Today the United States submitted its long-overdue report to the UN Committee Against Torture. Human Rights First says while the report reaffirms US policy against torture, it fails to assert that the US will not engage in “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” when it acts outside the US, which is expressly prohibited by the UN Torture Convention. The report is intended to explain how the United States is implementing its obligations under the Convention Against Torture, including the prevention of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of people in US custody.
"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales argued that the treaty doesn't prohibit non-military personnel acting abroad from treating people inhumanely. This attempt to create a loophole in the law against cruel and degrading treatment is what led to abuses in the first place," says Elisa Massimino, Washington Director of Human Rights First. “Failure to address this in the report leaves the door open to abuses in the future."
The report also ignores entirely the policy of ghost detainees -- those in US custody who are held incommunicado at secret locations. "I don't know how the US expects to explain its torture prevention policy without mentioning its ghost detainee problem,” says Massimino. “Our experience around the world makes clear that prisoners held in secret, with no access to the Red Cross or other outside visitors, are highly vulnerable to torture. But the US report pretends this problem doesn't even exist."
Finally, while the report acknowledges 190 cases of abuse in Iraq, it fails to link those abuses to official policies that led to the abuses -- policies that were generated by the Secretary of Defense. The report also fails to detail what happened in the 108 cases where people died in US custody, among them 31 cases the US now calls criminal homicides. Human Rights First stresses the need for a bi-partisan, independent commission to address the link between policies set at a senior level and abuses that occurred -- and continue to occur -- in the field.
