Balkinization: Kidnapping Young Children to Use Them as "Leverage"

Kidnapping Young Children to Use Them as "Leverage"

Marty Lederman

It's a very close competition, but this might be the most ghastly and indefensible -- and previously unimaginable -- thing we are doing in the conflict with Al Qaeda.

Here's hilzoy on a new human-rights report on the U.S. practice of "disappearing" detainees (and, by the way, if you aren't reading hilzoy regularly, you really should -- there's no better blogging anywhere):

The evidence that our government held Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's sons is not conclusive, and I do not mean to suggest that it is. Still, if you had told me, six years ago, that I would find myself seriously entertaining the possibility that my own government had detained children [under age ten], I would have thought you were insane. Disappearing people of any age, without charges or trial or anything, is what two-bit dictators do; not what we do. But disappearing children, not seventeen year olds about whom one might have interesting debates about when exactly childhood ends but seven- and nine-year olds -- that's so far across the line that it would have been unimaginable to me. And the fact, if it is one, that they are supposedly "handled with kid gloves" and "given the best of care" does not begin to make up for this. Detention is not "the best of care" for anyone. It is certainly not "the best of care" for a young child.

Later in the same article, someone identified as 'a CIA official' says of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: "His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him." I'm sorry: children are not "psychological levers". They are children. And if we don't know the difference, then we should just hang it up right now, since we have plainly lost anything remotely resembling a sense of decency.

Posted 7:58 AM by Marty Lederman [link]

Comments:

Detaining KSM's family for "leverage" in interrogations with the implied or expressed threat of harm to them would almost certainly be a violation of the severe psychological pain element of torture. Threats to those the prisoner cares about like family, girl friends and comrades in arms is precisely the kind of tactic meant to be covered under psychological pain. If the CIA did this, they crossed the line.

The only way I can imagine you can justify the detention of the family is to determine their status as combatants or to temporarily detain them to keep the news of KSM's capture from getting to out al Qaeda while KSM is being broken.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 9:26 AM

This comment has been removed by the author.

# posted by

J. Barrett Wolf : 9:41 AM

What was, beyond the obvious, really sad in reading the story was that, when I saw that there was one comment, I just knew it was Bart DePalma, ready to find some mitigation, justification or obfuscation to lessen the weight of yet another scandalous act.

Bart, you are as predictable as April showers.

# posted by

J. Barrett Wolf : 9:43 AM

barrett:

What scandalous act? Right now we have an allegation of a rumor from an unidentified source.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 10:45 AM

This comment has been removed by the author.

# posted by

John : 10:50 AM

I would qualify my first post in one way. It is a common law enforcement tactic to threaten to investigate or prosecute a family member who is tangentially related to the criminal activities with which the prisoner is accused and offer to let them off if the prisoner cooperates.

For example, it has been reported that the government lessened the charges against Aldrich Ames' wife in order to get him to cooperate and plea to a crime so that the government would not be compelled to reveal highly classified materials in open court.

I see no reason why the CIA could not likewise lean on KSM in the same manner by offering not to investigate or prosecute his family in return for KSM's cooperation. That is fundamentally different from threatening to harm his family for no reason except to get him to talk.

However, once again, until we have some evidence, we are engaged in yet another round of speculation here.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 10:50 AM

This comment has been removed by the author.

# posted by

John : 10:54 AM

bitswapper said...

Bart wrote: The only way I can imagine you can justify the detention of the family...

Would be if I wanted every last bit if international support and cooperation with the US to disappear altogether.

I am fairly sure that it has been previously reported that CIA temporarily detained the family living with KSM as well as Majid Khan when they were captured. This is old news.

Allow me to pose a question to you.

Would you temporarily detain the family living with KSM in order to keep them from informing al Qaeda of the capture and allow al Qaeda to redeploy and hide the cells of which KSM had knowledge?

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 10:57 AM

When Bart's right, he's right.

Suskind in his last book reported that we threatened harm or death to KSM's kids. Didn't work, and as Suskind notes, you can't build up the rapport needed for successful interrogation after you've threatened to kill your subject's kids.

# posted by

Anderson : 11:20 AM

Anderson:

What was Suskind's source for this claim? Let me guess...

A single anonymous "member of the administration."

What ever happened to the two source rule for publishing stories?

You assume that I am a member of the administration. So, if I told you off the record that George Bush tortures fluffy bunny rabbits in the Oval Office for laughs and giggles, would you quote me as a "member of the administration" and actually publish this quote if you were a reporter?

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 11:30 AM

First off, I agree that it is wrong to explicitly use the kids as leverage. However, it sounds like a case where the choices are between bad and worse.

It sounds like the Pakistanis captured the kids initially, and subsequently handed them over to the US. I'm assuming that the care they are receiving in US custody is substantially better than in Pakistan, which by itself wouldn't justify the detention but it mitigates it somewhat.

I just wonder what the alternatives are. Having been captured, we either have to continue holding them or release them - given their situation, it's plausible that there is no party that we would possibly want to turn them over to.

An equivalent situation might be that of a child who becomes a ward of the state as all living relatives are totally unfit parents. You might be able to place the kids in foster care, except in this case the kids are foreign nationals and the foster parents would be at considerable risk unless the children's identities were kept concealed.

A no-win situation. Hopefully it's not as bad as it seems.

# posted by

Unknown : 11:47 AM

You assume that I am a member of the administration.

No, I sometimes *suspect* that you are a paid flack of some rightwing group. Tho if you actually were Karl Rove, the past few years would make more sense.

A single anonymous "member of the administration."

Right. Two-source rule is for journalism. A book like Suskind's, or Woodward's, etc., depends on one's trust of the author. Woodward has been attacked by some of his sources, and I take him with a grain of salt.

Suskind appears more reliable; I didn't see any serious pushback on his book. I'll believe his plausible claims unless someone gives me a reason not to. Which you haven't.

# posted by

Anderson : 12:02 PM

Bart writes:
Allow me to pose a question to you.

Would you temporarily detain the family living with KSM in order to keep them from informing al Qaeda of the capture and allow al Qaeda to redeploy and hide the cells of which KSM had knowledge?

Your question does more proposing than anything else. Is that what happened?

# posted by

John : 1:31 PM

I'll believe Suskind before I'll believe "Barf" -- er, "Bart".

I'll also believe Seymour Hersh re. Abu Ghraib the evidence -- especially the videotapes -- of not merely torture but rape of boys in front of their mothers in effort to "persuade" their mothers to reveal where their [unadjudicated as either innocent or guilty, therefore presumed innocent under democratic due process] male relatives were so they could be falsely arrested/kidnapped/detained for "enhanced interrogation".

It would be prohibited to attempt to coerce a "suspect" with the torture of his children or other family members even if one were lying; even if one were not actually intending to do so. (It would also be counterproductive -- so say the experts on interrogation.) It would be beyond the usual moral depravity that is torture were one to only threaten them with torture those family members -- the children!? To actually torture those others -- the children!? -- would be beyond even that.

# posted by

JNagarya : 2:14 PM

That's right, Bart, run from the threads where you've been licked and come here to support torture of children. You are a blight and I never will understand how you claim to be either Christian or American.

# posted by

Robert Link : 5:32 PM

# posted by

JNagarya : 8:13 PM

But did they crush their testicles? John Yoo wants to know why not.

# posted by

zod : 10:47 PM

# posted by

Unknown : 1:21 PM