Thursday, March 29, 2007

Making Torture Hurt... The Torturers

A US District Judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit brought by nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan to hold Donald Rumsfeld and several military officers accountable for torture, abuse, and illegal interrogation practices they suffered while in American custody. According to this WaPo article, the judge maintained that "...Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job":

No matter how appealing it might seem to use the courts to correct allegations of severe abuses of power, Hogan wrote, government officials are immune from such lawsuits.

Now I understand the logic of not holding a government official accountable for actions taken by his staff that he was unaware of. After all, that would certainly have a chilling effect on people's willingness to serve in government. But this particular lawsuit makes the claim that, a) Rumsfeld was aware of the abuse, and ignored the warnings, and b) that he authorized illegal interrogation practices that violated the prisoners constitutional & human rights. I'm not a lawyer, but that strikes me as just the sort of thing that government officials are in fact held accountable for.

The lawsuit brings a factual claim that seems to my layperson's eye to meet the standard for government malfeasance. If Rumsfeld can rebut it, by all means, let him. But the lawsuit should proceed.

In a bitter irony, on the same day the suit was dismissed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak presented his annual report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva:

Mr Nowak said torture victims required long and costly treatment, and usually rich nations footed the bill rather than the offending states...

"Countries where torture is widespread or even systematic should be held accountable to pay," the UN rapporteur said.

Mr Nowak suggested that such states could then even pass the bill on to the individual torturers.

"If individual torturers would have to pay all the long-term costs, this would have a much stronger deterrent effect on torture than some kind of disciplinary or lenient criminal punishment..."

He also called for the application of a provision for universal jurisdiction within the UN convention against torture, which obliges countries to arrest alleged torturers who arrive on their territory.

Posted by Judah in:  Global War On Terror   Human Rights   

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