Physical Coercion during Interrogations – Bahrain Freedom Movement

The example of Bahrain Joe Stork, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a consultant with Human Rights Watch and Senior Attorney in the New York office of Dorsey & Whitney LLP Tuesday 9th February

Chairman: Bahrain may not appear very prominent on a map of the Gulf. But it certainly is very prominent because we see that the American naval fleet is also based there. Therefore America does realize the importance of Bahrain to the region. Hence the issues that are arising because of coercion, physical interrogation and all kinds of difficulties that are being faced by the majority of the population in Bahrain will have an impact on the region without any doubt.

Joe Stork:  Joshua and I arrived just a couple of hours ago from Manama. Yesterday we had a press conference. I think it is probably the first of its kind in Manama where an international organization like Human Rights Watch came and released a report, the results of an investigation into a very sensitive subject, one that certainly catches peoples attention and is a hot button topic.

I actually spent about ten days in Bahrain leading up to the press conference yesterday. During that time I was doing some other work. I had meetings with the interior ministry and finally Sheikh Rashid, the Interior Minister. We also met with the public prosecution office and the foreign ministry and so forth. So I had pretty high –level government meetings and one of the topics was the subject of this report.

I should start by noting that we could not have done this report or the press conference without the co-operation and assistance of a number of Bahraini human rights groups. The Bahraini Human Rights Society hosted us at their offices in Manama. The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab and his colleagues and the Bahrain Youth Human Rights Society helped us a lot. We could not have done it without them.

Let me say a little bit about the genesis of this report. As many of you know I made my first visit to Bahrain in 1996. It was intifadah time.  The problem of torture was one of the things that I investigated at that time. It was only one of a range of human rights violations. That resulted in report Routine Abuse, Routine Denial. It was the first report that Human Rights Watch had ever done on Bahrain. It provided some history and context and it was wide-ranging in terms of the issues that it addressed.

What we have just released is a very different kind of report as it zeroes in and puts a very bright spotlight on one issue. This report is probably as long as the one that we released in 1997. That covered freedom of speech, freedom of expression and  a whole range of violations.

The question is why? It is not just that torture and allegations of torture are going on in Bahrain.  The fact is that after 2001 or so, with the various reforms that were implemented after Sheikh Hamed came to power, one of the positive things that happened was that  torture pretty much disappeared.

Or what I can say is that we were no longer getting complaints of torture. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t happening but I think it is fair to say that if it was happening on any kind of  a regular basis we would have been hearing about it.

Bahrain is country that showed that with the political will it is possible to eliminate this really serious abuse and serious crime. Bahrain finally made its report to the Committee Against Torture which is a group of international experts that hears the reports of states that have signed on to the Convention Against Torture. They have to  make periodic reports to the Committee Against torture. Bahrain made its  first report. It joined the convention in 1999 around the time of the reforms and it made its first report in 2005. Bahrain claimed, and I think it legitimately claimed or at least no one disputed the claim, that the torture was not being practiced in Bahrain and had not been practiced for some time.

We certainly did not dispute it.  In that time frame  of the mid 2000s we found plenty of human rights violations in Bahrain to complain about but torture was not one of them. Towards  the end of 2007 we started to hear allegations of torture once again coming from detainees usually through their families or  lawyers and then relayed by human rights groups. It caught our attention. We did not jump to the conclusion that torture was being carried out. We did issue a couple of public statements, basically along the lines that there are these complaints, they seem serious. You, the government, should investigate them. You should meet  requests for an independent medical examination.

When the reports continued through 2008 and early 2009 we felt it was something that demanded our attention. When in April 2009 the king  issued a pardon for some 178 detainees, most of them security suspects including a number of the people  that had been involved in incidents that led to complaints of torture, these people were out of detention. This provided a potential opportunity to talk with them.

Let me just say a word about how we do our research. The  primary element about how we do our research is first hand testimonies from victims, in this case victims of torture or victims alleging they had been tortured or eye witnesses to an incident. If we are talking about clashes between demonstrators and security forces we go for eye witness testimonies from people who saw what happened.  We don’t just go for one or two. We build up a dossier of  testimonies about a particular incident or problem.

