9. Transfers of MSP personnel, expertise and training

This chapter outlines Amnesty International's concerns over the lack of regulation and reporting by EU Member States on the provision of MSP training and expertise. Most EU and new Member State governments provide very little information to their parliaments or elected representatives on the range and scope of MSP training or technical assistance that is provided by their own personnel and have little or no regulation of the activities of non-state organisations or private companies providing such assistance.(237)

Provision of MSP assistance by EU governments

A number of EU states - particularly France, Spain and the UK - are important providers of MSP training and military assistance worldwide to the MSP forces of foreign states. Some of this training and assistance may have the potential to benefit recipient communities by providing better skilled MSP forces, which respect the rule of law and seek to promote and protect the rights of the civilian population (see examples of good practice later in this section). However, unless such transfers are stringently controlled and independently monitored, there is a danger that it will be used to facilitate human rights violations.

Whilst a number of governments, for example the US with the Leahy Amendment,(238) do have controls which, in theory, prohibit the governmental transfer of MSP training or equipment to security forces that have poor human rights records, many countries – including a number in the EU – do not. Furthermore such MSP training and assistance is often carried out without adequate parliamentary oversight and in many cases in secret. This secrecy means that the public and legislatures of the countries involved rarely discover who is being trained, what skills are being transferred, and who is doing the training. Both recipient and donor states often go to great lengths to conceal the transfer of assistance and expertise which is subsequently used to facilitate serious human rights violations.

French military and security assistance
France has bilateral defence accords with countries such Burkina Faso, Central African Republic,(239) Congo, Gabon, Cote d'Ivoire (suspended since General Robert Guei entered in power), Rwanda, Togo and Zaire.(240) They are all countries where Amnesty International has reported human rights violations committed by the security forces since 2000. The number of French military personnel in operation in African countries is difficult to establish.(241) In 2000 François Lamy a French deputy, noted that just 39 defence accords were published out of a total of 90.(242)

The Nationals Schools with Regional Vocations (NSRV): In 2001 it was reported that there were 15 training centres with French Instructors in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Ivory Cost, Mali, Senegal and Togo for more than 840 trainees coming from 20 countries.(243) In February 2004 it was reported that France opened a new military training centre in Kabul, Afghanistan(244) to help train the reformed Afghanistan Army.

French military schools: In 2000, 1473 places were offered to foreign military officers. Full details of the training are not available. The available information does not mention human rights or humanitarian law, nor if inquiries are made about students' backgrounds or the risk of their involvement in human rights violations.(245)

Despite the reformation in 2001 of the reporting structures within the French "cooperation policy",(246) there is still a great lack of transparency. The French Parliament does not receive a complete report about French military cooperation programmes abroad. An official of the agency responsible for the cooperation policy told Amnesty International that his agency was always prepared to answer to questions raised by the French Parliament, but he refused to talk about French military cooperation programmes in central Africa, as 'this was confidential information that could not be shared with the general public'.(247) In the past inadequate controls and transparency regarding such military training and co-operation has led to human rights violations in the recipient country.

France and Togo
AI has published several reports on Togo during this past decade that describe its policy of extrajudicial executions, the pattern of "disappearances", arbitrary arrests, and detentions followed by torture and ill-treatment as well as deaths in detention and unacceptable conditions of detention. In one of these reports(248) AI detailed the military assistance that France had provided President Gnassingbe Eyadema's government over a period of several years.

In the context of an agreement on defence and on technical military assistance, Togo has benefited and continues to benefit from significant French military aid. By virtue of this agreement, Togo may call on France at any time in the case of external invasion. The agreement, which has never been made public, also allows for intervention in the case of trouble occurring on Togolese territory. France has already intervened, in September 1996, at the time of an attack by an armed opposition group.

The technical military assistance has three components: assistance from French experts; provision for Togolese trainees to be instructed in France and in military schools situated in the region; and the provision of matériel. Recently there were 17 French police advisers providing technical assistance to the Togolese police force, and a "military cooperation and defence" mission of 19 people. While the stated focus of the latter mission is to prepare the Togolese army for international peace keeping operations, information on the French Embassy in Togo web site stated that other forms of action include: supporting state security, training military forces, including gendarmes. Despite the provision of French training, Togolese forces have continued to carry out human rights violations including torture. In 1998, when AI raised with the Togolese Minister of Defence, the case of a Togolese gendarmerie captain who had been designated by several different people as responsible for torture and ill-treatment, the Minister replied that the captain was being trained in France.(249) Furthermore a high ranking officer in the Togolese gendarmerie, accused by Togo's National Commission for Human Rights of ordering the torture of four people in August 1990, was subsequently awarded the decoration of the National Order of Merit by the French government.

