Getting Away with Torture: Secret Government, War Crimes, and the Rule of Law

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Another prisoner is found with a broken neck, broken toes and internal injuries following an argument with guards; after one month in a coma he dies from septicaemia. Fire extinguisher sized canisters of pepper spray are used to cover prisoners with chemicals, and they are then left, resulting in second degree burns. Photos are shown of Frank Valdes, a convicted killer on Death Row , who was beaten to death after writing to local Florida newspapers with allegations of prison officer corruption and brutality.

Many of the segments in the documentary were several years old, e. Several Lawsuits was filed against the Prison which resulted in the Inmates favor.

Other prison officers involved in the incidents were suspended from duty or discharged of their employment. A memoir by Wilbert Rideau , an inmate at Angola Prison from through , states that "slavery was commonplace in Angola with perhaps a quarter of the population in bondage" throughout the s and early s.

Rideau stated that "The slave's only way out was to commit suicide, escape or kill his master. Murray Henderson, one of the wardens brought in to clean up the prison, states in one of his memoirs that the systemic sexual slavery was sanctioned and facilitated by the prison guards.

From the year onwards, the Supermax facility at the Maine State Prison was the scene of video-taped forcible extractions that Lance Tapley in the Portland Phoenix wrote "look[ed] like torture. Officers involved in the incident were convicted in court and sentenced to 2—5 years in prison. Border Patrol interdicts people crossing the border and maintains checkpoints and carries out raids in border regions. Human Rights Watch has documented severe human rights abuses by the Border Patrol, "including unjustified killing, torture, and rape, and routine beatings, rough physical treatment, and racially motivated verbal abuse.

Detained immigrants, including refugees seeking asylum, at the Esmor Inc. After the uprising, two dozen of them were beaten, stripped, forced to crawl through a gauntlet of officers, and made to chant, "America is number one. On arrival at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York , the detainees were slammed face first into a wall against a shirt with an American flag; the bloodstain left behind was described by one officer as the print of bloody noses and a mouth.

Once inside they were threatened with detention for the rest of their lives, verbally abused, exposed to cold, deprived of sleep , and had their hands, cuffed arms, and fingers severely twisted. In , the U. Supreme Court deferred to state secrets privilege when they refused to hear the case of Khalid el-Masri , who was kidnapped and tortured by the CIA under the Bush administration on December 21, The ACLU said that torture included methods of "forced anal penetration".

Certain practices of the United States military , civilian agencies such as the CIA , and private contractors have been condemned both domestically and internationally as torture. A fierce debate regarding non-standard interrogation techniques exists within the U. These practices have resulted in a number of deaths. According to Human Rights First , at least as many as 8 detainees have been tortured to death in U. In , a U. Jennifer Harbury , a U. On December 12, , the Court of Appeals for the District Court of Columbia rejected this claim, citing a lack of jurisdiction, since the events were planned and controlled in the United States, but the actual torture and murder occurred in Guatemala, a location where the U.

In and there was substantial controversy over the " stress and duress " methods that were used in the U. Executive branch of government at Cabinet level. CIA agents have anonymously confirmed to the Washington Post in a December 26, report that the CIA routinely uses so-called " stress and duress " interrogation techniques, which human rights organizations claim are acts of torture, in the U. These sources state that CIA and military personnel beat up uncooperative suspects, confine them in cramped quarters, duct tape them to stretchers, and use other restraints that maintain the subject in an awkward and painful position for long periods of time.

Some techniques within the "stress and duress" category, such as water boarding , have long been considered as torture, by both the United States government and human rights groups. State Department has described the following practices as torture:. These documents developed a legal basis for the use of torture by U. The legal definition of torture by the Justice Department tightly narrowed to define as torture only actions which "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," and argued that actions that inflict any lesser pain, including moderate or fleeting pain, do not necessarily constitute torture.

It is the position of the United States government that the legal memoranda constituted only permissible legal research, and did not signify the intent of the United States to use torture, which it opposes. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has complained about this prominent newspaper coverage and its implications.