After all it is very often down to us saying there is a human rights problem. The authorities say there is not. The government’s response to our report said these are false allegations and so on and so forth.  Frankly they have a very hard time making  that claim based on the work we have done. We don’t simply say there was torture. These people complained  of torture. We ask them what happened to you. So this is  a report that looks at particular techniques that were practiced on people.

We also spoke to other people in Bahrain. We spoke to the defense lawyers, Bahraini journalists who had talked to some of these families. When we went to Bahrain in June 2009 we met with government officials from the public prosecutors office and the Ministry of Interior.

I should also mention that we were able to have assess to court records and documents which corroborated these allegations and the results of medical examinations. It is important to note that this is material that was simply not available ten or 15 years ago when we did our first report. I don’t even know if there were medical exams. If there were the results were certainly not available to us.

Ten or 15 years ago we could not have had a press conference in Manama like we did yesterday. So it is important to recognize that we are not going back to square one. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the recurrence, the revival of a very serious abuse, an abuse that Bahrain showed it is possible to get rid of.

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan:  Thank you very much for having us.  We were in Bahrain in June last year conducting the investigations for this report. We interviewed 20 former detainees from three separate cases which I am sure most of you are familiar with.

One  was an event which occurred in Jidhafs village in December 2007. A police vehicle was burned and allegedly a weapon was stolen from that vehicle in protests which turned violent. We also spoke with people about events in Karzakan  in the spring of 2008 which involved the alleged arson of a farm belonging to a member of the royal family. Another involved street violence. And finally we interviewed people from the Al-Hujaira case. In this case people were arrested in December 2008 for allegedly travelling to Syria or Turkey or other places to receive terrorist training at the instigation of Hassan Mushaima and others.

Based on those interviews and the other materials we concluded that a particular set of illegal interrogation tactics were employed against detainees in those cases. A particular set of techniques in many instances amount to torture and otherwise are illegal pursuant to different standards.

Specifically the techniques that were employed were the following: detainees were subjected to electro shock devices, most typically stun guns. In most instances these devices were applied just momentarily to detainees before being taken off and then applied again.  We know that  if stun guns are applied for some time  they can incapacitate someone which is obviously not what you want to do during an interrogation. But if you are using this as an interrogation tool you would  shock someone momentarily before removing the tool and then possibly using it again.

Secondly we found detainees were suspended in the air most typically by their wrists and occasionally through other techniques as well. We found detainees were subjected to beatings of their feet. Falaka is the term which is sometimes used. This is of course a very awful technique. The soles of the feet do not have a lot of  muscles so it is quite excruciating to have them beaten.

We also found that detainees were subjected to what could be described as general beatings which would encompass everything from slaps to punches, to kicks to the use of batons or rubber hoses. Sometimes an individual kick or punch or kick was used, at other times it was a collective  strategy.

With very exceptions in  the accounts were relayed to us these techniques were used during interrogation sessions or during the interrogation process generally, right before or right after an interrogation session.

It appears that the security forces employed these techniques not to just satisfy  their own cruel impulses but with the very specific purpose of securing confessions from the detainees which would then be presented to a public prosecutor and later be the basis for a criminal prosecution. In a number of instances it looks as if the security forces took measures to try and reduce the visible signs of injury that could be caused by the use of these techniques.

So how did we conclude that this  is what happened? We interviewed 20 people. That is Human Rights Watch primary source of information. It is certainly a very valid method of researching. We also reviewed medical documents and other documents created by government  personnel that corroborated the detainees accounts.

With respect to the testimony that we heard from the former detainees I suppose a legitimate question  would be why did you believe what you heard? First of all the accounts that were given to us were consistent internally and were consistent as a whole. I mean that in a number of respects. The detainees did not give us different laundry lists of interrogation techniques employed against them. We did not hear that some detainees said they were water boarded and other people said they were hung upside down while  other people  talked about their finger nails being pulled off.

Instead what we heard across of all these accounts was about a finite set of interrogation techniques. The testimonies that we heard were also consistent in terms of the manner in which these techniques were used. The stun guns were only applied momentarily in most cases. In some instances the detainees talked about these devices being applied for a longer period and under those circumstances, detainees might fall down or even lose consciousness. All that is consistent with what we know about the use of stun guns.

To give you another example detainees talked to us about being suspended typically by their wrists. The majority of detainees said that those episodes occurred in a particular stairwell in the CID headquarters in Adleila, Manama. We also heard a consistent testimony from a number of detainees about the use of cloth being wrapped around their wrists before the handcuffs were applied. This was a way the security forces tried to hide signs of injury that you would normally have when you suspend someone using handcuffs by their wrists.

