V. Torture and Ill-treatment

Fourteen out of sixteen detainees or their families told Human Rights Watch that they had been subjected to some form of abuse and in some cases actual torture at the central GID facility. Of the two who did not allege to have been victims of abusive treatment, one said he was threatened with torture. All detainees or their families said they were subjected to solitary confinement throughout their detention, for periods ranging from two days to several months.

Jordanian officials have claimed that allegations of torture are a common ploy by detainees to gain favorable verdicts in their State Security Court trials. [162] However, fifteen of the sixteen detainees did not face trial. They had nothing to gain from persisting in making false allegations of torture, as thirteen of the fifteen had been released.

In fact, all but one were initially reluctant to speak to us about this aspect of their experience of detention. Allegations of abuse typically arose in the course of our interviews with them, which focused on procedural aspects of arrest, detention and interrogation. While some detainees initially only related the sense of insult they felt about the manner in which they were interrogated, such as being questioned about the female members of their families, their testimony later revealed that while in custody fifteen of the detainees had been beaten or otherwise ill-treated. One former detainee, Basim F., said of the beatings he suffered that GID officers had treated him "a little harshly." [163]

Beatings and other torture

Information about the interrogation and detention of the individuals in the sixteen cases reviewed by Human Rights Watch indicates that the GID regularly practices ill-treatment, including torture, on the detainees in its central facility. For example, Mustafa R. said that at the end of the third round of interrogations, the intelligence officers called officers in military uniform to bring him downstairs to what he called the "torture hall," where they beat him. [164] Since conducting our research in Jordan, Human Rights Watch has received information indicating that these practices continue. [165]

One form of torture reportedly practiced by the GID is beatings on the soles of the feet (falaqa), a type of torture widely used in several countries. The practice was identified as being perpetrated by the GID over a decade ago by the UN special rapporteur on torture, [166] and evidently persists: Four detainees or their families whom we interviewed in Jordan told Human Rights Watch that GID officers beat them with bamboo sticks on the lower parts of the legs and on the soles of the feet. The young Jordanian Palestinian from the Schneller refugee camp told Human Rights Watch: "I was beaten many times on the legs." [167] Mustafa R. told Human Rights Watch that he was subjected to falaqa twice within one week in 2004, each time for about 30 minutes. He told Human Rights Watch: "I was beaten on the lower parts of my legs and on the soles of my feet until they bled. When I didn't answer a question they would beat me harder." [168]

Two detainees separately reported an associated form of torture, the "salt and vinegar walk." In the large 20-by-40 meter hall where they said torture took place, they described how an officer would pour vinegar on the ground and pour salt on top in a small circle in part of the hall. "Then they forced me to walk around this circle for about five minutes with my bare feet, which were bleeding from the falaqa," Mustafa R. said. [169] When the interrogators and torturers were not satisfied with a particular session, the torture would culminate in this practice, before the detainee received medical attention. [170]

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi's son, Muhammad al-Barqawi, told us how the GID had called him for questioning and beat him. He told Human Rights Watch: "In early 2003, in February or March, the GID asked me to come, after I had returned from `umra [the lesser pilgrimage] in Saudi Arabia. I was beaten with an electric cable, but only for a few hours." [171] Ahmad Muhammad Sadiq Abu Nujila told Human Rights Watch that during his arrest in 2002 "the [GID] interrogators whacked me around while they questioned me about my brother, but mostly to scare me." [172]

Three former detainees, two of whom suffered torture, told Human Rights Watch that they regularly heard screaming from their cells, which one inmate said were close to the "torture room." [173] One said that he heard "screams and the sounds of beatings from the hall" where he himself had been tortured, a few yards down from his cell. He thought that this was done on purpose to frighten other detainees. [174] Another said that from his cell he regularly heard screams at night. [175]

Former detainees also report experiencing at the hands of the GID other practices that are cruel, inhuman and degrading. Four detainees reported being forced to sit rigidly straight for hours, without moving. When they did move, an officer would beat them. [176] Two persons reported having to squat or stand in uncomfortable positions, one for thirty hours; [177] and one other detainee said officers forced him to undress fully during interrogations. [178] Insults were common, from vulgar expressions to specific personal insults about the family. Two detainees reported being threatened with "being taken downstairs," which they said they understood to mean torture. [179]

In describing their interrogations, former detainees said that there were rarely less than three to four persons present, and sometimes up to seven or even eight persons. Two detainees described how interrogators called four to five other officers, dressed in military uniform, with their faces masked, to take detainees for interrogation. They would escort the detainee to a hall on the lower floor of the building, accompanied by the initial interrogators who wore civilian clothes. [180] Both groups participated in torture, Mustafa R. told Human Rights Watch, but only the plainclothes interrogators asked questions.

