Amnesty International calls for investigation into Bush's admission of torture in memoir

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Former President George W. Bush’s confirmation that he authorized the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against detainees held in secret US custody serves to highlight once again the absence of accountability for the crimes under international law of torture and enforced disappearance committed by the USA during what the previous administration called the “war on terror”.

It has long been known that six days after the attacks of 11 September 2001, President Bush authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), among other things, to set up secret detention facilities outside the USA. Multiple human rights violations were committed against detainees held in the CIA’s secret program. Those who authorized and carried out these abuses have not been brought to justice.

In his memoirs, leaked to the media in advance of publication, and in an interview on NBC News broadcast on 8 November 2010, the former President confirmed his personal involvement in the interrogation techniques used in the CIA program when he said that he had authorized the use of “water boarding” and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” against so-called “high-value detainees”.

Water-boarding, in which the perception of drowning is induced in the detainee, is torture – as both the current President and Attorney General of the USA have acknowledged. Torture is a crime under international law. Under international law, anyone involved in torture must be brought to justice. This obligation does not end with a change in government.

Under international law, the former President’s admission to having authorized acts that amount to torture are enough to trigger the USA’s obligations to investigate his admissions and if substantiated, to prosecute him. Failure to investigate and prosecute in circumstances where the requisite criteria are met is itself a violation of international law.²

In the NBC interview, former President Bush focussed on the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was arrested on 1 March 2003 in Pakistan and transferred to secret CIA custody. That same month, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “water-boarded” 183 times, according to a report by the CIA Inspector General. After three and a half years being held incommunicado in solitary confinement in secret locations, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was transferred to military custody in Guantánamo, where he remains without trial.

Water-boarding was far from the only technique alleged to have been used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others held in the secret program that violated the international prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Other techniques included prolonged nudity, threats, exposure to cold temperatures, stress positions, physical assaults, prolonged use of shackles, and sleep deprivation.

The USA ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) in 1994. Under UNCAT, in every case where there is evidence against a person of their having committed or attempted to commit torture, or of having committed acts which constitute complicity or participation in torture, the case must be submitted to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution, if the individual is not extradited for prosecution. The authorities must take their decision whether to prosecute in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of the state.

Failing to proceed with a prosecution on the basis that the accused held public office of any rank, or citing justifications based in “exceptional circumstances”, whether states of war or other public emergencies, is not permitted by UNCAT. Torture is also defined as a grave breach of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, meaning that investigation and submission for prosecution of all cases of torture in situations of international armed conflict is an express obligation under those treaties.

In the NBC interview, former President Bush said that he authorized the interrogation techniques in question because government lawyers had cleared them as legal under US law, and he asserted that using them had “saved lives”. Asked whether he would make the same decision today, the former President responded that “Yeah, I would”.

Under international law, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment are never legal. No lawyer can render them lawful; no politician, legislator, judge, soldier, police officer, prison guard, medical professional or interrogator can override this prohibition. Even in a time of war or threat of war, even in a state of emergency which threatens the life of the nation, there can be no exemption from this obligation.³The same is true of enforced disappearance.

Whether torture is effective or not in obtaining useful information is irrelevant to the question of whether it is lawful – it never is – or whether an individual responsible for torture is to be investigated or prosecuted.

In August 2009 US Attorney General Eric Holder ordered a “preliminary review” into some aspects of some interrogations of some detainees held in the CIA’s secret detention program. However this review has been narrowly framed and has been set against a promise of immunity from prosecution for anyone who acted in good faith on legal advice in conducting interrogations. This falls far short of the scope of investigations and prosecutions required by binding legal obligations to which the USA is subject under international law, including under the explicit provisions of treaties the USA has entered into such as the Geneva Conventions and UNCAT.

Many people were involved in the USA’s authorization and use of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment against detainees held in the CIA program. It is long overdue for the USA to conduct a full investigation into the crimes under international law committed in this program and to bring anyone against whom there is evidence of involvement in such crimes to justice.

