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Extrajudicial punishment is a punishment for an alleged crime or offense which is carried out without legal process or supervision by a court or tribunal through a legal proceeding.
Extrajudicial punishment is often a feature of politically repressive regimes, but even self-proclaimed or internationally recognized democracies have been known to use extrajudicial punishment under certain circumstances.
Although the legal use of capital punishment is generally decreasing around the world, individuals or groups deemed threatening—or even simply "undesirable"—to a government may nevertheless be targeted for punishment by a regime or its representatives. Such actions typically happen quickly, with security forces acting on a covert basis, performed in such a way as to avoid a massive public outcry and/or international criticism that would reflect badly on the state. Sometimes, the killers are agents outside the government. Criminal organizations, such as La Cosa Nostra, have reportedly been employed for such a purpose.
Another possibility is for uniformed security forces to punish a victim, but under circumstances that make it appear as self-defense or suicide. The former can be accomplished by planting recently fired weapons near the body, the latter by fabricating evidence suggesting suicide. In such cases, it can be difficult to prove that the perpetrators acted wrongly. Because of the dangers inherent in armed confrontation, even police or soldiers who might strongly prefer to take an enemy alive may still kill to protect themselves or civilians, and potentially cross the line into extrajudicial murder.
A forced disappearance (or enforced disappearance) occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. [1]
Extrajudicial punishment may be planned and carried out by a particular branch of a state, without informing other branches, or even without having been ordered to commit such acts. Other branches sometimes tacitly approve of the punishment after the fact. They can also genuinely disagree with it, depending on the circumstances, especially when complex intragovernmental or internal policy struggles also exist within a state's policymaking apparatus.
In times of war, natural disaster, societal collapse, or in the absence of an established system of criminal justice, there may be increased incidences of extrajudicial punishment. In such circumstances, police or military personnel may be unofficially authorised to punish severely individuals involved in looting, rioting and other violent acts, especially if caught in flagrante delicto . This position is sometimes itself corrupted, resulting in the death of merely inconvenient persons, that is, relative innocents who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Wyatt Earp led a federal posse, in the Earp Vendetta Ride, during the spring of 1882 which was implicated in the murder of four outlaw "Cowboys" they believed had ambushed his brothers Virgil and Morgan Earp, maiming the former and killing the latter. [2]
The NKVD troika and Special Council of the NKVD are examples from the history of the Soviet Union, where extrajudicial punishment "by administrative means" was part of the state policy. Other Soviet Bloc secret police organizations like the East German Stasi, Romanian Securitate have also used it from time to time.
Most Latin American dictatorships have regularly instituted extrajudicial killings of their enemies; for one of the better-known examples, see Operation Condor. [3]
The deaths of the leaders of the leftist urban guerrilla group, the Red Army Faction, Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe in West Germany are regarded by some of those in the radical left movements as extrajudicial killings, a theory partly based on the testimony of Irmgard Möller.
During the apartheid years (from 1948 until the early 1990s), South Africa's security forces were also accused of using extrajudicial means to deal with their political opponents.[ citation needed ] [4] After his release, Nelson Mandela would refer to these acts as proof of a Third Force. This was denied vehemently by the administration of F.W. de Klerk. Later the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu would find that both military and police agencies such as the Civil Cooperation Bureau and C10 based at Vlakplaas were guilty of gross human rights violations. This led the International Criminal Court to declare apartheid a crime against humanity.
