Aotearoa should sign the Disappearance Convention

There's horrible news from the US today, with the Trump regime disappearing Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student, for protesting against genocide in Gaza. Its another significant decline in US human rights, and puts them in the same class as the authoritarian dictatorships they used to sponsor in South America.

How can Aotearoa signal its disapproval of this abuse? Back in 2006, the UN agreed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED). The Convention requires its parties to take various steps to prevent forced disappearance, as well as criminalising it in international law. When it was established, Aotearoa refused to sign, officially because of a slight technical difference in wording with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but really because our "ally" the US was disappearing and torturing people as part of its extraordinary rendition program. And we wouldn't want to disagree with that, would we?

But times - and the international situation - have changed, and its time to revisit that decision. When Aotearoa refused, the ICPPED had fewer than 20 parties. Now it has almost a hundred - including almost all of Europe and South America. Basically, everyone we consider to be "like-minded" in supporting that "rules-based international order" we talk about so much. These states are all also members of the International Criminal Court, so its pretty clear that the inconsistency we were supposedly so worried about can be managed to the satisfaction of the majority of the international community.

Signing and ratifying the Convention would establish safeguards against disappearance here and improve human rights in Aotearoa. It would also signal our disapproval of disappearance internationally, and allow us to punish those responsible if any of them ever set foot in Aotearoa. That seems like a Good Thing. The question is, will the government do it, or are they still chickenshits about human rights?

Australia's secret prisoner

A prisoner stripped of their name, imprisoned for a secret crime after a secret trial, with all details legally suppressed for secret reasons. A story by Kafka or Dumas? China? No, its just the latest stage of Australian tyranny:

An Australian citizen was prosecuted, convicted, and jailed in the ACT last year in a process completely hidden from public scrutiny.

It is understood the prisoner, given a pseudonym of Alan Johns, was a military intelligence officer, but details about his crime and background have been kept secret.

The very existence of his case remained hidden until earlier this month, when a dispute between him and prison authorities about a draft memoir he had written found its way into the ACT supreme court.

He is apparently now free (and tweeting, though he's clear that what he can say is limited by law). But the fact that this even happened is appalling. It violates the fundamental value of open justice, and comes close to being a forced disappearance (a crime in international law).

If this can happen once, it can happen again. Australians should be very, very worried about the direction their country is taking.

Justice for Operation Condor

From 1975 to 1989, the spy agencies of South America's right-wing military dictatorships cooperated in Operation Condor, a joint campaign of extermination against the continent's left. Roughly 400,000 people were imprisoned, 30,000 disappeared, and 60,000 murdered - kidnapped, tortured, executed, assassinated, or thrown out of flying aircraft. It was a crime against humanity, and over the past decades, its surviving architects have gradually been convicted and punished for it. And today, another 24 of them went were sentenced to prison:

An Italian court has sentenced 24 people to life in prison for their involvement in Operation Condor, in which the dictatorships of six South American countries conspired to kidnap and assassinate political opponents in each other’s territories.

The trial, the first of its kind in Europe, began in 2015 and focused on the responsibility of senior officials in the military dictatorships of Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina for the killing and disappearance of 43 people including 23 Italian citizens.

Those sentenced on Monday included Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who was president of Peru from 1975 to 1980, Juan Carlos Blanco, a former foreign minister in Uruguay, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, a former deputy intelligence chief in Chile, and Jorge Néstor Fernández Troccoli, a Uruguayan former naval intelligence officer.

Good. And hopefully they'll track down and prosecute the rest of those involved as well.

Meanwhile, the perpetrators of Operation Condor being hunted down and prosecuted like Nazis makes me wonder whether the perpetrators of Guantanamo, and US rendition and torture will be treated the same way in future. It took 25 years after the end of Condor for the prosecutions to really get rolling, so we're probably looking at at least another decade for that to happen.

Correction: It wasn't clear from the original article, but only one of the defendants - Jorge Tróccoli - is actually in Italy and facing prison. The rest were sentenced in absentia and will need to be extradited (though some are reportedly already in prison in their home countries). So its not quite the justice I thought it was. Still, the ruling itself that Operation Condor was a crime is useful, and even if not extradited now, those convicted will have this hanging over them for the rest of their lives, and if they ever set foot outside of whatever country is harbouring them, may find themselves Pinocheted.