There is no longer any doubt that large numbers of troops responsible for guarding and interrogating detainees somehow loosed their moorings to humanity, and began behaving as sadists, perverts and criminals. The Bush administration told the CIA in that its interrogators working abroad would not violate U.

The interrogator's "good faith" and "honest belief" that the interrogation will not cause such suffering protects the interrogator, the memo adds. The page memo is heavily redacted, with 10 its 18 pages completely blacked out and only a few paragraphs legible on the others. Another memo released on the same day advises that "the waterboard " does "not violate the Torture Statute.

A third memo instructs interrogators to keep records of sessions that use "enhanced interrogation techniques. Intentionally causing mental suffering — as well as physical suffering — is prohibited, according to an unclassified analysis written by the U. Office of Legal Counsel in December The Post article continues that sensory deprivation , through the use of hoods and spraypainted goggles, sleep deprivation, and selective use of painkillers for at least one captive who was shot in the groin during his apprehension are also used.

The agents also indicate in the report that the CIA as a matter of course hands suspects over to foreign intelligence services with far fewer qualms about torture for more intensive interrogation. The Post reported that one U. Based on the Justice Department analyses, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later approved in the use of 24 classified interrogation techniques for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which after use on one prisoner were withdrawn. However, the Bush administration explicitly endorsed the use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding in memos to the CIA, [66] and one Pentagon official has publicly admitted that torture was conducted at Guantanamo Bay.

We possess all the evidence which proves that the torture methods used in interrogation by the U. Obviously, these orders were given with the highest U. Allegations emerged that in the Coalition occupation of Iraq after the second Gulf war, there was extensive use of torture techniques, allegedly supported by American military intelligence agents, in Iraqi jails such as Abu Ghraib and others.

In photos showing humiliation and abuse of prisoners leaked from Abu Ghraib prison, causing a political and media scandal in the U. Condoleezza Rice , Secretary of State ultimately told the CIA the harsher interrogation tactics were acceptable, [69] [70] In Rice stated, "We never tortured anyone. On February 14, , in an appearance on ABC 's This Week , Vice-President Dick Cheney reiterated his support of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques for captured terrorist suspects, saying, "I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program.

They're appropriate, they're in conformity with our international requirements and with U. Both United States citizens and foreign nationals are occasionally captured outside of the United States and transferred to secret U.

In addition, individuals are suspected to be or to have been held in temporary or permanent U. There are also allegations that persons categorized as prisoners of war have been tortured, abused or humiliated; or otherwise have had their rights afforded by the Geneva Convention violated. Extraordinary Rendition is the apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another. The term "torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the CIA [75] [76] [77] [78] and other U. It has been claimed, though, that torture has been employed with the knowledge or acquiescence of U.

Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured. Whilst the Obama administration has tried to distance itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques, it has also said that at least some forms of renditions will continue. A June report from the Council of Europe estimated people had been kidnapped by the CIA on EU territory with the cooperation of Council of Europe members , and rendered to other countries, often after having transited through secret detention centres " black sites " used by the CIA, some located in Europe.

According to the separate European Parliament report of February , the CIA has conducted 1, flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Following the 11 September attacks the United States, in particular the CIA , has been accused of rendering hundreds of people suspected by the government of being terrorists—or of aiding and abetting terrorist organizations—to third-party states such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Uzbekistan.

Such " ghost detainees " are kept outside judicial oversight, often without ever entering U. On April 30, , 62 members of Witness Against Torture , led by Carmen Trotta [86] were arrested at the gates of the White House demanding that the Obama administration support a criminal inquiry into torture under the Bush administration and release innocent detainees still held at Guantanamo.

The protesters wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods, were arrested, and charged with "failure to obey a lawful order" when they refused to leave the White House sidewalk. Protests have been held regarding the issue of torture and its legality as lately as The United States signed the Convention in the spring of the following year, officially declaring at the time of its signature on 18 April [91] that.

