EXECUTIVE SUMMARY / INTRODUCTION

This Report is a joint effort of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York's Committees on International Human Rights and Military Affairs and Justice, undertaken to consider allegations – reported in the press and by human rights and humanitarian organizations conducting their own investigations – that individuals detained by the United States at its military and intelligence facilities in connection with the initial War in Afghanistan and the subsequent ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, are being subjected to interrogation techniques that constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. We note at the outset, however, that although this project was initially motivated by allegations regarding the treatment of detainees from the War in Afghanistan, the international law and human rights standards discussed herein – with the exception of Geneva Convention protections applicable only to situations of international armed conflict – apply broadly and with equal force to the treatment of detainees captured in other situations, including detainees picked up in other countries in connection with the broader “War on Terror.” In this Report, we will examine the international legal standards governing United States military and civil authorities in interrogating detainees and propose ways of assuring that those standards are enforced.

THE ALLEGED INTERROGATION PRACTICES

These allegations first surfaced in December 2002, when the U.S. military announced that it had begun a criminal investigation into the death of a 22 year-old Afghan farmer and part-time taxi driver who had died of “blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease” while in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.