The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership’s intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago.
The provision, part of the massive bill introduced Friday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would apply to non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having links to terrorist organizations but have not been tried on or convicted of any charges. Democrats tried to strike the provision in a daylong House Judiciary Committee meeting, but it survived on a party-line vote.
The provision, human rights advocates said, contradicts pledges President Bush made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this spring that the United States would stand behind the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Hastert spokesman John Feehery said the Justice Department “really wants and supports” the provision.
Kudos to the Washington Post for picking up on this. If this is defensible, I’d really like to hear a defense. Until then, I’m going to contact my Representative again.
{ 15 comments }
Scott Spiegelberg 09.30.04 at 5:27 pm
I just emailed my Congressman, and got an interesting automated web response (I used the Write your Rep link that Ted kindly provided.) The response states that my Representative cannot directly respond to my email because of security concerns, but hopes that the situation will corrected soon. Does anybody have any information about this?
mona 09.30.04 at 5:37 pm
A question for the legal experts – since this provision is violating the conventions against torture, does it mean that once it’s approved, US citizens and military abroad are no longer protected by those conventions themselves?
ie. my layman understanding was that if a country that signed up to those conventions betrays them, then other countries are no longer under an obligation to consider them applicable to the violating country. Does it work like that or is it fuzzier? Would the US get to pay lip-service to the conventions once more even if approves this law?
Dubious 09.30.04 at 5:38 pm
It would be disgusting and shameful to deport someone with a wink and a nod to a country that practices torture, to outsource our torturing.
But suppose we have Pakistani militant who we want to deport because he’s a visa violator and suspected (but not provable) terrorist. Suppose Pakistan practices torture. What are we supposed to do with him? This is an honest question. If there’s an option which involves not
A) illegally detaining him indefinately in the US
B) not allowing him the freedom to cause problems in the US
C) not deporting him to Pakistan
what is that option? Deport him to his preferred choice, say, Sudan, where he can hook up with a terrorist network again? I really don’t understand how these things work, honestly.
Barry 09.30.04 at 5:56 pm
Dubious:
“I really don’t understand how these things work, honestly.”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggggggghhht.
Barry Freed 09.30.04 at 6:01 pm
But what if Lex Luthor had secreted a kryptonium-encased neutronium bomb somewhere in Metropolis and we knew that he did it? If that thing went off millions could die and what’s worse it could kill Superman and without the Man of Steel the noble cause of Truth, Justice, and the Washington Consensus would be set back decades.
Brian Weatherson 09.30.04 at 6:07 pm
You can already deport people to their country of origin if they are *proven* visa violators. The question is whether we can do what they already did to Maher Arar, deporting a Canadian citizen to Syria on the basis of extremel dubious testimony.
We shouldn’t be deporting anyone to third countries under any circumstances, and certainly not when they are countries that practice torture, and certainly not when we are doing this on mere ‘suspicion’. I suspect half the commentators on this board of having sympathy for extremist movements of one kind or other, but I shouldn’t be able to have them deported to Syria on that basis.
mona 09.30.04 at 6:10 pm
dubious – I don’t know the details of how that has been normally enforced in the US, but the conventions against torture are more than 50 years old. It’s not like they’re something new that no one knows how to apply. I don’t see how a conscious decision to violate them could ever be justified by positing cases where they would supposedly be insufficient or unsuitable.
You either ban torture and agree not to let people be tortured if you can prevent it, or you don’t. Simple as that.
I found an interesting quote on findlaw:
Katherine 09.30.04 at 6:49 pm
“A question for the legal experts – since this provision is violating the conventions against torture, does it mean that once it’s approved, US citizens and military abroad are no longer protected by those conventions themselves?”
I don’t think so. I think the protection against torture is universal, and does not depend on being a citizen of a country that has ratified the treaty.
luci phyrr 09.30.04 at 7:20 pm
Agree with the condemnations all around, but I wonder what the purpose of such a bill is: even in the off case (the Canadian Arar) where it might be handy, is the US really concerned about prosecution under international law? Is the bill then just symbolic posturing, part of (but worse, substantively) the usual election-year outbidding bluster?
Can’t “ThoseWithPower” already do whatever it is they deem necessary (or entertaining)?
Or is there a fear that codifying what is already, objectively, practiced will lead to increased use of the, um, extra-judicial procedures?
And isn’t “rendering” something you do to sausage?
Robin Green 09.30.04 at 8:50 pm
is the US really concerned about prosecution under international law?
As the convention has been enacted into federal law (and it is precisely this enactment which the first of these provisions attempts to alter), the US government could presumably be sued by any surviving victims, with all the expense and bad publicity that would ensue. So yes, I think it is a real issue. As quoted above, “the Justice Department “really wants and supports†the provision.”
Dubious 09.30.04 at 9:38 pm
Whoah there… let’s not get carried away. Hold the skepticism and innuendo slinging, please.
In the case specified (deporting a Canadian citizen to Syria) that seems a pretty disgusting tactic.
I’m not arguing that this bill is sane or justified, but rather that there’s a scenario that seems legally difficult, and I don’t know how that situation is currently handled, or how it should be handled.
