Denounce Torture

The Denounce Torture Action Guide includes a comprehensive overview of the Denounce Torture Initiative and the vital actions you can take to help stop the use of torture and ill-treatment in the context of the U.S. led “war on terror” once and for all. 

Download the action guide.

Also, stay tuned for the Denounce Torture Initiative teach-in guide, available later this month.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that a lawsuit was filed today against U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld regarding the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari citizen residing in the United States who had been designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush.  Al-Marri  alleged to have been kept in "complete isolation from the world" and denied appropriate care for physical and mental symptoms he developed while in military custody since December 2001. According to HRW U.S. Program Director Jamie Fellner:

"It is bad enough that al-Marri has been held indefinitely without charges and incommunicado. Now we learn that his life in the brig has also been one of relentless cruelty and petty vindictiveness. Whatever the Bush administration believes he has done or wanted to do, there’s no excuse for how they are treating him."

See "Cruel Confinement of ‘Enemy Combatant’ in United States."

America Magazine argues that the current administration's efforts to make the Geneva Conventions "optional" not only jeopardize U.S. soldiers and civilians and damage the United States' relationships with its allies, but hurt the United States' longstanding reputation of treating prisoners humanely during wartime.  The magazine's James Ross concludes:

"George W. Bush has a long way to go before he can claim Abraham Lincoln’s legacy to a humane articulation of the laws of war. It is a legacy that has long served the interests of the United States and for which Americans can genuinely be proud. It is a legacy that with each feckless Pentagon investigation and half-hearted war crimes prosecution becomes forever imperiled."

See "Bush, Torture and Lincoln’s Legacy."

In an article yesterday, New York Times reporter Tim Golden raised questions about the responsibility of more senior military personnel for the deaths of two detainees at Bagram Airforce base in Afghanistan in 2002.  According to Golden:

"In interviews and statements to investigators, soldiers who served at Bagram have at times echoed the defenses offered unsuccessfully by the soldiers charged with abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, saying they were acting on instructions from military intelligence personnel or on the authority of superior officers."

"But documents from the Bagram investigation and interviews with military officials suggest that at least some soldiers implicated in the two deaths may be able to make such arguments more forcefully than their counterparts from Abu Ghraib, who were unable to prove any authorization for their actions."

See "Abuse Cases Open Command Issues at Army Prison."

OneWorld reports that doctors and "medical bodies" have been involved in detainee abuse in the so-called  ''war on terror." According to Michael Wilks, the British Medical Association ethics committee chairman who made the allegation last Thursday:

''Governmental and medical bodies have begun adjusting and blurring their ethical guidance, tilting themselves towards endorsement of gross ethical malpractice, thereby ensuring the continuation of doctors' involvement.''

See "Medical Professionals Bending Ethics for 'War on Terror,' Expert Charges."
See our earlier post, "Village Voice Reports on Military Doctors Assisting Torture at Guantánamo Bay."