Just to give you another example some of the detainees said that after their feet were beaten they were made to walk or run for long periods of time. We know that some people think this reduces swelling that can be caused when the feet are hit with a baton or a rubber hose. So in that manner the detainees testimony was also very consistent.

In addition we heard about interrogation techniques that would not be considered illegal – maybe sort of standard procedures  that police departments almost anywhere could employ. When we heard consistent testimony about that sort of thing it made us credit the rest of the testimony. If you are trying to make up a story about being tortured there would be no reason to throw in these details about non torture interrogation techniques that were used.

I would like to think that we weren’t naive in conducting this investigation.  It crossed our minds that the  people we interviewed could have colluded to fabricate consistent testimony . We discounted this possibility to a very large extend because the accounts we heard were the same accounts and testimonies that the detainees gave at a time when they were being held in solitary confinement in detention centres or prisons. These were the same abuses that they reported to their lawyers before they had the opportunity to talk amongst themselves. They were  same abuses that they had reported in court while they were still being held in solitary confinement.

In one instance in the Al Hujaira case we have the court documents  that show that in February 2009 the detainees were complaining of abuse and it was over a month later when the court ordered an end to their solitary confinement. So in light of that we discounted to a very great extent the possibility that this was all just some conspiracy designed to paint the Bahraini government in a negative light.

In addition to that the documentary evidence that we viewed which in almost all cases was created by Bahraini government personnel was very strong  for our collaboration with the accounts that the detainees gave us. We weren’t able to review all of the records that existed. If we had been able to do that we probably would have found additional materials. But even just on the someone limited record that we had the corroboration that we had was quite remarkable.

In particular there were medical reports relating to the detainees that had been drafted by government doctors from Al Samaniya hospital – Ministry of Health doctors. Let me just give you a couple of examples of what those  records showed.

In the Jidhafs case we viewed court testimony by Ministry of Health doctors who talked about the fact that they found scars and other injuries on the wrists of the detainees. They found injuries to shoulders and clavicle joints and they said that these injuries are all consistent with the detainees claims of having been suspended.

We also reviewed individual medical reports relating to eight detainees in the Jidhas case – again created by Ministry of Health doctors. Of those eight detainees seven complained to us of having been suspended. In each of the seven medical reports relating to those individuals the doctors found medical reports that were consistent with the detainees having in fact been suspended.

I will give you another example. In the Karzakan case the court ordered a medical examination which was consistent with the Ministry of Health doctors. These doctors examined 28 detainees. They found that in 17 of the detainees there were injuries consistent with the various forms of abuse and torture that had been reported by the detainees.We found those numbers of to be quite significant.

Interestingly in the Karzakan case a member of the royal family found those numbers so significant that several months ago he decided to dismiss all charges against all 19 defendants in that case. The government’s prosecution rested on supposed confessions that 18 of the 19 defendants had given to the  security forces. The judge, again a member of the royal family, said that the court was not confident with these confessions given the medical reports. It appears that these confessions were given as a result of the use of force and intimidation.

In that sense our report is merely following up on the conclusions that a member of the Bahraini judiciary already made. So in a way I guess we were scooped by this judge. We should have tried to get our report out a little earlier. The fact that a court in Bahrain dealing with a national security case relied on medical examinations to find that detainees appeared to have been abused is incredibly significant.

It is interesting that in response to our report the government says they talk about the judge in the Kazakan case. But he didn’t find there was any abuse. You don’t have to take our word for it, you don’t have to take the government’s word for it. You just have to read that judge’s opinion which is publicly available and see exactly what he said.

In the light of the documentation I think it would have been very difficult for us to reach any other conclusion other than the conclusion that we did in fact reach. It is again completely consistent with the testimony but perhaps unusual that we were able to rely on documents actually created by government  personnel.

Let me finish with the summary right there, certainly if there are more detailed questions we will be happy to answer them.

Joe Stork:  Just to conclude our presentation I think there are a couple of points that we haven’t made yet. I mentioned that we met with government officials in June. We also wrote them very long detailed letters – to the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior in October. These were like five page letters, detailed questions based on our findings. So they knew very well what we were looking into and they had a  pretty good idea from the questions we asked what our conclusions were. We received no response. We wrote again in December saying hello we would like to hear from you and also adding a few more questions. The first set of questions mainly related to security – what was happening during interrogations. In the second letter we added questions about the prosecution.

