Definition of 'Torture' Blurs

Look it that, this was published today which means that I am faster than the Chicago Tribune:

Definition of 'torture' blurs

Coercion in Spain hints at how many justify the practice

By Tom Hundley
Tribune foreign correspondent

March 16, 2003

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain -- The two police cars had been conspicuous in tailing him earlier in the day, so Martxelo Otamendi was not surprised by his arrest, only the manner of it.

"The Civil Guard came to my house at 1:30 in the morning. There were about 12 cars. They sealed off all the streets in my neighborhood. It was really a military operation, like they were arresting [Osama] bin Laden," said Otamendi, editor of Egunkaria, Spain's only Basque-language newspaper.

The police spent five hours in the house, Otamendi said, rummaging through his belongings, carting away boxes of books, files, family photos and personal effects that they hoped would link him to ETA, the violent Basque separatist organization.

After they finished, a handcuffed and blindfolded Otamendi was led away from the house and driven six hours to Madrid's Soto del Real prison.

When he walked out of the prison five days later, Otamendi appeared dazed. He tried to give a television interview but broke down in the middle of it.

He later told interviewers he had been stripped, deprived of sleep, forced to stand for hours, blindfolded and subjected to other "moderate" physical and psychological abuse.

Human-rights organizations say that these allegations, if true, amount to torture.

"We believe that any ill-treatment inflicted deliberately should count as torture," said Gillian Fleming, an investigator with Amnesty International.

With countries as diverse as the United States, Russia, Israel and Spain stepping up their wars on terrorism, human-rights groups and legal experts say the legal and moral boundaries for the use of torture are becoming dangerously blurred.

For years, Israel's secret police defended what they called "moderate physical pressure"--binding suspects in painful positions, covering their heads with hoods and violently shaking them--as a legitimate means of coercing information from Palestinian prisoners.

Rights groups object to these practices. "Amnesty International is totally opposed to the idea that there is any acceptable form of torture," Fleming said, and in a landmark decision two years ago, the Israeli Supreme Court agreed.

But senior U.S. officials acknowledge they are using sleep and light deprivation and the temporary withholding of food, water and medical attention to extract information from Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the senior operative arrested in Pakistan this month.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insist that these techniques are legal and appropriate, especially when it comes to eliciting information from someone like Mohammed, a career terrorist and close confidant of bin Laden's who is believed to have been a key planner of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Otamendi, on the other hand, is a newspaper editor and television personality. His links to terrorist activity, if they exist at all, are far from proven. The newspaper he edits is generally regarded as a voice of moderation in a troubled region, although some in the Spanish
government suspect it of having ties to ETA.

In Spain, allegations of torture and abuse tend to fall on deaf ears when they come from people that the government has accused of having links to ETA, a group whose appetite for violence has alienated virtually all of the Spanish public, including most Basques.

"When they get out of jail, ETA people always claim torture. It's standard operating procedure," one Western diplomat said. An ETA operations manual seized by the government does instruct its members to make this claim.

Otamendi was arrested Feb. 20 along with nine other people associated with the Egunkaria management, including a Jesuit priest who is a member of newspaper's board of directors. Police also ordered the newspaper to cease publication.

Two days later, about 60,000 people marched in San Sebastian to protest the newspaper's closing. But Spain's leading newspapers have taken little notice of the closing or the allegations of torture made by Otamendi and three others who have since been released.

"Journalists here care about saving the whales, about torture in Chile 25 years ago and about mistreatment of Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo, but they are not going to stick their necks out for the Basques," Otamendi said.

He can smile now when he recalls how his jailers forced him to do calisthenics to the point of exhaustion.

"Knee-bends, push-ups. Then they would have me kneel or stand facing the wall for three or four hours at a time. They would let me sit for 20 minutes, but no lying down," he said. "For the first three days, I was never allowed to lie down."

As required by Spanish law, Otamendi was allowed to visit a court-appointed doctor each day. Because he also is well-known as a gay activist, Otamendi said he was constantly insulted about his orientation and forced to simulate sex acts.

"They kicked me a few times in the testicles. Not very hard, just a reminder of what could come later," he said.

On two occasions, he said, the jailers put a bag over his head so that he couldn't breathe. Another time they put a gun to his temple and cocked the hammer.

Spain's anti-terrorism laws allow authorities to hold suspects for five days without access to a lawyer and without specifying the charges. What Otamendi's interrogators seemed to want was information about the financing and ownership of Egunkaria and his journalistic contacts with
ETA.

"They told me that the interrogations were like a train: I had a chance to get off at any stop and suffer less. It was my choice. They told me that in the end everyone talks, so why not make it easy on myself," he said.

On Monday, the Spanish government filed a criminal complaint against Otamendi and the other detainees who alleged torture, accusing them of collaborating with ETA and undermining Spain's democratic institutions by making false allegations against the government.

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