[Mb-civic] Give Rumsfeld the Pinochet Treatment, Says US Amnesty Chief

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Inter Press Service via Common Dreams - May 26, 2005
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0526-03.htm

Give Rumsfeld the Pinochet Treatment, Says US Amnesty Chief

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - If the administration of President George W. Bush fails to
conduct a truly independent investigation of U.S. abuses against detainees
in Iraq and elsewhere, foreign governments should investigate and
prosecute those senior officials who bear responsibility for them, the
head of the U.S. chapter of Amnesty International said here Wednesday.

Speaking at the release of Amnesty's annual report, William Schulz 
charged that Washington has become "a leading purveyor and 
practitioner" of torture and ill-treatment and that senior officials
should face prosecution by other governments for violations of the Geneva
Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

"If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty
International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations
under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials
involved in the torture scandal." -William Schulz, Amnesty Intl USA

Among those officials, Schulz named Bush, Defense Secretary Donald 
Rumsfeld, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
director George Tenet, and senior officers at U.S. detention facilities at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Abu Ghraib, Iraq.

"If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty
International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations
under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials
involved in the torture scandal," said Schulz, who added that violations
of the torture convention, which has been ratified by the United States
and some 138 other countries, can be prosecuted in any jurisdiction.

"If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should
arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings
against them," he added. "The apparent high-level architects of torture
should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like
Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under
arrest as (former Chilean dictator) Augusto Pinochet famously did in
London in 1998."

Schulz also called on state bar associations to investigate 
administration lawyers who helped prepare legal opinions that sought to
justify or defend the use of abusive interrogation methods for breach of
their professional and ethical responsibilities.

He cited, in particular, Vice President Dick Cheney's general counsel,
David Addington; Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes; and top
officials in the Justice Department's Office of General Counsel, one of
whom, Jay Bybee, has since been confirmed as a federal appeals court
judge.

"A wall of secrecy is protecting those who masterminded and developed the
U.S. torture policy," Schulz said. "Unless those who drew the blueprint
for torture, approved it, and ordered it implemented are held accountable,
the United States' once-proud reputation as an exemplar of human rights
will remain in tatters."

Schulz's appeal for foreign governments to take the initiative coincided
with the launch of a bipartisan drive endorsed by some 350 attorneys and
legal scholars urging the administration to establish an independent
commission to address the allegations of abuse and torture, including an
assessment of the responsibility of senior administration officials and
military officers.

"By establishing an independent bipartisan commission to fully 
investigate the issue of abuse of terrorist suspects," said John 
Whitehead, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Ronald Reagan
administration, "Congress and the president have a unique opportunity to
send a message to the rest of the world that the United States is
committed to respecting the inherent worth and dignity of all human
beings, whether they are U.S. citizens or prisoners of war.”

Whitehead said a high-level, independent investigation was necessary
because the Pentagon's ongoing or recently completed investigations were
too narrowly focused and not designed to produce recommendations to
prevent future abuses.

Among the signers of the initiative, which was sponsored by the 
bipartisan Constitution Project at Georgetown University, were prominent
right-wing activists including David Keene, chairman of the American
Conservative Union, two former Republican congressmen, as well as former
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering, and former Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director William Sessions. The National
Institute of Military Justice (NIMJ) also endorsed the statement, as did
more than a dozen military law specialists and retired high-ranking
military officers.

Since the abuses first came to light with the publication of photos of
prisoners at Abu Ghraib 13 months ago, the Pentagon has carried out dozens
of reviews, courts-martial, and disciplinary proceedings. But virtually
all of them have dealt only with the responsibility of the soldiers who
carried out the abuses or their immediate superiors.

The failure to address the responsibility of officials and officers at the
top of the command chain, particularly in light of the disclosure of memos
which appeared to authorize at least some of the tactics carried out
against detainees, has provoked repeated demands by human rights groups to
appoint an independent commission to conduct a thorough examination. Last
summer, the 400,000-lawyer American Bar Association joined Amnesty, 
Human
rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) in those demands.

But the Bush administration has rejected them, arguing that the 
Pentagon's own efforts to investigate and prosecute abuses were 
adequate. The Republican leadership in Congress has also paralyzed 
efforts by Democratic and some Republican lawmakers to create a
commission.

The refusal to investigate translates into effective "tolerance" for
torture and mistreatment, Schulz said, resulting not only in the spread of
such practices but also in the destruction of U.S. credibility when it
assails other countries, such as Syria or Egypt, for human rights
violations.

"It is the height of hypocrisy for the U.S. government itself to use the
very torture techniques that it routinely condemns in other countries," he
said. "When the U.S. government then calls upon foreign leaders to bring
to justice those who commit or authorize human rights violations in their
own countries, why should those foreign leaders listen?"

As he spoke, the ACLU released new documents it had obtained from the FBI
under court order that disclosed that prisoners held at Guantanamo
complained that guards there had repeatedly mistreated the Koran. In one
2002 summary, an FBI interrogator noted a prisoner's allegation that
guards had flushed a Koran down a toilet.

The disclosure comes on the heels of controversy over a Newsweek report
saying that government investigators had corroborated an almost identical
incident. Newsweek ultimately retracted its story because a confidential
government source could not be confirmed.

Other documents released Wednesday by the ACLU provided accounts of 
beatings, planned suicide attempts, hunger strikes to protest 
mistreatment and sexual assaults, including an incident in which a 
female guard fondled a detainee's genitals while he was held down by male
guards.

"The United States government continues to turn a blind eye to mounting
evidence of widespread abuse of detainees held in its custody," said ACLU
director Anthony Romero. "If we are to truly repair America's standing in
the world, the Bush administration must hold accountable high-ranking
officials who allow the continuing abuse and torture of detainees."

© 2005 IPS - Inter Press Service


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