Participation of medical doctors

Two detainees told Human Rights Watch that medical personnel were present inside the GID central detention facility. [181] Mustafa R. described how interrogators took him to what he called a medical room "right around the corner" from the hall where they had just tortured him. [182] The two doctors who attended to his wounds did not ask about how he had sustained those injuries. After a second session, one of the doctors asked, "Was it very bad today?" [183] They did not give the detainee their names.

The United Nations General Assembly has agreed Principles of Medical Ethics. The Principles consider it:

a gross contravention of medical ethics, as well as an offence under applicable international instruments, for health personnel, particularly physicians, to engage, actively or passively, in acts which constitute participation in, complicity in, incitement to or attempts to commit torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. [184]

Medical treatment of a detainee after torture does not violate this principle, unless, for example, the doctors treat the person so that torture can resume sooner. But medical doctors have a responsibility to report abuse they witness. [185]

A medical professional should only consider not reporting indications of abuse if doing so would breach the confidentiality of his or her patient, or if it would further endanger the patient. If the doctor is a witness to a pattern of abuse, considerations of patient safety must be weighed against the risk or likelihood of future abuse.

The doctors at the GID central detention facility cannot but know what violations lead to the injuries they treat, yet they do not seem to have raised it successfully with the GID director or with other executive or judicial authorities. Fathi Abu Nassar, the president of the Freedoms Committee of the Professional Associations, including the Medical Association, was not aware of such protestations, whether in private or public. [186] According to the head of the Jordanian Medical Association, the doctors who work at the GID are military officers. GID prisoners who require medical attention are taken to the Royal Medical Services, not the al-Bashir hospital which treats inmates of other prisons. [187] Detainees at the GID, as in any detention facility, should enjoy a right to request or petition a judicial or other authority for a second medical examination or opinion. [188]

Solitary confinement

In each of the sixteen cases investigated by Human Rights Watch, the GID held the detainee in solitary confinement. [189] Prison practice worldwide recognizes legitimate preventive reasons for segregating inmates, for example, for a prisoner's own protection from imminent harm, or where a prisoner has a history of attempted escapes or violent behavior. Prison administrations may also place inmates in isolation to address a public health threat. But solitary confinement appears to be the routine mode of detention at the GID, not an extraordinary measure.

The GID isolates suspects from the moment they enter the GID detention facility. Muhammad `Ali Shaqfa described the procedure to Human Rights Watch. He said that GID officers confiscated all his belongings and made him wear a blue prison uniform. After recording his personal details in one office, they blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to his cell. Peering from under his blindfold, he saw that all the hatches on the cell doors had been closed so that other detainees could not see who was walking by. [190] Mustafa R. said that he was always blindfolded and handcuffed when officers transferred him from his cell to the interrogation room or the torture room downstairs. [191] Once in his cell, verbal communication with cell neighbors was forbidden, he said.

The GID held Muzaffar al-Jawabira in solitary confinement for around three months. [192] Others remained in solitary confinement for shorter periods before being released. During that time, they did not have contact with other detainees or eat with them. The cells are about two-by-four meters, and have a toilet, a bed, and a wash basin, but no windows. [193]

The evidence suggests that the GID uses solitary confinement regularly and, at least in these sixteen cases, exclusively. Detainees ate their meals inside their cells, where they were held around the clock in isolation, interrupted only by interrogations and occasional short exposures to sunlight, lasting ten to thirty minutes every other day at the most, also in isolation. [194] One detainee said he was taken outside for fresh air every two or three days for about ten minutes, accompanied by guards. [195] Another said guards took him outside every five days or so, for half an hour. [196]

International norms require that stricter forms of isolation be imposed only after establishing that less drastic means are unavailable to meet the need. They also require regular and transparent reviews of confinement in isolation. [197] The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment has argued that prolonged, consecutive solitary confinement can constitute ill-treatment:

The principle of proportionality calls for a balance to be struck between the requirement of the situation and the imposition of a solitary confinement-type regime, which can have very harmful consequences for the person concerned. Solitary confinement can in certain circumstances amount to inhuman and degrading treatment; in any event, all forms of solitary confinement should last for as short a time as possible. [198]

Jordan's Law on Correctional and RehabilitationCenters, which the GID does not in practice apply to its detention facility, allows for a maximum of seven days of solitary confinement without visitation. [199]

Three families told Human Rights Watch of the suffering of their detainee relatives in custody and their continuing psychological problems. One mother said that her son, ever since having spent twenty-seven days in solitary confinement, sleeps all day and has become listless. This young man, from a poor family in the Schneller Palestinian refugee camp outside Rusaifa, agreed to speak to Human Rights Watch but found it hard to talk about details of his ordeal. [200]