UN Torture Chief Rules Bradley Manning’s Treatment Cruel and Inhuman

The UN special investigator on torture said the US government’s treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning was cruel, inhuman and degrading. He was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being a WikiLeaks source.

Juan Mendez’s 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning came to the conclusion that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment. Manning was locked up for 23 hours a day, in solitary confinement, over an 11-month period in conditions that Mendez found might have constituted torture.

“The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence,” Mendez writes.

Manning, 24, was arrested on May 29, 2010 at the Forward Operating Base Hammer outside Baghdad, where he was working as an intelligence analyst. He has been charged with 22 counts, including aiding the enemy, relating to the leaking of state secrets to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Manning was held for almost three months at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, then moved in July to the Marine corps base at Quantico in Virginia. He was held there for another eight months in conditions that brought about widespread condemnation, including being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and being made to strip naked at night.

In his opening letter to the US government on December 30 2010, Mendez said that the prolonged period of isolated confinement was believed to have been imposed “in an effort to coerce him into ‘cooperation’ with the authorities, allegedly for the purpose of persuading him to implicate others.”

The US department of justice is conducting a grand jury in Virginia exploring the possibility of bringing charges against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder.

The US mission to the UN in Geneva responded to Mendez on January 27 2011. It said that the US government “is committed to protecting human rights in our country and abroad, and we value the work of the special rapporteur”.

In a later letter, dated May 19 2011, the Pentagon’s legal counsel told Mendez that it was satisfied that Manning’s treatment at Quantico had been fine. “Though Private Manning was classified as a maximum custody detainee at Quantico, he occupied the very same type of single-occupancy cell that all other pretrial detainees occupied.”

Mendez stressed in his final conclusions that “solitary confinement is a harsh measure which may cause serious psychological and physiological adverse effects on individuals regardless of their specific conditions.” Moreover, “depending on the specific reason for its application, conditions, length, effects and other circumstances, solitary confinement can amount to a breach of article seven of the international covenant on civil and political rights, and to an act defined in article one or article 16 of the convention against torture.”

He also said that the US government had tried to justify Manning’s solitary confinement by calling it “prevention of harm watch”. Yet the military had offered no details as to what actual harm was being prevented.

The Pentagon has refused to allow Mendez to see Manning in private, insisting that all conversations be monitored. “You should have no expectation of privacy in your communications with Private Manning,” the Pentagon wrote.

The lack of privacy is a violation of human rights procedures, the UN says, and considered unacceptable by the UN special rapporteur.

Manning’s solitary confinement came to an end on April 20, 2011 when he was transferred from Quantico to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. He is currently being held in a facility in Virginia so that he can make pre-trial appearances at Fort Meade in Maryland ahead of his eventual court martial.

Occupy San Quentin

Hundreds of Occupy Wall Streeters and prison reform activists joined forces outside the gates of San Quentin, California, this week to protest high incarceration rates and the harsh living conditions of inmates.

Speakers at the rally said the state’s sentencing laws are too strict and called for an end to solitary confinement, the death penalty and children being tried as adults.

“I myself experienced more than 14 months of solitary confinement, and after only two months my mind began to slip” said Sarah Shourd, 33, an American who was imprisoned in Iran after being arrested while hiking near the Iraq border in 2009.

San Quentin is California’s oldest correctional facility, houses all male inmates on death row and the state’s only gas chamber, according to the state’s prison website.

Activist Barbara Becnel said prisoners were drawing inspiration from the Occupy movement.

“We have merged the prison rights movement with the Occupy movement,” Becnel said, quoting a message she said came from San Quentin death row prisoner Kevin Cooper. “The 99 percent has to be concerned about the bottom 1 percent.”

Marin County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Keith Boyd estimated the crowd numbered 600 to 700 people at its height.

Demonstrators held a moment of silence for Christian Alexander Gomez, who died February 2 while on a hunger strike in California’s Corcoran State Prison.

Gomez was among thousands of California prisoners who have gone on hunger strikes since July, starting with the protests of isolation units at Pelican Bay State Prison.

The strikes began after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in May that California prison overcrowding was causing “needless suffering and death” and ordered the state to reduce the number of prisoners to 110,000, still well over the maximum capacity, from 140,000.

“I’m here for the woman who stole a bottle of vitamins, the woman who stole a jar of Vaseline or a pair of underwear,” said former inmate Kelly Turner, referring to those she said were jailed for minor offenses like her own, which landed her in prison for 13 years.

In an interview with Reuters, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton contradicted speakers who said they had been held in isolation while in prison in the state.

“Inmates held in segregated units are not isolated,” she said. “Some inmates are single celled. But they converse with other inmates. They can get visits and they interact with staff.”