Other governments, not least those which may have themselves been involved in facilitating the USA’s secret detention program, should call on the USA to meet its international obligations on accountability. Under Article 9 of UNCAT, “State Parties shall afford one another the greatest measure of assistance in connection with criminal proceedings” brought against anyone accused of involvement in torture. In addition, any State Party in whose territory a person believed to have been involved in torture is present must take the necessary investigative, prosecutorial or extradition measures against that person. There must be no safe haven for anyone responsible for torture.

At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last week, the USA said that “advancement and enforcement of human rights must be pursued persistently over time, with accountability, follow through, continuing effort, and constant improvement”.⁴The USA’s failure to account for the crimes under international law committed in the CIA’s secret detention program suggests that the USA is promoting double standards, not international standards. On this question, its “arc of history” is currently bent towards injustice. This must change.

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America's Torture Doctrine

John Galt
Activist Post

The new mainstream American value of torture is steeped in self-deception, legal justification, and propaganda.  We idolize torturers in our favorite TV programs, and are happy to see our enemies (real and imagined) vicariously taken apart in order to protect our beacon of freedom.  It is an Orwellian undertaking.  Only a massive propaganda effort and a healthy dose of self-delusion can explain poll numbers that show a split verdict on the subject of torture's legitimacy, when it has been proven to be completely unreliable in true intelligence gathering -- not even when a "Jack Bauer" is working against a ticking bomb.  We must conclude, then, that it is a type of blood sport, or a self-righteous power trip that expresses itself in the sheer enjoyment of the punishment inflicted against evildoers. 

Long before there was Jack Bauer to hold a blow torch to someone's chest, there was the blood-soaked march across the ages, and the planet, inspired by fundamentalist religions.  Sacrifices to Gods eventually waned, Inquisitions passed, and formal witch trials disappeared, to be supplanted by a new type of faith:  The State. 

The slaughters conducted by Stalin, Mao, and other decidedly Left governments, were not to be outdone by the iconoclasts of the Right.  It is a cynical admission, but it seems that torture has been around so long, and in so many forms, that it is part of who we are.  Evidently, we are easily whipped into a frenzy of self-righteousness that will not stop until the torture apparatus is turned upon the screaming body politic.  By then, it is too late.  The next generation is left to evaluate what could have led to such horrendous mass insanity.

The melting pot of modern America would seem immune to a torture doctrine; each ethnicity has their own history of horrific religious or State persecution. Many times, the arrival to America was an escape toward a nation of sound laws and founding documents that elevated the individual rights they sought.  Could it be that a nation built by rugged individuals simply cannot believe that their government could become a tyranny similar to those they fled?  And, yet, the evidence of history is clear:  any government that uses torture never stops with the initial target of revenge.  It becomes a point of no return, past which no one is immune.  And, sure enough, today we see the progression from overseas non-citizens, toAmerican citizens overseas, then citizens on American soil, and now we learn of a new bipartisan Domestic Terrorism Agency that will set up the new parameters for the sweeping inclusion of both action and thought for main street America.
  

But we are a nation of laws, right?  Wrong.  The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with the most bloodthirsty, well-documented, torture gang on the planet -- the CIA.  They have ruled that the secrets of the State are more important than the rights of the individual.  Openly.  Until this point, the research and actions of the CIA have been clandestine, hidden under jungle canopies, and given plausible deniability by their black ops missions.  So, down the slippery slope we slide to a place where torture has become a mainstream debate.  This era will not be one looked upon fondly in the annals of American history. 



In our hearts, we know what torture is.  We don't need the ACLU to define it for us, nor for Jack Bauer or the courts to convince us that there are certain exclusions.

Torture is this

Medieval waterboarding used on a heretic or witch by the Catholic Church

And this

Waterboarding Demo
U.S. Government will not release photos or video of actual sessions

And this

Our Legacy?