Spies are just murderous scum

From 1975 to 1989, the spy agencies of South America's right-wing military dictatorships cooperated in Operation Condor, a joint campaign of extermination against the continent's left. Roughly 400,000 people were imprisoned, 30,000 disappeared, and 60,000 murdered - kidnapped, tortured, executed, assassinated, or thrown out of flying aircraft. The scheme was a massive human rights violation,and many of its surviving architects are now in prison for their crimes. So its a little shocking to learn that in the late 1970's, the spy agencies of supposedly human-rights-respecting European nations were trying to learn from their South American counterparts so they could plan similar murders:

British, West German and French intelligence agencies sought advice from South America’s bloody 1970s dictatorships on how to combat leftwing “subversion”, according to a newly declassified CIA document.

The European intelligence services wanted to learn about “Operation Condor”, a secret programme in which the dictatorships of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador conspired to kidnap and assassinate members of leftwing guerrilla groups in each other’s territories.

[...]

“Representatives of West German, French and British intelligence services had visited the Condor organization secretariat in Buenos Aires during the month of September 1977 in order to discuss methods for establishment of an anti-subversion organization similar to Condor,” states the document.

“The terrorist/subversive threat had reached such dangerous levels in Europe that they believed it best if they pooled their intelligence resources in a cooperative organization such as Condor,” the Europeans told the Condor secretariat in Buenos Aires, according to the CIA document.

Which immediately raises questions about whether they moved forward on this. But even if they didn't, the fact that they were even asking is deeply troubling. European nations are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights, which forbids torture, arbitrary detention, and execution. These spies basicly planned to violate it in the most egregious way possible. Which tells us that intelligence agencies are both fundamentally lawless, and deeply institutionally opposed to basic human rights. And this is why their existence is incompatible with democratic society.

Meanwhile, now I'm curious as to whether there was ever any contact between the SIS and these murderous regimes. But they'll never tell us, because of "national security".

Reminder: Saudi Arabia kidnapped people from New Zealand

Earlier this month, journalist Jamal Khashoggi visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He was then beaten, drugged, and dismembered - apparently while still alive - by a 15-man Saudi kill team who had been specially flown in for the purpose. Its a horrific act, and one which should make Saudi Arabia an international pariah. But Khashoggi is not the only victim of the Saudi regime. As Stuff reminds us, in 2014 they apparently kidnapped a refugee from New Zealand:

Friends of Khalid Muidh Alzahrani, who they called Daniel, know what the Saudi regime is capable of.

Four years ago, the refugee disappeared from his sparse flat in Redwood, Christchurch, and they haven't spoken to him since. They fear he's been executed.

Daniel had converted to Christianity - a crime in Saudi Arabia - and his friends believe he was forcibly repatriated, possibly with his family's help.

The original media stories are here and here. And as this story makes clear, Alzahrani wasn't the only one: in May 2013 an unnamed Saudi refugee was apparently snatched off the street in Auckland and rendered to Saudi Arabia, where he was reportedly tortured.

The New Zealand government owes a duty of care to those we have granted refugee status, and we have an obligation to protect them from this sort of shit. The Stuff article argues that we should be demanding "proof of life" of these snatched refugees from the Saudis, and they're right. And if they don't provide it, we should cut ties with that tyrannical monarchy.

Disappearance to execution?

Remember Khalid Muidh Alzahrani? A Saudi refugee who had fled religious persecution, last year he was kidnapped from his home in Christchurch and flown back to Saudi Arabia by Saudi officials. Now, there are worries that he has been executed:

Friends of a Saudi refugee who left New Zealand in mysterious circumstances fear he may have been put to death.

The police case file reveals no-one has heard from Khalid Muidh Abudulla Alzahrani, 43, since October, when he sent a series of text messages from Saudi Arabia to a friend stating he had been detained by his father, was due to appear in court and needed help from the New Zealand embassy.

The Government has been unable to assist, claiming it can do little for residents or refugees not travelling on a New Zealand passport.

Those who knew Alzahrani fear the worst. They believe he may have been imprisoned and tortured or executed.

