Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty(rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
We have discussed the enforcement of torture laws many times here on Prof. Turley’s blog and the policy of the Obama Administration to “look forward” and not go after the Bush Administration for its admitted torture of detainees. With that in mind, it was interesting to read this week that 4 victims of torture under the hands of the Bush Administration have turned to the United Nations Committee against Torture in a last effort to get justice. “Hassan bin Attash, Sami el-Hajj, Muhammed Khan Tumani and Murat Kurnaz—they are all survivors of the systematic torture program the Bush administration authorized and carried out in locations including Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, and numerous prisons and CIA “black sites” around the world. Between them, they have been beaten, hung from walls or ceilings, deprived of sleep, food and water, and subjected to freezing temperatures and other forms of torture and abuse while held in U.S. custody. None was charged with a crime, two were detained while still minors, and one of them remains at Guantánamo.
This week, in a complaint filed with the United Nations Committee against Torture, they are asking one question: how can the man responsible for ordering these heinous crimes, openly enter a country that has pledged to prosecute all torturers regardless of their position and not face any legal action?” Truthout
The complaint was brought to the United Nations in response to the Canadian government’s refusal to arrest former President George W. Bush last year when he visited British Columbia. The idea that victims of CIA and United States Military torture techniques that are illegal in the United States have to resort to filing a complaint with the United Nations is sad. Our Judiciary and our Department of Justice have collectively turned a blind eye to the admitted instances of torture, purportedly for the purpose of allegedly protecting national security and avoiding the political fall-out an investigation would bring.
“The country in question is Canada, visited last year by former U.S. President George W. Bush during a paid speaking engagement in Surrey, British Columbia. Bush’s visit drew hundreds in protest, calling for his arrest, and it also provided bin Attash, el-Hajj, Tumani and Kurnaz the opportunity to call on the Canadian government to uphold its legal obligation under the U.N. Convention against Torture, and conduct a criminal investigation against Bush while he was on Canadian soil.
To this end, the four men, submitted a 69-page draft indictment that CCR and CCIJ had presented to Canada’s attorney general ahead of Bush’s arrival in support of their private prosecution. The submission included thousands of pages of evidence against Bush consisting of extensive reports and investigations conducted by multiple U.S. agencies and the U.N. The evidence is overwhelming, not to mention the fact that Bush has admitted, even, boasted of his crimes, saying “damn right” when asked if it was permissible to waterboard a detainee – a recognized act of torture.” Truthout
The Truthout article is a fervent plea and demand that the United Nations should enforce its own laws and call upon all countries to enforce the U.N. Convention against Torture. The United Nations has a unique ability to pressure its signing members to enforce the laws that the signers of the anti-torture measures have agreed to follow and enforce. When an individual country, for whatever reason, is unable to or unwilling to investigate and prosecute violations of the torture restrictions, the United Nations can assist in obtaining justice for the victims by reminding other member countries that if any individual who has admitted to torture, they have a duty to prosecute those individuals when they enter their respective countries.
What do you think will happen to the complaint filed by the four victims with the United Nations? Can the United Nations preserve its honor if it doesn’t follow-up on this complaint and urge any signing country to enforce it? I truly don’t know what the United Nations can do if the individual countries refuse to honor their agreements. This horrific history of torture could be corrected after the fact if the United States Department of Justice would do their job and if President Obama would just get out-of-the-way and allow the AG to investigate any and all instances of torture that have not escaped via the statute of limitations.
If we cannot or will not investigate any and all alleged law breakers because of their place in the government or because of their political persuasion, why do we have laws outlawing torture at all? What will stop current and future bad actors from engaging in torture if the former President and Vice President of the United State allowed it and encouraged it and stand impervious to prosecution? How do we prevent a political civil war if any administration tries to enforce the law against torture against its predecessors?
The rule of law stands tarnished, if not damaged, by the Obama Administration’s refusal to enforce the laws against torture. Will President Obama’s stance on enforcing the illegal torture program “evolve” now that he has survived the reelection? What do you think?
