[Vision2020] U.S. to Answer U.N. Questions on Torture

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (May 8, 2006) Army Times Daily News Roundup Edition -

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U.S. to answer U.N. questions on torture

By Sam Cage
Associated Press

GENEVA - U.S. officials will respond Monday to a U.N. panel's questions on a
series of issues ranging from Washington's interpretation of the absolute
ban on torture to its interrogation methods in prisons such as Abu Ghraib,
Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In the first session of the review last week, members of the U.N. Committee
Against Torture told the United States that it has to set a better example
in combating torture and cannot hide behind intelligence activities in
refusing to discuss violations of the global ban on prisoner abuse in the
war on terror.
 
State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger III, leading the U.S.
delegation in its first appearance before the committee in six years,
insisted that the U.S. government felt an "absolute commitment to upholding
our national and international obligations to eradicate torture."

The delegation told the committee, the United Nations' watchdog for a
22-year-old treaty forbidding prisoner abuse, that mistakes had occurred in
the U.S. treatment of detainees in the war against terror, and that 29
detainees in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan had died of what
appeared to be abuse or other violations of U.S. law.

Andreas Mavrommatis, who chaired the session, said the U.S. investigations
would be more convincing if they were conducted by an independent judge or
lawyer rather than by staff of the Defense Department.

Bellinger said the 25-member delegation - including officials from the
Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments - was committed to
answering the committee's questions, but would be unable to discuss "alleged
intelligence activities."

Mavrommatis, who is from Cyprus, said he could understand that intelligence
matters needed careful treatment, "but they are not excluded" from scrutiny.

Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch said the delegation had not fully
answered all of the committee's questions and hopefully would give more
detailed replies Monday. But she said the presence of such a large
delegation indicated that the United States was taking the hearing
seriously.

"I think that what's important is that they're here," Daskal told The
Associated Press. "I do think that they're taking this process very
seriously."

But Jamil Dakwar, staff attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union, or
ACLU, said the U.S. government needed to go further and take "vigorous and
sincere measures" that will "end secret imprisonment and detainee abuse and
hold officials accountable."

The ACLU presented the committee with a book with more than 200 pages of
U.S. documents that "clearly prove that the abuse of detainees was systemic
and widespread," Dakwar said.

The United States is taking its turn as one of the 141 signatories to the
Convention Against Torture in submitting to a periodic review by the 10
independent members of the committee.

Intelligence matters such as alleged secret CIA prisons and flights
transferring suspects for possible torture in other countries were key items
on a list of questions submitted to the U.S. government by the committee in
advance.

Criticism by the U.N. panel brings no penalties beyond international
scrutiny, but Daskal said it could influence U.S. public opinion and hence
the government. The committee is expected to issue conclusions at the end of
its session on May 19.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in
sideways, chocolate in one hand, a drink in the other, body thoroughly used
up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO. What a ride!'"