What we have here is a multi-layered problem and multi-layered responsibility for these abuses. Obviously first and foremost the actual perpetrators of the abuses, the interrogators who carry out these acts of torture. But then there are the people who supervise them in the Ministry of the Interior or the National Security Agency. And there is the role of the prosecutor because in Bahrain the formal interrogation is carried out by the prosecutor and his  responsibility – I think they are all men- is to among other things ask the defendant if he or she has been injured or coerced in any way to make these statements. That is part of the procedure. He is also required to note whether or not the individual has visible signs of possible abuse. He has the responsibility to order medical examinations in those cases.

As you can conclude some prosecutors in some cases do this. They at least went so far as to order the medical exams. They had another responsibility which by and large they did not meet at all. When they have grounds for suspecting a crime of any sort. –  we are talking about the crime of torture – they have the responsibility to initiate an investigation into what happened. And this has not happened. This is aside from the acts of torture themselves, the single biggest failing of the system in Bahrain. The failure to investigate, the failure to prosecute. You can have all the education programmes that you want. We have heard about many. You can have all the posting of the rules in the  ministry and the police station. But unless you enforce those rules, unless you make people pay a price when they violate those rules you are not going to have that enforcement.

When I met with the Minister of the Interior just a few days ago he spent much of his initial comments on the need for discipline. He was referring to the street violence and the tyre burning and other violence, some of which was destructive of property, some of which has resulted in the deaths of individuals. So there is a public  security issue, a legitimate public security concern that like authorities anywhere the Bahraini authorities have a responsibility to address.The question is how they address those responsibilities and obviously torture goes over the line, way over the line.

I should also point out that we make no comment whatsoever on the guilt or innocence of the individuals. Perhaps they were responsible for starting fires, perhaps they were responsible for the attack which resulted in the death of a policeman. But lets say that is a possibility. It is still not okay to torture them. The issue is not whether they are guilty or innocent. The issue is how they are treated and the responsibility of the authorities to treat everyone in a humane way. Thats what the Convention Against Torture requires.

It is also worth pointing out that these acts of violence, this infliction of pain on individuals was for the purpose of eliciting confessions. Now confessions play a large role in the investigative work of any police  department anywhere in the world.

But in Bahrain where they are the sole basis for conviction. That is where you have problems. It is not only Bahrain. There is a failure to carry out any other serious police work: investigating a crime, collecting the evidence, getting testimonies from witnesses. It really boils down in these national public security cases to ‘lets get the confession, lets get it quickly and lets get them to implicate others who we, the Bahraini authorities, want to put behind bars’.

Our basic recommendation to the government was that they have to initiate investigations. We recommended that they set up an independent commission to carry out such investigation given the dereliction of duty so far by the public prosecutor. Based on the records so far it is not clear that they can do so credibly.

Another issue that we raise in the report and that it also the responsibility of the authorities is to compensate the victims. But the investigation and the prosecution and the compensation is a requirement of Bahraini law. The problem isn’t so much with the law – certainly there could be some improvements there. The problem is with the practice and the practice does not comply with Bahraini law or certainly with the international obligations that Bahrain has taken on by becoming a party to the Convention Against Torture.

Finally we have urged the governments of the United States, the  United Kingdom and France, three governments that have varying security relationships with the Bahraini government to raise the issue of torture with the  Bahraini authorities at the highest level. We would like to see this end. What we have seen so far from the government is denial. They say it doesn’t happen. These are false allegations. They even go so far as to say that the medical reports say the injuries could have resulted from handcuffs. That is not what the medical reports show. In one case in the court record where the judge asked the doctor if those injuries are consistent with just the handcuffs he said  just having tight handcuffs does not produce that kind of injury.

So we need some answers from the government. These are answers that the government has so far failed to provide. In my meetings with officials there was a bit more give and take. The Interior Department, including the Minister of the Interior said when we hear about a wrong doing of this sort we carry out an investigation. But we will reinvestigate  That is not what the official statement said today. I hope what the minister said will happen will happen but it will only happen if we can keep the spotlight on the problem and that is what we have tried to do.