Obama's inheritance of torture
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
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JonatPower@aol.com
January 13, 2009
LONDON - The courtrooms of America sometimes take us by surprise. Last week Charles ”Chuckie” Taylor, the son of the former Liberian president and notorious warlord, Charles Taylor, was sentenced in a Miami court to 97 years in prison for torture. It was the first time that an American court had applied a law passed in 1994 allowing the prosecution of citizens who commit torture overseas. (Taylor was born in the U.S. But then moved to Liberia to join his father.)
Is there now one law in America for those who commit torture overseas and those who commit it at home with the authority of government? Perhaps for not much longer. In a television interview last weekend President-elect Barack Obama said that the attorney general would investigate whether some senior members of the Bush administration should be prosecuted for their part in torture, although he said that his belief was that ”what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future”.
Also last week he said that he had given his new appointees to top intelligence positions a clear charge to restore the U.S.'s stance of human rights. ”Under my administration the United States does not torture.” Obama should also have reminded his audience that it was during the presidency of Ronald Reagan that the U.S. helped push for the UN to agree to a legally binding treaty against torture, and then propelled Congress to rap idly ratify it. It is this treaty that provides the legal underpinning for the prosecution of Taylor.
Still, even the Bush administration has done its bit for some aspects of international law. For years it waged war against the creation of the International Criminal Court, meant to try those charged with crimes against humanity. But in recent years the U.S. has appeared to change its position. As a number of African warlords have been seized by the ICC the U.S. has supported the process. Most recently it has encouraged the ICC for the first time to prosecute a head of state, the prime minister of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir. Bush seems to have put to one side his fears that the ICC might put the U.S. in its sights. The statutes of the ICC make clear that it will only prosecute when domestic courts fail to act and even if the U.S. now signs up it cannot act retrospectively.
Surprisingly too, the Bush administration has quietly supported the UN Security Council in working closely to act on grave issues. Even though the U.S. abstained last week on a Security Council resolution ordering the Israelis and Hamas to agree to a cease fire, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made it clear that the U.S. was not against the resolution, only its early timing. The U.S. abstention was considered a shot across Israel's bows.
But there was total unanimity in the Security Council following the Mumbai killings when it declared that the Pakistani Jamaat-ud- Dawa was a front for the militant movement Lashkar-e-Taiba and that sanctions against it should be applied. This added to the pressure on the Pakistani government to arrest suspected militants.
Likewise last Tuesday the Security Council voted, again unanimously, authorising member states to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases in Somalia.
Often overlooked is the fact that during the time of the Bush administration a fourth of all UN Security Council resolutions in its entire history were voted on, and usually passed without dissent.
A test case for the U.S. observing international law will be the Obama's administration's willingness to close down Guantanamo. The world never believed President George W. Bush when he said last year he wanted to close it. But now, with Obama pushing, the other Western countries will have to step forward and agree to take many of the prisoners the U.S. wants to release.
But Obama will still have the so-called ”hard core” on his hands, and public opinion does not appear to want them brought to the mainland and prosecuted in domestic courts. The fear is that too many of them will be acquitted for lack of evidence or because they were tortured, and then will be free to arrange another atrocity.
Maybe part of the answer to this is to bring a domestic court to Guantanamo to replace the military court. If convicted they can be moved to incarceration in the U.S., but with their rights of appeal intact. If freed they can be refused entry to the U.S. and be deported to the country of their choice. If no one will take them they can be given a house and a plot of land in Guantanamo and wait until some country does. They can be compelled to wear tracking devices so than any move to escape can be thwarted.
This would be an important contribution to upholding what Obama calls America's ”highest ideals .
Copyright © 2008 Jonathan
Power
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Jonathan Power can be
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and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Jonathan
Power
2007 Book
Conundrums
of Humanity
The Quest for Global Justice
“Conundrums
of Humanity” poses eleven questions for our future progress, ranging
from “Can we diminish War?” to “How far and fast can
we push forward the frontiers of Human Rights?” to “Will
China dominate the century?”
The answers to these questions, the author believes, growing out of
his long experience as a foreign correspondent and columnist for the
International Herald Tribune, are largely positive ones, despite the
hurdles yet to be overcome. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, London, 2007.
William Pfaff, September 17, 2007
Jonathan Power's book "Conundrums" - A Review
"His is a powerful and comprehensive statement of ways to make the world better.
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