Huffington Post: Bush Cancels Visit To Switzerland Due To Threat of arrest for Torture

Posted: 02/ 5/11 09:00 PM

GENEVA, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President George W. Bush has cancelled his visit to Switzerland. He was afraid of being arrested for alleged torture.

The Swiss government was expected to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he flew into Switzerland.

Criminal complaints against Bush had been filed in Geneva,

Human rights groups said they were going to submit a 2,500-page case against Bush in Geneva for alleged mistreatment of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch and International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) said Bush admitted in his memoirs and television interviews to authorizing the interrogation technique that simulates drowning.

"He's avoiding the handcuffs," said Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch.


Brody is an American-trained lawyer specialised in pursuing war crimes worldwide, especially those allegedly ordered by former leaders.Brody said:

President Bush has admitted he ordered waterboarding which everyone considers to be a form of torture under international law. 

Under the Convention against Torture, authorities would have been obliged to open an investigation and either prosecute or extradite George Bush.

Swiss judicial officials indicated that Bush would still enjoy some diplomatic immunity as a former head of state.

Bush, in his "Decision Points" memoirs on his 2001-2009 presidency, defended the use of waterboarding as key to preventing further terror attacks against the US.

Bush was unapologetic about the water boarding, a technique used by the Chinese communists during the Korean War.

The Convention on Torture, an international pact prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. Switzerland and the United States are among 147 signatories to the 1987 treaty.

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Israel's Abu Ghraib: Soldiers posing with dead or bound Palestinians

From: RussiaToday | August 18, 2010  
 

A Human rights group says the photos posted on Facebook of a former Israeli officer posing beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners - are the tip of the iceberg.

The group 'Breaking the Silence' even went as far as publishing photos of other soldiers in front of Palestinian prisoners. The Israeli Army had been defending itself by saying it was a one time event, and promised to investigate. Palestinian officials say this incident shows the true attitude of Israelis.

Lewis Frankenthaler from the Public Committee Against Torture In Israel says the Jewish State's Army lacks discipline and psychological training.

... (more info)  

source: Russia Today


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Economist: Torture more acceptable in the US than in China

Yesterday, The Economist posted poll numbers on global attitudes towards torture. This was based on 2008 research conducted by World Public Opinion.  

The Economist notes: "Surprisingly, democracies are not necessarily more hostile to the practice than non-democracies.

According to the polls, Americans are more willing to tolerate the use of torture than are Chinese." US attitudes about torture are very similar to the Egyptians and Russians.



See the rest of the story at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/31/ieconomisti-us-more-permi_n_248811.html

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CIA used fire ants during interrogation of jihadists

July 16, 2009

CIA Supervisor Claimed He Used Fire Ants On Detainee

A recently released legal memo describing interrogation techniques showed that Bush Administration lawyers had approved the use of "insects" in interrogations. "You would like to place [Abu] Zubaydeh in a cramped confinement box with an insect," Jay Bybee, then a Justice Department lawyer and now a federal judge, wrote in 2002. He opined that as long as the bug wasn't actually harmful, it would not violate the law to use one to scare a terrorist detainee.

According to Wikipedia,  inject a toxic alkaloid venom called Solenopsin, a compound from the class of piperidines. For humans, this is a painful sting, it hurts, a sensation similar to what one feels when burned by fire—hence the name fire ant—and the after effects of the sting can be deadly to sensitive individuals.

I would imagine that vice president Dick Cheney enjoyed reading about the detainees that were tortured with fire ants.  Jeb Bush probably sent some Florida fire ants to Iraq to help the CIA operatives inflict as much pain as possible.

Sources: Huffington Post and Wikipedia

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Congressman Robert Wexler on torture

We are on the cusp of perhaps the most significant development in our multi-year quest for accountability:

Multiple sources are reporting that Attorney General Eric Holder is likely to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate possible crimes committed by and under the authority of the Bush Administration – particularly as they relate to the use of torture.

Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind: such an appointment is critical to the integrity of our system of government. As you know, I have been pushing for such accountability for quite some time.

