The critique by an unnamed official in the Ministry for Political Development of the Human Rights Watch report Suspicious Sweeps: The General Intelligence Department and Jordan’s Rule of Law Problem fails to address the human rights violations it documents and misrepresents its findings. Human Rights Watch found that Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID) frequently carries out arbitrary arrests and abuses suspects in its own detention facility and that many suspects are held in incommunicado detention but never charged with a crime.
The critique by an unnamed official in the Ministry for Political Development of the Human Rights Watch report Suspicious Sweeps: The General Intelligence Department and Jordan’s Rule of Law Problem fails to address the human rights violations it documents and misrepresents its findings. Human Rights Watch found that Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID) frequently carries out arbitrary arrests and abuses suspects in its own detention facility and that many suspects are held in incommunicado detention but never charged with a crime.
The critique (“The Legal Response,” published in al-Dustur, September 29, 2006) also attempts to explain away the consistent allegations of torture and ill-treatment at the GID presented in the report by insinuating that Jordanian torture is somehow not as bad as “the barbarity such as that which has happened and is happening at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.” Human Rights Watch has helped expose torture at Abu Ghraib and has long lobbied for the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Unlike this unnamed official, we seek to expose violations, not cover them up.
This is a reply to the main elements of the “Legal Response.”
- The author states that the Human Rights Watch report falsely claims that Jordanians have no right of appeal to decisions of the State Security Court. The report makes no such claim. The report does state that the “prime minister can transfer any case to this court, regardless of the charge, and the defendants have no right to appeal this decision.” The author does not dispute this claim.
- The author claims that the GID detention facility is open and accessible to human rights organizations and subject to independent oversight. This is not true. The government has repeatedly turned down requests for prison visits by Jordanian non-governmental organizations. Only one human rights organization, the government-appointed National Center for Human Rights, visited the GID detention center, for the first time in 2005. The center is not independent, however, and the tightly-controlled manner of the center’s visits provides very limited oversight.
- The author claims that the Public Assemblies Law adequately protects the right to demonstrate and gather in public, but does not mention, as our report does, that a provincial governor can summarily forbid demonstrations without giving a reason, and has done so on numerous occasions. The author also sets out to correct the report’s claim that the High Judicial Council is not entirely independent by simply noting, as the report does, that the Jordanian constitution guarantees judicial independence. Yet the author does not challenge Human Rights Watch’s arguments concerning undue executive influence on the council, such as: the council includes ministry of justice representatives; the king appoints some high-level judges who are members; the justice ministry retains budgetary authority over the court system; and ministry-controlled prosecutors at the levels of courts of first instance and the Court of Appeals are bound to execute ministerial instructions.
- The author misrepresents the meaning behind the fact that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) did not confirm torture at the GID detention facility. The ICRC never tells outsiders of its findings, but, as the report notes, can only protest serious problems it encounters by suspending its visits. The ICRC has indeed suspended visits in Jordan on several occasions over the past years, for the last time in 2004.
- The author mentions the legal obligation, cited in the report, on all Jordanian officials to report abuse, and on the attorney general to investigate it. The salient point is not the progressiveness of Jordanian law, but that officials do not enforce these laws. Every detainee Human Rights Watch spoke with said he had complained to his prison guard or interrogator about his treatment, but that the officials did not act on these complaints. The report also lists Jordanian laws that provide redress, including compensation, to victims of official wrongdoing, and that punish officials found guilty of such wrongdoing. A public prosecutor and GID officials, however, separately told Human Rights Watch that no GID official had ever faced criminal proceedings for overstepping the law. The National Center for Human Rights in its 2005 annual report provided numerous allegations of torture, including by the GID, which were not investigated.
- The author uses the case in the report of the military prosecutor asking one detainee if he wanted a lawyer as evidence that all proceedings at the GID follow the letter of the law. To the contrary, this case is an exception that proves the rule. The prosecutor did not make similar enquiries of the other 15 detainees. Four defense lawyers, hired by the detainees’ families, told Human Rights Watch that it is difficult or impossible to see their clients at the GID. Similarly, the author cites a mention in our report that mukhtars, neighborhood leaders, attended house searches in compliance with Jordanian law as evidence that GID officials always conduct house searches properly. But out of nine house searches listed in the report, mukhtars were present in only two cases.
- The author claims that the fact that the GID released most of the detainees mentioned in the report is a sign that these were preventive arrests to forestall terrorist activities. To the contrary, it stands to reason that if the arrested persons had been involved in conspiring or planning to carry out an attack, then the military prosecutor would not have released them, but brought them to justice. As the author is no doubt aware, a number of persons in 2006 have stood before the State Security Court accused of plotting attacks.
- Finally, a faulty translation of the English text of the report, which stated that Sajida al-Rishawi “may be related by marriage to Nidal ‘Arabiyat,” led to the impression, in Arabic, that she was married to Mr. ‘Arabiyat. Human Rights Watch is correcting this translation.
Instead of contriving arguments through selective reading of the report to try to dismiss its claims, the government should have started its own investigation into allegations of abuse, as the report recommends. Al-Dustur, which published this weak attempt at refutation, could also dedicate its resources and pages investigating abuses, not whitewashing them. That’s one of the most significant roles and responsibilities of a free press – to investigate and expose wrongdoing by public officials. Sadly, no Jordanian media outlet has the freedom or shown the will to carry out such investigative reporting and to challenge the government’s record on human rights.
Christoph Wilcke is a researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch
