Guest Post by Morbo
Another week, another appalling story about government-sanctioned torture in “The New Yorker.” This one comes courtesy of writer Jane Mayer. She writes about Iraqi insurgent Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in Abu Ghraib prison at the hands of the CIA in November of 2003.
The subtitle of Mayer’s article is “Can the C.I.A. legally kill a prisoner?” Apparently, the answer to that question is yes, as Mayer details. Jamadi died of suffocation after being chained to wall. His head had been covered with a plastic bag. As Mayer writes:
[Jamadi] was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe; according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he asphyxiated.
This happened during interrogation under Mark Swanner, a 46-year-old CIA officer. Jamadi’s death has been classified as a “homicide.” So Swanner is in prison, right? Not at all. He’s hanging out in his “handsome replica of an old-fashioned farmhouse, with a white-railed front porch” in a fast-growing outer D.C.-area Virginia suburb.
CIA internal investigators looked into the matter and determined it was serious enough to be referred to the U.S. Justice Department. Justice sent the case to U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty of the Eastern District of Virginia, who has jurisdiction over the region that includes the CIA headquarters.
And there the case has sat for more than two years. McNulty’s office claims the matter is still under investigation. McNulty, meanwhile, has been nominated to the position of deputy attorney general. Somehow, I don’t expect his investigation to be too aggressive.
Jamadi was no saint. He was accused of providing explosives for the Iraqi insurgents. When Navy SEALs stormed his house on Nov. 4, 2003, Jamadi fought back with such savagery that his stove fell on some of the SEALs. Still, there used to be this thing called “due process.” It began with a presumption of innocence.
No one bothered to extend even a modicum of rights to this guy.
Once they had Jamadi in CIA custody, Swanner and his colleagues couldn’t wait to start whaling on him. He arrived at Abu Ghraib naked from the waist down with a bag over his head. Jamadi refused to give Swanner any information, so he was taken to a “shower room” and shackled to the wall. Writes Mayer:
There was a barred window on one wall. Kenner and Nady [two soldiers], using a pair of leg shackles, attached Jamadi’s arms, which had been placed behind his back, to the bars on the window.
The window was five feet off the ground. Jamadi was 5’10”. He could stand but not kneel or sit without hanging from his arms. Apparently, Jamadi had broken ribs, and being hung that way hastened asphyxiation.
In previous posts I’ve complained about Americans’ inability to grasp the moral argument against torture and deplored the brutality of the Bush administration, which seems so eager to employ the most vicious and appalling forms of abuse. I’ve pointed out that even if guys like Jamadi do bad things, we only demean ourselves when we sink to their level by endorsing the use of torture.
If those arguments aren’t persuasive, here’s a pragmatic one: The CIA was so eager to start beating up Jamadi that it undercut its effort to get information out of him. Agency interrogators ended up having him in custody for only a few hours before he died. Dead men have a hard time giving you the information you seek.
As Jamadi lay dead, Swanner was asked to explain what had happened. During his statement, Swanner admitted that he “did not get any information out of the prisoner.”
The results might have been different — if Swanner had treated Jamadi like a human being.