So, just to make this clear, the Saudi Arabian government kidnapped a man to whom New Zealand had extended its protection, rendered him overseas, and may have murdered him. And our government simply doesn't want to know. I guess they wouldn't want any concerns about criminal behaviour or human rights from interfering with their precious trade deals.

Meanwhile, I'm still wondering: where were the SIS? We pay them $50 million a year specifically to protect us from stuff like this. Either there was a failure of intelligence around the Saudi government's actions, or they let them happen. Either way, we deserve some answers, so we can make sure this never happens again.

"CIA or Gestapo tactics"

Earlier in the week we learned that the Chicago police department had been running its very own black site, where prisoners were disappeared, beaten, shackled, hot-boxed, and held without access to lawyers (or any other form of due process). It seems to be turning into a major political issue in Chicago, and rightly so. While the Chicago PD has a dirty history of torture and abuse (so much so that when the US needed torturers for Guantanamo, they hired a former Chicago police detective), the idea that torture is happening in America is a bit too much even for Americans. And with a mayoral runoff election now on the cards, there might be some chance of change (or, it could just be swept back under the carpet, like Fergusson and police violence generally. This is America after all).

But what got my attention reading all this was the reaction of one local politician:

Until this week, the Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin only knew of the warehouse next-door – like the mother – as a police facility in a struggling Chicago neighbourhood.

“I hadn’t heard of the sort of CIA or Gestapo tactics that were mentioned in the Guardian article until it was brought to my attention,” Boykin said in an interview outside Homan Square. “And we are calling for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into these allegations.”

[Emphasis added]

Yes, the CIA now has such a reputation for torture that even Americans talk about it in the same breath as the Gestapo.

(Those who don't like the comparison may wish to consider this 2007 analysis of the two organisations' techniques. The major difference between the two seems to be that the Gestapo were better dressed).

Another secret prisoner in Israel

Earlier in the year we learned that Israel had disappeared an Australian citizen and detained him in total secrecy until he killed himself. At the time they said he was their only secret prisoner. They lied:

Israel is holding a second unidentified security prisoner in conditions of extreme secrecy, according to court documents released this week in relation to Prisoner X, the Australian-Israeli secret agent who hanged himself in jail in 2010 and whose case caused a sensation when it was exposed earlier this year.

The existence of another top-secret prisoner was acknowledged in the Israeli parliament on Wednesday, although no details were disclosed.

But former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman described it as "an exceptionally grave case", and the lawyer for Ben Zygier, who was dubbed Prisoner X when details of his case were revealed in February, said the second prisoner's alleged offences were "sensational".

Israel insisted it was acting within the law in regard to secret prisoners held in isolation and whose identity is concealed even from prison guards.

Israel calls itself the Middle East's only democracy. But democracies don't do this. Democracies charge people publicly and try them in open court. They do not disappear them and detain them secretly without charge or trial. But then, democracies don't have military censorship of the media either...

Israel admits it

So, its true: Israel disappeared an Australia citizen, and held him in secret until he killed himself:

After more than two years of silence, the Israeli Government has admitted a prisoner it held in detention for "security reasons" – believed to be the Australian Ben Zygier – committed suicide in custody.

Amid increasing pressure on the Israeli and Australian Governments to reveal what they knew about the December 2010 death of Mr Zygier in solitary confinement in Ayalon Prison, Israel's Justice Ministry released a statement on Wednesday night announcing that the court's gag order had been partially lifted.

Without naming Mr Zygier or identifying him as an Australian citizen, the statement said: "For security reasons, the prisoner was held under a pseudonym, but his family was notified of the arrest immediately. The prisoner was held by proxy of an arrest warrant issued by the court. The proceedings were overseen by senior officials in the Justice Ministry and he was duly represented in all the proceedings against him by attorneys Roi Belcher, Moshe Mazor and Boaz Ben-Zur.

And it gets worse: the Australian government was told about it, but looked the other way. So they basically sold one of their own citizens down the river tot he Israelis without a peep of objection.

Again: disappearance is a crime under international law. Secret detention is a breach of the Convention Against Torture. Both underline Israel's status as an outlaw regime.

