The 39-page report says patients in at least four state hospitals have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including by medical staff.

Syrian authorities have denied torturing opponents of the government.

Watch Syria Undercover Preview on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

“In a location on the outskirts of Damascus, we met an opposition doctor,” Navai said. “He spends every night treating the wounded.”

And he’s not doing it at local hospitals, because government militia are raiding the hospitals and shutting out anyone whom they believe has been a protester, Navai found. Instead, a network of secret, make-shift hospitals have been established around the country.

“We got access via the activists who we were effectively embedded with,” Navai said. “It was really quite an operation just getting us to these secret hospitals.”

She described the hospitals as almost surreal. Virtually every patient is suffering from a gunshot wound. Many of them are children. The sterilizing solution they use is stored in cut out Coke bottles.

What equipment they do have, they share with other hospitals. It’s stored at a warehouse, away from the patients and hospitals, so that if there is a raid, the equipment is more likely to survive and a new hospital can be set up.

“Within 10 minutes, they can get operating tables, heart monitors to makeshift rooms that operate as operating theatres or to the secret hospitals themselves,” Navai said.

Navai said she met one patient who had actually been taken to a traditional hospital. The state militia, however, raided the hospital and if not for the quick thinking of a sympathetic doctor, the man likely would have found himself seized by the militia or killed on the spot.

Protesters say the militia often kidnap the injured, torture them, kill them and then return the bodies to family members a week later. Instead, the doctor told militia that the patient had died and wheeled him to the morgue. There, he was taken straight to a secret hospital for treatment.

“There are few doctors who were willing to risk their lives to help injured protesters, because it’s so dangerous,” Navai said. One doctor told Navai he himself knew of 10 doctors who had been imprisoned for treating protesters.

Syrian officials have denied all allegations of mistreating protesters, though Amnesty International released a 39-page report documenting just this type of abuse.

Ramita Navai’s documentary on PBS Frontline is scheduled for November 8.

Read tweets about Syria

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Marco Werman: The Libyan rendition controversy could complicate Libya’s relations with the US and other nations.  As we heard, Abdul Hakim Belhaj is a former member of a group that had ties to al-Qaeda.  And that raises questions about how Washington will work with him as a member of Libya’s new government.  I put them to New York Times Magazine contributing writer, James Traub, who’s been examining the Libyan transition.

James Traub: It would certainly not be a good thing if the government of Libya were controlled by members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, but that’s not the case.  There is this one guy, this one guy seems like a very interesting person who says yes, that’s who I used to be; that’s not who I am now. Now, obviously, we can’t trust that that’s the case, and in any case it certainly seems like Libya’s so-called Transitional National Council, which is the interim government, doesn’t consist of people like him at all.  If anything it consists of probably un-representatively pro-western, basically liberal minded folk who have agreed to include him in the group. Now, documents found in Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli match the story that Belhaj has told, that he was taken off a flight in Bangkok and he then says we then tortured by two CIA officials.  We don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s perfectly plausible that his claims are true. Now, why is that important?  Does that mean that when this guy says he is nevertheless willing to work with the west he’s lying because he’s filled with hatred of the west?  That would be plausible, but from all accounts and in terms of what he has said has so far been pursuing a non-Jihadist agenda.

Werman: So what then is the answer?  How does the US move forward now when one of the emerging leaders in a post-Gaddafi government says he was tortured by the CIA?

Traub: Well, so fine, so he says that and the British are now doing an inquiry, and they may very well find out that it’s true that he was tortured by the CIA.  So then the question is is the United States going to apologize?  Answer, no, it’s not going to apologize.  And is Belhaj going to be unhappy that he wasn’t apologized to?  I suppose he will, but life goes on. And so the real issue is what can the United States and other western nations do to ensure that the new government in Libya is an effective one, is a legitimate one, one that represents the Libyan people?  And there are a lot of answers to that question in terms of aid, in terms of political advice, in terms of lots of issues.  But I don’t think that this has to be a preoccupying fact.  There are much bigger sources of concern.  Are they gonna be able to form an effective government at all?  How are they going to bind together all these different freelance fighting units which have now converged on Tripoli?  These are the big questions.  I don’t think the Belhaj issue is nearly as important as that.

Werman: Right, but if Belhaj or other Islamists who have been extraordinarily rendered by the United States don’t get the apology that they want, I mean that wouldn’t be a very good start for US-Libyan relations.

Traub: Only if those guys are running the show.  I mean look, do I think that there should be an apology?  Yes.  Do I think there will be an apology?  No.  I mean in the new world that is emerging in the Middle East there will be myriad grievances against the west, because anybody who spent any time in the Middle East knows that there are deep-seeded grievances against the United States and against the West. And you have Barack Obama replace George Bush as president, it’s still going to be so.  And so this is part of the price that we have to decide we’re willing to pay in order to have a more democratic Middle East.  The alternative was to have autocratic allies who were able to suppress those voices, but in part for that very reason had very little legitimacy among their own people.

Werman: You know, last week, James Traub, I saw an interview with Dick Cheney about his forthcoming book and the word waterboarding was mentioned, and I realized I hadn’t seen that word for a while.  And now this story of Belhaj, a man from whom confessions were extracted through torture allegedly, does this put the torture to bay, to front and center again?

Traub: I wouldn’t mind if it did.  I don’t think it will, I mean it’s remarkable to me how kind of insignificant that’s been in this country.  You would think this would’ve violated our values in such a profound way.  So yes, I find it kind of appalling that there still is this stout defense of torture, and not only by Cheney, but you know, will the Belhaj case change that?  I don’t think so.  I don’t know.

Werman: James Traub’s most recent book is The Freedom Agenda.  His column, Terms of Engagement, appears each week at foreignpolicy.com.  James Traub, thank you so much.

Traub: Well, thank you.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  The turmoil in Syria shows no signs of easing.  Today, there are reports of security forces raiding houses in central Syria looking for protest organizers.  Yesterday, government troops reportedly killed four anti-government protestors. The United Nations estimates that 2,000 people have died in the Syrian government’s crackdown on descent, and today, human rights group, Amnesty International, says it has evidence of 88 people dying in captivity at the hands of the government during the last five months.  Amnesty says all of the 88 dead had been detained after taking part in protests, and that 10 of them were children. Neil Sammonds is an Amnesty International spokesperson.  He’s in London.  Mr. Sammonds, how did you get the information for this report and how can you confirm its accuracy?

Neil Sammonds: Good afternoon.  Yes, we got the information from contacts we’ve built up over many years working on Syria through all sorts of repressive periods, although none quite as bad perhaps as what’s happening now.  So that means it comes from lawyers, activists, from family members, from a couple of medical professionals.  And we also sent a list with nearly all of these names to the Syrian authorities asking them for any kind of comments they might have about the deaths or about any investigations setup into the causes of death.  And we haven’t received a response, so we’ve given them the opportunity to rebut the information and they haven’t taken that up.

