rule of law demand

8/7/2019 Rule of Law Demand

1/9

Accountability, Disclosure, and Deterrence

of Government Criminality -

A Demand for the Equal and Principled Application of Laws

Forbidding War Crimes and Other Heinous Abuses of Power

We, the undersigned, submit the following urgent plea to President Obama; U.S.

Attorney General Eric Holder; the United States Congress; the United Nations; all other

international bodies committed to the rule of law and ending aggressive wars, war crimes,and crimes against humanity; and the nations of the world:

We begin with these inquiries:

Should the law be applied unequally, or should it apply to every person and everynation in equal measure?

Should nations live up to the solemn promises they and other nations have madeto each other, particularly with respect to the protection of human rights and the

deterrence of human rights abuses?

The honest responses to those vital questions

determine the genuineness of any claim that a nation or the

international community abides by the rule of law and

commits to the protection of human rights.

Either the law justly formulated and applied

governs, or tyranny prevails.

This is a pivotal moment in history to determine

which it will be.

Will the law be disregarded for powerful people and

powerful nations while applied against others?

Is the law to be applied only against the vanquished

or is the earnest promise made at the Nuremberg Tribunal ofuniversal application of the law to be honored?

Shall we allow politicians to ignore and demean

well-established law, including U.S. domestic legislation

such as the War Crimes Act of 1995 and the Federal TortureAct; international treaties to which the U.S. is a party such

as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the United Nations Charter, the

Abed Hamed Mowhoush hadwalked into a military base in Qaim,

Iraq, hoping to speak with US

commanders to obtain the release of

his sons. He was detained and

tortured.His autopsy reflected that he died 16

days later of asphyxia due to

smothering and chest compression,and that his body showed evidence

of blunt force trauma to the chest

and legs. He had massive bruising

and five broken ribs.

How did it happen? Chief WarrantOfficer Lewis Welshofter, who had

received no guidance about how to

interrogate detainees, called in aCIA-sponsored team of

paramilitaries who beat Mowhoush

with sledgehammer handles, theirfists, and a rubber hose.

Mowhoushs hands were bound and

he was struck repeatedly on hiselbows. Finally, Welshofer and the

team wrapped Mowhoush inelectrical cord and shoved him

head-first into a sleeping bag.

Welshofer sat on Mowhoushs chestand blocked his nose and mouth.

Mowhoush suffocated to death.


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Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the

Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment orPunishment (Convention Against Torture); and customary international law forbidding

aggressive war and war crimes such as kidnappings and torture?

Perhaps most importantly: Will we, the people ofthe U.S. and people of good will around the world,

permit crimes against peace and war crimes to be

ignored so that, instead of deterrence of future similaroutrages, the lesson learned for those in positions of

power in the future will be that such crimes can be

committed with impunity?

The Nuremberg Tribunal Charter affirmed the

principled application of the rule of law. It made clear

that the powerful, or previously powerful, would be held

to the same standards as anyone else, and that the violations of solemn legal prohibitionswould not be excused because of claims that the

perpetrators were following orders.1

Central to any system of justice, from the

Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals to domestic civil

and criminal law, is the universal principle thatpersonal accountability is essential to the rule of

law.

Following World War II, leaders in national

governments and international bodies did not seek

to avoid the application of the most fundamental

legal principles forbidding aggressive war, warcrimes, and crimes against humanity with the

wretched excuse that we need to look forward, as

opposed to looking backwards, as PresidentObama has said in trying to explain why war

criminals acting in the name of the U.S. are not to

be held accountable.2

Those post-World War II

1

Similarly, in a televised message on March 17, 2003 to Iraqi military and civilian personnel just before

ordering an illegal war of aggression against Iraq, President George W. Bush stated: War crimes will beprosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, I was just following orders.

2

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the continuation of trials against former members of the

Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, saying that a country that is able to confront its past is a country that can

overcome it. (Seth Mydans, In Cambodia, Clinton Advocates Khmer Rouge Trials,New York Times,

November 1, 2010.) When asked if he were satisfied with the resolution of past human rights abuses in

Indonesia, President Obama urged that investigations into the abuses continue, saying: We have to

acknowledge that those past human rights abuses existed. We cant go forward without looking backwards

. . . .