RELATED ARTICLE BY JOHN GALT:
Another Nuremburg in the Making:  Intelligence Agencies Employ Physicians to Torture Detainees

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Obama Hauls Arizona Before the UN Human Rights Council

Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports
America’s Independent Party
August 25, 2010

Apparently Barack Obama is not content to make a federal case out of his immigration feud withArizona; he just made it an international one.

The president’s first-ever report on U.S. human rights to the UN Human Rights Council contains a rich vein of offensive material. So far, one aspect has not been reported: our petty president used the situation to bash Arizona’s immigration law — and possibly transfer jurisdiction over the law from Arizona to the UN. Throughout the report, which sounds like an Obama campaign speech, the president discusses “the original flaw” of the U.S. Constitution, America’s tolerance for slavery, and his version of our long and despicable history of discriminating against and oppressing minorities, women, homosexuals, and the handicapped. After each complaint, he addresses how he is delivering us from ourselves, patting himself on the back for such initiatives as ending “torture,” promoting Affirmative Action, and passing health care legislation.

In his section on “Values and Immigration,” he praised the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to provide better medical care for detainees and increase “Alternatives To Detention”(e.g., letting them go). Then he turned to the one state that has had the temerity to stand in his way of fundamentally transforming the American electorate:

A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.

On Obama’s command, Attorney General Eric Holder has sued the State of Arizona for passing a law that he criticized without reading, and which merely upholds federal law. (He gave sanctuary cities a pass.) He now threatens an additional lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio for “racial profiling” when arresting illegal immigrants near the Mexican border.

Obama’s turns his skirmish with Jan Brewer from a states rights dispute into an international human rights cause. It also places Arizona’s law in the hands of the United Nations.

The national report is but the first step of the international government’s review process. On November 5, the United States will be examined by a troika of UN bureaucrats from France, Japan, and Cameroon (an oppressive nation which is a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference). This trio will consider three items: Obama’s self-flagellating report, reports written about America by UN tribunals or international governing bodies, and testimony from NGOs with a pronounced anti-American bias. It will also consider “voluntary pledges and commitments made by the State,” such as suspending an Arizona state law.

Then the French, Japanese, and Cameroon diplomats will draw up a plan of action for the United States to implement.

Nations are re-examined every four years. The Human Rights Council looks for voluntary compliance. However, its website asserts, “The Human Rights Council will decide on the measures it would need to take in case of persistent non-cooperation by a State with the” World Body.

When the Left cannot win at the ballot box (virtually every time), it overrules the people in the courts. Now that Obama is not sure he can prevail in the courts, he has overruled the American people by hauling Arizona and the two-thirds of Americans who support its law before the United Nations.

The Long Road to The Hague: Prosecuting Former Prime Minister Tony Blair

The Long Road to The Hague: Prosecuting Former Prime Minister Tony Blair

Part I

By Lesley Docksey

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20740

Global Research, August 23, 2010

Ex-Prime Minister and post-Downing Street millionaire Tony Blair, to celebrate the publication of his book A Journey, is holding a ‘signing’ session at Waterstones, Piccadilly on 8 September.  That this man, responsible for taking us into an illegal war, playing his part in the ruination of an ancient country because he ‘believed he was right’, should advertise himself in this way has caused outrage. Time, I think, to look at where we, and Blair, actually stand in terms of what we can and cannot do to call him to account.

What hope for international law?

We have spent years constructing that body of treaties, statutes and conventions known as international law only to ignore it when it is most needed. How often has any state or rather, how many powerful Western states have been brought to account for breaching international law?  And how many exempt themselves from the laws while insisting others abide by them?

The world’s record at upholding its own laws is poor.  The United Nations passes Resolutions where states have breached international law, demanding compliance. It imposes sanctions, hoping to force compliance.  But beyond that what is done, except to threaten belligerence? What other routes are available?

When the UN was set up, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) also came into being.  It can settle disputes between states and it can give advisory opinions on legal matters when asked by recognised bodies or coalitions of such. A good example of the latter is the opinion they delivered in 1996 for the World Court Project on the legality of the use of nuclear weapons.  In neither case does this really result in accountability.