Werman: Interestingly for this report you have video recordings of witnesses of human rights abuses in Syria.  One individual, Tamer Mohammed al-Sharei, was 15 when he was arrested in April, and it was a fellow detainee, Ibrahim Jamal, who was later released, who saw him beaten by security officials and covered in blood.  Here’s a clip of one of those testimonials:

Ibrahim Jamal: [speaking Arabic]

Interpreter: Then I heard the child screaming loudly and pleading for help.  They hit him with a gun on the back of his neck and he collapsed.  Afterwards he was hit with a sharp metal sword.  He was beat repeatedly on his back.  The boy fell unconscious from the severity of the beating.

Werman: Neil Sammonds, what do you know about Tamer Mohammed al-Sharei, is he still alive?

Sammonds: No, he is one of the 88 cases of deaths in custody.  He’s in our report.  We have video of his body after it was returned to his family.  And he was one of some 20 cases where there was the video evidence, which we’re able to send to forensic pathologists.  They made comments on his body saying that there was a wound below the left knee, seems to be the result of an open tibia fracture, obvious facial injuries, jaw especially left side huge laceration and probably fractures.  That is just from the fairly conservative comments that a forensic pathologist was able to make here, so you know, very sadly Tamer is one of many who died in the hellish Syrian detention centers in the last 4-1/2 months.

Werman: What are you hoping will come with these findings in the international community?

Sammonds: Well, we hope that the international community and particularly the UN Security Council will really quite belatedly make serious moves towards bindingly condemning the violence which is taking place in Syria.  And in particular, refer the situation in the country to the international criminal court because as we have been calling since April, there is very good evidence to believe that crimes against humanity are taking place.  When we’re looking at deaths in custody and it’s such a scale as this, I mean 2-3 cases you could say were almost an accident or something unfortunate like that if you wanted to be kind…88, that’s deliberate, that’s murder. The world kind of knows that.  It needs to make several jumps forward into referring that situation to the international criminal court so that then the situation is investigated properly, crimes are investigated and those accountable are brought to justice.

Werman: Neil Sammonds is a spokesperson for Amnesty International.

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Official response from the Department of Defense

DoD personnel working in detention facilities operate under a high level of scrutiny and consistently provide the most humane and safe care and custody of individuals under their control. The Joint Medical Group is committed to providing unconditional appropriate comprehensive medical care to all detainees regardless of their disciplinary status, cooperation, or participation in a hunger strike. The healthcare provided to the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay rivals that provided in any community in the United States. Detainees receive timely, compassionate, quality healthcare and have regular access to primary care and specialist physicians. The care provided to detainees is comparable to that afforded our active duty service members. All medical procedures performed are justified and meet accepted standards of care. A detainee is provided medical care and treatment based solely on his need for such care and the level and type of treatment is dependent on the accepted !
Medical standard of care for the condition being treated. Diagnosis of such conditions and medical care and treatment for them are not affected in any way by a detainee’s cooperation, or lack thereof, during an interrogation session. Similarly, medical care is not provided or withheld based on a detainee’s compliance or noncompliance with detention camp rules or on his refusal to end a hunger strike. Medical decisions and treatment are not withheld as a form of punishment. Additionally, the medical staff has no involvement in discipline decisions made by detention personnel.

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Marco Werman: The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has long come under attack for its use of what the defense department called enhanced interrogation techniques and what critics called torture.  Now there are new allegations that military doctors who cared for the inmates ignored or hid evidence of torture.  That’s the claim of a study published in the scientific journal, PLoS Medicine.  Vincent Iacopino is one of the authors.  He’s with the organization, Physicians for Human Rights, and Dr. Iacopino, you know, first off we need to be clear here — you’re not just a bystander in the legal battles over Guantanamo Bay.  In fact, you’ve been retained as a medical expert by lawyers representing nine detainees.  How can we be sure that your study is an independent analysis of the evidence?

Dr. Vincent Iacopino: Well, it wasn’t a study to begin with.  It was the analysis of the medical records and the evaluations were conducted for medical legal purposes, so they have to be true and accurate.

Werman: And though, as a result of your work with the lawyers, you had access to these medical records of these nine detainees.  The men say they were beaten, and choked, and threatened with execution.  When you examined the medical records kept by prison doctors who treated the prisoners, what evidence did you see that abuses had occurred?

Iacopino: Several individuals had fractures that were consistent with their allegations of specific harm.  They had nerve injuries, back problems, things of that nature, which corroborated the precise allegations.  The same was true for he psychological symptoms.  While some of the symptoms are non-specific to trauma or abuse, such as depression symptoms and so forth, there were other symptoms that were quite suggestive of the torture that the alleged, the PTSD symptoms, the nightmares that they had, and so forth. So, the sum total of evidence, physical and psychological, was what we considered to make a final determination.  In each of the cases the evidence was highly consistent with their allegations.

Werman: So these detainees did receive medical treatment.  Are you saying that the military doctors didn’t provide good care?

Iacopino: Well, it’s clear from the medical records that they were provided medical care for physical and psychological problems, with the exception of any symptom or injury that inferred intentional harm.  So, they documented the injuries and so forth, but never pursued the cause of those injuries.  And so in that form of neglect you have an enabling environment for the abuse to continue.

Werman: What do you propose the doctors should have done?

Iacopino: They could’ve chosen to go up the chain of command or go outside the chain of command.  They had an ethical duty in my opinion to do so.

Werman: Can you give us one example from the medical records where as you see it there was just clear evidence of torture the doctors ignored?

Iacopino: Well, someone who was beaten severely, who had very typical symptoms of broken ribs, x-rays demonstrated that the ribs were in fact broken.  He was treated for weeks as individuals normally are for pain.  And you don’t get broken ribs simply from falling down.  And in the setting of detention, your first consideration should be intentional harm.

Werman: We received a reply from the defense department.  We asked them about this case.  And their press office sent us back a reply, which I’ll read just abbreviated parts of — the healthcare being provided to detainees being held at the Guantanamo Bay facility rivals that provided in any community in the United States.  Detainees receive timely, compassionate, quality healthcare and have regular access to primary care and specialist physicians.  Medical decisions and treatment are not withheld as a form of punishment.  Additionally, the medical staff has no involvement in discipline decisions made by detention personnel. Dr. Iacopino, I mean your study is based on the medical records of just nine men.  What do you know about the medical records of the hundreds of other detainees at Guantanamo Bay?