Order signed by President Bush on February 7,2002: I accept the legal conclusion of the

Department of Justice and determine that none of

the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict withal-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout

the world . . . [C]ommon Article 3 of Geneva does

not apply to either al-Qaida or Taliban detainees . ..

Four years later, the Supreme Court repudiated thePresidents claim that the minimal standard of

Common Article 3 could be ignored. Hamdan v.

Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006).

The Presidents memo . . . violated almost everyexisting legal guarantee of humane treatment inwartime and replaced them with a virtual invitation

to engage in coercive interrogations. We would

have seen no rapid deterioration in detaineetreatment standards and no spread of torture

without President Bushs February 2002 decision

to reject the checks imposed by Congress when itadopted the Geneva Conventions into U.S. law.

Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. and Aziz Z. Huq,Unchecked and Unbalanced(The New Press

2007), p.76.

Some may argue that we would

be more effective if we sanctionedtorture or other expedient

methods to obtain information

from the enemy. They would be

wrong. Beyond the basic fact that

such actions are illegal, history

shows that they also are

frequently neither useful nor

necessary.

Commanding General

David H. Petraeus, United

States Army


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leaders, intent on holding war criminals accountable, did not say, as U.S. Attorney

General Eric Holder has, that so long as government agents have acted in good faithand consistently with legal advice provided to them by government lawyers, they may

escape responsibility for unlawfully torturing human beings.3

Rather, the international community was unified intaking a principled stand for the rule of law, personal

accountability, and vindication of principles of international

law.

Justice Robert Jackson, the U.S. Chief Prosecutor at

Nuremberg, emphasized the universality of the solemn lawsagainst aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against

humanity, noting that they must apply to all nations and to all

people alike, then and in the future:

We must never forget that the record on which we judge thesedefendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass

these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.

* * *

[L]et me make clear that while this law is first applied against German

aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn

aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.4

Those who have signed this plea call upon

President Obama and his administration, includingU.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., and upon

the United States Congress, to take every necessary

measure to comply with the vital commitments by the

United States to the international community, torestore the rule of law, and to repair the constitutional

system of checks and balances, through:

3Reminiscent of the excuse by some Nuremberg defendants that they were just following orders, Attorney

General Holder has announced that the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted ingood faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the

interrogation of detainees. Attorney General Eric Holder Regarding a Preliminary Review into the

Interrogation of Certain Detainees (August 24, 2009). This appears to be the first time war criminals have

been given a free pass by a U.S. Attorney General on account of baseless legal guidance by lawyers who

were simply providing cover for the commission of blatantly illegal, heinous acts against detainees in U.S.

custody.

4Justice Robert H. Jacksons Opening Statement for the Prosecution, Nuremberg Tribunal (November 21,

1945).

They prepared me for interrogations byputting electric shocks through my feet.

For hours on end they would hang me up

by my hands, which were bound behind

my back. . . A doctor looked in to see if

you were still alive . . .

Murat Kurnaz, describing his

treatment at a US prison inKandahar, Afghanistan. He spent

five years in Guantnamo then was

released in 2006 without anycharges ever being filed.

We also have to work sortof the dark side, if you will.. . . [I]ts going to be vitalfor us to use any means at

our disposal, basically, to

achieve our objective . . . It

is a mean, nasty,

dangerous, dirty business

out there, and we have to

operate in that arena.

Vice-President Dick Cheney,September 16, 2001 on Meet

the Press


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criminal prosecutions5 and the allowance ofcivil actions

6for illegally kidnapping,

disappearing, indefinitely detaining withoutcharges, and torturing people; depriving

detainees of their due process and habeas

corpus rights; and engaging in andauthorizing felonious warrantless electronic

surveillance of U.S. citizens

communications;

the appointment by Congress of a selectcommittee or independent commission to

conduct thorough and transparent

investigations and public disclosures with

regard to (1) the crime of aggressive war inconnection with the invasion and occupation

of Iraq; and (2) conduct proscribed by the

Constitution, domestic legislation, treatycommitments, and customary international

law in connection with kidnappings,

disappearances, torture, indefinite detentions,

5President Reagan praised the ratification by the United States of the Convention Against Torture, noting

that it marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against

torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. He stressed the importance of prosecuting those who

are responsible for torture, saying: The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for

international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called universal

jurisdiction. Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or toextradite them to other countries for prosecution. . . . By giving its advice and consent to ratification of this

Convention, the Senate of the United States will demonstrate unequivocally our desire to bring an end to

the abhorrent practice of torture. President Ronald Reagan, Message to the Senate, May 20, 1988.