Additional Source: U.N. Convention against Torture
Z,
Didn’t the Rasul case confirm US courts jurisdiction over Gitmo?
Bud,
My article states Bush visited Canada in 2011.
Corrections:
Has either Bush or Cheney left the country since leaving office?
If not, then the message must be getting through to them.
Has either Bush or Cheney left the country since leaing office?
If not, then there must be the message must be getting through.
The Hermann Goring wikipedia section has an account of the Reichstag Fire and Goring’s role. Perhaps there are some 1933 Parallels here with Nine Eleven as well.
Wiki: The Reichstag fire occurred on the night of 27 February 1933. Göring was one of the first to arrive on the scene. Marinus van der Lubbe—a communist radical—was arrested and claimed sole responsibility for the fire. Göring immediately called for a crackdown on communists.[37]
The Nazis took advantage of the fire to advance their own political aims. The Reichstag Fire Decree, passed the next day on Hitler’s urging, suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. Activities of the German Communist Party were suppressed, and some 4,000 communist party members were arrested.[38] Göring demanded that the detainees should be shot, but Rudolf Diels, head of the Prussian political police, ignored the order.[39] Researchers, including William L. Shirer and Alan Bullock, are of the opinion that the NSDAP itself was responsible for starting the fire.[40][41]
At the Nuremberg Trials, General Franz Halder testified that Göring admitted responsibility for starting the fire. He said that at a luncheon held on Hitler’s birthday in 1942, Göring said, “The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!”[42] In his own Nuremberg testimony, Göring denied this story.[43]
Is it possible to bring a citizen’s suit against these torturers for a federal law violation? Must DoJ approve it? The feds have reached out many times in the name of citizens. Why can they not now. Is that Obama’s call?
Surely there must be statutes describing now a treaty will be enforced.
@rafflaw
I’m not certain that the Hamdan ruling was on the grounds that Guantanamo, as a military base, was *us soil*
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/why-obama-still-wont-close-guantanamo-even-if-he-wants
Exceptional nations have the halo over thier heads and can break laws of humanity in order to stop a competing tyranny. President Hindenburg had to do something when the communists allegedly burned down their Parliament building, the Reichstag. He issued the Reichstag Fire Decree which set aside human rights laws and allowed his government to go after the communists without any due process of law. The slippery slope resulted in the greatest genocide conceivable. This is the parallel for the trek taken by Bushie and Cheney with the Patriot Act after the so called terrorists took down the Twin Towers and hit the Pentagon. The 1933 Parallel is something that we need to discuss and not put in our past. We Americans think that we are exceptional. We were so exceptional that we prosecuted the germans at the Nuremburg Trials after WWII. We set the standards for human rights prosecutions. So now there is room for someone to come after Bush and Cheney and their waterboarders.
Beverliee,
I am talking about all law breakers, including illegal aliens. However, I would suggest that going after those that tortured under our name are a little higher on the priority list. Then, when you discuss illegal aliens, are you ready to put corporate officers in jail for knowingly hiring illegal aliens? They are people according to the Supreme Court so people should go to jail when corporations break the law.
I feel like that the number of honest people in our top echelon can be counted on four hands. Now the odd thing is that these bought crooks THINK that they are honest and doing the right thing.
Just like the guy who wants JJJr’s seat in Chicago. He believes. Do we? nuh uh, not in anybody right now. They’ve got to prove that we did right in voting for them.
Obama said in effect: “Force me” when we asked for what he promised us. Well, guess we’ll have to do it.
I would not take any odds that Obummer will do a thing. It is just not productive in his eyes. Our honor is so stained internationally that one more smear won’t make a difference, but will domestically. Obummer? Yeah, that is for the man, not the office.
“If we cannot or will not investigate any and all alleged law breakers because of their place in…”
Does this include illegal aliens or just those that you deem law breakers?