The Government of the United States of America reserves the right to communicate, upon ratification, such reservations, interpretive understandings, or declarations as are deemed necessary. Thereafter, the United States formally notified the United Nations and its member states, a few months prior to its ratification, that [92].

These can be read verbatim at the UN treaty website [91] and are parsed here as follows:. By transferring military detainees to Iraqi control, the U. The Convention proscribes signatory states from transferring a detainee to other countries "where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture. She claimed that if returned to Nigeria, she would be imprisoned and tortured as a result of her U. In her December hearing before the immigration judge, she presented evidence of Nigeria's Decree No.

When asked how she knew she would be tortured, she said that some years ago, she had spoken with a Nigerian friend, [nb 10] who had been convicted of a U. The friend had told her that her family had to bring money to the jail for protection, that she slept on the floor and that "you probably get raped" by the guards because they have authority to do "whatever they can do. M-B-A did not know if the friend had seen a judge before being incarcerated, or if the friend had been raped in the prison.

M-B-A also presented evidence that she had a chronic ulcer, asthma and suffered from depression; that she was on medication but had no one to help her with medicine if she ended up in jail; that her father was deceased and her mother lived in the UK and that she had no relations to help her in Nigeria, aside from an uncle who had sexually abused her as a child. The full Board of Appeals [nb 11] considered the question of whether M-B-A had carried her burden of proof in showing that it was more likely than not that she would be tortured by a public official upon her return to Nigeria.

In a close decision, the Board found that M-B-A had not demonstrated that it was more likely than not that she would be imprisoned in Nigeria on the basis of Decree She did not present any evidence on the question of the extent to which the Decree was enforced, or against whom it was enforced. Her own evidence about enforcement was either a her own speculation or b based on the conversation with her friend's experience during a different Nigerian regime. There were two separate dissenting opinions, [nb 13] both of which agreed with the enunciated standard of proof to be used "more likely than not" , but disagreed over the question of whether the burden had been met by M-B-A.

Judge Schmidt's dissent cited the U. State Department's report on Nigeria's prison system, reported that one area of abuse in Nigerian prison was the intentional withholding of medical aid or medication.

Torture is a war crime the government treats like a policy debate

He found on the basis of this report that such withholding for purposes of e. He did not, however, address the majority's assertion that M-B-A had failed to establish, by a preponderance of the evidence, that she would be imprisoned in the first place under Decree No. For an act to constitute "torture" it must satisfy each of the following five elements in the definition of torture: Thus, in the U. Likewise, substandard prison conditions in Haiti did not constitute "torture" where there is no evidence that the authorities intentionally created and maintained such conditions in order to inflict torture.

J-E was a Haitian who had entered the U. The Government sought to deport him, but J-E claimed that he would be imprisoned and tortured if he were returned to Haiti. Therefore, he argued, Article 3 of the Convention prevented his being deported. The Board set out the five-part test for torture and noted that.

While the Convention Against Torture makes a clear distinction between torturous and non torturous acts, actually differentiating between acts of torture and other bad acts is not so obvious. Although not binding on the United States, the opinions of other governmental bodies adjudicating torture claims can be instructive.

The Board thereupon considered Ireland v. United Kingdom , 2 Eur. It was admitted by all parties that J-E would be indefinitely detained upon return to Haiti. Deportees were held by police in holding cells for weeks before release. However, the State Department report relied upon by all parties confirmed that the Haitian government used this policy as a warning and a deterrent, to try to prevent deportees from committing crimes in Haiti. Thus, Haiti's detention policy in itself appears to be a lawful enforcement sanction Nor is there evidence that the procedure is inflicted on criminal deportees for a proscribed purpose, such as obtaining information or a confession Haiti's detention practice alone does not constitute torture within the meaning of the regulations.