Iacopino: First of all, this is not the first study that we’ve conducted.  We’ve also conducted another study of 11 former detainees.  And in each case the detainees were not only exposed to the authorized enhanced interrogation techniques, but also unauthorized interrogation techniques — sexual assault, and sodomy, and…

Werman: And there’s evidence of that in the medical records that you’ve seen?

Iacopino: Yes, to answer your question, the statement by the DOD is in the present tense, that they’re not doing this now.  We don’t have information on current practices.  And this study is showing us that those clinicians who had the opportunity to document physical and psychological evidence neglected that evidence; and thereby helped to conceal the acts of torture that have already been documented.

Werman: Dr. Vincent Iacopino is with the group Physicians for Human Rights.  He also teaches at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.  Dr. Iacopino, thank you very much.

Iacopino: My pleasure, thank you.

Werman: And you can read the Pentagon’s full response to our request for comment on the allegations in the study we posted at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

(Photo: Andreas Praefcke)

Lourdes Mary relies on her live-in Indonesian maid, Tateka. Tateka helps care for Mary’s elderly mother and husband, who has a degenerative brain disease.

“I need the maid to help when I am not at home, to take care of my husband, because he needs to be fed and cleaned and given the right medication at the right time,” Mary said.

Mary pays her Indonesia maid $170, more than she could make in Indonesia. However, Tateka plans to return home in a few months, and Mary is scrambling to find a replacement.

Malaysians tend to hire workers from Indonesia because of language and cultural similarities. They are also cheap labor, but they have been in short supply of late. In July 2009, Indonesia banned its citizens from going to Malaysia for work, after Indonesian media ran stories about domestic workers being abused by their Malaysian employers.

Tateka arrived in Malaysia before the ban took effect. She said that before she left home, she saw images of maids badly mistreated by their employers – some of the women were branded with hot irons.

“I was afraid,” Tateka said. “But I prayed to God, and thankfully, you can see that I have a good employer.”

But not everyone is that lucky. A shelter for abused maids is housed inside the Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur. The women cook and clean to earn their keep, while their cases are investigated by Indonesian officials. 45-year-old Sopieati arrived at the shelter with bruises underneath both her eyes and her chin.

She said that her employers punched her, and tried to strangle her. “I wanted to leave,” Sopieati said, but her employers insisted that she had to repay the $900 they spent to bring her over from Indonesia, money that she did not have.

Sopieati said her employers took away all of her belongings. She could not even find the number to call for help. “I have very bad luck,” she said.

Indonesian authorities have been negotiating with Malaysia to enact protections for Indonesian domestic workers. Talks have stalled over pay, but Malaysia has agreed to give Indonesian maids one day off a week and to allow them to keep their own passports.

Employers are not happy about that. According to Lourdes Mary, holding a maid’s passport is their only safeguard.

“The employers have paid so much to get the maids in,” Mary said. “But when they run away, we have to pay again to get another maid. This is a big burden. How are we to restrict them from running?”

Mary said most Malaysians do not abuse their maids, but the Indonesian media never reflect that.

At the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, officials said that the travel ban may expose domestic workers to more exploitation.

Labour Attaché Agus Triyanto said Indonesians filed 6,000 complaints of abuse last year. All of them entered the country on tourist visas to work illegally because of the ban, Agus said, making it harder for Indonesian officials to protect them. Agus said that Malaysians need to change their attitude toward Indonesian workers.

“It’s such a shame that domestic workers are still not seen as assets to the family. Instead they are treated as objects that they can mistreat,” Agus said.

Transcript:

Lawyers representing 142 Iraqis are heading to the High Court in London tomorrow asking for a public inquiry into allegations of systemic torture.
The Iraqis were held and interrogated by British forces between 2003 and 2008. Despite widespread allegations of abuse no officer has ever been convicted. Laura Lynch reports:

Ali Zaki Mousa was arrested at his home in Basra four years ago, bundled into a tank, and then taken to a British base at the airport.

MOUSA: ARABIC..WHEN WE GOT TO BASRA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT THEY PULLED ME OUT OF THE TANK AND FORCED ME TO KNEEL DOWN WITH MY HEAD DOWN AND MY HANDS TIED BEHIND MY BACK. IT WAS INCREDIBLY PAINFUL. THE MORE I SCREAMED, THE MORE THEY KICKED ME. THE TIME MUST HAVE BEEN ABOUT 330, FOUR IN THE MORNING WHEN THE SOLDIERS STARTED TO BEAT THE DETAINEES IN BASRA AIRPORT ONE AFTER THE OTHER. AND I WAS ONE OF THEM.

Mousa says he endured months of beatings before being released a year later.
He says noone has ever explained to him why he was held.
Tomorrow, lawyer Phil Shiner will argue that Mousa’s case, along with 141 others, prove the need for an independent public inquiry.
Shiner says the allegations suggest there was widespread abuse that may sound familiar to Americans.

PHIL SHINER: WE’VE GOT 142 CASES THOUSANDS OF ALLEGATIONS, EVERY FACILITY THAT THE WE KNOW ABOUT THE BRITISH WERE USING FROM THE VERY FIRST DAY OF THE WAR ALL THE WAY INTO 2009, THE COMPARISON THAT CAN BE MADE WITH WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT WHAT THE U.S. WERE DOING AT GUANTANAMO BAY OR ABU GHRAIB LEADS ME TO ASK THE QUESTION: WERE WE LEARNING FROM THEM OR WERE THEY LEARNING FROM US?

The ministry of Defence says there’s no need for an inquiry because it investigates all claims of torture.
But top military prosecutor Bruce Houlder says it’s difficult to build a case so long after the fact.

BRUCE HOULDER: I MEAN GOODNESS KNOWS, I WOULD LIKE TO PROSECUTE A CASE WHERE THERE IS EVIDENCE OF SERIOUS WRONGDOING. ANYONE WHO THINKS THE SERVICES ARE NOT INTERESTED THOSE, WHO FOR EXAMPLE COMMIT ABUSES AGAINST PRISONERS IS WIDE OF THE MARK.

But Shiner says the military shouldn’t investigate itself when it comes to accusations of systemic problems.
Instead, he says there’s a need for a broader examination of army practices.

PHIL SHINER: WE NEED A SINGLE INQUIRY TO GET IT OVER WITH WE NEED TO FULLY EXPLORE WHY PEOPLE ARE COMPLAINING OF SENSORY DEPRIVATION, FOOD AND WATER DEPRIVATION, FOOD AND WATER DEPRIVATION, STRESS TECHNIQUES, SLEEP DEPRIVATION.

It will be up to the court to decide whether an inquiry is needed.
But one former American officer believes it isn’t just a case of a few rogue soldiers using what he labels “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
Matthew Alexander – not his real name – used to be an interrogator for the U.S. military.
He conducted 300 interrogations and supervised another thousand in Iraq in 2006.