Of the permanent Security Council members only the United Kingdom has made a declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the Court.  Nevertheless, they all have judges sitting on the Court’s bench, and one of them, Sir Christopher Greenwood, aided the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith with his legal opinion okaying the Iraq invasion in March 2003. 

But - the UN Charter authorises the Security Council to enforce the Court’s rulings. Security Council members can thus veto any judgement that interferes with the political agendas of those states or their allies.  Political interests always seem to override the rule of law.

Why is it necessary to get someone like Tony Blair into court?  It is the only way to demonstrate to those in power that no one is above international law, and we cannot, regardless of what statements we issue or pieces of paper we sign (or in America’s case, ‘unsign’) simply decide we are exempt in every case where it could be proved we are guilty.  To get just one of the West’s leaders into court and thereby create a legal precedent, will make all the world’s leaders sit up and take note.

Prosecuting Blair

In 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted, opening the way to establishing the ICC.  When the Court was proposed, its importance was such that 60 rather than the usual 30 ratifications were required.  Considering that the Convention on Cluster Munitions took four years to reach 30 ratifications allowing it to pass into law, support for the ICC was obviously keen in that the Rome Statute gained twice the number of ratifications in the same amount of time.  Clearly, many countries felt the need for such a Court, but of the Security Council’s big 5, only the UK and France are fully signed up.

Following the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, many British campaigners attempted to get Tony Blair into court.  Encouraged by Chris Coverdale of Legal Action Against War, (LAAW), we approached our county police forces and asked them to act.  The reasoning behind this was that any British citizen, believing that a crime has taken place, has the duty to inform the police and ask them to investigate.  In this case we used the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which Blair’s own government had incorporated into British domestic law.

In November 2003 Peacerights held a Legal Inquiry to examine aspects of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and their panel of international lawyers then compiled a full report on the evidence from eye and expert witnesses, together with their legal opinion that war crimes had been committed in Iraq.  This was presented to the Attorney General and the ICC, which was unable to act.

The ICC cannot consider a prosecution unless it can be proved that efforts to prosecute in the home country have failed.  To do that one needs to demonstrate why.  And we didn’t know why, only, unofficially, that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had told the Metropolitan Police Force (the Met) that no prosecution would be allowed.  And by ‘we’, I do not mean just campaigners.  The lawyers also did not know and could not find out - which is where the Dorset Police came in.

In September 2003 I wrote a letter to Dorset ’s Chief Constable, requesting that Dorset Police investigate Mr Blair and members of his government for war crimes with a view to prosecuting them under the ICC Act 2001.  Unlike Chris Coverdale who, in the template letter he sent round to campaigners, was accusing Blair of genocide, I decided to go for war crimes and crimes against humanity, these being much easier to prove under the definitions of the Act (cluster munitions and depleted uranium weapons cause disproportionate harm to civilians, constituting war crimes).  Also, rather than swamping Dorset Police with what I thought was evidence, I simply sent them a copy of the relevant part of the Act, knowing full well that it would have been unread by the majority of the British police.

I received a letter from the Chief Constable saying that the matter was under consideration.  That in itself was a major difference between Dorset and other UK police forces.  The difficulty was that any complaint of illegal behaviour by members of the government comes under the jurisdiction of the Met, so any requests to investigate with a view to prosecution go through them to the CPS, the body that decides which public prosecutions go ahead.  All other police forces simply refused any such requests made of them.

It took weeks, plus letters and phone calls to the Met from the Chief Inspector who was trying to further my request, before the Met informed him that the CPS had refused permission for a prosecution some months back.  This was in answer to LAAW’s application, the CPS having instructed the Met at the end of November 2003, but the Met not informing LAAW until sometime in January 2004.  My local force must have felt both insulted and angry at being treated in such an offhand manner by the Met, and this may explain why I ended up achieving more than I hoped.