J-E contended that in any case, the combination of indefinite detention with the admittedly substandard conditions of Haitian prison constitute torture. However, the Board noted that the Convention required that "torture" required a "specific intent" by the accused country in order for torture to result:. Although Haitian authorities are intentionally detaining criminal deportees knowing that the detention facilities are substandard, there is no evidence that they are intentionally and deliberately creating and maintaining such prison conditions in order to inflict torture.

Finally, J-E maintained that mistreatment was common in Haitian prison and that he would be subjected to such mistreatment, and that constituted torture. The Board found that there was, in Haiti,. Beating with fists, sticks and belts However [there are] other forms of mistreatment, such as burning with cigarettes, choking, hooding and The Board considered all the evidence submitted and concluded that it showed that isolated incidents of torture did occur in Haitian detention facilities.

However, this evidence was not sufficient to demonstrate that it was more likely than not that J-E would be subjected to torture upon his detention. There was no evidence that the torture was persistent or widespread; or that the Haitian government used torture as a policy; or that there was no meaningful international oversight.

The Board accordingly held—in yet another opinion with substantial dissenting opinions—that J-E had failed to carry his burden of showing that the admitted mistreatment was so pervasive that it therefore was more likely than not that he would be tortured in a Haitian jail, as opposed to being subjected to cruel and inhuman acts that, while despicable, were less than torture within the meaning of the applicable law.

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Most of the actions reported against Haiti, the Board decided, were sanctioned under Article 16 the Convention as acts that were "cruel and inhuman" and that State Parties were obliged to correct, but nevertheless did not constitute "torture" within the meaning of Article 1 of the Convention. No State Party shall expel, return "refouler" or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Slavery in the United States. Lynching in the United States. United States and state terrorism. Army and CIA interrogation manuals. Only by fully and forthrightly dealing with those responsible for systematic violations of human rights after September 11 will the US government be seen to have surmounted them. Without real accountability for these crimes, those who commit abuses in the name of counterterrorism will point to the US mistreatment of detainees to deflect criticism of their own conduct.

Indeed, when a government as dominant and influential as that of the United States openly defies laws prohibiting torture, a bedrock principle of human rights, it virtually invites others to do the same. As in countries that have previously come to grips with torture and other serious crimes by national leaders, there are countervailing political pressures within the United States. This position ignores the high cost of inaction. Any failure to carry out an investigation into torture will be understood globally as purposeful toleration of illegal activity, and as a way to leave the door open to future abuses.

In contrast, the benefits of conducting a credible and impartial criminal investigation are numerous. For example, the US government would send the clearest possible signal that it is committed to repudiating the use of torture. The majority of administration investigations undertaken from forward lacked the independence or breadth necessary to fully explore the prisoner-abuse issue.

Almost all involved the military or CIA investigating itself, and focused on only one element of the treatment of detainees. None looked at the issue of rendition to torture, and none examined the role of civilian leaders who may have had authority over detainee treatment policy. The US record on criminal accountability for detainee abuse has been abysmal. In , Human Rights Watch collected information on some cases of alleged abuse involving more than US personnel. The highest-ranking officer prosecuted for the abuse of prisoners was a lieutenant colonel, Steven Jordan, court-martialed in for his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, but acquitted in When Barack Obama, untainted by the detainee abuse scandal, became president in , the outlook for accountability appeared to improve.

The problem is that the legal advice in question—contained in memoranda drafted by the OLC, which provides authoritative legal advice to the president and all executive branch agencies—itself authorized torture and other ill-treatment. It purported to give legal sanction to practices like waterboarding, as well as long-term sleep deprivation, violent slamming of prisoners into walls, forced nudity, and confinement of prisoners into small, dark boxes.

Notably, all of the memoranda were later withdrawn by subsequent OLC officials during later periods in the Bush administration. While US officials who act in good faith reliance upon official statements of the law generally have a defense under US law against criminal prosecution, this does not mean that the Justice Department should embrace the sweeping view that all officials responsible for methods of torture explicitly contemplated under OLC memoranda are protected from criminal investigation.