“MATTHEW ALEXANDER”: I SAW SOME INSTANCES WHERE SOLDIERS AND INTERROGATORS DID USE ABUSIVE TECHNIQUES. IN ONE CASE I HAD TO RESTRAIN A SOLIDER FROM CHOKING A PRISONER. AND WHAT I ALSO SAW WAS THAT I WAS THERE IN 2006 AFTER THE PASSAGE OF THE DETAINEE TREATMENT ACT WHICH OUTLAWED ENCHANCED INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES AND YET SOME INTERROGATORS CONTINUED TO USE THEM OR TO MODIFY THEM TO SKIRT AROUND THE RULES.

Alexander says he never used abusive techniques and doesn’t condone them.
But he thinks military and political leaders are to blame for creating a system that allowed torture to happen.

“MATTHEW ALEXANDER”: I THINK WE’VE SEEN THROUGHOUT THE WARS IN A’STAN AND IRAQ AND WHAT’S HAPPENED AT GUANTANAMO BAY THAT THERE CERTAINLY HAS BEEN A LEADERSHIP ROLE IN THE SYSTEMATIC USE OF TORTURE AND ABUSE. WE KNOW OF SOME EXAMPLES WHERE SERNIOR LEADERS REFUSED TO USE ENHANCED INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES BECAUSE THEY CONSIDERED THEM UNLAWFUL. BUT NOT MANY CASES.

The government will argue against an inquiry in court tomorrow, saying it should be given the time to investigate allegations first.
But that will take at least two years – far too long for the men who say they want to know why they were beaten and tortured by British troops.
For the World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

• Closing Guantanamo
• Katy Clark’s Guantanamo stories

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MARCO WERMAN:  The Obama administration is still reviewing its options as to where to try key terrorism suspects, and that includes alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed.  Plans to try him at a federal court in New York generated a lot of opposition, and that’s kept alive the option of military trials.  Guantanamo could be the venue.  The suspects are already there, and the legal system to try them is ready to go, as The World’s Katy Clark reports.

KATY CLARK: Former President George W. Bush signed orders back in 2006 setting up military tribunals for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo.  In doing so, Mr. Bush was adapting a long established system of military commissions to a modern threat.  Still, critics charged that the commissions were a lesser form of justice than either civilian or other military courts.  President Obama seemed to agree, and shortly after taking office he suspended the military tribunals and launched a review.  Realizing, though, that the commissions might be a necessary option, President Obama signed his own version of the Military Commissions Act last fall.  Navy Captain John Murphy is Chief Prosecutor in the Military Commissions office at the Pentagon.  One of the biggest changes under President Obama, he says, is limits on the type of evidence that can now be admitted.

JOHN MURPHY:  “There can be no torture, obviously.  That was true in the previous statute as well.  But no cruel, inhumane or degrading evidence or evidence obtained in that manner can be introduced.”

CLARK: Also any statements introduced in trial now have to be voluntary, rather than merely reliable.  And when it comes to hearsay evidence, the burden is now on the party who offers it, to prove its reliability.  Captain Murphy says defendants also have greater freedom to select their own military lawyers under the revamped Military Commissions Act or MCA.

MURPHY: “I think that the new MCA that is currently in effect is an improvement over our prior law, and I believe it represents fair justice.  We’re ready to move forward, when we’re directed by our leadership to prosecute cases under that statute.”

CLARK: But not all lawyers are as enthusiastic as Captain Murphy is to see the military commissions resume.  Law Professor Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University has represented several Guantanamo detainees.  He says it remains unclear to him what the government means when it says no cruel, inhumane or degrading evidence or evidence obtained in that manner will be allowed.  Denbeaux wonders if that includes evidence obtained after a detainee has been deprived of sleep for several days.

MARK DENBEAUX:  “Now, I think you could argue evidence after 48 hours of being kept awake with loud noises and strobe lights isn’t reliable.  But the standard here also is – is it humane?  Are courts gonna say keeping people awake for 24 hours are inhumane?  Fourteen hours?  Eighteen hours?  The questions here can’t be solved by saying we’re not only not allowing in torture.  We’re also not allowing inhumanely obtained evidence.”

CLARK: Captain John Murphy says it’s up to the judge to determine what’s admissible, based on what Murphy describes as ‘the totality of the circumstances’.

MURPHY:  “I would also add, too, that prosecutors make their own decisions before we ever offer evidence.  And within my office, if we make a determination that a statement or other evidence is likely to be excluded under those rules, that is, that it’s cruel, inhumane, degrading or torture or not voluntarily provided, then we’re not gonna offer it.”

CLARK: Still, other legal experts interviewed for this story say that no matter what changes the Obama administration makes, the military commissions at Guantanamo are flawed beyond repair.

JOHN HUTSON:  “For me, there’s absolutely no question that the best place to try terrorists is in federal court.”

CLARK: John Hutson served as Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy from 1997 to 2000.  He’s now Dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire.

HUTSON:  “Let’s say that you came here from Mars.  And you were told that we have some really, really bad guys that we want to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.  And we’ve got two judicial systems that we have to choose between.  One of them, it successfully prosecuted 200 cases since September 11^th, ’01, and most of those guys are still in prison.  It has experienced judges and prosecutors and court personnel.  And it clearly complies with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.  That’s one system.”

CLARK: Hutson describes the other system as having tried just three cases since 9/11.  Two of the defendants pleaded guilty and are now free.  The third didn’t participate and was found guilty in absentia.

HUTSON: “Which one would you select?  To me, that’s just a no brainer.”

CLARK: Captain John Murphy of the Military Commissions Office has heard such arguments before and shrugs them off.  He maintains there’s no better law team than his to handle terrorism cases.  Captain Murphy adds that one of the reasons why the Office of Military Commissions has only held three trials at Guantanamo so far is because proceedings have been on hold there for the past year.  The Office of Military Commissions is now preparing three more cases.  Preliminary hearings at Guantanamo are expected to resume later this month.  The next trial is set to begin in July.  For The World, this is Katy Clark.

MARCO WERMAN:  The Obama administration is still reviewing its options as to where to try key terrorism suspects, and that includes alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed.  Plans to try him at a federal court in New York generated a lot of opposition, and that’s kept alive the option of military trials.  Guantanamo could be the venue.  The suspects are already there, and the legal system to try them is ready to go, as The World’s Katy Clark reports.

KATY CLARK: Former President George W. Bush signed orders back in 2006 setting up military tribunals for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo.  In doing so, Mr. Bush was adapting a long established system of military commissions to a modern threat.  Still, critics charged that the commissions were a lesser form of justice than either civilian or other military courts.  President Obama seemed to agree, and shortly after taking office he suspended the military tribunals and launched a review.  Realizing, though, that the commissions might be a necessary option, President Obama signed his own version of the Military Commissions Act last fall.  Navy Captain John Murphy is Chief Prosecutor in the Military Commissions office at the Pentagon.  One of the biggest changes under President Obama, he says, is limits on the type of evidence that can now be admitted.

