-board of inquiry finds
The board of inquiry into torture allegations made by soldiers against officers attached to the army’s Military Criminal Investigation Department (MCID) found that some forms of physical abuse and ill-treatment were committed on the men.
But in its confidential report it also concluded that there was no significant evidence of injuries to draw the conclusion that the men, Corporal Alvin Wilson and Private Michael Dunn and Private Sharth Robertson had been tortured. Only the allegations against Wilson and Dunn were the official subject of the inquiry, but the board also considered the statements of Robertson. A part of the report seen by Stabroek News said: “…[T]he consistency of the statements and the vivid descriptions of the methods of interrogation along with the doctor’s report on the tenderness shown on [Corporal] Wilson’s neck, chest and abdomen, provide a reasonable basis to conclude that there were some forms of physical abuse and ill-treatment committed on [Corporal] Wilson A, [Private] Dunn M and [Private] Robertson S.” It added: “However, because of the inconsistency of the injuries and medical reports, except for the tenderness on the neck, chest and abdomen of Cpl Wilson, there was no significant evidence of injuries to draw a conclusion of torture.”
Three officers, a lieutenant colonel, a lieutenant commander and a warrant officer, conducted the inquiry and noted that a lack of supervision during the interrogation process, a lack experience on the part of the interrogators and a lack of interrogatively friendly methods to obtain information were contributory factors. They recommended that there be a review of the existing protocols on interrogation with a view to establish a clear policy on the issue of interrogation and ways of obtaining information. They also recommended that officers be properly trained in the field of interrogation and that more interrogatively “friendly methods to obtain information from the persons under investigation should be adopted.”
Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Chief-of-Staff Com-modore Gary Best had recently told Stabroek News that army had taken appropriate action against members accused of torturing two soldiers during interrogations. While he did not divulge what actions had been taken, Stabroek News has been told that the accused ranks may have lost their ranks as a result of the findings.
Physical abuse,
ill-treatment
and torture
The board of inquiry was set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding allegations of torture committed on Wilson and Dunn by members of MCID between November 23 and December 6, 2007 at Base Camp Ayan-ganna. As part of the inquiry, evidence was taken from 22 members of the GDF in addition to a member of the Guyana Police Force Crimi-nal Investigations Depart-ment, between January 12 and January 16 this year.
The board adopted Article 1 of the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment as its reference for an interpretation of the definition and concept of torture. Article 1 of the convention states: “…torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.” It also caters for any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.
According to the board, from its interpretation of the convention’s definition of torture, the words “severe pain or suffering” allows for a threshold where torture can be described at the highest point or level of an interrogation process comprising cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. “Once an act therefore crosses this threshold where severe pain or suffering is inflicted, a distinction can be then drawn between acts of torture and physical abuse or ill-treatment,” it said. “The board’s main consideration to embrace this hierarchy between torture and different forms of ill-treatment was the circumstances and gravity of the basis for the investigation which was the loss of an AKM rifle from the Army Base at Camp Ayanganna,” it added.
The main opposition PNCR, at a press conference on Thursday, accused the board of seeking to redefine the nature of torture even though the United Nations Convention Against Torture explicitly stated what torture was. In a statement, the party said that’s the board’s interpretation was intended to prevent the conclusion that the soldiers and others had not been tortured. The party dared the administration to deny that severe pain and suffering, mental or physical had not been inflicted on the men.
The party also claimed that there were two versions of the report, one of which was comprehensive with the names of those “who perpetrated acts of torture are clearly stated, and the other is the sanitised version of carefully selected extracts from this document with the names excised.” The party said that the administration could have saved itself the trouble, since “By now every schoolchild knows the names of the officers who conducted the interrogation for the MCID.”
The army responded to the PNCR statement, expressing concern over what it called attempts to vilify its officers by incorrectly naming them as those who engaged in torture. “This dogged reluctance by the PNCR-1G to address this issue and the report in an honest and unambiguous manner points clearly to their efforts to destabilise and demoralise the [GDF], sow seeds of hatred, enmity and discord among the populace towards ranks of the GDF…” it said in a statement.
