American tortured by US in Iraq speaks out
By David Phinney
04/07/06 "ICH"
-- -- WASHINGTON, Apr 5 (IPS)
- A year ago, Donald Vance learned what its like to be
falsely accused by the U.S. military of aiding terrorists. He
was held without charge for more than three months in a
high-security prison in Iraq, and interrogated daily after
sleepless nights without legal counsel or even a phone call to
his family.
On Wednesday, the former private security contractor was
honoured for his ordeal in Washington and for speaking out
against the incident. At a luncheon at the National Press Club,
Vance received the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, an award
named in memory of Army helicopter gunner Ron Ridenhour who
struggled to bring the horrific mass murders at My Lai to the
attention of Congress and the Pentagon during the Vietnam War.
Vance was joined by former president Jimmy Carter, who won a
lifetime achievement award, and journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran
of The Washington Post who was recognised for his recent book,
"Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone".
As hundreds at the luncheon finished their lobster salad, Vance,
a two-time George W. Bush voter and Navy veteran, recounted the
events of his imprisonment and the grief of his fiancé and
family. They did not know if he was alive or dead, he said. They
were already making inquiries to the U.S. State Department on
how to ship his body home.
He then drew a wider circle around his ordeal to include the
countless others who have been held falsely without charge and
denied normal legal constitutional protections under law. "My
name used to be 200343," Vance said recalling his prisoner ID.
"If they can do this to a former Navy man and an American, what
is happening to people in facilities all over the world run by
the American government?"
Vance's nightmare began last year on Apr. 15 when he and
co-worker Nathan Ertel barricaded themselves in a Baghdad office
after their employer, an Iraqi private security firm, took away
their ID tags. They feared for their lives because they
suspected the company was involved in selling unauthorised guns
on the black market and other nefarious activity. A U.S.
military squad freed them from the red zone in Baghdad after a
friend at the U.S. embassy advised him to call for help.
Once they reached the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, government
officials took them inside the embassy, listened to their
individual accounts and then sent them to a trailer outside for
sleep. Two or three hours later, before the crack of dawn, U.S.
military personnel woke them. This time, however, Vance and
Ertel, Shield Security's contract manager, were under arrest.
Soldiers bound their wrists with zip ties and covered their eyes
with goggles blacked out with duct tape.
The two were then escorted to a humvee and driven first to
possibly Camp Prosperity and then to Camp Cropper, a
high-security prison near the Baghdad airport where Saddam
Hussein was once kept. Vance says he was denied the usual body
armour and helmet while traveling through the perilous Baghdad
streets outside the safety of the Green Zone or a U.S. military
installation.
It was not the way the tall 29-year-old with an easy charm and
keen mind had expected to be treated. Vance claims that during
the months leading up to his arrest, he worked as an unpaid
informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes
twice a day, he would share information with an agent in Chicago
about the Iraqi-owned Shield Group Security, whose principals
and managers appeared to be involved in weapons deals and
violence against Iraqi civilians. One company employee regularly
bartered alcohol with U.S. military personnel in exchange for
ammunition they delivered, Vance said.
"He called it the bullets for beer programme," Vance claimed
while relating the incident during an interview this week at a
cigar bar just walking distance from the White House.
But his interrogators at Camp Cropper weren't impressed.
Instead, his jailers insisted that Vance and Ertel had been
detained and imprisoned because the two worked for Shield Group
Security where large caches of weapons have been found --
weapons that may have been intended for possible distribution to
insurgents and terrorist groups, Vance said.
In a lawsuit now pending against former Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and "other unidentified agents," Vance and Ertel accuse
their U.S. government captors of subjecting them to
psychological torture day and night. Lights were kept on in
their cell around the clock. They endured solitary confinement.
They had only thin plastic mattresses on concrete for sleeping.
Meals were of powdered milk and bread or rice and chicken, but
interrupted by selective deprivation of food and water.
Ceaseless heavy metal and country music screamed in their ears
for hours on end, their legal complaint alleges.
They lived through "conditions of confinement and interrogation
tantamount to torture", says the lawsuit filed in northern
Illinois U.S. District Court. "Their interrogators utilised the
types of physically and mentally coercive tactics that are
supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy
combatants."
Rumsfeld is singled out as the key defendant because he played a
critical role in establishing a policy of "unlawful detention
and torment" that Vance, Ertel and countless others in the "war
on terror" have endured, the lawsuit asserts, noting that the
former defence secretary and other high-level military
commanders acting at his direction developed and authorised a
policy that allows government officials unilateral discretion to
designate possible enemies of the United States.
Because the incident and allegations are now in litigation, the
Pentagon has no comment, spokesman Army Lieut. Col. Mark
Ballesteros said. He referred all inquires to the U.S. Justice
Department, which also had no comment for similar reasons.
But darker allegations are included in the complaint over false
imprisonment. Because he worked with the FBI, Vance contends,
U.S. government officials in Iraq decided to retaliate against
him and Ertel. He believes these officials conspired to jail the
two not because they worked for a security company suspected of
selling weapons to insurgents, but because they were sharing
information with law enforcement agents outside the control of
U.S. officials in Baghdad.
"In other words," claims the lawsuit, "United States officials
in Iraq were concerned and wanted to find out about what
intelligence agents in the United States knew about their
territory and their operations. The unconstitutional policies
that Rumsfeld and other unidentified agents had implemented for
'enemies' provided ample cover to detain plaintiffs and
interrogate them toward that end."
It may take some time to sort out the allegations as the legal
process grinds forward, but, in the meantime, Vance is raising
new questions about his detention. He still wonders why his
jailers didn't just call the FBI and have him cleared. They had
access to his computer and cell phone to determine if his claims
were true.
"When I told them to do that, they just got angry and told me to
stop answering questions I wasn't being asked," Vance said. "I
think they were butting heads with the State Department. I just
snitched on the wrong people. I took the bull by the horns and
got the horn."
And why weren't managers with the Shield Group held and
interrogated?
Interrogators were certainly interested in these other
individuals, according to the lawsuit. They wanted to know about
the company's structure, its political contacts, and its owners
-- most of whom are related to a long-established Iraqi family
who fled Iraq during the years the country was ruled by Saddam
Hussein, Vance said.
More startling even now is that the company has reformed. At the
time they left, Shield Security held U.S.-funded contracts with
the Iraqi government, Iraqi companies, NGOs and U.S.
contractors. As far as Vance knows, the company still does --
but under a different name: National Shield Security.
"I built the original web site for Shield Security. All they did
was change the name," he said. "And they are still being awarded
millions of dollars in contracts."
David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in
Washington, DC, whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles
Times, New York Times and on ABC and PBS. He can be contacted
at: phinneydavid@yahoo.com. (END/2007)
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