JOHN MURPHY:  “There can be no torture, obviously.  That was true in the previous statute as well.  But no cruel, inhumane or degrading evidence or evidence obtained in that manner can be introduced.”

CLARK: Also any statements introduced in trial now have to be voluntary, rather than merely reliable.  And when it comes to hearsay evidence, the burden is now on the party who offers it, to prove its reliability.  Captain Murphy says defendants also have greater freedom to select their own military lawyers under the revamped Military Commissions Act or MCA.

MURPHY: “I think that the new MCA that is currently in effect is an improvement over our prior law, and I believe it represents fair justice.  We’re ready to move forward, when we’re directed by our leadership to prosecute cases under that statute.”

CLARK: But not all lawyers are as enthusiastic as Captain Murphy is to see the military commissions resume.  Law Professor Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University has represented several Guantanamo detainees.  He says it remains unclear to him what the government means when it says no cruel, inhumane or degrading evidence or evidence obtained in that manner will be allowed.  Denbeaux wonders if that includes evidence obtained after a detainee has been deprived of sleep for several days.

MARK DENBEAUX:  “Now, I think you could argue evidence after 48 hours of being kept awake with loud noises and strobe lights isn’t reliable.  But the standard here also is – is it humane?  Are courts gonna say keeping people awake for 24 hours are inhumane?  Fourteen hours?  Eighteen hours?  The questions here can’t be solved by saying we’re not only not allowing in torture.  We’re also not allowing inhumanely obtained evidence.”

CLARK: Captain John Murphy says it’s up to the judge to determine what’s admissible, based on what Murphy describes as ‘the totality of the circumstances’.

MURPHY:  “I would also add, too, that prosecutors make their own decisions before we ever offer evidence.  And within my office, if we make a determination that a statement or other evidence is likely to be excluded under those rules, that is, that it’s cruel, inhumane, degrading or torture or not voluntarily provided, then we’re not gonna offer it.”

CLARK: Still, other legal experts interviewed for this story say that no matter what changes the Obama administration makes, the military commissions at Guantanamo are flawed beyond repair.

JOHN HUTSON:  “For me, there’s absolutely no question that the best place to try terrorists is in federal court.”

CLARK: John Hutson served as Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy from 1997 to 2000.  He’s now Dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire.

HUTSON:  “Let’s say that you came here from Mars.  And you were told that we have some really, really bad guys that we want to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.  And we’ve got two judicial systems that we have to choose between.  One of them, it successfully prosecuted 200 cases since September 11^th, ’01, and most of those guys are still in prison.  It has experienced judges and prosecutors and court personnel.  And it clearly complies with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.  That’s one system.”

CLARK: Hutson describes the other system as having tried just three cases since 9/11.  Two of the defendants pleaded guilty and are now free.  The third didn’t participate and was found guilty in absentia.

HUTSON: “Which one would you select?  To me, that’s just a no brainer.”

CLARK: Captain John Murphy of the Military Commissions Office has heard such arguments before and shrugs them off.  He maintains there’s no better law team than his to handle terrorism cases.  Captain Murphy adds that one of the reasons why the Office of Military Commissions has only held three trials at Guantanamo so far is because proceedings have been on hold there for the past year.  The Office of Military Commissions is now preparing three more cases.  Preliminary hearings at Guantanamo are expected to resume later this month.  The next trial is set to begin in July.  For The World, this is Katy Clark.

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• Katy’s update from Guantanamo (Jan 6)
• Katy’s previous Guantanamo coverage on The World
• FAQ on closing Guantanamo

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World. When Barack Obama became president he promised to shut down the US prison at Guantanamo Bay within one year. He’s going to miss the deadline. In fact the closure of Guantanamo has become even more difficult since Christmas day. That’s when a man who studied in Yemen allegedly attempted to blow up a US airliner. The White House then suspended the repatriation of Yemeni prisoners from Guantanamo. Those Yemenis account for about half the prison’s population. In a moment we’ll speak with a top Yemeni diplomat about the terror threat from his country. But first we turn to the world’s Katy Clark for an update on Guantanamo. She’s just returned from her third trip to the facility since August 2002. So Katy I guess the question is what’s new there?

KATY CLARK: Well you get the sense that it’s no longer this high risk interrogation operation but more of a babysitting operation right now.

SHARP: How so?

CLARK: Well I mean maybe that’s exaggerating things a little bit but one of the starkest examples of that was in our tour of Camp 5 which is one of the maximum security prisons that have been built there over time. One of the cell blocks that they walk us down on our tour used to have an interrogation room in the first room of that cell block and now it’s a TV lounge with a refrigerator and detainees goes in there one at a time. And although they still have a shackle around one of their legs they can watch movies and get drinks out of the fridge and sit on this cushy couch. I mean it was weird to see that.

SHARP: Any other sort of really striking changes or developments?

CLARK: Well they take art classes now. They take language classes now. And that sort of underscores the sense that it’s not such a dangerous place anymore. The people being held there maybe are not so dangerous as they used to be. And one of the things that does seem to be different down there as well as the effort that is being made to have the guards and the detainees get along a little better than they have in the past. One of the individuals that I met down there is a fellow, a US military contractor, who was introduced simply as Zack – we didn’t get his real name or his full name.

SHARP: You mean it was withheld.

CLARK: Yeah the name was withheld for security reasons. And he is a Muslim-American who is employed as a cultural advisor at Guantanamo. He’s been there since September 2006. He’s only recently started talking to reporters. And his job he says is to work to teach and educate everybody who interacts with detainees about the detainees’ culture and religion. And it was really interesting the way he described his job. I want to play a bit of an interview that I did with him there. And it starts with how he says he helps newly arrived guards.

ZACK: I show them you know. They pray five times a day. This is how it’s performed you know so if you’re knocking on the cell door and you see the person doing all the movements you know that’s done do not knock the door. Wait until that one person is done praying because you know he’s not going to answer you. All these little things you know I was able to teach you know and you know we have new people all the time here you know so I’m always continuing to teach everyone who works on the blocks about all these things.

CLARK: How do they detainees here view what you do? It seems as if they might look at you as the enemy.

ZACK: It’s not an easy job. It’s a difficult job because some they call me you know traitor, some they call me enemy of guard you know. Some you know because I was able to learn you know which group of detainees want to talk to me. Which one want to sit down man to man and do business you know.

CLARK: You talk about some of the games that were played early on. For instance … .

ZACK: Some of the games that were played you know it’s happened to me you know when I first came here you know. One detainee says a guard stepped on the Koran and urinated on it. I said okay.