I don’t think the case I outlined is so terribly unlikely as to expose it to the barry-freed style of mockery.
Many countries that suspected terrorists come from are oppressive — indeed, by most accounts, that’s a major source of their extremism. Many citizens of those countries could reasonably request asylum, given their governments’ human rights records.
As I understand it, most suspected terrorists have been charged with visa violations and deported, since there was not sufficient evidence to convict them of anything.
Given a lack of evidence to charge them with a crime, and given that we don’t want to deport them to their country of origin for fear of their being tortured, what is to be done?
Is there any option which isn’t illegal or extra-judicial detention, and yet which decreases the odds that they will be able to rejoin a terrorist network?
Ginger Yellow 10.01.04 at 9:30 am
Surveillance? Intelligence gathering?
Do you realise what you’re asking? “Isn’t there anything we can do about people we don’t have enough evidence to convict of anything and can’t deport to countries where they’d be tortured?” What sort of screwed up mind asks such questions? Oh, wait. John Ashcroft’s.
Look. We have this exact situation in the UK, where we’re not allowed to deport people if they might be tortured or executed. But we’re also not allowed to use wiretap or other intercept intelligence in court. So the government has abrogated from article 5 (I think) of the Human Rights Act (due process/fair trial) and is holding about a dozen asylum seekers indefinitely. Our own mini-Gitmo. The government insists that if these people want, they can go back to their country of origin. Which is kind of odd, if you think about it. If these guys are so dangerous, you don’t want them running around in Syria, or Yemen, or Pakistan or wherever. But never mind. Now I might have a tiny bit of sympathy for the government’s point of view if instead of riding roughshod over the constitution by denying people the right to trial, they had, you know, made any attempt to change the law to allow wiretap evidence. I’d have even more sympathy if the government had provided any evidence whatsoever that these people were terrorists. After all, since they can’t be tried, producing the evidence wouldn’t prejudice any trial.
mona 10.01.04 at 9:53 am
“Given a lack of evidence to charge them with a crime, and given that we don’t want to deport them to their country of origin for fear of their being tortured, what is to be done?”
Come on dubious, how can you genuinely ask a question like that?
In a normal well-functioning legal system, when you don’t have enough evidence againt someone you either gather evidence of the crimes you suspect them of, and prosecute them, or you don’t and release them. Oh of course that doesn’t cover the current non-normal situation of “suspects” being held indefinitely with no charges, but that is _already_ a violation of international conventions. Making it easier to deport people to countries where they may be tortured, however, is another step in the violation direction. You’re making it sound as if it could be devised to manage a genuine problem that has never arisen before, sorry, no, the conventions against torture apply to all cases and all kinds of people. I would imagine the actual steps to take when you are complying with the Conventions, and can’t deport someone to country A because country A is known to practice torture, depend from case to case (deport to a third country, release, grant asylum – depending on whether it’s just a suspect or someone who already committed actual crimes or an asylum seeker) but please, let’s not pretend the proponents of this provision are genuinely scratching their heads trying to solve some unprecedented legal puzzle, ok?
katherine – I thought the convention only applied to country that ratified it. My question is about the technical, legal implications of continuing to violate conventions you’ve ratified. I mean, how far can a country continue to violate something it’s signed up to, and still maintain it’s a signatory to that because it’s convenient when it comes to protecting its own citizens? Politically it’s complete hypocrisy, I’m just wondering about the legal implications of it.
Katherine 10.06.04 at 6:09 am
“katherine – I thought the convention only applied to country that ratified it. My question is about the technical, legal implications of continuing to violate conventions you’ve ratified. I mean, how far can a country continue to violate something it’s signed up to, and still maintain it’s a signatory to that because it’s convenient when it comes to protecting its own citizens? Politically it’s complete hypocrisy, I’m just wondering about the legal implications of it.”
I think you’re right that we’ll basically have withdrawn from the treaty.
Since the treaty categorically forbids torture of ANYONE, other countries are still obligated not to torture U.S. citizens.
Nell Lancaster 10.07.04 at 6:03 am
luci phyrr wondered what the purpose of such a bill is: even in the off case (the Canadian Arar) where it might be handy, is the US really concerned about prosecution under international law? Is the bill then just symbolic posturing, part of (but worse, substantively) the usual election-year outbidding bluster?
Can’t ThoseWithPower already do whatever it is they deem necessary…?
The purpose of the torture legalization provision, along with dozens of other repressive and antilabor sections, is to turn the bill that’s supposed to carry out the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission into a ‘poison pill’ for Democrats. The
commissioners themselves have spoken out against the House version of the bill, whose vicious extra provisions violate the spirit and the substance of many of the recommended reforms.
But the House leadership is counting on the unwillingness of many Dems to “vote against the Sept. 11 reforms”. And the congressional D’s are getting no cover from their national candidates, who won’t raise the torture issue because, as Jim Henley said [it] risks sounding “not tough,” and they would rather clip the wires to their own nipples than do that.
The forced removal of caps isn’t an endearing affectation.
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