The army was critical of the PNCR’s repeated description of the board’s report as a “Torture report,” noting that it was irresponsible and that the inquiry had not found any evidence of torture. It added that it had “taken action against its ranks for the use of excessive force,” which was the finding of the board. “The GDF finds the PNCR-1G’s actions irresponsible and calls on it to act and behave more responsibly and contribute to peace and tranquillity of our country,” it said.
Consistencies
and inconsistencies
According to the report, an examination of the statements made by the soldiers to the board showed strong consistency in relation to the methodical conduct of their interrogation as well as other events during their investigation. “Some of the acts that were consistently highlighted were: physical restraint of hands and feet, placing of a bag over the head, throwing of cold water on the body, attempts at strangulation, stripping of clothes and electric shock and physical blows to various parts of the body,” it noted. However, the report said that an examination of the injuries and medical examinations and results showed strong inconsistency in relation to alleged torture. It was stated that Dunn’s wounds, according to the professional medical opinion of the GDF’s medical officer and the medic who examined him, showed that they had been obtained as a result of the soldier’s own escape bid to flee from custody (these wounds were described as clean-cut and ripped wounds indicative of cuts from barbed wire.” The report said that Dunn himself confessed that during his bid for escape he had jumped to the ground from a 15-18ft high landing at the band corps’ barracks while his hands were still in cuffs.
In relation to Wilson, the report said that both medical results from checks for broken ribs and passage of blood in urine showed negative. “The FMO’s report of tenderness to the neck, chest and abdomen was however, consistent with some form of physical contact.”
And while Private Robertson was never examined by a medical doctor, the report noted that police CID records at Eve Leary said that a procedural examination for injuries when he was handed over to them two days after the alleged torture showed that there were abrasions on both wrists, which he had indicated were from the handcuffs used to keep him under restraint.
While Stabroek News has seen the report, it is still to be made public as has been promised by President Bharrat Jagdeo. Recently, the President said the names of the alleged perpetrators would be deleted when the report was made public.
The first mention of the findings of the report was made by Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud, who told the National Assembly that the board had found no evidence of torture. He said claims by some of the alleged victims had been found to be false. He then added that the inquiry had found cases of “roughing up,” but then explained that in the light of the “new face of criminality” the security forces would use “a certain amount of physical and mental pressure” in order to get information, while insisting that such tactics did not fit the definition of torture.
Following Persaud’s ‘roughing-up’ claim Dunn, who had said he was pepper-sprayed and whipped with metal pipes by the MCID officers, said he felt “betrayed by the government and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF)” for labelling the “horrifying experiences” he and his colleagues had endured as mere ‘roughing up.’
Dunn, of Georgetown, and Robertson, of Berbice, said they had been beaten, doused with cold water and in one case slashed across the heel with an iron pipe during interrogation over a missing AK-47. He also said there were marks on his body caused by the electric shocks inflicted on him by the two MCID officers. He said too the men had thrown acid on his body and pepper-sprayed his genitals.
Wilson, who was in charge of the arms store from where the gun was stolen, said he had been kicked about his rib cage and had had a false tooth smashed by members of the army’s investigating unit. The 53-year-old retiree, who was serving as a reservist corporal, told Stabroek News that during his interrogation he had been handcuffed and led out of the interviewing room and placed to kneel on stones in front of a palm tree. “Wilson, you know your family doesn’t know your whereabouts, you could be a dead man,” the man said one of the officers had told him. After kneeling on bricks for over ten minutes he had then been taken to a pick-up where he had met Robertson, who, the officers claimed, had told them a deal had been struck for the two of them to sell the rifle. He denied the claim and he had then been carried into a room where sponge sealed the windows and placed on a bench and his face covered with a wet bag and a string pulled tight so that he could hardly breathe.
The man said his hands had been bound while the officers poured water into the bag and asked him to breathe; he began to resist and in the process his false teeth had fallen out. One of the officers allegedly had taken the dentures and had pelted them on the concrete floor smashing one of them. “Is either you find back the weapon or you dead here,” he had threatened. Days after his ordeal the man said he was still passing blood and was unable to sit upright. The father of five also said that sometimes his back could not support his weight and as such he had to be lying down most of the time. “I should have never been treated this way − look the time I spent in the army, I would not steal their weapon,” Wilson declared.
While the allegations of the two were investigated those made by civilians Patrick Sumner, Victor Jones, David Leander also known as David Zammett are still to be investigated.