CLARK: A story that was reported.

ZACK: A story that was reported. And he said come on down and see it with your own eyes. So I go down there you know. And I say to the detainee where is it? And my eye contact with the detainee says where is the footprint? The boot prints? You know boot prints are not easy to remove you know because once they go it’s not the [INDISCERNIBLE]. I dusted it off. I said okay then where is the urine. Smell it. I’m smelling you know. I’m not smelling it. But I’m not arguing also because my job is to listen and take in whatever I’m hearing and not argue. And I was saying where is the urine. He said look at it. So here is the book. Here’s the edge of the book. And it was exactly half a circle. You give me one human being that can urinate that uniformly. See you’re laughing. I did not laugh for the detainee or nothing. I said here is another copy but I went to another detainee who was more religious leader you know and I said guys this is what this person did so quit it.

CLARK: What kind of response did you get? I mean where they like kids who were caught in a lie?

ZACK: Yes, yes, yes. You know it’s something you know nobody’s going to admit you know. I mean another … . I mean just their ideology and their thinking you know just makes them believe you know. Like another example they’ll say as well it says in the Koran kill Americans. I looked at the kid – not kid you know just a guy – anybody younger than me is kid you know. You know and I said you know, okay no problem and just [INDISCERNIBLE] to somebody else, I said, can you show me where it says that? Maybe you know all these years I have not been able to find it you know. No he means this and he means that. So there’s always that game and manipulation and using religion as a weapon.

CLARK: That’s Zack, the US Defense Department’s cultural advisor down at Guantanamo Bay.

SHARP: He sounds like an interesting character. What was his background before he went to Guantanamo?

CLARK: He is Muslim-American. He said he’s of Jordanian descent and he had worked for the US military in Iraq back in 2003 as an interpreter and he sees this as just a continuation of this work. And it was interesting because I asked him if he had any concerns at some point in the job that he has had interacting very closely with the detainees, if he fears for his safety at some point when these men are released from Guantanamo if they might seek him out, which has been a common fear of the guards there. Some would describe it as a paranoia even. And he said if it happens it happens. I can’t really do anything about it. But I’m not going to let them kill me easily.

SHARP: Katy thank you.

CLARK: You’re welcome.

SHARP: The World’s Katy Clark just back from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

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• Katy’s previous Guantanamo coverage on The World
• FAQ on closing Guantanamo

Read the Transcript
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MARCO WERMAN: The would-be bomber on the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit reportedly got his explosives and training in Yemen. That’s focused a lot of attention on the country. Yesterday the Obama Administration announced it’s suspending the repatriation of several detainees from Yemen currently held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The reason given is the deteriorating security situation in their home country.  The World’s Katy Clark is in Guantanamo.  Katy, just how many detainees will be affected by this decision?

KATY CLARK: Well, it’s tough to say. I mean, they won’t go into details about specifics. I was under the impression that fewer than 200 detainees are being held here. A good half of those were to be released to Yemen. Now, I’ve heard various numbers that maybe it was 75, maybe it was as many of 91, but they are in a holding pattern right now. So that’s a good size of the population still being held here.

WERMAN: Have you had a chance to speak with any of the detainees?

CLARK: No, that’s never an option here. They are kept very much for their own privacy reasons away from reporters whenever reporters come here.  So basically what I know about what’s going on with them is what I am told from the guards, from the people in charge of the mission here. And we’ve asked whether or not the current situation has people frustrated. People were getting ready to get on an airplane to go home or to go to Yemen anyway, or to go to somewhere else, and that that’s all been put on hold. But the guards say right now that they haven’t seen any overt frustration on the part of the detainees. Maybe it’s just, you know, that they’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting and this is just waiting some more.

WERMAN: How do the detainees know what’s going on? Do they have access to newspapers or radio?

CLARK: They do and that’s actually one of the changes that I’ve been seeing since my previous trips here. They have access to three newspapers in different languages. They have access to satellite television. Some of the detainees could watch television 20 hours a day if they wanted to so they could be following the news. They also get news bulletins posted in their recreation areas, but it seems to be that the newspapers and the satellite TVs, they’re really keeping them plugged in.

WERMAN: If they are in this limbo state for right now, is there any sense of what will happen to these detainees instead of repatriation to Yemen?

CLARK: No, nobody seems to know and every time you ask that question here, people say, “Our job is just to make sure things run smoothly here. Any of those types of decisions are happening in Washington and we’re just waiting word on that.”

WERMAN: The World’s Katy Clark speaking with us from the U.S. Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Thank you very much, Katy.

CLARK: My pleasure, Marco.

WERMAN: By the way, when Katy Clark says prisoners are not allowed to give interviews for privacy reasons, this is in fact in accordance with the policies of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Geneva Conventions prohibit prisoners of war being paraded or subject to public humiliation. There’s no outright ban on media interviews, but according to the ICRC, it’s better to discourage interviews since it’s impossible to tell if a prisoner is being forced to say things.

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• BBC coverage
• On The World: Renditions to continue under Obama (Aug 25)

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MARCO WERMAN: Hi, I’m Marco Werman, this is the World. During the Bush Administration, the CIA operated secret prisons to hold suspected terrorists. Today, Lithuania said its intelligence service helped the CIA operate at least two of those prisons.  These so called black sites in Lithuania might have been used to hold Al Qaeda suspects, but a Lithuanian investigation found no evidence the country’s leaders knew what was going on there. Still, the controversy is making big waves in Lithuania, and as the world’s Matthew Bell reports, those waves could eventually be felt in Washington.

MATTHEW BELL: The investigation carried out by a parliamentary commission in Lithuania might have been sparked by ABC News. Back in August, it ran a story that said one of the secret sites used by the CIA for holding high value Al Qaeda suspects was outside the capital, Vilnius. Today, the head of the Lithuanian investigation said there were two sites used by the CIA between 2002 and 2005, and that Lithuanian intelligence knew about them and helped the CIA operate them.

MAN: LITHUANIAN]

BELL: Arvydas Anusauskas said that the facilities were there. The chance to avoid immigration checks for prisoners, they were there. And flights connected to the CIA, they were there, too. But he went on to say that political leaders were not briefed about this in any meaningful way. That’s important, because the big question in Lithuania is whether officials there broke the law by complying with practices associated with CIA black sites such as water boarding. Lithuanian investigators today said they found no evidence of human rights violations at these sites, and they went even further. They said they found no evidence that the facilities were ever used to hold any CIA detainees. But if Lithuanian officials were in the dark about what went on at those black sites, international law expert Scott Horton says it’s because they wanted to be.