6The Convention Against Torture provides as follows: Each State Party shall ensure in its legal system

that the victim of an act of torture obtains redress and has an enforceable right to fair and adequate

compensation, including the means for as full rehabilitation as possible. Part I, Article 14, paragraph 1.

The United States government has represented to the United Nations Committee Against Torture that a

broad range of civil remedies is available in the U.S. for victims of torture, including suing federal

officials directly under provisions of the United States Constitution for constitutional torts, see Bivens v.

Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971) . . . Report of United States of America to Committee

Against Torture (October 15, 1999), page 14. However, when victims of torture have sued in U.S. federal

courts, their claims have been dismissed without any determination on the merits and without any redress without any justicewhatsoever. In each case, the George W. Bush or the Obama administration has

argued that the cases cannot proceed, and therefore the torture victims shall have no remedy, because to

proceed with the litigation would require the disclosure of unidentified state secrets. El-Masri v. Tenet,

437 F. Supp. 2d 530 (ED Va 2006), affd., 479 F.3d 296 (4th Cir. 2007), cert. denied552 U.S. 947 (2007);

Arar v. Ashcroft, 585 F.3d 559 (2d Cir. 2009) (en banc), cert. denied130 S.Ct. 3409 (2010); Mohamed v.

Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., 614 F.3d 1070 (9th

Cir. 2010). InArar, the Obama administration argued, and the

court agreed, that the plaintiff could not pursue a Bivens-type constitutional tort claim one of the remedies

the U.S. assured the U.N. Committee Against Torture was available for torture victims.

The [1975-76 Church Senate Select]

Committee found that all too often, executive

branch actions taken in the name ofnebulous concepts like national security, or

subversion, shielded by secrecy, and

without the guidance of clear laws were notgoverned and controlled in accord with the

fundamental principles of our constitutionalsystem of government. As a result, theCommittees report concluded, Americas

secret government did far too many illegal,

improper or unethical deeds that did notreflect the ideals which have given the

people of this country and of the world hope

for a better, fuller, fairer life.

Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. and Aziz Z. Huq,

Unchecked and Unbalanced(The New Press2007), p.23.

The Select Senate Committee headed by

Frank Church found, no mailbox, no college

campus, no television had been safe. The

Church Committee led Congress to reject

presidential claims of 'inherent authority' andrestore some checks and balances .

Bill Moyers, The Path to Power, Bill

Moyers Journal, October 26, 2007


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denials of due process and

habeas corpus rights, andillegal surveillance;7

a strict limitation on theapplication of the state secrets

doctrine, which has beenutilized by the George W.

Bush and Obama

administrations to remove thecourts as a check on abuses of

power and illegal activity by

members of the executive

branch;

a limitation on signingstatements and legislation

forbidding the reliance on a

signing statement as a defensefor the violation of any law or

a determination concerning

legislative intent with respect

to the legislation; and

7

Following disclosures of appalling abuses of detainees by U.S. agents at Abu Ghraib, President George

W. Bush stated that, in contrast to a dictatorship, a democracy investigates and discloses serious abuses,

then requires perpetrators to be accountable for their crimes:

Were an open society. Were a society that is willing to investigate, fully investigate in this case,

what took place in that prison. That stands in stark contrast to life under Saddam Hussein . . .There were no investigations about mistreatment of people. There will be investigations. People

will be brought to justice. . . . [I]n our system of law, its essential that those criminal ch arges go

forward without prejudice. . . . And we want to know the truth. . . . We have nothing to hide. We

believe in transparency, because were a free society. Thats what free societies do. They if

theres a problem, they address those problems in a forthright, up-front manner. . . . [P]eople will

be held to account. Thats what the process does. Thats what we do in America. We fully

investigate; we let everybody see the results of the investigation; and then people will be held to

account. . . . [T]here will be a full investigation, and justice will be served. And we will do to

ourselves what we expect of others.

President George W. Bush, Interview by Alhurra Television, May 5, 2004.

