Amnesty International Report 2015/16 - United States of America

United States of America
Head of state and government: Barack Obama

There was no accountability nor remedy for crimes under international law committed in the secret detention programme operated by the CIA. Scores of detainees remained in indefinite military detention at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, while military trial proceedings continued in a handful of cases. Concern about the use of isolation in state and federal prisons and the use of force in policing continued. Twenty-seven men and one woman were executed during the year.

BACKGROUND

In March, September and November respectively, the USA provided its one-year follow-up responses to the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), the CERD Committee and the UN Committee against Torture on their 2014 priority recommendations after scrutiny of the country's compliance with the ICCPR, the CERD and the UN Convention against Torture.

In May, the USA's human rights record was examined under the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process. In September, the USA accepted about three-quarters of the 343 recommendations made under the UPR process. As in 2011, the USA said it supported calls for the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and CEDAW, and for accountability for torture. None had been implemented by the end of the year.

IMPUNITY

In its one-year update to the HRC, the USA said that it prohibited torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention of "any person in its custody wherever they are held", and that it held "accountable any persons responsible for such acts". Yet by the end of the year, no action had been taken to end the impunity for the systematic human rights violations committed in the secret detention programme operated by the CIA, under authorization granted by former President George W. Bush after the attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11).

The USA also told the HRC that it "supports transparency" in relation to this issue. Yet by the end of the year, more than 12 months after the publication of the declassified summary of the report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into the CIA programme, the Committee's full 6,700-page report, containing details of the treatment of each detainee, remained classified top secret. Most, if not all, of the detainees were subjected to enforced disappearance and to conditions of detention and/or interrogation techniques which violated the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Classification of the report continued to facilitate impunity and the denial of remedy.[1]

During the year, military prosecutors reportedly learned of a cache of some 14,000 photographs relating to CIA "black sites" in Afghanistan, Thailand, Poland, Romania, Lithuania and possibly elsewhere, including images of naked detainees being transported. The photographs had not been made public by the end of the year.

COUNTER-TERROR – DETENTIONS

Detainees held at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay continued to be denied their human rights under the USA's flawed "global war" framework and its views on the non-applicability of international human rights law to the detentions. In its one-year follow-up response to the HRC's call for administrative detention and military commissions against Guantánamo detainees to be ended, the USA reiterated its erroneous position on extraterritoriality that "obligations under the Covenant apply only with respect to individuals who are both within the territory of a State Party and within its jurisdiction". To the CERD call to end Guantánamo detentions "without further delay", the USA responded that it did not agree that the "request bears directly on obligations under the Convention".

At the end of the year, 107 men were held at Guantánamo. The majority were held without charge or trial. About half had been approved for transfer for at least five years. Twenty-one detainees were transferred out of the base during the year to Estonia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and the UK.

Hearings by the Periodic Review Board (PRB) continued. These administrative review proceedings, undermining ordinary criminal justice processes, apply to detainees who are not facing military commissions and have not been approved for transfer by other administrative reviews.

Pre-trial military commission proceedings continued against five detainees accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks and charged under the Military Commissions Act (MCA) for capital trial in 2012. The five – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, 'Ali 'Abd al-'Aziz and Mustafa al Hawsawi as well as 'Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was arraigned for capital trial in 2011 on charges relating to the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 – were held incommunicado in secret US custody for up to four years prior to their transfer to Guantánamo in 2006. Their trials had not begun by the end of the year.

Pre-trial proceedings also continued in the case of Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, who was reportedly arrested in Turkey in 2006 and transferred to US custody, held in secret by the CIA and transferred to Guantánamo in 2007. He was formally charged on 18 June 2014. His trial was pending at the end of the year.

Majid Khan and Ahmed Mohammed al Darbi were still awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in 2012 and 2014 respectively while agreeing not to sue the USA for their prior treatment in custody. Ahmed Mohammed al Darbi was arrested by civilian authorities in Azerbaijan in June 2002 and was transferred to US custody two months later. He has alleged that he was ill-treated. Majid Khan was held in the secret CIA detention programme from 2003 and subjected to enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment before being transferred to Guantánamo in 2006. Further details of his treatment in CIA custody emerged during the year, including of rape, sexual assault, beatings, subjection to prolonged darkness and solitary confinement, hanging for days from a wooden beam, and threats against him and his family.

In June, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals nullified the conviction by a military commission of Guantánamo detainee Ali Hamza Suliman al Bahlul. The conviction was for conspiracy to commit war crimes, but the Court threw it out on the grounds that the charge was not recognized under international law and could not be prosecuted before a military tribunal. In September, the authorities' appeal to the Court to rehear the case was accepted and oral arguments were held on 1 December, with the ruling pending at the end of the year.

EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE

At least 43 people across 25 states died after police used Tasers on them, bringing the total number of Taser-related deaths since 2001 to at least 670. Most of the victims were not armed and did not appear to pose a threat of death or serious injury when the Taser was deployed.

The death of Freddie Gray in April and the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown's death sparked protests in Baltimore, Maryland and Ferguson, Missouri respectively. Similar protests against police use of force occurred in cities including Cleveland, Ohio and St. Louis, Missouri, among others. The use of heavy-duty riot gear and military-grade weapons and equipment to police the demonstrations served to intimidate protesters who were exercising their right to peaceful assembly.

Authorities failed to track the exact number of people killed by law enforcement officials each year – estimates range from 458 to over 1,000 individuals. According to the limited data available, black men are disproportionately victims of police killings. State statutes on the use of lethal force are far too permissive; none limit the use of firearms to a last resort only after non-violent and less harmful means are exhausted, and where the officer or others are faced with an imminent threat of death or serious injury.

TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT

The City of Chicago, Illinois, passed an ordinance to provide reparations to over 100 survivors of torture committed by members of the Chicago Police Department from 1972 to 1991. The ordinance includes a US$5.5 million fund for survivors, a formal apology from the Chicago City Council, free college education for survivors and their families, an educational component in Chicago Public Schools on the history of torture by the Chicago Police Department, a public memorial to torture survivors and a counselling centre for torture survivors.

MIGRANTS' RIGHTS

More than 35,000 unaccompanied children and 34,000 families were apprehended crossing the southern border during the year, many fleeing violence and insecurity in Mexico and Central America. Families were detained for months while pursuing claims to remain in the USA; many were held in facilities without proper access to medical care, sanitary food and water and legal counsel. Transgender individuals were routinely detained according to their gender at birth, leaving them susceptible to abuse, or held in solitary confinement and without access to hormone therapy.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS

Despite legislative gains in the reauthorized Violence against Women Act, including provisions that address the high levels of violence against Indigenous women and provide protection and services for survivors of domestic violence, Native American and Alaska Native women who were raped continued to lack access to basic care, including examinations and other essential health care services such as emergency contraception. Native American and Alaska Native women continued to experience disproportionate levels of violence; they were 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than other women in the country.

There were broad disparities in women's access to sexual and reproductive health care, including maternal health care. African-American women remained nearly four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women. Over 230 bills were introduced across multiple US states seeking to restrict access to safe and legal abortion.

PRISON CONDITIONS

Over 80,000 prisoners at any given time were held in conditions of physical and social deprivation in federal and state prisons throughout the country.

In September, a landmark settlement to a class action lawsuit, Ashker v. Brown, virtually eliminated prolonged and indefinite isolation in California's Security Housing Units (SHUs). Under the terms of the settlement, the overwhelming majority of prisoners held in SHUs were due to be released to general prison population units. In recognition of the harmful effects of long-term solitary confinement, prisoners who have been held for over 10 years in SHUs will be immediately transferred to a Restricted Custody General Population Unit, to begin a two-year programme to reintegrate them into the general prison population.

The release in March of an "independent" audit into the use of solitary confinement in Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities reported a number of inadequacies in the system, including in mental health provision and re-entry programmes for those held for long periods in isolation. Its recommendations did not go far enough to improve the harmful effects the isolation regime exerts on prisoners' physical and mental health, or to bring the BOP in line with its international obligations.[2]

DEATH PENALTY

Twenty-seven men and one woman were executed in six states, bringing to 1,422 the total number of executions since the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1976. This was the lowest number of executions in a year since 1991. Approximately 50 new death sentences were passed. Almost 3,000 people remained on death row at the end of the year.

The Nebraska legislature voted to abolish the death penalty, overriding the State Governor's veto against the bill. However, the repeal was on hold at the end of the year after opponents gathered enough signatures to a petition to have the issue put to the popular vote in November 2016. Momentum against the death penalty continued in February with the announcement of a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania by the State Governor. Moratoriums also remained in force in Washington State and Oregon at the end of the year.

Warren Hill was executed in Georgia on 27 January. All the experts who assessed him, including those retained by the state, agreed that he had an intellectual disability, rendering his execution unconstitutional. Cecil Clayton, a 74-year-old man, was executed in Missouri on 17 March. He had been diagnosed with dementia and a psychotic disorder stemming from a serious brain injury.

The Governor of Missouri commuted the death sentence of Kimber Edwards shortly before he was due to be put to death in October. The man who shot the victim and is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in return for avoiding the death penalty had signed a statement recanting his post-arrest statements implicating Kimber Edwards in the murder.

Kelly Gissendaner was executed in Georgia on 30 September for the murder of her husband. The man who pleaded guilty to shooting the victim and testified against his co-defendant is serving a life sentence. Numerous inmates and former correctional officials supported clemency for Kelly Gissendaner, pointing to her rehabilitation and her positive impact on prison life and prisoners.

States continued to face litigation on lethal injection protocols and problems in acquiring execution drugs. On 29 June, in Glossip v. Gross, the US Supreme Court upheld the use of midazolam as the sedative drug in Oklahoma's three-drug protocol. Two dissenting judges argued that the Court should revisit the constitutionality of the death penalty. Their dissent argued that the death penalty was now "highly likely" unconstitutional, including on the grounds of arbitrariness and unreliability.

After the ruling, Oklahoma scheduled the execution of Richard Glossip, one of the plaintiffs in the lethal injection challenge. Hours from execution on 16 September, and then minutes before his rescheduled execution on 30 September, the State Governor stopped the execution after it was revealed that the prison authorities had the wrong drug. It was later found that this drug had been used in at least one execution, that of Charles Warner in January. The State Attorney General sought and obtained an indefinite stay of executions and in October, his office said that it would not seek any new execution dates until at least 150 days after the completion of investigations into the execution protocol.

In October, the Ohio prison authorities announced that 11 executions scheduled for 2016 were being rescheduled for 2017, 2018 and 2019 as the state continued to seek "legal means" to obtain lethal injection drugs.

During the year, six inmates were exonerated of the crimes for which they were originally sentenced to death, bringing to 156 the number of such cases since 1973.

[1] USA: Crimes and impunity (AMR 51/1432/2015)

[2] USA: Entombed: Isolation in the US federal prison system (AMR 51/040/2014)