Indeed, for the Justice Department to take such a position would risk validating a legal strategy that seeks to negate criminal liability for wrongdoing by preemptively constructing a legal defense. If such a strategy is seen to have worked, future administrations contemplating illegal actions will also be more likely to employ it.

In assessing the good faith of those who purported to rely on OLC guidance, the Justice Department should critically inquire, on a case-by-case basis, whether a reasonable person at the time these decisions were made would be convinced that such practices were lawful. It seems doubtful that cases of the most serious abuses would pass this test. It is especially unlikely that senior officials who were responsible for authorizing torture will be protected under this calculus, particularly if they were instrumental in pressing for legal cover from the OLC, or if they influenced the drafting of the memoranda that they now claim protect them.

For the Justice Department to look primarily into the actions of low-level interrogators would also be a mistake: Over the past several years, more evidence has been placed on the public record regarding the development of illegal detention policies and the torture and ill-treatment of detainees in US custody. In this report, our conclusion, which we believe is compelled by the evidence, is that a criminal investigation is warranted with respect to each of the following: He authorized the CIA renditions program, which he knew or should have known would result in torture.

And he has publicly admitted that he approved CIA use of torture, specifically the waterboarding of two detainees. Bush never exerted his authority to stop the ill-treatment or punish those responsible.

Duty to Investigate and Provide Redress

Vice President Dick Cheney: He chaired or attended numerous meetings at which specific CIA operations were discussed, beginning with the waterboarding of detainee Abu Zubaydah in Cheney has publicly admitted that he was aware of the use of waterboarding. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: Rumsfeld closely followed the interrogation of Guantanamo detainee Mohamed al-Qahtani who was subjected to a six-week regime of coercive interrogation that cumulatively amounted to torture.

Rumsfeld never exerted his authority to stop the torture and ill-treatment of detainees even after he became aware of evidence of abuse over a three-year period beginning in early In addition, there should be criminal investigations into the drafting of legal memorandums seeking to justify torture, which were the basis for authorizing the CIA secret detention program. The US and global public deserve a full and public accounting of the scale of abuses following the September 11 attacks, including why and how they occurred.

Prosecutions, which focus on individual criminal liability, would not bring the full range of information to light. An independent, nonpartisan commission , along the lines of the Commission, should therefore be established to examine the actions of the executive branch, the CIA, the military, and Congress, and to make recommendations to ensure that such widespread and systematic abuses are not repeated.

The investigations that the US government has conducted either have been limited in scope—such as looking at violations by military personnel at a particular place in a restricted timeframe—or have lacked independence, with the military investigating itself. Congressional investigations have been limited to looking at a single agency or department.

Individuals who planned or participated in the programs have yet to speak on the record. Many of the key documents relating to the use of abusive techniques remain secret. Many of the proverbial dots remain unconnected. A January 9, draft memo by John Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general in the OLC, advised the Defense Department that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to members of al Qaeda because it was not a state and thus not a party to the conventions.

In a key memo dated January 25, , Gonzales urged the president to declare Taliban forces in Afghanistan and al Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military leaders voiced similar concerns. In response to the objections of Powell and others, Bush slightly modified the proposed order, but did so in a manner that effectively denied protection to the detainees: All persons detained in connection with an armed conflict, whether or not they are entitled to POW status, [30] are still legally entitled to basic protections under international law.

On September 26, Tenet reportedly briefed Bush and the NSC on CIA renditions operations in which suspects were transferred into the custody of third countries such as Jordan and Egypt for detention and interrogation. Within weeks, media reports began to surface alleging mistreatment of detainees at Qali Jangi and at the Kandahar base.

Allegations of abuse against detainees by US personnel in Afghanistan continued in After news of the sites became public, Bush in September officially acknowledged the existence of the secret CIA sites, saying:. He ordered what he said were the remaining 14 detainees in CIA custody transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Zubaydah was shot during his arrest and taken to a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, before being transferred to a secret CIA facility, apparently in Bangkok, Thailand. The memo also took an extremely narrow view of which acts might constitute torture. It referred to seven practices that US courts have ruled constitute torture: With these approvals, CIA officials began using more abusive interrogation methods on Zubaydah.

