In the concluded report by US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has confirmed that the method and techniques used by the CIA to extract information from suspect’s after September/11 was illegal. The program of rendition, secret detention, and torture of detainees was criminal and wouldn’t have been used in the first place by the most democratic and human rights champion nation on this planet.

SSCI Chair Senator Dianne Feinstein stated that the report “uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight … The creation of long-term, clandestine ‘black sites’ and the use of so-called ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’ were terrible mistakes.”

 

Article 1(1) of Convention against Torture defines Torture as:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he/she or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

However, the above Article leaves some gaps of abuse by some countries which define the inherent or incidental in circumstances that suits them. The words “inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions” remain vague and very broad. It is extremely difficult to determine what sanctions are ‘inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions’ in a particular legal system and what are not. The drafters of the Convention neither provided any criteria for making such determination nor did it define the terms. The nature of the findings would so differ from one legal system to another that they would give rise to serious disputes among the Parties to the Convention. It was suggested that the reference to such rules would make the issue more complicated, for it would endow the rules with a semblance of legal binding force.

 

This allows state parties to pass domestic laws that permit acts of torture that they believe are within the lawful sanctions clause.

Whereas, some politicians argue that obtaining information is vital in any war fare as a weapon. In a “war against terrorism”, where the adversary wears no uniform and hides among the civilian population, information can matter even more. But does that mean that torture can sometimes be justified to extract information? I will argue that under no circumstances does the international law bend its rules on Torture and it is morally wrong because:

As laid down in treaties such as the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the ban on torture or any cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is absolute, even in times of war. Along with genocide, torture is the only crime that every state must punish, no matter who commits it or where. Defenders of this blanket prohibition offer arguments that range from the moral (torture degrades and corrupts the society that allows it) to the practical (people will say anything under torture so the information they provide is unreliable anyway).

Furthermore, the security officials that conduct torture will always abuse the powers and abuse even innocent people. Whereas after the September/11 the United States of America has not legally sanctioned torture, its  has allowed the September 11th attacks  drive constructively reverse itself and make torture legal. They have encouraged the bending of definitions and the turning of blind eyes.

Allowing Torture by US will set a precedent for other countries.

One objection to allowing moderate physical pressure is the difficulty of knowing where to draw the line. If stress positions and sleep deprivation do not work, do you progress to branding with red-hot irons and beating to a pulp? And can you rely on interrogators to heed such distinctions? It is the danger of a slippery slope that makes opponents of torture insists on a total ban. Indeed, when it comes to the rogue nations they will use all cruel methods not only to criminal suspects, but to their political rivals.

In the 1970s Britain used similar techniques against suspected terrorists in Northern Ireland. These were banned in 1978 following a case brought by the Republic of Ireland to the European Court of Human Rights. Although not torture, such methods did amount to inhumane treatment, the court ruled. In 2002 the International Criminal Court for ex-Yugoslavia in The Hague decided that prolonged solitary confinement constituted torture. However, such rulings did not prevent America from resorting to such harsh techniques when interrogating suspects in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, however. Former detainees in those places have spoken of severe beatings, water-boarding, excruciating stress positions, mock executions, sleep deprivation and much else besides.

The US Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan in 2006 made the Bush administration accept that all detainees, wherever held, were protected by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which bans all forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as well as torture. The 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, incorporating an amendment by Senator John McCain, already prohibited such treatment by American soldiers anywhere in the world.  It is therefore evident that whereas, nations might bend their laws to torture, they do so knowing that Torture is absolutely illegal, and morally wrong.

 

Joseph Ruhumuriza