March 30, 2009

• Long Time No See

  I see that I haven't posted in a month.  My mother's death, and the associated psychological detritus, may have had something to do with it.  I may write a post about my mother one of these days, though I'm not at all certain that it matters in the least.  We all write about our own lives as though they were actually important to someone else besides ourselves.

  Meanwhile, in any case, there's this, below.  I like this.  The final four or five paragraphs are especially piquant.

  Washington Monthly
  

  
  

  March 28, 2009

  By: dday

  
  

  SPANISH COURT OPENS TORTURE INQUIRY AGAINST GONZALES, ADDINGTON, YOO, OTHERS.... Just off the press from the New York Times:

  A high-level Spanish
  court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation
  against six former Bush administration officials, including former
  Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, on whether they violated
  international law by providing a legalistic framework to justify the
  use of torture of American prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an
  official close to the case said.

  
  The case was sent to the
  prosecutor's office for review by Baltasar Garzon, the crusading
  investigative judge who indicted the former Chilean dictator Augusto
  Pinochet. The official said that it was "highly probable" that the case
  would go forward and could lead to arrest warrants.

  
  

  I would call this a big
  deal. As the report notes, Garzon indicted Augusto Pinochet, which led
  to his arrest and extradition. This would not immediately lead to
  arrest and trial, but it would certainly confine the six officials to
  the United States and increase the pressure for stateside
  investigations. Spanish courts have "universal jurisdiction" over human
  rights abuses, under a 1985 law, particularly if they can be linked to
  Spain.

  
  In the case against the
  former Bush administration officials, last week Judge Garzon linked it
  to an earlier case in which he indicted five former Guantanamo Bay
  prisoners who were citizens or residents of Spain. The Spanish Supreme
  Court had overturned a conviction of one of them, saying that
  Guantanamo was "a legal limbo" and no evidence obtained under torture
  could be valid in any of the country's courts.

  
  The complaint was filed
  by a Spanish human rights group, the Association for the Dignity of
  Prisoners, to the National Court, which assigned the case to Judge
  Garzon. After the complaint is reviewed by the prosecutor, a criminal
  investigation would be likely to begin, the official said. If the case
  proceeds, arrest warrants could still be months away.

  
  The 98-page complaint, a
  copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, was prepared by
  Spanish lawyers who have also relied on legal experts in the United
  States and Europe. It bases its case on the 1984 Convention Against
  Torture, which is binding on 145 countries including the United States.

  
  

  The six officials in the inquiry are:

  - former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
  - John Yoo, the Justice Department attorney who authored the infamous "torture memo"
  - Jay Bybee, Yoo's superior at the Office of Legal Counsel, also involved in the creation of torture memos
  - David Addington, Dick Cheney's chief of staff and legal adviser
  - Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy
  - William Haynes, the legal counsel at the DoD

  
  The amount of material
  connecting these six to the creation, authorization and direction of
  state-sanctioned illegal torture, based on perverse and discredited
  reasoning, is voluminous, and given the record of Garzon, I would
  imagine this will lead to arrest warrants.

  
  This story shows once
  again the growing global unease with the implicit policy of the United
  States to conveniently forget the torture and other abuses of the Bush
  regime. In England, police are investigating
  whether British intelligence officers knew about and prolonged the
  torture of Binyam Mohamed, the recently released Guantanamo detainee.
  As Glenn Greenwald notes, other countries have not abandoned
  their commitment to the rule of law.

  As The Guardian reported,
  the British Government was, in essence, forced into the criminal
  investigation once government lawyers "referred evidence of possible
  criminal conduct by MI5 officers to home secretary Jacqui Smith, and
  she passed it on to the attorney general." In a country that lives
  under what is called the "rule of law," credible evidence of serious
  criminality makes such an investigation, as The Guardian put it,
  "inevitable." British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has clearly tried
  desperately to avoid any such investigation, yet as The Washington Post reported this morning,
  even he was forced to say in response: "I have always made clear that
  when serious allegations are made they have got to be investigated."

  
  Wouldn't it be nice if
  our government leaders could make a similar, extremely uncontroversial
  statement -- credible allegations of lawbreaking by our highest
  political leaders must be investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted?
  In a country with a minimally healthy political culture, that ought to
  be about as uncontroversial as it gets. Instead, what we have are
  political leaders and media stars virtually across the board spouting
  lawless Orwellian phrases about being "more interested in looking forward than in looking backwards" and not wanting to "criminalize public service." These apologist maneuvers continue despite the fact that, as even conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum recently acknowledged in light of newly disclosed detailed ICRC Reports, "that crimes were committed is no longer in doubt."

  
  

  The end of the NY Times
  article shows why the US can hardly claim that Spain is acting
  irresponsibly beyond its own borders and violating the sovereignty of
  other nations, because in one recent case we did almost exactly the
  same thing.

  The United States for
  the first time this year used a law that allows for the prosecution in
  the United States of torture in other countries. On Jan. 10, a Miami
  court sentenced Charles Taylor, the former Liberian leader, to 97 years
  in a federal prison for torture, even though the crimes were committed
  in Liberia.

  
  Last October, when the
  Miami court handed down the conviction, Attorney General Michael B.
  Mukasey applauded the ruling and said: "This is the first case in the
  United States to charge an individual with criminal torture. I hope
  this case will serve as a model to future prosecutions of this type."

  
  

  So do I.

  • 5:41 am
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