The legal evils of Guantanamo Bay: The Rumsfeld Memo

[maddezmom]

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 27/04/2008



Alasdair Palmer reviews Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law by Philippe Sands

Torture Team centres on a single document: a memo, signed by the former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, authorising the use of additional methods of interrogation on those interned at Guantanamo Bay. Taken together, Philippe Sands believes these amount to torture.

He believes that the memo holds the key to unlocking the Bush administration's policy on the treatment of the non-American citizens it suspected of involvement in al-Qa'eda-inspired terrorism.

He thinks this policy, which involved torture and a retreat from the Geneva Convention, is both unique and uniquely evil.

It seems to me, however, that what is different this time isn't the fact of torture: it is the attempt to make it legal. That attempt left a paper trail and it is the release to the public of that trail that has made this book possible.

It is based around Sands's interviews with some of the key people involved. Not surprisingly, he was unable to get to Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush. Predictably, those lower down the hierarchy say that what happened wasn't their fault: 'Oh no, Sir, it wasn't me. I didn't do it', seems to be the most common response.


more:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/27/bosan127.xml

[maddezmom]

1. ACLU And HRF Ask Circuit Court To Reconsider Rumsfeld Torture Case

ACLU And HRF Ask Circuit Court To Reconsider Rumsfeld Torture Case
Precedent Used To Dismiss Case Wrongly Ignores Constitution, Groups Say

WASHINGTON, DC - April 25 - The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First (HRF) today filed an unusual motion in federal court in an effort to overturn the dismissal of a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The March 2005 lawsuit was filed on behalf of nine Iraqi and Afghan former civilian detainees who were tortured while in U.S. military custody and eventually released without being charged with a crime. The lawsuit charged that then-Secretary Rumsfeld was legally responsible for policies and practices leading to the torture and abuse of detainees.


"It is increasingly obvious that responsibility for widespread and systemic abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan lies at the top of the chain of command, but no one has been held accountable," said Lucas Guttentag, ACLU lead counsel for the plaintiffs. "The rule of law and the protections of the Constitution cannot stop at the water’s edge when United States officials adopt policies that violate fundamental rights and core American values."

Today’s motion asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to hear the case in the first instance as an “en banc” matter, meaning the entire court would hear the request rather than the standard procedure of assigning the case to a panel of three judges. The motion asks the court to sit “en banc” in order to reconsider its existing decisions that suggest that foreign nationals outside the United States can never bring a claim against government officials for violations of the Constitution.

In March 2007, Chief Judge Thomas A. Hogan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit even though he described the case as “lamentable” and “appalling” and noted that “the facts alleged in the complaint stand as indictment of the humanity with which the United States treats its detainees.” Still, he concluded that under the governing precedent the case must be dismissed.

more:http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0425-09.htm

[JDPriestly]

2. This article views the torture memos and Sands' book from

the point of view of national security and the Geneva Convention. The author does not consider that torture of detainees who have not been tried and convicted violates a fundamental precept of our law: that a person is innocent until proven guilty. It is a violation of intrinsic human rights to punish a person without first charging the person and proving the person's guilt in a court of law. These prisoners were tortured before being charged and tried. There are many more serious issues, but that is one of the first issues we should consider.

Torturing prisoners without charging or trying or convicting them is a bad precedent. It permits the development of an arbitrary system of accusation, retribution and punishment based on rumor, vengeance and personal hatred. Such a system contravenes everything that we stand for as a nation -- which is the rule of law, the law of the people and not of an elite group of individuals.