This isn't the first time israel has done this. The Israeli government has a long history of kidnapping, torturing, and secretly imprisoning those it deems to be "enemies of the state", then using censorship to keep their crimes out of the media (and their politicians from being held accountable for them). This is not how democracies are supposed to behave. But with a perpetual war mentality, Israel is fast slipping away from being one.

Did Israel disappear an Australian citizen?

A state decides that someone is a threat to "national security". It disappears them and holds them incommunicado in a secret prison where even the guards are forbidden to know their name. It refuses to acknowledge this detention, and media reports on it are suppressed by official censorship. When the prisoner finally hangs themselves, worn out by the indefinite, arbitrary detention, it refuses to acknowledge even their death.

Iran? Syria? China? No, this happened in Israel, "the Middle East's only democracy". And now it looks like their victim was an Australian:

Evidence has been unearthed that strongly suggests Israel's infamous Prisoner X, who was jailed under extraordinary circumstances in 2010, was an Australian national from Melbourne.

Investigations by the ABC's Foreign Correspondent program have revealed Ben Zygier, who used the name Ben Alon in Israel, was found hanged in a high-security cell at a prison near Tel Aviv in late 2010.

His body was flown to Melbourne for burial a week later.

The death goes part of the way to explain the existence in Israel of a so-called Prisoner X, widely speculated in local and international media as an inmate whose presence has been acknowledged by neither the jail system nor the government.

Disappearance is a crime under international law. The Israeli government needs to be held to account for this.

Justice for the disappeared

Between 1976 and 1983, Argentina's military junta waged a campaign of violence against dissidents, students, and unionists known as the "Dirty War". Thousands were disappeared, tortured and murdered by government death squads, their bodies flung from the backs of planes over the Atlantic Ocean to prevent any evidence from coming to light. One particular horror was the theft of the children of the victims, who were given to military families to raise. An estimated 400 children were stolen in this manner.

Yesterday, former dictators Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone were convicted for their role in that crime. Videla was sentenced to 50 years in prison, Bignone to 15. Both are already serving lengthy prison sentences for torture, murder, and disappearance, and will likely die in jail. But this doesn't make the convictions pointless. The trial has uncovered and acknowledged the truth. While that makes no difference to Videla, it makes all the difference in the world to his victims.

More British war crimes in Iraq

Another day, another exposure of British war crimes in Iraq and their complicity in US torture. Today its the story of Tariq Sabri al-Fahdawi, who was beaten to death by British soldiers in a helicopter. The Ministry of Defence lied about his death, lied about why he was in the helicopter, and didn't even bother to verify his identity. The reason? Because they were covering up a darker secret - that the victim was being transported to a US black site notorious for torture - making the RAF complicit in the disappearance and torture of Iraqis:

The holding facility appears effectively to have been a secret prison – a so-called black site. It is entirely possible, according to international law experts, that taking prisoners to H1 could amount to "unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement", and that the prisoners were subjected to "enforced disappearances", both of which are war crimes under the Rome statute of the international criminal court.

[...]

According one well-placed source with knowledge of Operation Raker, the RAF police investigation into the death, there were some at the MoD who were concerned about the possible consequences of a more thorough inquiry: people who were filled with dread at the thought that it could lead to accusations that British forces and others had been involved in crimes against humanity.

But it gets worse: the British weren't just providing transport, but had a special forces unit serving as a snatch squad, disappearing people so they could be tortured. They may also have had staff from MI6 involved in the interrogations - which included waterboarding and rape. When a British soldier went public about this, their government used the courts to silence him.

These are the actions of a government deeply complicit in crimes against humanity, and desperate to cover up that fact. They should not be allowed to. Instead, there must be full transparency - and full accountability. Only by bringing every single one of those involved in these crimes to justice can we prevent them from happening again.

Justice for torture in Argentina

Between 1976 and 1983, Argentina's military junta waged a campaign of violence against dissidents, students, and unionists known as the "Dirty War". Thousands were disappeared, tortured and murdered by government death squads, their bodies flung from the backs of planes over the Atlantic Ocean to prevent any evidence from coming to light. Yesterday, former naval officer Alfredo Astiz was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity for his part in those killings. Astiz worked in an intelligence unit operating from the Naval Mechanical School (ESMA) in Buenos Aires, a notorious torture centre and death camp. He specialised in infiltrating peaceful opposition groups, identifying their leaders, then disappearing, torturing, and murdering them. Among his proven victims were French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet, and the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group which protested against disappearances. None of these people committed any crime; they were murdered because they spoke out against the crimes of the government and people like Astiz.

