Let Us No Longer Keep Silent About Torture

[unhappycamper]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29119-let-us-no-longer-keep-silent-about-torture

Let Us No Longer Keep Silent About Torture
Saturday, 14 February 2015 10:13
By Hans Christof von Sponeck, Brussels Tribunal

In the Arab world, he is known and called by his name: Satar Jabar. In the West we know of him as the faceless, nameless man in the black hood. The image of the tortured Iraqi in Abu Ghraib prison went around the world and shocked and moved people everywhere.

The evil things that happened in the US military prisons of Bagram in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper in Iraq were officially down-played as the misconduct of a few individuals. Simple soldiers such as Charles Graner and Lynnie England, whose images are included for ever in the picture books of brutality, were sentenced to light prison terms for their crimes in Abu Ghraib and were released after a few years. There were no planned, systematic and continuous cases of torture, the world was told.

Similarly, the European public was appeased when, by means of so-called rendition flights or delivery flights, the CIA abducted terror suspects in order to interrogate and torture them in secret prisons in Libya, Syria, Poland, Romania and other countries. "We do not approve of torture. The US respects its international obligations and the law of nations," said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Berlin, in December 2005. German Chancellor Merkel welcomed this assurance.

~snip~

My predecessor in Baghdad, Denis Halliday, and I therefore believe that the International Criminal Court should prepare now to shoulder the responsibility for hearing the case of torture. Reliable evidence will not be wanting. A pertinent petition initiated by us is currently in circulation in 15 languages and is met with approval from all parts of the world. Widely accepted is what Ben Emmerson Q.C and UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, has pointed out: "torture is a crime that is subject to universal jurisdiction".

[marym625]

1. Condoleezza Rice

Is one of the many that should be arrested and tried for war crimes.

That statement in the article just infuriates me.