The report prepared by Amnesty
International was called "absurd" by George W. Bush. However, there is
considerable evidence to show that this administration has been involved in
crimes of torture. The evidence comes not only from the victims, but
also from military officers, enlisted personnel, and others.
"Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their
obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials
involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support
prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their
territory and begin legal proceedings against them."
Statement Of Dr. William
F. Schulz Executive Director, Amnesty International USA [Excerpt--
for full statement, see
Here]
May 25, 2005
Good morning. I’m William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty
International USA. Today, Amnesty International releases its annual report
on the state of human rights around the world. What we have found brings
shame to governments from Afghanistan to the United States. We have
documented that the use of torture and ill treatment is widespread and that
the US government is a leading purveyor and practitioner of this odious
human rights violation.
The refusal of the US government to conduct a truly independent
investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention
centers is tantamount to a whitewash, if not a cover-up, of these
disgraceful crimes. It is a failure of leadership to prosecute only
enlisted soldiers and a few officers while protecting those who designed a
deliberate government policy of torture and authorized interrogation
techniques that constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
The government’s investigation must climb all the way to the top of the
military and civilian chain of command.
If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility,
Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their
obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials
involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support
prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their
territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent
high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their
next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may
find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in
1998.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned in 2002 that a failure to
apply international law to detainees in Afghanistan may “provoke some
individual foreign prosecutors to investigate and prosecute our officials
and troops.” It’s not too late for President Bush to heed those words today
and apply international law to all who are responsible for torture at all US
detention centers.
Secretary Powell also argued at the time that adhering to international
law “preserves US credibility and moral authority by taking the high
ground.”
How far from that moral high ground the US government has fallen: Its
descent into torture and ill treatment includes beatings, prolonged
restraint in painful positions, hooding and the use of dogs at Abu Ghraib,
Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Air Base and “rendering” detainees to countries
that practice torture.
Tolerance for torture and ill treatment, signaled by a failure to
investigate and prosecute those responsible, is the most effective
encouragement for it to expand and grow. Like a virus, the techniques used
by the United States will multiply and spread unless those who plotted their
use are held accountable. Those who conducted the abusive interrogations
must be held to account, but so too must those who schemed to authorize
those actions, sometimes from the comfort of government buildings. If the
United States permits the architects of torture policy to get off scot-free,
then other nations should step into the breach.
Foreign governments that are party to the Geneva Conventions and/or the
Convention against Torture—and that is some 190 countries—and countries that
have national legislation that authorizes prosecution—and that is at least
125 countries—have a legally binding obligation to exercise what is known as
universal jurisdiction over people accused of grave breaches of the
Conventions. Governments are required to investigate suspects and, if
warranted, to prosecute them or to extradite them to a country that will.
Crimes such as torture are so serious that they amount to an offense against
all of humanity and require governments to investigate and prosecute people
responsible for those crimes—no matter where the crime was committed.
Amnesty International’s list of those who may be considered high-level
torture architects includes Donald Rumsfeld, who approved a December 2002
memorandum that permitted such unlawful interrogation techniques as stress
positions, prolonged isolation, stripping, and the use of dogs at Guantanamo
Bay; William Haynes, the Defense Department General Counsel who wrote that
memo, and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is cited
in the memo as concurring with its recommendations.
Our list includes Major General Geoffrey Miller, Commander of the Joint
Task Force Guantanamo, whose subordinates used some of the approved torture
techniques and who was sent to Iraq where he recommended that prison guards
“soften up” detainees for interrogations; former CIA Director George
Tenet, whose agency kept so-called “ghost detainees” off registration logs
and hidden during visits by the Red Cross and whose operatives reportedly
used such techniques as water-boarding, feigning suffocation, stress
positions, and incommunicado detention.
And it includes Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who called the
Geneva Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete” in a January 2002 memo and who
requested the memos that fueled the atrocities at Abu Ghraib; Lieutenant
General Ricardo Sanchez, former Commander of US Forces in Iraq, and Sanchez’
deputy, Major General Walter Wojdakowsi, who failed to ensure proper staff
oversight of detention and interrogation operations at Abu Ghraib, according
to the military’s Fay-Jones report, and Captain Carolyn Wood, who oversaw
interrogation operations at Bagram Air Base and who permitted the use of
dogs, stress positions and sensory deprivation.
While this is by no means an exhaustive list of those who deserve
investigation, we would be remiss if we ignored President George W. Bush’s
role in the scandal. After all, his Administration has repeatedly justified
its detention and interrogation policies as legitimate under the President’s
powers as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. And President Bush signed
a February 2002 memo stating that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to
Taliban or al Qaeda detainees and that their humane treatment should be
contingent on “military necessity.” This set the stage for the tragic abuses
of detainees.
Without full and impartial investigations of all key players, the torture
scandal will come to be as indelibly associated with the Bush Presidency as
Teapot Dome is with Warren Harding’s or Watergate with Richard Nixon’s.
What’s more, it is the height of hypocrisy for the US government itself
to use the very torture techniques that it routinely condemns in other
countries.
The Bush Administration, which saw fit in its most recent “Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices” to criticize Syria for administering
electric shocks, appears to have used the same torture technique in the war
on terror. Amnesty International took testimony, for example, from Mohammad
al Dossari, who alleged that US soldiers subjected him to electric shocks,
death threats, assault and humiliation in Kandahar.
The Bush Administration cited Egypt for beating victims with fists, whips
and metal rods. And yet US Major Michael Smith testified at an
administrative review hearing last year that an autopsy of a captured Iraqi
general revealed he had suffered five broken ribs that were “consistent with
blunt force trauma, that is, either punching, kicking or striking with an
object or being thrown into an object.”
When the US government then calls upon foreign leaders to bring to
justice those who commit or authorize human rights violations in their own
countries, why should those foreign leaders listen? And if the US government
does not abide by the same standards of justice, what shred of moral
authority will we retain to pressure other governments to diminish abuses?
It is far past time for President Bush to prove that he is not covering
up the misdeeds of senior officials and political cronies who designed and
authorized these nefarious interrogation policies.
Congress must appoint an impartial and independent commission to
investigate the masterminds of the atrocious human rights violations at Abu
Ghraib and other detention centers, and President Bush should use the power
of his office to press Congress to do so. Attorney General Gonzales must
appoint an independent Special Counsel to conduct criminal investigations
into administration officials, including himself, who are suspected of
having committed, assisted, authorized, or condoned these abuses or had
command responsibility for them. Such investigations must apply to both
military and civilian officials who may be complicit in these crimes.
It is inexcusable that the few military higher-ups who have been held
accountable have received the equivalent of a parental time out for their
wrongdoing, among them Col. Thomas Pappas, the top military intelligence
officer stationed at Abu Ghraib in 2003, who was given only a reprimand and
a fine amounting to one month’s pay.
Even worse, for President Bush to promote and reward those who should be
investigated makes a mockery of the principles of justice on which this
nation was founded. Those who were rewarded include Gonzales, promoted from
White House Counsel to the highest law enforcement position in the land;
Timothy Flanigan, just nominated to serve as Gonzales’ second in command and
who allegedly contributed to several key legal opinions that lead to
torture; Haynes, the Defense counsel who was nominated to serve on the
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Jay Bybee, former Assistant Attorney
General in the Office of Legal Counsel whose August 2002 memo argued that
only interrogation techniques that cause pain that would ordinarily be
associated with death or organ failure constitute torture and who was later
nominated to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Furthermore, Amnesty International calls upon state bar authorities to
investigate the Administration lawyers alleged to be involved in the torture
scandal for failing to meet professional responsibility standards. The
attorneys who wrote various legal opinions that may have provided cover for
subsequent crimes and who should be investigated include Bybee and David
Addington, General Counsel to Vice President Cheney; Robert Delahunty,
former Special Counsel in the Office of Homeland Security, and three
attorneys in the Office of Legal Counsel—John Yoo, former Deputy Assistant
Attorney General, Patrick Philbin, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and
Jack Goldsmith, former Assistant Attorney General. We also call on the
Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to make public
the findings of its investigation into the
Bybee memo.
A wall of secrecy is protecting those who masterminded and developed the
US torture policy. Unless those who drew the blueprint for torture, approved
it and ordered it implemented are held accountable, the United States’ once
proud reputation as an exemplar of human rights will remain in tatters. Its
shattered image will continue to fuel anti-American sentiment around the
globe and make the world a more dangerous place.
Amnesty International’s new report documents just how dangerous the world
remains.
Nepal is on the brink of catastrophe. Each day, civilians face possible
torture, “disappearances,” political executions, abduction, arbitrary
detention, rape and other abuses at the hands of government security forces
and insurgents from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). New cases of
torture are reported almost daily, and hundreds of student activists,
journalists, trade unionists and human rights defenders have been arrested.
Despite the Nepali government’s poor human rights record, since 2001 the
US government has provided it with more than $29 million in security
assistance to fight the insurgents. Amnesty International strongly condemns
the human rights violations committed by those insurgents but urges the US
government to immediately suspend all security assistance to the Nepalese
military until fundamental human rights protections are restored. We call on
the government of Nepal to immediately release all prisoners of conscience,
reinstate fundamental freedoms, and bring to justice security forces who
commit abuses.
Today, as we focus on the torture scandal, Amnesty International USA
announces its new grassroots campaign, “Denounce Torture: Stop It Now!”
Public opinion surveys have shown that Americans oppose the use of torture,
and Amnesty International will work to turn that opposition into action. We
will educate and mobilize tens of thousands of people around the country to
take action to end torture and ill treatment and pressure the government to
hold individuals accountable at all levels of the chain of command.
Mr. President, last year you said, “Let me make very clear the position
of my government and our country. We do not condone torture. I have never
ordered torture. I will never order torture. The values of this country are
such that torture is not a part of our soul and being.”
President Bush, it is time to find out whether what you said is true and,
if you did not order torture, then who did. It is time to prove that your
words were not an artful cover-up of illegal actions. It is time to stop
sheltering the apparent architects of torture policy, or else you will be
known not for your promotion of democracy but for your perpetuation of
demagoguery, not for your high mindedness but for your hypocrisy. Mr.
President, tear down this wall of secrecy and silence! Thank you.
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