SCOTT HORTON: That’s called deniability in a case like this. Certainly the report itself says that this is coordinated with the Lithuanian intelligence services, and certainly they would have briefed up the chain. But did the Lithuanian authorities know exactly who was being held there and what was being done to them? I think we could probably assume they didn’t want to know those things. But they could easily have found them out if they wanted to.

BELL: This controversy might have claimed one high level political casualty already. The head of Lithuanian’s intelligence agency resigned last week. Horton says there could be more to come.

HORTON: The fact that the CIA used torture is presenting a real complication for especially intelligence services in Europe and their collaboration. And we’ve already seen a number of senior Italian intelligence officers indicted and put on trial because of their collaboration with the CIA. We may see this in a number of other countries. Major criminal investigation going on right now in Spain; another in Germany; another one in the UK. And it shows really how dangerous this technique is from the perspective of our allies.

BELL: For the most part, Horton says CIA officials back in Langley, Virginia, are safe from any criminal charges that might be brought in Europe. Their European counterparts are not. And that’s a potential headache for the Obama administration as it seeks to increase cooperation on counterterrorism. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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• BBC coverage
• Central Intelligence Agency

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MARCO WERMAN: Twenty-three Americans were sentenced to prison today in Italy. All but one of them work for the CIA and all were convicted of kidnapping. The case involves the abduction of an Egyptian-born Muslim cleric who was snatched off a street in Milan in 2003 and flown to Egypt for interrogation. The cleric says he was tortured there. Though the Americans received prison terms they’re not likely to do any time. John Radsan served as a CIA’s assistant general counsel from 2002 to 2004. He now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. Now the case relates to the seizure and then extraordinary rendition of a Muslim cleric. Tell us who this man was – this cleric – and where is he now?

JOHN RADSAN: Based on the public record we believe that he was recruiting people to go and fight in Iraq against American forces. That he was a radical preacher in Milan. He’s of Egyptian origin. And he was stirring up people to fight against Americans and against western interests around the world. He’s not in prison right now. At the end of his rendition he was released and as I understand he’s in Egypt at this time.

WERMAN: And when he was extraordinarily rendered how actively do you think the US government actually participated in that?

RADSAN: From the public record it seems clear that the US was involved in his snatch in Italy. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. And that he was transferred. One of the questions was whether the Italian government knew about this. Was this a unilateral operation or was it a bilateral operation in Italy. I think it stands to reason that the CIA would not do something that is completely unilateral in Italy. That would make it very dangerous for the CIA officers. It would complicate the intelligence relationship between the CIA and the various Italian services. It would be bad at a political level. Of course if the CIA notifies its counterparts in Italy, they’re taking it on some sort of faith that the Italian authorities will in turn notify the political leaders in Italy. And it’s one of the questions we had in the trial and we still don’t know the level of Italian involvement and we don’t know the level of American involvement. But I don’t think any of these defendants has said that this did not take place – that the abduction did not take place. The defendants say that this was an authorized operation by the United States government.

WERMAN: And at the time what was the legal opinion relating to these kinds of operations in 2003? You were assistant general counsel for the CIA at the time.

RADSAN: I was assistant general counsel. I didn’t advice on this program. But I can speculate what the advice was. We comply with American law. We have to make sure that we comply with the American constitution, with the various statutes that apply to the CIA. When we do espionage in covert action we accept, as an unfortunate consequence, that in many situations we’re going to be violating international law and we may in many situations be violating the laws of other countries.

WERMAN: And for these 23 individual Americans who were sentenced today, are they going to have to be careful where they travel now? I mean would they want to avoid going on vacation in Italy for example?

RADSAN: That’s for sure. They’re not going to be going to Italy. They’ll also have to be careful about other countries that they go to. They’ll probably get legal advice. If they don’t they should to figure out what sort of extradition arrangements may exist between France and Italy, Singapore and Italy. I suspect that most of these people will be limiting their travel to within the United States. They’re not going to take the risk. We have examples of other people that have fallen in the international target. Henry Kissinger was careful about his travel because of various allegations. So these defendants will be in a similar category.

WERMAN: So what next? Will the US try to appeal this in any way?

RADSAN: I think the lawyers that are representing these people, they will appeal. At the end even if these convictions stand I don’t think we’re going to have American officers serving sentences there. In that sense the sentences are symbolic. I think it’s possible the Italians will ask for the extradition but I think it’s next to impossible that the Americans will extradite CIA officers – these are people that were serving their country – back to Italy to serve prison sentences. There’s an irony in this case. And that is that the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, was one of our important colleagues in counterterrorism and continues to be. He might have been coordinating with other parts of the American government beyond the CIA but he is the one that has been leading the charge and getting over these hurdles to bring this case. So in that sense it’s one part of the counterterrorism community indicting and convicting another part of the international counterterrorism community.

WERMAN: That’s interesting. I mean briefly, if these sentences are symbolic as you say, what do you think is the one-line message from them?

RADSAN: The CIA got in trouble for arguably violating Italian law and the CIA lives in a murky world of having to violate the laws of other countries to do espionage and conduct covert action.

WERMAN: Well John Radsan, former assistant general counsel for the CIA. Thanks very much.

RADSAN: Thank you.

WERMAN: And the State Department said today it’s disappointed by the Italian court’s decision.

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From The Washington Post:
The Freedom of Information Act request submitted by musicians Thursday asks for documents that include but are not limited to references to the following performers or songs:
AC/DC
Aerosmith
“Barney” theme song (by Bob Singleton)
Bee Gees
Britney Spears
Bruce Springsteen
Christina Aguilera
David Gray
Deicide
Don McLean
Dope
Dr. Dre
Drowning Pool
Eminem
Hed P.E.
James Taylor
Limp Bizkit
Marilyn Manson
Matchbox Twenty
Meat Loaf
Meow Mix jingle
Metallica
Neil Diamond
Nine Inch Nails
Pink
Prince
Queen
Rage Against the Machine
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Redman
Saliva
“Sesame Street” theme (by Christopher Cerf)
Stanley Brothers
“The Star-Spangled Banner”
Tupac Shakur

• Law professor Mark Denbeaux on archiving Guantanamo cases
• Katy Clark’s Guantanamo coverage (2002-2009)

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Guantanamo’s detainee population is now down to 223. In the past few years, several hundred men have already been released.  A few more have been cleared for release, and are expected to be sent overseas soon for resettlement.  For some former detainees, life after Guantanamo is a huge challenge.  The World’s Katy Clark reports.

KATY CLARK: It was quite a sight.  Four former detainees frolicking in the Atlantic Ocean off the Coast of Bermuda this past summer.  It gave the impression that life post-detention might be pretty sweet, but that’s not necessarily the norm.  Take the case of Sami Al-Haj, who was on assignment as a cameraman with Al-Jazeera when he was captured in Pakistan in late 2001.  He was held for more than six years as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo.  During his detention he says he was beaten and sexually assaulted.  Then May 2008, Al-Haj was released and returned to his native Sudan.  He was never charged with a crime.  Yet Al-Haj told Iranian-based Press T.V. that more than a year after his release he remains “A misfit” at home.