In late March I finally met the Chief Inspector who had with him a copy of the CPS letter, detailing why the prosecution was refused.  Forbidden to show me the letter, give me a copy or read it out to me, he managed in one short meeting to give enough information about the CPS reasons for refusal to allow us to prove we could not go further in this country (one reason being that ‘the ICC Act was not detailed enough to allow for prosecution’). 

I informed Professor Nick Grief, from Peacerights’ Legal Inquiry panel, Phil Shiner (Public Interest Lawyers) took a witness statement from me, and that joined the Peacerights report in The Hague .  Where it sits, gathering dust.

Well, you didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?

The ICC and the Crime of Aggression

The crime of aggression (then known as ‘crimes against peace’) was said at Nuremburg to be the supreme international crime, and when the ICC was brought into being, it was clear that many saw the crime of aggression as integral to the crimes that would come under its jurisdiction.  So the most pressing subject for discussion at the Rome Statute Review Conference that took place earlier this year was the defining of this crime and how a prosecution would be brought at the Court (the so-called ‘trigger’ mechanism).

One of the main blocks to progress is that the decision allowing a prosecution to take place lies with the Security Council, placing it under the control of politicians rather than judiciary.  Former judge Richard Goldstone, speaking on the BBC World Service, said one couldn’t put the crime of aggression into the hands of the ICC.  It would be very ‘political’ to make judgements on the decision to go to war.  But the ICC prosecution would not be for the decision to go to war.  That decision is always political.  Even in civil wars, the propaganda that drives neighbour to attack neighbour is mostly politically driven.  It is the act of waging war that is the crime to be prosecuted, and the decision is only part of that act.  While the ‘trigger’ allowing a prosecution to take place remains under the control of the Security Council it is impossible for any of the permanent members of the Council to be prosecuted for a crime they show an unhealthy willingness to commit.  Indeed, three of them are able to control an international body they do not support.

A letter I received from the Foreign Office states “A provision on aggression that does not make reference to the Security Council would also be bad for the Court.  We want to avoid the ICC being politicised... The Prosecutor needs to know that, before he embarks on an investigation, he has behind him the political support of the international community and that can only be expressed through the Security Council.”  That political support would be more honestly and democratically expressed through the General Assembly, where all nations can have their say.  And the best way to avoid the ICC being ‘politicised’ is to keep it well away from the Security Council.

How successful was the Review Conference in resolving this conundrum?  Amendments have been incorporated which include both the definition of the crime of aggression (identifying the decision and initiation processes, preparations for war and the various actions that, as a whole or in part, constitute a crime of aggression), and a set of conditions for the exercise of jurisdiction by the court in relation to that crime.  The conditions make no reference to the exclusive need of the Security Council for predetermination before allowing the ICC to investigate and prosecute.  Instead, if after 6 months the Council has not acted, the Prosecutor can seek a formal authority to investigate from 6 judges of the Court itself.

The amendments agreed at Kampala have to go through the same ratification process as the original Statute, although only 30 states are required this time, and this must be completed by January 1st 2017.  Everyone, including the UK government says that this means nothing will happen until 2017 and, according to the Foreign Office, “ICC States parties now have a seven-year period before making a further decision on the conditions under which the Court will exercise its jurisdiction”.  But look at it another way. They have seven years to obtain half the ratifications they originally achieved in four. 110 countries have ratified the Statute, and a further 35 have signed but not ratified.  Even with behind-the-scenes arm twisting, surely 30 states will step forward and clear the way for prosecuting the crime of aggression?  They must do it by January 2017 to get the crime of aggression onto the books.  But it is entirely possible they will fulfil that condition before then.

However - read the Kampala resolution carefully and you will see that this clause has been added to Article 15 of the Rome Statute:
‘The Court may exercise jurisdiction only with respect to crimes of aggression committed one year after the ratification or acceptance of the amendments by thirty States Parties.”

So if and when the crime of aggression is incorporated into our domestic law, we can forget about seeing Blair prosecuted for it.

But is this the only way to bring him to account?

Lesley Docksey is Editor of Abolish War 

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