Zubaydah, still weak from his wounds, was stripped and placed in a cell without a bunk or blankets. He stood or lay on the bare floor, sometimes with air-conditioning adjusted so that, one official said, Mr. Zubaydah seemed to turn blue. At other times, the interrogators piped in deafening blasts of music by groups like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.

In , however, the agency destroyed 90 videotapes of Zubaydah's interrogations, which resulted in a criminal investigation of officials. In November , Justice Department officials confirmed that no charges would be filed in connection with the destruction of the tapes. As of this writing, Zubaydah remains in Guantanamo.

He has not been charged with any offense. The expansion of the CIA program was later discussed and authorized, after the fact, in a meeting at the White House in early As the SSCI narrative states:. The CIA detention and interrogation program appears to have been scaled back temporarily in , after the Abu Ghraib scandal and a critical report by the CIA inspector general that was sent to the White House in May There had been significant controversy within the CIA about the program, leading to an investigation by the CIA Office of Inspector General which took place through and into However, in May , the new OLC head, Stephen Bradbury, issued three memoranda to the CIA embracing many of the earlier arguments in the Bybee memorandum applicable to Abu Zubaydah, and—years after the fact—formally authorizing the expansion of the techniques originally approved in to other detainees.

The secrecy surrounding the rendition program means that no accurate statistics exist. One study found 53 such cases, excluding those sent to Afghanistan or into US custody. Many detainees were returned to CIA custody immediately after intensive periods of abusive interrogation in Jordan. Numerous detainees so rendered are known or believed to have been tortured. The following cases are illustrative:.

Indeed, he was tortured during his confinement in a Syrian prison, often with cables and electrical cords. When Arar sued the US for denying him his civil rights, the Bush administration—and later the Obama administration—successfully argued the case should never be allowed to come to trial for reasons of national security. The operatives stripped them, inserted suppositories into their rectums, dressed them in a diaper and overalls, blindfolded them, and placed a hood over their heads. They were then placed aboard a US government-leased plane and flown to Egypt.

Several days later, Egypt made a formal request that Indonesia extradite Madni for unspecified, terrorism-related crimes. Abusive interrogations by the military appear to have begun in Afghanistan as early as December and continued despite high-profile media accounts, and perhaps encouraged by the sidelining and disparaging of the Geneva Conventions by US officials. Reports by civilian Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI agents who witnessed detainee abuse by military personnel at Guantanamo—including forcing chained detainees to sit in their own excrement—reinforced accounts by former detainees describing the use of painful stress positions, extended solitary confinement, military dogs to threaten them, threats of torture and death, and prolonged exposure to extremes of heat, cold, and noise.

Many techniques used on detainees by military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison and other Iraqi locations resembled abuse seen earlier in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, including forced standing and exercise, shackling detainees in painful positions or close confinement, extensive long-term sleep deprivation, and exposure to cold.

Abuse spread throughout Iraq from late and into Documented cases included beatings and suffocation, [] sexual abuse, [] mock executions, [] and electro-shock torture. The tactics used in mock SERE interrogations resembled many of the practices used immediately afterwards in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. These included stripping detainees naked for degradation purposes, exploiting cultural or religious taboos, and use of forced standing, exposure to cold, and prolonged sleep deprivation. A week later, on September 25, , a delegation of senior officials visited Guantanamo to discuss interrogations there.

Dunlavey told Philippe Sands that the group discussed the interrogation of Mohamed al-Qahtani, a detainee suspected of direct involvement in the September 11 attacks.

JSTOR: Access Check

By October 11, , Dunlavey sent a memo and an attached legal opinion by Lt. James Hill of Southern Command requesting authority to use aggressive interrogation techniques. In late October , the documents were sent from Gen. Richard Meyers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with recommendations that the secretary of defense authorize the techniques listed. On November 14, , Col. Britt Mallow, a senior commander at the Criminal Investigation Task Force CITF at Guantanamo who had already raised concerns about abusive interrogations with senior Pentagon officials, together with others expressed his legal concerns to Guantanamo commander Gen.