[I]n a democracy . . . there will be a full investigation. . . . [P]eople want to know the truth. That

stands in contrast to dictatorships. A dictator wouldnt be answering questions about this. Adictator wouldnt be saying that the system will be investigated and the world will see the results

of the investigation.

President George W. Bush, Interview by Al-Arabiya Television, May 5, 2004.

The very different accounts of what did and did not happen (compare Marc Thiessen, Courting Disaster

How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack(Regnery, 2010),

withJane Mayer, Counterfactual A curious history of the C.I.A.s secret interrogation program, The

New Yorker, March 29, 2010) make clear the historical importance of undertaking a full investigation and

disclosing the truth so the historical record of these events is not left to those who have reason to mislead.

Major General Antonio M. Taguba prepared a report, ordered by

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. military official in Iraqin 2004, about abuses at the Abu Ghraib Prison, operated by the

United States, in Baghdad. He found many incidents ofsadistic,

blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several

detainees. He described some of the acts of abuse:

Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light andperhaps a broom stick

Using military dogs to frighten and intimidatedetainees with threats of attack and biting a detainee

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoricliquid on detainees

Pouring cold water on naked detainees Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair Threatening male detainees with rape Videotaping and photographing naked male and

female detainees

Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexuallyexplicit positions for photographing

Forcing naked male detainees to wear womensunderwear

Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbatethemselves while being photographed and videotaped Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then

jumping on them

Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detaineesneck and having a female soldier pose for a

photograph

Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keepingthem naked for several days at a time


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amendment by Congress of the War Powers Act,making it clear that, consistent with the War

Clause of the Constitution, only with the expressnon-delegable authorization of Congress can the

U.S. military be committed to armed conflict,

except in cases of actual or imminent invasion ofthe United States.

In the absence of the above measures beingundertaken by the Obama administration and the U.S.

Congress, the signatories to this plea urge the United

Nations and its relevant committees, as well as other

international bodies and individual nations that supportthe rule of law, personal accountability, and adherence

to the duty of party states to comply with their treaty

commitments, to thoroughly investigate and disclose,

and in appropriate cases undertake prosecutions for,violations by U.S. officials and agents, and those

working in concert with them, in connection with the

commission of aggressive war and war crimes,including kidnappings, disappearances, and torture.

Just as it is not a matter of discretion, but ofabsolute legal obligation, for the United States to

investigate every case of suspected torture and to

prosecute those who have ordered, helped facilitate, or

perpetrated torture, so too are all other State Parties to

the Convention Against Torture obligated to exercise theuniversal jurisdiction provided by that Convention8

with

respect to any suspected offenders present in anyterritory under their jurisdiction. As President Reagan

said when addressing the United States Senate

concerning its ratification of the Convention Against

Torture, Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its

territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.9 We appeal to all

nations that have ratified the Convention Against Torture to reaffirm the rule of law by

investigating all claims of torture and taking all reasonable steps to prosecute, and to

8The Convention Against Torture, Part I, Article 5, paragraph 2, provides as follows: Each State Party

shall likewise take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over such offenses in

cases where the alleged offender is present in any territory under its jurisdiction and it does not extradite

him pursuant to article 8 to any of the States mentioned in paragraph I of this article.

9

President Ronald Reagan, Message to the Senate, May 20, 1988.

Some detainees have been water-

boarded, a form of torture in which theperson being tortured is immobilized on

his or her back, with water poured over

the face and into the breathing passages.The torture victim experiences

drowning and is made to believe that

death is imminent. One detainee waswaterboarded 183 times.

Waterboarding poses risks of long-term

physical injury, including damage to the

lungs, brain damage from oxygen

deprivation, and death. Horrendous

psychological effects can be lasting.

Waterboarding is a technique utilized

during the Inquisition, by Japanese

troops and officers of the Gestapo

during World War II, and by the Khmer

Rouge in Cambodia. Until recently, the

U.S. government has never permittedwaterboarding and, in fact, has

prosecuted others as war criminals for

engaging in the practice.

Waterboarding was deemed illegal by

U.S. generals during the Vietnam War.

One US soldier who was photographedwaterboarding a prisoner of war was

court-martialled and discharged from

the army.

For waterboarding a suspected

Philippine insurgent after the Spanish

American War of 1898, Major EdwinGlenn was court-martialed and

sentenced to 10 years hard labor.

