MN Peace Project activist helped write the Torture Amendment passed by the Senate.
Friends,
You may recall that two years ago MPP’s Jim Roth (5th Congressional District) drafted an anti-torture bill which we took to D.C. to encourage our Congress members’ support. A few months ago Senator Klobuchar’s office began working with Jim to give his bill traction. Brian Burton took the bill to Senator Feinstein’s staffer who made revisions, then Senator Feinstein went to Senator McCain for co-sponsorship.
Yesterday the Senate voted to adopt the McCain-Feinstein Amendment to the Defense Authorization bill. This Amendment, if ultimately adopted into law, will significantly strengthen existing laws prohibiting torture-- The Convention Against Torture and the U.S. Torture Act. Senator Klobuchar and Senator Franken were among the 78 Senators who voted for it.
Read more here: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/245117-senate-votes-to-permanently-ban-use-of-torture
The Senate version of the Defense Authorization Act in which this Amendment is now embedded will next go to a Conference Committee. This Amendment is not contained in the House version of the Defense Authorization bill previously adopted.
All Minnesota House members voted in favor of the original Defense Authorization bill except Reps Ellison and McCollum. Accordingly we need to persuade them to vote in favor of a version of the bill which will hopefully emerge from the Conference Committee including the McCain-Feinstein Amendment. The Senate will also need to vote on the ultimate bill from the Conference Committee.
When this is signed into law, we’ll all be dancing in the streets. A huge accomplishment for Jim and for MPP.
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It's true I worked very hard on this. But I don't deserve all the credit!
In 2013 I drafted a proposed bill (with permission of Scott Roehm, Senior Counsel for the Constitution Project) based on the Constitution Project Task Force Report on Detainee Treatment, along with a cover letter to all of the members of the Minnesota Congressional Delegation. I, along with others, have continuously lobbied every member of the Minnesota Congressional Delegation repeatedly since that time. I also lobbied, along with many others, for the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture. The Executive Summary and Findings and Conclusions were released in December. I, along with many others, continued to lobby for a bill that would further strengthen the existing prohibitions on torture in the Geneva Conventions, Convention Against Torture, the US Torture Act and the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act.
A couple of months ago I was contacted by the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee for my input on a proposed bill they were working on. I provided a copy of my draft bill and other information and talked with the staff about what I believed should be included in the proposed bill.
After I received a copy of the proposed bill, called the McCain-Feinstein Amendment to the 2016 Defense Authorization Act, I reviewed it and checked with Scott Roehm and also Melina Milazzo, Senior Policy Counsel for The Center for Victims of Torture, to see if they supported it. I also learned that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, ACLU and many others were supporting it. I then talked to Brian Burton, Legislative Aide to Senator Klobuchar, and Jeff Lomanaco. Legislative Aide to Senator Franken, and asked them to support the Bill and also encourage their colleagues to support it. I, along with colleagues at the Minnesota Peace Project have been lobbying them on an ongoing basis since I first prepared a draft bill. I provided them with summaries of both the Constitution Project Report and the Senate Intelligence Committee Report. (I thought they and others would be most persuaded by these reports among the many others that are available.)
At this point the Senate version and the House version (which does not contain the torture amendment) go to a Conference Committee. Hopefully the torture amendment will survive as part of the 2016 Defense Appropriations Act and both the Senate and the House will approve it and President Obama will sign it into law. This is no sure thing since there is lots of political infighting over several other parts of the Defense Appropriations Act. We'll see. The prognosticators in Washington believe so far that the torture amendment is most likely to survive. I and others have to keep working on that in the meantime.
And no I'm not happy that it is embedded in the Defense Appropriations Bill but I do want to become law. I don't know if it would survive as a separate bill but I highly doubt it.
In short, it has been and continue to be a collaborative effort by many people but yes I was and am one of them. I have an even longer shaggy dog version of the story that Is available it anyone wants to hear more...
One of my next tasks is to lobby Loretta Lynch on prosecutions as well as to continue pressing for release of the full Senate Intelligence Committee Report. I feel like Sisyphus, as I'm sure all of you do as well. As you know, both Senator Klobuchar and Senator Franken are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I'm hoping to find a way to persuade them to help support prosecutions.