Amnesty International is concerned that, despite France's training of the Togolese security forces, excessive force continues to be used notably during election periods such as in June 2003 when it led to the death of several civilians, and the arrest and arbitrary detention of scores of political opponents.

EU military training and assistance to Colombia(250)
The provision of MSP training or the transfer of expertise or personnel is often just one part of a larger package or military or security aid given by EU Member States to foreign governments. In a number of cases Amnesty International has raised tangible evidence of serious concerns that the MSP aid package or assistance programme has been used to commit human rights abuses by the recipient government. This is illustrated by the grave abuses associated with continuing MSP transfers from certain EU countries to Colombia.

In 2002, following the break-down of peace talks, the 40-year old armed conflict between the Colombian security forces, (acting in conjunction with paramilitary groups), and guerrilla groups, intensified. This resulted in a marked deterioration in the human rights situation. By the end of 2003 more than 600 people had been "disappeared" and more than 3,000 civilians were killed for political motives. Forced internal displacement continued to grow dramatically. Over 2,200 people were kidnapped, more than half of them by guerrilla groups and paramilitaries.(251) The main victims of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law continued to be the civilian population including the internally displaced, peasant farmers, Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities living in conflict zones.

This cycle of political violence was exacerbated by the security policies of the new government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez which took office in August 2002. The creation of a network of civilian informants, and an army of "peasant soldiers" required to collaborate with the security forces has put civilians in danger of attacks by the guerrillas. The approval in Congress of a law that grants judicial police powers to the armed forces is likely to facilitate the existing practice of launching often spurious criminal investigations against human rights defenders and other civilians, heightened risk of violent attack by paramilitaries, regardless of whether or not investigations uncover evidence of criminal wrong-doing. With the military "policing" themselves, very few, if any, are likely to be investigated for human rights violations.(252)

Under international humanitarian law, the civilian population is entitled to be shielded from the effects of armed conflict. However, civilians in Colombia are the prime targets as the parties to the conflict compete for territory through the control of the civilian population. The Colombian armed forces and their paramilitary allies as well as the armed opposition groups have all been responsible for serious and persistent human rights abuses. Amnesty International has documented the mounting scale of such abuses in certain areas of Colombia. For example in a recent report Amnesty International has discovered that in the municipality of Tame alone, which has a population of only some 55,000, at least 175 people were murdered in 2003, compared to 144 in 2002 and 86 in 2001.

Despite these grave concerns, a number of EU countries, including France, Spain and the UK, have provided MSP assistance and training to the Colombian government forces over the past few years. Amnesty International is concerned that many of those MSP transfers may have been used for grave human rights violations by the Colombian military.

In 1999 the Foreign Office confirmed that the UK had given training on urban warfare techniques, counter-guerrilla strategy and "psychiatry".(253) During 2002 the UK provided military advice and training assistance to Colombia, and in 2003 the Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram, admitted that "military liaison teams" had been sent to Colombia.(254) Media reports indicate that the UK has also provided military advice in the setting up of newly created Colombian army mountain units.(255) In July 2003 the Foreign Office held an international conference on support for Colombia, the second in two years, which involved the EU, the US, several Latin American countries and the IMF. UK special forces, whose activities are not formally acknowledged by the government, have been present in Colombia since the 1980s, and is thought to be involved in counter-insurgency training.(256) A security analyst with close ties to the Colombian defence ministry suggested recently in the UK press that the UK is now the second biggest donor of military aid to Colombia after the US.(257)

According to press reports during President-elect Uribe's visit to France in July 2002, the French Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, offered his "total apoyo a la lucha contra la guerrilla y el trafico de drogas" ("total support to the fight against the guerrillas and narcotrafficking"). He suggested the possibility of sending a delegation of police and gendarmerie experts to Colombia. According to the Colombian press, Uribe requested military aid from the French government; it has also reported that France had a technical cooperation agreement with Colombia which included a US $200 million facility for Colombia to purchase weapons.(258)

At the end of February 2003, the Spanish government announced a huge unconditional package of military assistance to the Colombian government armed forces. Anti-terrorist equipment and exchanges of military personnel to help train the Colombian security forces in military intelligence and anti-terrorism were included in the package. It reportedly included two C-212 military transport planes and real-time satellite intelligence, as well as the possibility of helicopters and patrol launches.(259)

United Kingdom aid to foreign military
In 2000 a parliamentary answer provided details of how Britain had provided military training for nearly 4500 foreign military personnel from over 100 countries including Algeria, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe between April 1999 and March 2000.(260) Neither details of the nature of the military training nor of the specific forces trained has been made public. Such training is of potential concern given the poor human rights record of many of the countries whose forces were trained. Without adequate transparency and reporting to the public and parliament, such MSP training can facilitate human rights violations in the recipient countries.