Nevertheless, General Counsel Haynes submitted the techniques to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for approval in late November , with a one-page cover letter recommending he approve most of the methods—but not waterboarding. Rumsfeld appended a handwritten note to his authorization of these techniques: Why is standing limited to 4 hours?

Those captured or otherwise taken into custody during the international armed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan should have been presumptively classified as POWs, and afforded the protections due to POWs under the Third Geneva Convention. The Defense Department investigation chaired by James R. Contrary to the attention given interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, there was no prescribed interrogation regime for prisoners in Afghanistan. According to the review of Defense Department interrogation operations conducted by Vice Adm.

Access Check

Officials in Afghanistan appear to have begun drawing up a set of policies based both on the techniques they were already utilizing and others they had learned from their trip to Guantanamo. Carolyn Wood, who had helped develop interrogation policies for non-special forces in Afghanistan in late —and who was implicated in the beating deaths of two detainees there in December —was stationed in Iraq and put in command of Abu Ghraib interrogation operations in mid, under the new Combined Joint Task Force 7 CJTF In July , Capt.

The overall military commander for Iraq, Gen. The abusive techniques approved, along with the techniques used by SMU TF units, were among those being used at Abu Ghraib through the beginning of The War Crimes Act of provides criminal punishment for whomever, inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, if either the perpetrator or the victim is a member of the US Armed Forces or a national of the United States.

The Military Commissions Act revised the War Crimes Act and limited the definition of war crimes, with retroactive effect. As a result, humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees in US counterterrorism operations following the September 11 attacks can no longer be charged as war crimes under the statute.

However, this does not change liability for murder and torture. The Anti-Torture Act 18 U. Some of the crimes listed above are subject to a statute of limitations. Under federal law, charges for the crimes of assault, kidnapping, and acts against rights must ordinarily be brought within five years of the date of the commission of the offense.

For the crime of torture, the statute of limitations is at least eight years, [] and arguably does not exist at all. Homicide, sexual abuse, and war crimes resulting in death are not subject to a limitation period. In addition to the substantive offenses listed above, there is sufficient evidence to open a criminal investigation into whether senior Bush administration officials engaged in a criminal conspiracy to commit offenses such as torture and war crimes.

This conspiracy would include, at a minimum, the top officials listed in this report as well as the lawyers who drafted legal memoranda seeking to justify torture. A conspiracy to commit a federal crime may fall under the general federal conspiracy statute 18 U. The essential elements required to bring a charge of conspiracy under 18 U. Specific intent is an essential element of criminal conspiracy.

In addition, it is not necessary for conspirators to have known or intended for the conspiracy to violate federal law per se. As the Supreme Court has said: While conspiracy is subject to a five-year statute of limitations, it is a continuing crime that does not end until the last co-conspirator commits the last overt act of the conspiracy.

There is no immunity from prosecution in US courts for the acts described in this report.

Getting Away with Torture

Senior US officials did not physically commit acts of abuse. However, civilian superiors and military commanders can be held criminally liable as principals if they order, induce, instigate, aid, or abet in the commission of a crime. This is a principle recognized both in US [] and international law.

Three elements are needed to establish such liability:. The US armed forces have long recognized the principle of command responsibility. Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of the Japanese forces in the Philippines in World War II, whose troops committed brutal atrocities against the civilian population and prisoners of war. General Yamashita, who had lost almost all command, control, and communications over his troops, was nevertheless convicted by the International Military Tribunal in Tokyo based on the doctrine of command responsibility. Maples in gave testimony that, in his view, waterboarding violated the laws of war.

