Foreign Investigation of Torture Techniques Sanctioned by Bush Administration
By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
CIA Director Leon Panetta announced on April 9, 2009 that it would shut down those “black site” secret prisons in foreign countries utilized by the George Bush administration to house, and torture, suspected terrorists—many of whom were kidnapped off public streets in their home countries by either CIA agents or CIA operatives, and who had never been formally charged with any terror-related activity.
Panetta said the agency officers who employed what the New York Times called “brutal interrogation methods”—a euphemism for torture—“should not be investigated, much less punished” because their actions had been declared lawful by the U.S. Justice Department.
The laws of the United States, and international law, prohibit torture, as do many treaties between most civilized nations. CIA interrogators employed a variety of brutal interrogation methods in these “black site” prisons to get terrorist suspects to provide information about terrorism activities. One of the methods was “water-boarding”—a near drowning technique used on at least three prisoners in 2002 and 2003, and a torture technique declared a “war crime” by the U.S. after World War II because it had been used by the Japanese. Panetta and other top Obama administration officials have stated publicly that they believe water-boarding is torture.
Neither President of the United States, with all his immense executive powers, nor the United States Justice Department have either the statutory or constitutional authority to declare a crime—and torture is recognized by the laws of this nation and the laws of the international community as a crime—to be “legal” as suggested by CIA Director Panetta. (more…)
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