United Kingdom and Jamaica
Jamaica suffers from a high level of crime and police officers frequently face armed criminals, at times leaving them with no alternative to the use of lethal force to protect their own lives and the safety of the public. However, over recent years, Amnesty International has documented numerous cases where the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that those killed were extra-judicially executed.(261) Although the UK is the principal provider of external assistance to the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), including programmes in human rights and firearms training and forensics, such assistance has been insufficient to end the pattern of extra-judicial executions and impunity by the JCF.

With 133 deaths at the hands of the JCF in 2002 alone, Jamaica had one of the highest rates of police killings per capita in the world.(262) In April 2001 and March and July 2003, Amnesty International released reports documenting extra-judicial executions and violence by members of the Jamaica security forces, including the "killing of the Braeton Seven.(263)

However, in 2001, the UK government issued an arms export licence authorising the transfer to Jamaica of 300 handguns, small arms ammunition, weapon sights and gun mountings. The UK government subsequently reported that 100 Beretta pistols were actually transferred. Amnesty International protested against such transfers and sought assurances that the UK government would not export arms to Jamaica for use by the JCF until significant steps were taken to re-train JCF officers to operate within existing UN standards on law enforcement, criminal justice and human rights, and until effective monitoring and accountability systems have been put in place.

In 2003, Amnesty International called upon the Jamaican government to hold police officers accountable for committing extrajudicial executions - "not one police officer has been convicted of an extrajudicial killing since 1999, despite over 600 killings at the hands of the police since that date, many in disputed circumstances." The organisation documented in detail the impunity with which the JCF are able to kill, and called for a worldwide campaign for the protection of human rights in Jamaica. (264)

Good practice in EU training and assistance:
Some examples have been reported of international military and security assistance by EU Member States and their partners which incorporate human rights and other international standards into their operational procedures and accountability systems. A few that try to help curb the illicit circulation and misuse of small arms in line with the EU Joint Action on Small Arms(265) have been innovative, and these point to the possibility of the EU establishing good practice guidance for aid programs to military, police and security sectors.

Cambodia:

Lax storage facilities for police firearms fuels armed crime in many countries. For example many policemen in Cambodia used to take their weapons home at night and they would be used off duty in domestic and neighbourhood disputes. Now however, an ambitious project of management and storage of weapons is underway. After a successful project to store army weapons, the European Union has funded a programme for police weapons in Phnom Penh, Kandal and Kampong Speu provinces.(266) The EU coordinating body claims that this project has:
· registered all weapons belonging to the National Police in a centralized computer database; · built one safe storage depot in each province for police weapons not in daily use. Each building is capable of storing 1,260 weapons;
· constructed a larger storage depot for national reserve weapons in Phnom Penh. This has a storage capacity of over 7,000 weapons;
· equipped each police post with a rack to lock up the duty weapons. A total of 477 racks were produced for the three provinces. This represents a storage capacity of 5,670 weapons;
· installed additional racks in the Ministry of Interior in Phnom Penh for an extra capacity of 800 weapons;
· provided training courses in logistics, weapons management and computer skills for relevant police officials.

The EU has also provided a series of fourteen training courses for policemen in the rural areas of Cambodia with the aim of improving their relations with the local villagers.(267) One outcome from such training is that when the villagers trust the police, they will hand in their illegal weapons; but they will only trust the police when neither the police, nor the police weapons, are seen as a threat to the villagers. (268)

UK and Norwegian aid to Malawi: From 1999, the UK and Norwegian governments have provided aid to enable the Malawian government to reform its police and criminal justice system. With civil society and NGO cooperation the Malawian government has engaged community representatives in hundreds of new Community Policing Forums across the country. Awareness of basic human rights standards for policing and the dangers of the proliferation of firearms are spread using posters, radio, TV and other media, including a video film, "Protecting our lives". (269) Although it is too early to tell how effective this has been in reducing violent crime and countering the illegal possession of firearms, there have been indicators of increased reporting of illegal firearms by the community to the police. Increased public awareness of policing issues has helped police gather more information and build public support for policing by consent. Nevertheless, reform of the Firearms Act and policing standards regarding the use of force and firearms are still inadequate, and there is a lack of transparency regarding both investigations of police misuse of firearms, and police issuance of firearms licences to civilians.(270)

Lessons to be learned:
All international assistance programmes by EU Member States should ensure that the training of military, security and police personnel of another country does not include the transfer of skills, knowledge or techniques likely to lend themselves to torture or ill-treatment in the recipient country. The practical application of relevant human rights standards and humanitarian law should be fully integrated into such training programs.