Bud,
I hope Cheney gets over his fear of Canada and that our neighbors to the North see the light on this issue.
Zorensen,
the courts confirmed that Gitmo is US soil and under our laws.
It is 42 years since. How we need her now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs1JMQEJn8g&feature=g-all-lgv
The sixties were definitely ended. And we are left with this “thing”.
Thanks for bringing it up Rafflaw. Did you all note that four Nobel Peace Prize winners, not including Obama, came out for Bradley Manning and us, ie our right to know WTF is happening in our names.
Is there a law against hanging former Pres n Veeps in effigy? Let’s start with that as a folk demo, anywhere we can get 10 honest people together. Let’s see how often they tase us before it gets on the news.
Remember Nixon, he left in what? 1973. Got a pardon from Ford. He was guilty of lots, but not so much Watergate, that was a scam. Now of course that was for US law violations. Is torture a crime in the USA. Yeah, sure. But odd that the President gets to decide who gets investigated and prosecuted. Don’t we have grand jurys anymore.
With all our reservations, our Congressional approval is as binding as Romney’s campaign promises. Try cashing them in.
“Will President Obama’s stance on enforcing the illegal torture program “evolve” now that he has survived the reelection? What do you think?”
One would hope, but then again, all evidence from his first term indicates otherwise.
Great follow up, raff. We need to have this iron kept hot so to speak. The wound allowing domestic war criminals to go free has created both at home and internationally will never heal until it is cleaned and (ad)dressed. And it will never be addressed if those in power are allowed to quietly sweep it away without questions.
Even though I was glad to see the President re-elected, this was one area in which I found his performance in the prior four years abyssmal. I would have thought that as a Black man, given the history of slavery, he would be amienable to putting the Bush administration on trial, but he really disappointed me and most of my friends with his “looking forward, not back”. Would that also be his view of the holocaust? How about the civil rights protests? Should we only look forward and not look back? We MUST Hold the Bush administration to account for their blatant disregard for the establishment of torture, or lose forever the tenuious hold we have of ANY moral imperitive.
To actually do anything to bring Bush and Cheney to justice for not following our laws against torture sounds like an untouchable political hot potato that even the current president to handle. Perhaps the only way it could be achieved to minutely lessen the inevitable backlash would be to pull a fast one. That is, no sooner are Bush and Cheney found guilty (as surely they must be), than the president pardons them both. However, with so much concern by congressional members about their own and their party’s re-election futures, I feel sure politicians on the Left would be scared spitless that the whole brouhaha would repeatedly come back to haunt them. After all, how could anyone who is supposed to be a “good American” do anything to tarnish our self-aggrandizing, jingoistic image of ourselves as the “world’s greatest power,” etc.
John McCain, born in Panama, was eligible to be president because he was born on a US military base. While this would imply that the US is an empire — rather than a republic — it seems more plausible than attempts to exclude Barry Goldwater from office because he was born in Arizona before it was a state.
But what I wonder about, in terms of the official position of the US government, relates more to Guantanamo: what is the relation of these issues to, for example, John Yoo’s suggestion that the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility — outside US territory — in order to evade the Geneva Conventions?
How is waterboarding clearly torture during the Spanish Inquisition, but not today because of a memo?
Torture laws??? They are way in the back window somewhere.
Laws to kill people have replaced them… You see torture never did work and still doesn’t work… But killing, well it is just great now.
No explanations to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
As far as Canada is concerned, their government wouldn’t do anything but it sounds like Cheney is scared to visit Canada….
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/12/dick-cheney-cancels-toronto-trip-says-canada-is-too-dangerous/
My Pal took me to a clinic to pick up some medicine he needed for his eyesight, or lack there of. We sat in this waiting room with a few other patients and they had this television going with some show on called Fox News. Then we went to the airport waiting room waiting for unlce billy to get off a plane and had to watch some guy named Rush Limbaugh. Pure torure. Is there no law against this kind of thing?