AL-HAJ: Still, my son doesn’t deal with me as a normal father, and even my wife and our close family like sister, brother, and even our friend is keeping away from me because they doesn’t want to want to put themselves in trouble and I lost many friends.

CLARK: What Al-Haj is experiencing is part of what Eric Stover calls the Guantanamo Stigma, something that haunts some of the more than 500 freed detainees.   Stover is a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.  He spent last year interviewing 62 men once held at Guantanamo.  He says many of them said they were ostracized by their own families and communities after their release.

ERIC STOVER: We heard of cases in many countries where former detainees were trying to find work but unable to do so.  You know, they were away, and a three or four years hole in resume, and if they said they were in US custody, they often didn’t get the jobs they were seeking.  We found that in fact six of the 62 former detainees only six had actually found meaningful employment.

CLARK: Without jobs and the proper support networks, Stover says there’s little to stop these men from turning or in some cases returning to Jihad against the United States.  Joshua Colangelo-Bryan is a New York based attorney who represented six detainees.   All of them are now free.  He would like to see the United States and other governments do more to keep these guys on track.

JOSHUA COLANGELO-BRYAN: It certainly is in the interest of all reasonable people to have the Guantanamo detainees who were released integrate themselves back into their societies.  Where home countries have the capacity to provide support, be it psychological or material, they certainly should.

CLARK: The State Department has the job of facilitating transfers of released detainees to their home countries or to third countries, but it won’t say whether it does any more than that to help these men readjust.  Often the mental wounds former Guantanamo detainees carry with them re-open after their release.  Berkeley’s Eric Stover says one man now living in the Middle East whom he tried to interview, went into hiding during the week they were scheduled to talk.  Stover describes him as “the worst case scenario” of any of the former detainees he met.

STOVER: The family said that he had left the house without shoes and that this was happening quite often.  He just was completely disoriented and was in clear need of psychiatric care.

MOAZZEM BEGG:  Where is the welfare for the people who have been tortured? Where is the support system for people who have endured cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment?

CLARK: This is Moazzem Begg speaking at the launch of the Guantanamo Justice Center in London.  Begg and other former detainees created the center to help men like themselves who’ve been left traumatized by their experiences at Guantanamo. It’s not the kind of organization that will win plaudits in Washington, but its goals may just coincide with Washington’s so long as those goals focus on former detainees moving past their time in captivity and living peaceful lives.   For The World this is Katy Clark.

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Some great voices in this episode of the podcast.

Paul Pillar of Georgetown University was at the CIA for 28 years before retiring in 2005. He was an expert on South Asia and counter-terrorism at the agency. Pillar told me there’s good reason for frustration at the CIA over all this.

I also talked with former CIA officer Robert Baer. Much of his career was spent in the Middle East. Baer told me he could have tortured detainees a number of times over the years. But he never did. He said that’s not because he was categorically against it on moral grounds in all cases. But he said it’s simply because torture doesn’t work. It doesn’t produce solid intelligence. Baer wants President Obama to take the preliminary investigation into CIA abuse and kick it up a notch.

Mark Bowden has written fantastic stuff for The Atlantic on the issue of interrogations. He told me this would be a simple matter if it was always true that non-coercive methods of interrogations worked best in all cases. But it’s not that simple, Bowden said. However, he’s also very supportive of the way the Obama administration has broken with the past.

David Cole is the author of The Torture Memos. Cole said failing to hold those responsible for breaking laws on torture would allow future American presidents to repeat the mistakes of the Bush administration. But he added that this could be achieved without going down the road of full-blown criminal investigation.

There are, of course, differences of opinion on the question of how far up the chain of command the Obama administration should go with any investigation or inquiry. I talked about this with Stephen Walt of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Robert Jervis of Columbia, and David Kennedy at Stanford.

Human rights advocates in EUROPE are calling for countries there to look into their own role in CIA prisoner abuse. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush administration. The World’s Gerry Hadden has the story.

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JEB SHARP: Human rights advocates in Europe are pressing for some action. They’re hoping the Obama Administration’s investigations into alleged CIA prisoner abuses will move Europe to do some self-examination of its own. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush Administration. But so far no one’s been held accountable. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN: Europe has been through all of this before. In 2007 Dick Marty, a Swiss member of the Council of Europe, led an investigation into Europe’s role in America’s fight against terrorism. His findings? Several EU states let the US use their airports to move terrorism suspects around the globe. Some helped the CIA abduct targets. And some countries likely hosted secret CIA prisons. But most European governments simply ignored Marty’s report. The question is whether that will change now that the Obama Administration has released an internal CIA report on the agency’s interrogations and with the Justice Department investigating. There’s been some movement in Europe this week. Lithuania says it will investigate reports that it, like Poland and Romania, may have hosted a secret prison during the Bush era. Guilietto Chiesa is a member of the European Parliament from Italy. He says Europe can no longer remain quiet.

GUILIETTO CHIESA: The question now is to have the list of the people who have been detained in Lithuania. And probably there there have been torture, illegal interrogation, and very serious violation of human rights there. That means there are political and penal responsibilities.

HADDEN: Lithuanian denies it hosted a CIA prison and says it’s only investigating to clear its name. Gabriele Betchkaypeeteh is an editor at the Lithuanian daily paper Lietuvos Rytas. She says there’s no way her country could have hosted such a prison without word getting out.

GABRIELE BETCHKAYPEETEH: Technically it’s very difficult to have that prison in a country which has 3.5 million people and the place mentioned of the possible prison is quite small and we believe that local residents probably would have noticed any secret activities.

HADDEN: Romania also denies it hosted a prison. Same with Poland. Although that country says it’s investigating. Reed Brody, with Human Rights Watch in Brussels, says he was hoping that the CIA’s internal report on prisoner abuse would shed some light on this but he says it hasn’t.

REED BRODY: There were 23 pages of information in the CIA report on detention sites that were completely redacted. And obviously the CIA or whoever was involved here was afraid that if information about those sites were disclosed it could lead to further criminal investigations and prosecutions.

HADDEN: There’s also new pressure this week on some European governments to come clean on secret rendition flights. Amnesty International in Ireland says Shannon International Airport was used to move suspects. It’s calling for the Irish government to look into it. Reed Brody says if Europe doesn’t own up to its own role in the US-led war on terrorism it will lose credibility. And worse, quipped someone at the council of Europe today, Europe this person said has been criticizing the States for years on this but not only did Europe aid the effort it may now fall behind the US in investigating it. For The World I’m Gerry Hadden.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.