Glenn argued that such torture wasnecessitated by the circumstances and

that the military should not be limited in

the use of waterboarding. The judge

advocate general at Glenns court-martial rejected that defense, saying that

no modern nation could allow suchtorture, in violation of the rules of

civilized war.


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provide for civil remedies against, those present in any territory under their jurisdiction

who have participated or been complicit in torture.10

The undersigned seek these measures to be taken not out of hostility toward, but

out of deep concern for, the United States and the core principles underlying its founding,

its Constitution, and its most fundamental commitments to the international community.

The United States government was carefully structured to provide a separation of

power among the three branches of government to avoid tyranny. Central to thatprotection is a system of checks and balances, pursuant to which, when a challenge is

raised, the courts are to determine if executive branch

officials have acted contrary to law.

Subversive to that system, Presidents George W.

Bush and Obama have, through the assertion of the state

secrets doctrine and the political question doctrine,

removed the courts as a check on illegal executive branchactions. The system of checks and balances has been

emasculated in cases challenging the violation of the WarClause of the Constitution, felonious surveillance of U.S.

citizens communications, and illegal torture.

The foundations of the U.S. republic arecrumbling, with a complicit Congress and a judiciary that

is an enabler of, rather than a check against, executive

branch abuses.

As a matter of official policy since the founding of

the U.S. until recently, the U.S. absolutely prohibited

torture. George Washington was committed to winningthe Revolutionary War consistently with high moral

values, including a prohibition against torture, even when

the British were committing atrocities against colonialsoldiers and civilians. During the Civil War, the Union

army abided by the Lieber Code, prohibiting the

intentional infliction of any suffering on captured soldiers.General Eisenhower guaranteed exemplary treatment to German POWs during World

War II, and the U.S. applied the Geneva Convention protections against torture during the

Korean War.

10

Justifying the jurisdiction of U.S. courts in tort actions against persons present in the United States who

engaged in torture elsewhere, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Ci rcuit noted: The

torturer has become like the pirate and slave trader before him hostis humani generis, an enemy of all

mankind. Filrtiga v. Pea-Irala, 630 F. 2d 876, 890 (2d Cir. 1980). The court affirmed the absolute

prohibition against torture under customary international law.

According to Army documents, two

prisoners killed at Bagram Air Base in

December 2002 had been chained to the

ceiling, kicked, and beaten over a periodof several days. One U.S. soldier

admitted striking the prisoner thirty-seven

times, destroying his leg muscle tissuewith repeated unlawful knee strikes.

Three other interrogators participated inthe assault on these prisoners with kicksto the groin and leg, shoving or slamming

him into walls/table, forcing the detainee

to maintain painful, contorted bodypositions during interview and forcing

water into his mouth until he could notbreathe. One of these two prisoners had

been captured by Afghan militiamen, who

stopped him driving a vehicle at a

checkpoint near Khost, Afghanistan.They turned him and his three passengers

over to the United States. The passengers

were sent to Guantnamo, where they

were held for more than a year before

being released without charges. But the

driver remained in Afghanistan, where he

was beaten so severely that, even if he hadsurvived, doctors determined he would

have lost both his legs. Yet by the time

the interrogators were finished, most ofthem were convinced that the detainee

was innocent.

Joseph Margulies, Guantnamo and the

Abuse of Presidential Power(Simon &

Schuster 2006), p. 137.


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The international community, including the U.S.,

has outlawed torture in the Geneva Conventions, theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and

the Convention Against Torture. Customary international

law also guarantees freedom from torture.11

Torture is a

war crime under international law and under U.S.domestic law.

We call upon the United States government andthe international community to take a principled stand by

holding those responsible for torture fully accountable

under the law. We also call for a full investigation anddisclosure to people throughout the world concerning the

commission of the crimes of aggressive war (that is, the

invasion and occupation of a nation other than in self-

defense)12

and war crimes. If the US is permitted to

escape even an inquiry and disclosure ofand perhapssanctions for its unlawful conduct under the United

Nations Charter, other commitments undertaken throughtreaties ratified by the United States, and customary

international law of the sort relied upon in prosecutions at

the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals, the entire

international system established following World War IIto prevent crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity would be

11

[A]lthough there is no universal agreement as to the precise extent of the human rights and

fundamental freedoms guaranteed to all by the [United Nations] Charter, there is at present no dissent from

the view that the guaranties include, at a bare minimum, the right to be free from torture. This prohibition

has become part of customary international law, as evidenced and defined by the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights, . . . which states, in the plainest of terms, no one shall be subjected to torture. Filrtiga v.

