Last week on January 13, 2009, former military prosecutor Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld submitted a declaration in US federal court on behalf of Mohammed Jawad's habeas corpus petition, noting "reliable evidence that he was badly mistreated by U.S. authorities both in Afghanistan and at Guant?namo, and he has suffered, and continues to suffer, great psychological harm."

Vandeveld's declaration is an important illustration of why President Obama's suspension of military commissions at Guantanamo Bay is so timely and essential. Jawad, who was captured in Afghanistan as a juvenile, was subjected to sleep deprivation at Guantanamo, moved from cell to cell 112 times in a 14-day period in 2004, a victim of the so-called "frequent flier" program. Vandeveld resigned as lead prosecutor in Jawad's case before the Guantanamo military commissions in September 2008. His declaration urges Jawad's release, stating Jawad would pose "no threat whatsoever," concluding "six years is long enough for a boy of sixteen to serve in virtual solitary confinement, in a distant land, for reasons he may never fully understand."

In a Washington Post op-ed piece Lt. Col. Vandeveld stated:

[it] is impossible to prepare a fair prosecution against detainees at Guantanamo Bay. I had concluded that the system of handling evidence is a haphazard farce.

He continued:

There is a way out of Guantanamo. It is not as difficult as some apologists have made it seem. Many of the detainees have not committed war crimes and the handful of real terrorists and war criminals can be tried in federal court. The Department of Justice has a well-developed expertise in these cases and can achieve justice with transparency and rigorous due process.

In his conclusion, Vandeveld strongly urged President Obama to waste no time in

appointing a civilian with full authority, competence and expertise to review detainee files and determine who can be prosecuted and who should be released, and her or his determination should be final….No one who has fought for our country and its values has done so to enable what happened in Guantanamo.

Further Reading

• Declaration of Darrel J. Vandeveld, January 12, 2009 (PDF)

PHR learned on January 20 that Kamiar and Arash Alaei were convicted on spurious charges and sentenced to three and six year prison terms, respectively.

In the wake of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, Iran has signaled that the espionage trial of two world-renowned AIDS doctors is a bellwether for the future of US-Iranian relations.The Washington Post reported on Jan. 19 that an unnamed Iranian senior counter-intelligence official warned the new Obama administration that the case of Dr. Kamiar Alaei and Dr. Arash Alaei exemplifies a “full fledged intelligence war” between Iran and the US.

“If Kamiar and Arash are engaged in any war, it’s the battle against HIV/AIDS,” said Sarah Kalloch, Director of Outreach for Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). “They traveled the world to share the Iranian model of HIV prevention, and to learn from other countries about innovations in infectious disease treatment. Treating AIDS is not a crime—it is good medicine.”

It now appears that the convictions of the Alaeis were based on tainted and unreliable confessions.

Sources close to the trial have told PHR that one of the brothers had agreed under duress to make a videotaped statement prepared by Iranian authorities, who had promised that if he read the statement, both brothers would be set free. Said Jonathan Hutson, J.D., Chief Communications Officer for PHR, "Given the isolation, months without charge and perfunctory trial, and the interrogation techniques and duress known to exist in other cases like this one in Iran, any purported 'confession' in the trial of the Alaei brothers must be viewed as tainted and unreliable."

The brothers have been held in Evin prison since late June 2008. According to a press release issued today from the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the mother of Arash and Kamiar Alaei recently broke her silence in an interview with Iranian news media. The press release stated that the mother told Rooz Online that her sons had been held for 63 days in solitary confinement and that she feared that they might be tortured to coerce false confessions on camera.

The recent developments in the Alaei brothers' case have attracted a lot of press, which we have been covering in detail on IranFreeTheDocs.org.

Please show your support for Kamiar and Alaei by signing our new petition calling for their release. You may also add your own photograph to support the campaign to free the Alaeis.

Supporter in China

What happens when a government presides over the dramatic reversal of its population's access to food, clean water, basic sanitation, and healthcare? When government policies lead directly to the shuttering of hospitals and clinics, the closing of its medical school, and the beatings of health workers? We don't need to wonder. It is happening now in Zimbabwe.PHR has witnessed the devastation caused by the willful neglect of Zimbabwe's people by the Government of Robert Mugabe. We detail the causes and effects of this crisis in our new report, Health in Ruins: PHR Reports on the Man-Made Health Crisis in Zimbabwe.

