unmonitored meeting with Manning.

More --

http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=11231&LangID=E

[Luminous Animal]

1. Greenwald has a few things to say about this:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/12/manning/index.html

During the Bush years, the pronouncements of the U.N.'s rapporteur for torture were widely hailed in progressive circles, but caring about what the U.N. thinks -- like concerns over detainee abuse -- is so very 2006. After all, look over there: it's Michele Bachmann . As for the Obama administration's strange refusal to allow a private U.N. interview with Manning -- something even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was allowed by the Bush Pentagon in 2006 with the ICRC -- hasn't the Government taught us that you have nothing to hide if you've done nothing wrong?

[EFerrari]

3. Thanks, I'd missed that. n/t

[chill_wind]

2. K & R. n/t