Pea-Irala, 630 F. 2d 876, 882 (2d Cir. 1980).

12

Justice Robert H. Jackson addressed the crime of aggression at the Nuremberg Tribunal as follows:

I suggest that an aggressor is generally held to be that state which is the first to commit any of

the following actions: (1) Declaration of war upon another state; (2) Invasion by its armed forces,

with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another state; (3) Attack by its land, naval,

or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels, or air forces, with or

without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another state . . . And I further

suggest that it is the general view that no political military, economic, or other considerations shall

serve as an excuse or justification for such actions; but exercise of the right of legitimate self-

defense, that is to say, resistance to an act of aggression, or action to assist a state which has beensubjected to aggression, shall not constitute a war of aggression. . . . Our position is that whatever

grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is

an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions.

The United Nations Charter prohibits wars of aggression, making it clear that, except when a nation is

under attack or threat of imminent attack, and except when the UN Security Council determines that all

nonmilitary and peaceful options have been fully exhausted, no member of the UN may use military force

against another country. United Nations Charter, Chapter I, Article 1 para. 1, Article 2, paragraphs 3-4.

[M]any independent experts who havetop security clearances, and who have

had access to the C.I.A.s records,

have denounced the agencys

[interrogation] tactics. Among the

critics are Robert Mueller, the director

of the F.B.I., and four chairmen of the

Senate Intelligence Committee. Lastyear, President Obama asked Michael

Hayden, the C.I.A. director, to give a

classified briefing on the program to

three intelligence experts: Chuck

Hagel, the former Republican senatorfrom Nebraska; Jeffrey Smith, a

former general counsel to the C.I.A.;

and David Boren, the retiredDemocratic senator from Oklahoma.

The three men were left unswayed.

Boren has said that, after the briefing,he wanted to take a bath. In an e-

mail [to Jane Mayer], he wrote, I left

the briefing by General Haydencompletely unconvinced that the use

of torture is an effective means of

interrogation. . . . Those who arebeing tortured will say anything.

Jane Mayer, Counterfactual A

curious history of the C.I.A.s secretinterrogation program, The New

Yorker, March 29, 2010.


9/9

severely undermined. That in turn would make our world a much less safe, less humane

place, now and far into the future.

The United States cannot expect other nations to refrain from aggressive war and

war crimes while the U.S. itself engages, and has engaged, in those crimes with impunity.

The United States government and many of its political leaders appear to be

pursuing the course of a self-proclaimed exceptionalism that would permit the U.S., its

officials, and its agents to avoid any consequences for violating the solemn laws againstaggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity to which the U.S. has

committed, and which it expects to be applied to other nations.13

We hereby urge the

United States and the world community to take another course, demanding that the lawsbe applied to all nations alike and that violations of those laws shall carry consequences

of such severity for all violators, whether individuals or nations, that similar conduct in

the future will be effectively deterred.

We join with people throughout the world in urging the U.S. government at thishistoric moment to abandon the arrogance of holding itself and its agents above the well-

established law and to embrace and restore the rule of law, the separation of powers, anda renewed respect for the moral, political, and legal values that compel accountability by

all who violate the U.S. Constitution, domestic law, treaty commitments, and customary

international law.

If the United States government continues in its obstinacy to ignore and violate

the law and elude or deny governmental and personal accountability for gross breaches

of the Constitution, domestic law, treaty obligations, and customary international law,then we call upon the United Nations, other international bodies, and the worlds nationsto take every measure reasonable and necessary to make it clear to all the worlds peoplethat no person or nation is above the law and that the international community will not

tolerate the commission of aggressive war, war crimes, or other breaches of fundamentallegal and moral commitments with impunity.

Respectfully,

13

The failure by the U.S. to prosecute those who authorized and engaged in torture is itself a violation of

the Convention Against Torture. Under that treaty, a decision as to whether one should be prosecuted for

torture shall be made in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under

the law of that State. Convention Against Torture, Part I, Article 7, paragraph 2.

rule of law demand

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