RNA - This is because the Trump White House is moving to keep the Senate report on the CIA's torture and detention program forever from the public eye. Laws requiring government records to eventually be made public don't apply to congressional documents. And the CIA, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the CIA's inspector general have already returned their copies of the report. The idea is to cover up the sensitive sources and condemnable torture methods contained within the report - instead of holding those responsible to account.
The landmark investigative report documents horrific abuses and details of CIA lies to the White House, Congress, the courts, and the international community about its torture program. This critically important investigation should have been made public years ago. It must not be buried or destroyed.
Human rights organizations have criticized the move to totally bury the report. They say, “For over a decade, the US government has refused to reckon with US torture, preferring to deny or suppress the facts. It is no surprise that we now have a president whose contempt for facts leads to dangerous decisions. We cannot learn from history unless we know what it is."
When the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report was released in December of 2014, Ben Emmerson, United Nations Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, said that those "responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in the report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes."
Sullivan-Bennis also referenced that shorter document as well as the still-open Guantanamo Bay prison, where "harmless men are still languishing without charge or trial, due entirely to mistakes and abuses detailed in the summary of that report - merely the tip of the iceberg. My clients and the American people are entitled to see the truth. Lawmakers should be ashamed of this disgraceful cover-up, and Americans should ask themselves what our government is so desperate to hide."
Here is some background information about the report on the CIA and its detention and interrogation program:
- The report is the result of an investigation into six years of detention and "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the CIA against suspected terrorists in secret sites around the world.
- The 525-page report is a summary of a classified 6,700 page review.
- The report says the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of obtaining accurate information or gaining detainee cooperation.
- The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.
Under International Law, actions on foreign soil fall under legal jurisdictions of those countries or the ICC in The Hague. The International Criminal Court has already said it is looking at potential US torture of detainees in Afghanistan. Meaning, US officials and military officers implicated by the report on torture must face arrest in other countries as a result of investigations by their national courts.
Obviously this is something for the ICC to take up. But we have not seen any persuasive indicators that the Court is willing to step up to its responsibilities. However, because torture is considered a grave crime under International Law, other governments could arrest and prosecute anyone implicated in the report who happened to be on their territory under the principle of universal jurisdiction. It is a legal avenue open to states with those laws on their books and the political will. Many European states and many states internationally have those laws – particularly those that had a secret CIA interrogation site and tried to convince the US government to close it.
In summation, the use of torture cannot be condoned. It is against International Law, International Humanitarian Law, and the common laws of nations. Just like the International Criminal Court, governments should assess as part of a preliminary examination of US treatment of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. These inquiries should lead to charges against the US officials involved in the torture program, for both legal and political reasons. These governments can and should end impunity for the most egregious and shocking breaches of International Law.
Furthermore, the significance of the US torture program goes well beyond simple numbers of victims. This is a colonial power that has carried out a program of torture, tried to cover it up in a reprehensible way, and recruited the help of some 50 other countries in the program. The ICC prosecutors and national governments should keep in mind that by keeping the torture report forever from the public eye, the Trump administration is unwilling to prosecute the systematic abuses itself. The American process is essentially a sham.
True, the US is not a state party to the ICC. But some governments could still request an ICC investigation as they are state parties to the statute and the US abuses were committed on their soil. Actions on foreign soil fall under legal jurisdictions of those countries or the ICC in The Hague.
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