Torture Documents

Here are some documents about recent allegations of torture by the US. I can post more, but right now my pdf reader isn't working. Of course, it's difficult to know for sure what the military is doing right now. That's why I prefer history to current events.

NPR's series on Torture. This is a link to Alan Dershowitz's proposal that torture be brought out in the open so that it can be regulated. There are links to the rest of the series on the side of the screen.

Amnesty International's Memorandum about the findings of the UN Committee Against Torture. There is also an earlier document they filed with the UN Committee Against Torture, but my computer doesn't want to open it.



The Washington Post report on 2002 Justice Department memo (for those who don't have Lexis Nexis).

June 13, 2004 Sunday
Final Edition

SECTION: A Section; A03

LENGTH: 1174 words

HEADLINE: Justice Department Memo Said ...

BODY:
In August 2002, the Justice Department advised the White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad "may be justified," and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in President Bush's war on terrorism, according to a newly obtained memo.

If a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity, "he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network," said the memo, from the Justice Department's office of legal counsel, written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance. It added that arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later.

Bush said that he expects U.S. authorities to follow the law when interrogating prisoners abroad, but he declined to say at a news conference Thursday in Savannah, Ga., whether he believes torture is permitted under the law. Pressed repeatedly during a news conference at the end of the Group of Eight summit about the Justice Department memo, Bush said only that U.S. interrogators had to follow the law.

The legal reasoning in the 2002 memo, which covered treatment of al Qaeda detainees in CIA custody, was later used in a March 2003 report by Pentagon lawyers assessing interrogation rules governing the Defense Department's detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Bush administration officials say flatly that international conventions barring torture have been abided, and that detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere have been treated humanely, except in the cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for which seven military police soldiers have been charged.

-- Dana Priest, Dana Milbank and R. Jeffrey Smith