Fifteen other former military officers were also jailed for their crimes at ESMA, eleven of them for life. They're not the first, and they won't be the last. Argentina is settling its score with the dictatorship and their torturers, finally providing justice for their victims.

More tyranny in Bahrain

Last month, Bahrain's monarch invited a foreign army into his country and used them to violently suppress his country's pro-democracy movement. Since then, the Bahraini regime has embarked on a reign of terror, raiding Shi'ite homes in the night, disappearing democracy and human rights activists, and apparently murdering them in prison. Now they've taken things a step further, targeting doctors whose sole "crime" is to treat the wounded:

At least 32 doctors, including surgeons, physicians, paediatricians and obstetricians, have been arrested and detained by Bahrain's police in the last month in a campaign of intimidation that runs directly counter to the Geneva Convention guaranteeing medical care to people wounded in conflict. Doctors around the world have expressed their shock and outrage.

One doctor, an intensive care specialist, was held after she was photographed weeping over a dead protester. Another was arrested in the theatre room while operating on a patient.

Many of the doctors, aged from 33 to 65, have been "disappeared" – held incommunicado or at undisclosed locations. Their families do not know where they are. Nurses, paramedics and ambulance staff have also been detained.

Doctors have a professional duty to treat anyone in need, regardless of their political or religious views. These people are being persecuted for doing their jobs and acting in a humane and decent fashion. But in Bahrain, that apparently is now a crime.

Meanwhile, the US government still supports the Bahraini regime. By doing so, they are supporting torture, murder, and widespread human rights abuses. Its time that support ended for good.

Justice for the disappeared

Between 1976 and 1983, Argentina's military junta waged a campaign of violence against dissidents, students, and unionists known as the "Dirty War". Thousands were disappeared, tortured and murdered by government death squads, their bodies flung from the backs of planes over the Atlantic Ocean to prevent any evidence from coming to light. Today, former General Eduardo Cabanillas and three accomplices were sentenced to life imprisonment for their role in those crimes. Cabanillas ran a secret prison where hundreds of left-wing activists were tortured and murdered as part of the regime's programme of political cleansing; the bodies were dumped in a river in cement-filled drums.

This is just one of a series of cases. Since 2005, when the regime's purported amnesty was overturned by the Supreme Court, dozens of regime figures, including former dictators Reynaldo Bignone and Jorge Videla have been tried and convicted for their crimes against humanity. Argentina is comprehensively settling its score with the dictatorship, finally providing justice for the disappeared.

In force

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, an international treaty aimed at outlawing disappearance, entered into force today. Sadly, it has done so without the support of New Zealand. Just another example of how we've gone from being a leader on human rights, to a craven follower of the United States, afraid to stand up and speak out against abuses because it would cast our "very very very good friends" in a bad light.

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Disappearance Convention update

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance is an international treaty aimed at outlawing disappearance and bringing its perpetrators to justice. It requires its parties to outlaw and punish disappearance (and assert extraterritorial jurisdiction if necessary), as well as take specific measures (such as tracking prisoners) to ensure it does not happen. Opened for signature in December 2006, it has languished for the last four years, waiting for enough countries to ratify it to bring it into force.

Until now. Last week, Iraq became the 20th country to ratify the Convention. Meaning that it will come into force on 23 December.

Sadly, New Zealand has not been part of this human rights achievement. Instead, we've refused to sign or ratify the Convention, using minor (and easily resolvable) inconsistencies with other international law as the excuse. The real reason, of course, is that the Convention outlaws the American practice of rendition; signing it would be seen as criticising America, and apparently no New Zealand government wants to do that.

One more to go

Paraguay has become the 19th country to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. The Convention comes into force after the 20th ratification, so it only needs one more. And with the International Day of the Disappeared less than two weeks away, hopefully that ratification will come soon.

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