All of the evidence publicly available raises significant questions as to whether the Bush Administration or interrogators violated the law regarding the authorization and use of interrogation techniques. Such techniques such as excessive waterboarding and extreme physical brutality likely violated existing American law and international treaties against torture and led to the death of prisoners held in US custody.

The Attorney General testified in the Judiciary Committee recently: “If somebody was tortured to death, clearly a crime would have occurred.”

Please click here to support my emails and message.

There are those who fear that an investigation will distract and divide us at a time when we need to focus on very pressing issues such as health care, the economy, and foreign policy. The truth is that we can and must do both. Just as we must repair our health care and economic system, we must also repair of system of justice.

The appointment of a Special Prosecutor has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the seriousness of the allegations and the evidence that supports them.

In fact, by appointing a Special Prosecutor – the Department of Justice separates itself from the investigation, allowing the evidence to be considered totally independent of political or institutional influences.

I refuse to believe that many Americans, regardless of their political leanings, would want any President, Vice President, or Cabinet official to exist above the law. That is not democracy.

Should we fail to investigate alleged abuses of power – even at this late date – we concede our rights and set dangerous precedents for the future.

Enforcement of our laws preserves the balance of power – not simply between branches of government – but between citizens and their elected leaders.

Sincerely,

Congressman Robert Wexler

Paid for by "Wexler for Congress"

PO Box 810669

Boca Raton, FL 33481

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UN pushes countries to end torture

Note: The US is not yet a signatory. I can only imagine how the Republicans will react to this treaty when it hits the US Senate. See the signatories at http://www.hrweb.org/legal/catsigs.html, 

Some states like China have ratified the Convention Against Torture and made a declaration, under Article 28, that they do not recognize the competence of the Committee against Torture to investigate allegations of widespread torture within their boundaries. This makes the treaty toothless.

UNITED NATIONS, June 26 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday urged governments to go on the offensive in the fight against torture, stressing there can be no justification under any circumstances for such "cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment," in a message marking the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

"I urge all United Nations member states that have not yet done so to ratify and implement in good faith the Convention against Torture (CAT)," Ban said in the message. "Let us step up the fight against torture and cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment and punishment, wherever they occur."

Echoing Ban's statements, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that no exceptional "circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, maybe invoked as a justification of torture." Pillay stressed that no one should be let off the hook for torture, including the policy-makers and public officials who define the policy and give the orders. Since its adoption in 1984, a total of 146 nations, or three-quarters of the world, has ratified the convention, noted Pillay, who urged the remaining countries to sign up and current signatories to abide by its "very clear" rules.

"Many states that have ratified CAT continue to practice torture, some of them on a daily basis," she said, adding that other states enable torture by sending back asylum-seekers to countries they know carry out torture, which is also clearly prohibited by the treaty. The high commissioner noted that the terrorist attacks of Sept.11, 2001 resulted in some countries backsliding on commitments not to practice or condone torture, looking for "ingenious ways to get around CAT, or stretch its boundaries."

"The Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons, in particular, became high-profile symbols of this regression," she said. "New terms such as 'water-boarding' and 'rendition' entered the public discourse, as human rights lawyers and advocates looked on in dismay."

Welcoming United States President Barack Obama's decisions to close Guantanamo and ban methods of interrogation that contravene international law, Pillay said that leadership plays a crucial role in upholding the total prohibition of torture.

"As CAT makes clear, people who order or inflict torture can not be exonerated, and the roles of certain lawyers, as well as doctors who have attended torture sessions, should be scrutinized," she said.

Pillay also said that while Guantanamo was "reprehensible," it paled in comparison to the scale and nature of torture taking place in prisons, police stations and other government premises in countries all around the world.

There are thousands of such places and tens of thousands of victims, she said, including child criminals and street children, she said, not just suspected terrorists and political activists. "I call on leaders across the world to send a clear and unequivocal message that torture will no longer be tolerated," she said.

Editor: Xiong Tong

See the complete treat at http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html

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