-Caveat Lector- CNN Online News Report:
Report: U.S. lenient in bringing torturers to justice April 10, 2002 Posted: 12:27 PM EDT (1627 GMT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. government is not doing enough to bring to justice people within its borders who are suspected of torture in other countries, the human rights group Amnesty International said Wednesday. In a report called United States of America: A Safe Haven for Torturers, the group said not a single case has been brought in the eight years since U.S. law allowed domestic prosecution of people accused of committing torture in other countries. The group said its research confirms that at least 150 suspected torturers are living in the United States, and it cites government estimates that there may be as many as 1,000 such suspects who have fled to the United States to escape justice. "Those who tortured and murdered in other countries should not be able to evade justice and live in the United States without fear of arrest and prosecution," said William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, in a written statement. "The U.S. government is adept at taking people into custody, as it has shown by its detention of some 1,200 individuals following the attacks of September 11." The report specifically names 13 individuals who live in, or have entered, the United States accused of human rights violations in Cuba, Somalia, Guatemala, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Haiti, Honduras or Chile. The report also criticizes the U.S. government for relying on deportation proceedings to get suspected torturers out of the country rather than extraditing them to the country where the alleged torture took place, surrendering them to international war crimes tribunals or trying them for their alleged crimes in a U.S. court. Under the International Convention Against Torture, which the United States ratified, the government is obligated to extradite, surrender or prosecute suspected human rights abusers, the report said. Instead, the Immigration and Naturalization Service in November 2000 started detaining aliens who allegedly committed human abuses abroad in order to deport them. Amnesty International characterizes the U.S. approach as "a misguided policy of either inaction or deportation in place of prosecution." Under a federal law approved in 1994, people suspected of human rights abuses in other countries can be tried in U.S. courts if the suspects are U.S. nationals or are on American soil. In the report, Amnesty International takes issue with a Justice Department interpretation that holds the law may not apply to crimes that took place before 1994. While the Justice Department said that invoking the law for pre-1994 crimes may violate the constitutional prohibition on "ex post facto" prosecutions -- trying someone for actions that are a crime now but were not one at the time they took place, Amnesty argues that "ex post facto" doesn't apply because torture has long been illegal under U.S. and international law. "An individual who committed an act of torture, in any country, cannot possibly argue that he/she was unaware of the illegal nature of her/his conduct," the report said. The report also calls on the U.S. government to impose new immigration restrictions on people accused of torture. People accused of genocide, Nazi war crimes or religious persecution can be automatically excluded from the country or deported, but for those accused of torture or other human rights abuses, deportation and exclusion are not automatic. Amnesty International also said it wants the United States to establish a Justice Department office dedicated to tracking down human rights abusers and to make it easier for victims to sue alleged torturers for damages in U.S. courts. _______________________________________________ Dr. Kelly Dawn Askin Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University 79 JFK St. Cambridge, MA 02138 USA Ph: 617-495-0305; Fax: 617-495-4297 <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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