Jim
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Yes, great thanks and praise to Jim Roth and his consistent and tireless efforts against torture and for prevention and accountability, along with exposing the truth in this regard. Minnesota Peace Project and their co-legislative friends in DC have brought the fight against torture and for justice to Washington directly.
In addition, and especially, one must give kudos to Tackling Torture at the Top, the WAMM group that Jim has also worked with, to keep this issue before the public and our Minnesota Department of Justice and Senators Klobuchar and Franken, along with St.Thomas School of Law, which tries to hide the truth in regards to the Constitutional Law professor on their faculty, Professor Robert Delahunty, who signed his name, along with John Yoo, law professor at UC Berkeley, to the first torture memos issued by them, granting the Bush Administration "legal" cover for their heinous internationally illegal crimes of torture. Both were acting in their capacity as lawyers for the Office of Legal Counsel to the Executive Branch including to the President.
Delahunty and Yoo continue to collaborate in their writings for academic journals, espousing their distorted and illegal "legal" interpretations of the Constitution to give cover for the use of torture, along with teaching at their respective Universities. John Yoo speaks out publically in defense of his legal stance in support of torture as being permissible against "non-state actors" or those who do not wear the uniform of a nation state engaged in war.
Unfortunately, Professor Delahunty has remained relatively under the radar, as he is not on the speakers circuit or TV news/talk shows promoting his internationally illegal "legal" opinon, by virtue of the Geneva Convention on Torture which the USA is a signatory to.
Further, each and every member of Tackling Torture at the Top (T3), and those who have collaborated with them (which are many) over the years on various actions and events need to be thanked. I would particularly like to single out Sonja Johnson, who has never waivered in her commitment and focus to bring attention to the issue and to the Guantanamo prisoners who still are suffering unspeakable horrors.
It does take all of us to row the boat towards peace and justice and away from the depths of depravity, war and all of the crimes against humanity that come with the mass violence we call war. The currents against truth and justice are very very strong and powerful with all the media and propaganda and spineless Department of Justice and political leaders hiding behind Presidential edicts.
Thank you one and all for the parts you have played in standing up for the demand for accountability and an end to injustice and the crimes of war, which always seem to include torture in its arsenal of violence against others.
The truth is, the USA has employed the weapon of torture from colonial times, against the indigenous peoples living on the land they wished to take from them, to the enslaved peoples from western Africa, to all of its wars and occupations, and has taught the techniques of torture to those who have supported the US goals of economic and political control over people by dictators and political elites in many parts of the world, from Central and Latin America to the Philippines, Indonesia, Iran, Vietnam and on and on and on.
The program of torture under Bush was actually begun without the legal cover, during the Clinton administration, when the first secret renditions to black sites began, and has only been a continuation of a long and vile tradition that is part of the American Way and not an aberration. Torture has of course, also been practiced by countless other empires, nations, and groups of people throughout thousands of years, at the behest of the power structures of their day and carried out by those in their service. May this be the beginning of the end of these inhumane and unspeakable crimes against all peoples everywhere!
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I'm sharing an email thread with you from my peace friends. I'm have been a member of Tackle Torture at the Top since 2004.
It started out of a small group of people outraged that US was torturing and also that one of the Bush's White house legal counsel, Robert Delahunty, was to be a professor at Minneapolis's St Thomas Law School. Delahunty mentored John Yoo and co-authored the pre-torture memo. Then left then to be a Law Professor at St Thomas Univeristy. After about a year the group formerly became part of WAMM (women against military madness). The group had some actions outside of WAMM and also in coalition with other local groups.. like ACLU Twin cities chapter, and Amnesty International local chapter. The group consists of ret FBI agent, ret JAG defense lawyer for Guantanamo detainee, several lawyers, Veterans for Peace members and a bunch of rabble rousers. WAMM is the group I'm most active in.
Anyhow, 11 years later one of the member drafted a bill that was used in the recently passed Amendment in the Senate.