Bush administration will continue to accept 'assurances' from countries that torture
 The State Department has no plans to stop accepting promises that countries with poor human rights record will not torture freed Guantanamo Bay detainees, RAW STORY has learned. The announcement came the same day the group Human Rights Watch published a report showing that seven ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees of Russian descent have faced torture and other forms of mistreatment since being returned to the Russian Federation in 2004.
The US government is obligated under the Convention Against Torture to not transfer persons to countries where they are likely to face torture. However, the State Department accepts "diplomatic assurances," official promises that the receiving governments will not subject transferred individuals to abuse.
In the case of Russia, seven ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees were shown by Human Rights Watch to have faced abusive treatment after being returned to their homeland. A State Department spokesman told RAW STORY on Thursday afternoon that the US government was concerned by the content of Human Rights Watch's report.
"There's no confirmation that it's true, but the information contained in the report is clearly troubling," Curtis Cooper, a State Department spokesman, said in a phone interview.
He added that the matter had been discussed between the US and Russian governments, but could not say at what level.
"It's specifically an issue that has been raised," he said. "We are now following up with the Russian government, and will express concerns regarding those reports."
Still, Cooper said that there were no plans to reform or reevaluate the practice of accepting diplomatic assurances from countries with troubling human rights records, like the Russian Federation.
"I'm not aware of a review, we have nothing to announce of that kind," he said.
The State Department also had a combative response to the idea that it shouldn't send prisoners home from places like Guantanamo Bay purely because of human rights concerns.
"We don't want to be the world's jailer," the spokesman argued. "It's inconsistent to criticize our efforts to return people to their countries while simultaneously calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. We will continue to look for other nations to accept third country national detainees."
The author of the Human Rights Watch report, Carroll Bogert, who is the organization's assistant director, countered Cooper's argument.
"Of course we want Guantanamo closed," she said. "We wouldn't want this to slow it down, and we don't think it should, but the US has to invest time and diplomatic effort into finding third counties to accept these people."
She added that protecting former detainees has been made difficult by the lens through which the government looks at them.
"It requires applying a rights perspective to Guantanamo," she explained. "The United States has been exclusively concerned with US security, not with the fates of these actual human beings."
Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), who recently sponsored the Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act, a bill that would ban the acceptance of diplomatic assurances from governments with poor human rights records as well as the practice of "extraordinary renditions," released a sharply worded statement, reacting to Human Rights Watch's report by slamming the Bush administration.
"The use of so-called ‘diplomatic assurances’ is a cynical con-game played by the Bush Administration to bypass our obligations under the Convention Against Torture and under domestic law," he said. "We need to stop the practice of extraordinary rendition, which is nothing more than the outsourcing of torture, and stop the use of diplomatic assurances. That is why I’ve introduced the Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act, which will permanently close the loopholes exploited by the Bush Administration when they send detainees to known torturers with a wink and a nod."
A spokesman from the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, did not answer questions that he asked RAW STORY to e-mail to him.
Report shows ex-Gitmo detainees facing abuse
The group Human Rights Watch published a report on Thursday showing that the Russian Federation violated assurances given to the US government that detainees transferred to its authority from Guantanamo Bay would not be tortured.
"The US government appears to have made no attempt to either monitor or protest the inhumane treatment of the seven ex-Guantanamo detainees in Russia, despite the fact that it was aware of Russia’s pattern of abusive treatment," wrote Carroll Bogert in the report, "The 'Stamp of Guantanamo.'"
Seven Russian citizens, Rustam Akhmiarov, Ravil Gumarov, Timur Ishmuratov, Shamil Khazhiev, Rasul Kudaev, Ruslan Odizhev, and Airat Vakhitov, were detained in Afghanistan or Pakistan in 2001 or 2002, and ultimately transferred to Guanatanamo Bay. All seven were subsequently transferred back to Russian authorities after the US government determined that they would not be charged with any crimes.
Human Rights Watch notes that "all of the detainees repeatedly asked authorities at Guantanamo not to be returned to Russia because they expected to be treated worse there."
In spite of their pleas, in March 2004 the Secretary of State accepted "diplomatic assurances" officially issued by Russian authorities, stating that "the individuals will be detained, investigated and prosecuted, as appropriate, under Russian law and will be treated humanely in accordance with Russian law and obligations."
In spite of the Russian government's promises, the New York-based human rights group claims, the 7 men were subjected to torture, harassment, and denial of the right to a fair trial.
The report presents detailed testimony from three of the ex-detainees who have faced particularly harrowing years since their return to Russia.
For the case of Rasil Kudaev, Human Rights Watch noted that there was an ample record of "eyewitness testimony, photographic evidence, and official medical documents" offering proof of the mistreatment he faced.
 Although suffering from poor health after his years of detention, Kudaev was accused of involvement in an attack in Southern Russia that killed 150 people. He was detained in two different locations and beaten on each occasion. His attorney described the signs of the beatings he faced after being moved to the second location in Oct. 2005.
"When I came to the pre-trial detention centre to talk to Rasul, two men carried him to me because he couldn't walk," Human Rights Watch quotes Irina Komissarova as stating. "Rasul couldn't hold up his head. On the right side of his face there was a large haematoma, his eye was full of blood, his head was a strange shape and size, his right leg was broken and he had open wounds on his hands."
The report also points out that Russia violated more than its assurance that the men would be free of abuse. In fact, it failed to prosecute them for any crimes related to their time in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and primarily for political reasons.
"When they were released, the detainees were given the impression that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened on their behalf, to spite the Americans," the Human Rights Watch report states.
One detainee, Ravil Gumarov, described the statement of officials who released him.
"The Americans wanted to put you away, but we’re letting you out, we’re such good guys," he said.
Bogert said in the report that America and Russia share blame for what has transpired.
“The Russian experience shows why ‘diplomatic assurances’ simply don’t work,” she explained. “Governments with records of torture don’t suddenly change their behavior because the US government claims to have extracted some kind of assurance from them.”
The full Human Rights Watch report can be accessed at this link.
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