• Read PHR's New Report on the Crisis
• See what the PHR Team found in December
• Follow our blog posts about Zimbabwe, or subscribe to the RSS feed
• Sign the Petition to the US Secretary of State
• Read Zimbabwean Health Workers' Call for Crisis Response
• Support PHR's most critical efforts

Health Care: Zimbabwe's Luxury Item

In the January 21 edition of the United Nations Association E-News Update, reporter Damiano Beltrami posts a video slideshow from PHR's report on the health system disaster in Zimbabwe.

The article states

The report points its finger directly at Mugabe and his government’s neglect of health care and suggests that the epidemic is a crime against humanity and should be dealt with as such in seeking solutions.

and goes on to enumerate several of PHR's recommendations, such as:

that the United Nations Security Council ensure that the current political impasse in Zimbabwe be resolved by calling on the Mugabe regime to accept the results of the March 29, 2008, election in which Morgan Tsvangirai, representing the Movement for Democratic Change, won the majority vote.

PHR CEO Frank Donaghue was recently interviewed by award-winning Zimbabwean journalist Violet Gonda about PHR's new report, Health in Ruins: A Man-Made Disaster in Zimbabwe. Gonda and SW Radio Africa are based in London, from where they are forced to broadcast in exile to Zimbabwe. Donaghue told Gonda about some of the things he learned first-hand during the investigation for the Health in Ruins report.

FD: We know that there’s no obstetric care. If a woman wants or needs a C section in Zimbabwe, and obviously there are private hospitals, a C section in the Avenues Hospital costs $3000. Who can afford that? And so the solution, I asked a doctor what happens if you don’t have the $3000 and she said “You die”.

VG: And this $3000, this is $3000 US dollars?

FD: US dollars in a private hospital. And so we went out to some of the mission hospitals, and thank God there are mission hospitals, but as you know they are primarily out in rural regions. And now people that have some money can afford to get to a rural hospital like Howard and get treatment. A C-section there costs US $15 but there are very few people that have the US $15 or the money to transport themselves out to the hospital to get there. And yet the hospital is overflowing with people. And so the poorest of the poor of the poor have no healthcare in Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe and his regime have signed onto a number of international covenants and commitments with the United Nations and other civil societies to protect the life of his citizens. He is in gross violation of those covenants and therefore we’re saying the United Nations has the responsibility to step in and we’re suggesting the United Nations through its power, and they have that power, to take over the health system, the sanitation system and anything that relates to the health of the people – put together a consortium of non-profit organisations and non-government organisations to take care of those until the rightful government is put in place in Zimbabwe. And we know the rightful government was elected in March.

Donaghue continued:

Let’s take childbirth, the maternal mortality. Ten years ago, twelve years ago the maternal mortality rate in Zimbabwe was about 138 to 100 000 births. In 2005 that number had risen to 1100 out of 100 000 births. If you can imagine, 1100. Who knows what has happened in the last three or four years since that statistic has been developed by the World Health Organisation. So the problem is, based on the regime, so many things have collapsed, there is no real adequate data collection and of course there is total denial by the government that any of these issues exist. I mean the life expectancy of an individual in Zimbabwe today is about 34 years old, where 15 years ago it was mid-60s. And Mr Mugabe would not admit that people are dying of starvation, he told regional health ministers not to report cholera.

Listen to the podcast of Donaghue's interview or read the full transcript.

With the Zimbabwean government accused of failing to protect the health of its people by the campaign group Physicians for Human Rights, the BBC's Paul Martin sees first hand how the country's health system has disintegrated.

Perhaps inspired by the work reported in PHR's Health in Ruins: A Man-Made Disaster in Zimbabwe, a BBC reporter makes his own fact-finding trip to places the PHR team was not able to visit – and finds the same horrific conditions, and more.Read his report here.

The new PHR report on the collapse of health systems in Zimbabwe has brought media attention to the crisis there. The Washington Post today reports:

The cholera outbreak gripping the country is just one sign of the disintegration of a once-admired health-care structure that essentially ceased to function in late 2008, denying Zimbabweans their human right to health, according to U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights.