In Mainland China, a system of administrative detentions called Re-education through labor (láodòng jiàoyǎng 劳动教养, abbreviated láojiào 劳教) was used to detain persons for minor crimes such as petty theft, prostitution, and trafficking illegal drugs for periods of up to four years. Re-education through labor sentences were given by the police, rather than through the judicial system.[ citation needed ]
In the Netherlands, prosecutors and tax inspectors can procure punishments without due process (Strafbeschikking), a practice that has been increasingly criticised by members of the Dutch Second Chamber, such as Michiel van Nispen. [5]
For many years, the Jamaican Constabulary Force has been noted for its extrajudicial killings. [6] [7] With 140 police killings in a population of 3 million, "Jamaica’s police force [is] among the deadliest in the world". [8]
It has been discussed[ who? ] that the use of psychiatric treatments to reduce unwanted behaviors can be seen as extrajudicial punishments, due to many side-effects associated to these treatments. [9]
The US has been known to employ extrajudicial tactics including extraordinary rendition. Some critics use the term "torture by proxy" to describe situations in which the CIA [10] [11] [12] [13] and other US agencies have employed rendition techniques to transfer suspected terrorists to countries known to utilize torture. While denied by the US, where it is a crime to transfer anyone to any location for the purpose of torture, critics claim that torture has been employed with the knowledge or acquiescence of US agencies. Condoleezza Rice (then the United States Secretary of State) stated: [14]
...the United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured.
The CIA has been accused of operating secret detention and interrogation centres known as black sites. These are allegedly located in countries other than the US, thus evading US laws as they are outside US jurisdiction.[ citation needed ]
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Many human rights organisations like Amnesty International are campaigning against extrajudicial punishment. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
Iraq under the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party saw severe violations of human rights. Secret police, state terrorism, torture, mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, deportations, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, assassinations, chemical warfare, and the destruction of the Mesopotamian marshes were some of the methods Saddam Hussein and the country's Ba'athist government used to maintain control. Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War, which violated the Charter of the United Nations. The total number of deaths and disappearances related to repression during this period is unknown, but is estimated to be at least 250,000 to 290,000 according to Human Rights Watch, with the great majority of those occurring as a result of the Anfal genocide in 1988 and the suppression of the uprisings in Iraq in 1991. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture.
In an extradition, one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdictions and depends on the arrangements made between them. In addition to legal aspects of the process, extradition also involves the physical transfer of custody of the person being extradited to the legal authority of the requesting jurisdiction.
Human rights in Uzbekistan have been described as "abysmal" by Human Rights Watch, and the country has received heavy criticism from the UK and the US for alleged arbitrary arrests, religious persecution and torture employed by the government on a regional and national level. Amnesty International stated that freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly continue to be restricted, and that relations between gay men are illegal.
Human rights in post-invasion Iraq have been the subject of concerns and controversies since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Concerns have been expressed about conduct by insurgents, the U.S.-led coalition forces and the Iraqi government. The U.S. is investigating several allegations of violations of international and internal standards of conduct in isolated incidents by its own forces and contractors. The UK is also conducting investigations of alleged human rights abuses by its forces. War crime tribunals and criminal prosecution of the numerous crimes by insurgents are likely years away. In late February 2009, the U.S. State Department released a report on the human rights situation in Iraq, looking back on the prior year (2008).
Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored kidnapping in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpose of circumventing the source country's laws on interrogation, detention, extradition and/or torture. Extraordinary rendition is a type of extraterritorial abduction, but not all extraterritorial abductions include transfer to a third country.
Hooding is the placing of a hood over the entire head of a prisoner. Hooding is widely considered to be a form of torture; one legal scholar considers the hooding of prisoners to be a violation of international law, specifically the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, which demand that persons under custody or physical control of enemy forces be treated humanely. Hooding can be dangerous to a prisoner's health and safety. It is considered to be an act of torture when its primary purpose is sensory deprivation during interrogation; it causes "disorientation, isolation, and dread." According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, hooding is used to prevent a person from seeing, to disorient them, to make them anxious, to preserve their torturer's anonymity, and to prevent the person from breathing freely.
Torture, the infliction of severe physical or psychological pain upon an individual to extract information or a confession, or as an illicit extrajudicial punishment, is prohibited by international law and is illegal in most countries. However, it is still used by many governments. The subject of this article is the use of torture since the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which prohibited it.