Courts in the US and other tribunals have repeatedly found that waterboarding, or variations of it, constitute torture and is a war crime: These methods violate the protections afforded to all persons in custody—whether combatants or civilians—under the laws of armed conflict and can amount to torture or inhuman treatment. For detainees who should be considered POWs or were entitled to a presumption of POW status, mistreatment by these methods would be a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.

Serious violations of the laws of war committed with criminal intent, including grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, are war crimes. The field manual also prohibits forms of coercion including threats. Perhaps most importantly, the field manual instructs soldiers, when in doubt, to ask themselves: The US government has itself denounced as torture these same methods when practiced by other countries, including Burma being forced to squat or remain in uncomfortable periods for long periods of time , Egypt stripping and blindfolding of prisoners , Eritrea tying of hands and feet for extended periods of time , Iran sleep deprivation and suspension for long periods in contorted positions , Iraq food and water deprivation , Jordan sleep deprivation and solitary confinement , Pakistan prolonged isolation and denial of food or sleep , Saudi Arabia sleep deprivation , Tunisia food and sleep deprivation , and Turkey prolonged standing, isolation.

Threatening a prisoner with torture to make him talk is considered to be a form of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. And, of course, many of the pictures from Abu Ghraib show unmuzzled dogs being used to intimidate detainees, sometimes while they are cowering, naked. Disappearances violate or threaten to violate a range of rules of international human rights and humanitarian law, including arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, and the right to life.

US law places limits on the treatment of detained terrorist suspects. The US Supreme Court ruled in that the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which Congress passed after the September 11, attacks and authorizes presidential action against al Qaeda and allied forces, gave the president power to detain enemy belligerents. The prolonged, unacknowledged, incommunicado detention of persons in secret CIA facilities constitutes enforced disappearances under international law.

Information continues to reach the Working Group on the existence of secret detention centres where terrorist suspects are held in complete isolation from the outside world. In [this situation], people disappear. As is well documented, disappearance is often a precursor to torture and even to extrajudicial execution. The string of legal opinions and memoranda by Bush administration lawyers on detainee issues since September 11, , appear to have been intended to shield US officials from potential liability.

Gonzales then explained to the president that "it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section [the War Crimes Act].

Your determination [that the Geneva Conventions do not apply] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution. Bush and others have asserted that they approved the detention and interrogation techniques described above only after legal review by Department of Justice attorneys. For instance, in a television interview after he left office, Bush explained his approval of waterboarding: At the same time, due process concerns would seem to bar conviction when a defendant engages in conduct in reasonable reliance on an official interpretation of the law.

Under section a of the Detainee Treatment Act of , written after the Abu Ghraib revelations and the release of the torture memos, officials prosecuted as a result of detention and interrogation operations may raise as a defense that they: Good faith reliance on advice of counsel should be an important factor, among others, to consider in assessing whether a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the practices to be unlawful. In the context of practices such as waterboarding, prolonged stress positions and long-term incommunicado detention, it stretches credulity to argue that a person of ordinary sense and understanding would not know the practices were illegal.

In addition, there is now substantial evidence that the initiative for abusive interrogation techniques came largely from civilian leaders, and that politically appointed administration lawyers created legal justifications in the face of opposition from career government legal officers. Avoiding prosecution is literally a theme of the memoranda. Reportedly, the following day, Bush sent his name forward for formal nomination. Chertoff refused to provide such a declination. Under international law, states are obligated to investigate credible allegations of war crimes and serious violations of human rights committed by their nationals and members of their armed forces, or over which they have jurisdiction, and appropriately prosecute those responsible.

War crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law committed willfully—that is, deliberately or recklessly—and give rise to individual criminal responsibility. The US also has a duty to investigate serious violations of international human rights law and punish the perpetrators. Those seeking a remedy shall have this right determined by competent judicial, administrative, or legislative authorities. And when granted, these remedies shall be enforced by competent authorities. Civilian leaders and commanders may also be prosecuted for war crimes and violations of international human rights law as a matter of command responsibility when they knew or should have known about the commission of war crimes and took insufficient measures to prevent them or punish those responsible.

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