"Cholera is not the issue," said Frank Donaghue, chief executive of the group, which presented the report at a news conference here in South Africa. "Cholera is a symptom of a grossly collapsed health system due to the blatant disregard by Mugabe of his people."

In a related article, Zimbabwe cholera deaths more than 2,000 – WHO, the Post also says:

Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people and almost 40,000 have contracted the normally preventable disease in Africa's worst outbreak in nearly a decade, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.

…U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights called on Zimbabwe's government to hand over control of its health services, water supply, sanitation and disease surveillance to a United Nations-designated agency.

The group said the U.N. Security Council should enact a resolution referring Zimbabwe's crisis to the International Criminal Court for investigation.

Internationally, The Telegraph, in the UK, headlines an article "Robert Mugabe should face trial say US doctors".

The recommendation came in a damning report published after the group's fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe last month.

They were forced to flee after interviewing 92 health workers, patients, nurses and members of the public, and being accused by the government of being American spies.

The doctors, members of a group called Physicians for Human Rights, also concluded that the United Nations should take over the country's health system.

And in an article titled "The Horror Mugabe Doesn’t Want the World to See", ReligionDispatches.com notes that

Bishop Desmond Tutu calls for the world to take action against the regime of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and the Nobel Prize-winner has signed the preface to a harrowing new report from Physicians for Human Rights on the man-made situation that may, if ignored, match Rwanda.

The BBC News website today reported on PHR's emergency report on the health crisis in Zimbabwe, Health in Ruins: A Man-Made Disaster in Zimbabwe.The BBC News states:

Physicians for Human Rights says the "shocking" findings in its report – Health in Ruins, a man-made disaster in Zimbabwe – should compel the international community to act."These findings add to the growing evidence that Robert Mugabe and his regime may well be guilty of crimes against humanity," it says in the report's preface, which is signed by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and Richard Goldstone, a former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The BBC goes on to say

President Mugabe has been facing intensified criticism over the dire economic and humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe. He signed a power-sharing deal with his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, in September, intended to rescue the collapsing economy, but progress has since stalled over who should control key ministries.Among its recommendations, the report says the UN Security Council and Southern African Development Community (SADC) should call on Mr Mugabe to accept the first round of last year's presidential election, which was won by Mr Tsvangirai.

Read more about this humanitarian disaster in PHR's new report.Other news coverage:The Zimbabwean: Call for world to assist with Zim healthcare systemThe Times (South Africa): Deadly cholera across Southern AfricaLe Temps.ch (Switzerland): ?Crimes contre l'humanit_? au Zimbabwe The Earth Times (Britain): Zimbabwe's health system in crisis; cholera claims 1,937

Frank Donaghue announces the release of PHR's new report on the catastrophic situation in Zimbabwe.

A verdict in the trial of Doctors Kamiar and Arash Alaei was postponed Wednesday due to an Iranian holiday, as reported in the Albany Times-Union. Reporter Paul Grondahl writes:

Prosecutors rested their case after an unorthodox, one-day secret army trial in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court on Dec. 31. The brothers’ attorney, Masoud Shafie, said the proceeding deprived them of due process.The next likely date for a verdict is Saturday, when courts are in session, said Jonathan Hutson, a spokesman for Physicians for Human Rights. The Boston-based organization is spearheading an international campaign calling for the immediate release of the brothers. They call the charges bogus and politically motivated, based on the brothers’ attendance at international AIDS conferences.

The brothers have been charged by Tehran prosecutors with attempted overthrow of the Iranian government and a number of charges the Iranian military court refuses to divulge. The Drs. Alaei were instrumental in orchestrating some of Iran’s first AIDS treatment programs, and their participation in overseas health conferences raised the suspicion of Iranian officials. Dr. Kamiar Alaei is a PhD student at the University at Albany School of Public Health.Grondahl also referenced the countless Alaei supporters who have contacted the Iranian mission to the UN this week to demand the doctors’ release:

Health care professionals mounted an aggressive phone-in campaign this week to the Iranian mission at the U.N. and more than 4,000 people from 85 countries have signed a petition calling for the doctors’ release.

Please continue your efforts to show Iran that treating AIDS is not a crime. View PHR’s “Picture the Docs” slideshow, print out your own poster and add your own photo.(Cross posted on Iran, Free the Docs.)