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous. Such uses arose as the Bush administration initiated the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. As documented in the 2004 Taguba Report, it was used in the same manner by United States officials and contractors of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003–2004.
Reprieve is a nonprofit organization of international lawyers and investigators whose stated goal is to "fight for the victims of extreme human rights abuses with legal action and public education". Their main focus is on the death penalty, indefinite detention without trial, extraordinary rendition and extrajudicial killing. The founding Reprieve organization is in the UK, and there are also organizations in the United States, Australia and the Netherlands, with additional supporters and volunteers worldwide.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
Torture in Bahrain refers to the violation of Bahrain's obligations as a state party to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and other international treaties and disregard for the prohibition of torture enshrined in Bahraini law.
Human rights in Egypt are guaranteed by the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt under the various articles of Chapter 3. The country is also a party to numerous international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, the state of human rights in the country has been criticized both in the past and the present, especially by foreign human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. As of 2022, Human Rights Watch has declared that Egypt's human rights crises under the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is "one of its worst ... in many decades", and that "tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists, peaceful activists, and human rights defenders, remain imprisoned on abusive 'terrorism' charges, many in lengthy pretrial detention." International human rights organizations, such as the aforementioned HRW and Amnesty International, have alleged that as of January 2020, there are some 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. Other complaints made are of authorities harassing and detaining "relatives of dissidents abroad" and use of "vague 'morality' charges to prosecute LGBT people, female social media influencers, and survivors of sexual violence". The Egyptian government has frequently rejected such criticism, denying that any of the prisoners it holds are political prisoners.
There are cases, both documented and alleged, that involve the usage of torture by members of the United States government, military, law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, health care services, and other public organizations both in and out of the country.
Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah is a citizen of Yemen who is reported to have been a subject of the United States' controversial extraordinary rendition program. The American Civil Liberties Union states that he was apprehended by the Jordanian General Intelligence Department and tortured and interrogated for days, in Jordan, where he was: "turned over to agents who beat, kicked, diapered, hooded and handcuffed him before secretly transporting him to the U.S. Air Force base in Bagram, Afghanistan." They report that Bashmillah was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Bagram Theater Internment Facility, and the CIA network of black sites.
This article deals with the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the federal government of the United States that are violations of human rights.
An extrajudicial killing is the deliberate killing of a person without the lawful authority granted by a judicial proceeding. It typically refers to government authorities, whether lawfully or unlawfully, targeting specific people for death, which in authoritarian regimes often involves political, trade union, dissident, religious and social figures. The term is typically used in situations that imply the human rights of the victims have been violated; deaths caused by legal police actions or legal warfighting on a battlefield are generally not included, even though military and police forces are often used for killings seen by critics as illegitimate. The label "extrajudicial killing" has also been applied to organized, lethal enforcement of extralegal social norms by non-government actors, including lynchings and honor killings.
In the United States, human rights comprise a series of rights which are legally protected by the Constitution of the United States, state constitutions, treaty and customary international law, legislation enacted by Congress and state legislatures, and state referendums and citizen's initiatives. The Federal Government has, through a ratified constitution, guaranteed unalienable rights to its citizens and non-citizens. These rights have evolved over time through constitutional amendments, legislation, and judicial precedent. Along with the rights themselves, the portion of the population granted these rights has expanded over time. Within the United States, federal courts have jurisdiction over international human rights laws.
The political killings in the Philippines are a series of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of left-wing politicians and activists, journalists, human rights advocates, the political opposition, and outspoken clergy that have increased dramatically since 2001.
Mohammed Assad was a citizen of Yemen who, according to Amnesty International, was subjected to extraordinary rendition by the CIA, and held in the CIA's network of black sites—secret interrogation centers. Assad had been living and working in Tanzania. Amnesty International reports he was captured on December 26, 2003, and held by the CIA until May 2005.
The CIA controls black sites used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain people deemed to be enemy combatants.
Media related to Extrajudicial killings at Wikimedia Commons
