U.S.: Investigate Rumsfeld, Tenet for Torture

The United States should name a special
prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA Director George Tenet in cases of detainee
torture and abuse, Human Rights Watch said in releasing a new report today.
The report, Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees,
is issued on the eve of the first anniversary of the publication of the
Abu Ghraib photos (April 28). It presents substantial evidence
warranting criminal investigations of Rumsfeld and Tenet, as well as
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and
Gen. Geoffrey Miller the former commander of the prison camp at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"The soldiers at the bottom of the chain are taking the heat
for Abu Ghraib and torture around the world, while the guys at the top
who made the policies are going scot free," said Reed Brody, special
counsel for Human Rights Watch. "That’s simply not right."

Human Rights Watch said that there was now overwhelming
evidence that U.S. mistreatment and torture of Muslim prisoners took
place not merely at Abu Ghraib but at facilities throughout Afghanistan
and Iraq as well as at Guantánamo and at "secret locations" around the
world, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the laws against
torture.

"This pattern of abuse across several countries did not result
from the acts of individual soldiers who broke the rules," said Brody.
"It resulted from decisions made by senior U.S. officials to bend,
ignore, or cast rules aside."

Among Human Rights Watch’s findings:

• Secretary Rumsfeld should be investigated for potential
  liability in war crimes and torture by US troops in Afghanistan, Iraq
  and Guantánamo under the doctrine of "command responsibility"-the legal
  principle that holds a superior responsible for crimes committed by his
  subordinates when he knew or should have known that they were being
  committed but fails to take reasonable measures to stop them. Secretary
  Rumsfeld approved interrogation techniques which violated the Geneva
  Conventions and the Convention against Torture, such as the use of
  guard dogs to frighten prisoners and painful "stress" positions. There
  is no evidence that, over a three-year period of mounting reports of
  abuse, Rumsfeld exerted his authority and warned those under his
  command that the mistreatment of prisoners must stop. Had he done so,
  many of the crimes committed by U.S. forces certainly could have been
  avoided.
• Under George Tenet’s direction, and reportedly with his specific
  authorization, the CIA has "rendered" detainees to countries where they
  were tortured, making Tenet potentially liable as an accomplice to
  torture. The CIA has also "disappeared" detainees in secret locations
  and it is said to have used "waterboarding," in which the detainee’s
  head is pushed under water until he believes he will drown, also
  reportedly with Tenet’s authorization.
• Gen. Sanchez approved illegal interrogation methods-again,
  including the use of guard dogs to frighten prisoners-which were then
  applied by soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Gen. Sanchez does not appear to have
  intervened to stop the commission of war crimes and torture by soldiers
  under his direct command.
• Gen. Miller, as commander at the tightly-controlled prison camp at
  Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, may bear responsibility for war crimes and acts
  of torture there. He may also bear responsibility for bringing illegal
  abusive interrogation tactics to Iraq.

Despite this evidence, Human Rights Watch said, the United
States has deliberately shielded the architects of illegal detention
policies through the refusal to allow an independent inquiry of
prisoner abuse and the failure to undertake criminal investigations
against those leaders who allowed the widespread criminal abuse of
detainees to develop and persist. Rather, the Department of Defense has
established a plethora of investigations, all but one in-house, looking
down the chain of command. Prosecutions have commenced only against
low-level soldiers and contractors.

"A year after Abu Ghraib, the United States continues to do
what dictatorships and banana republics do the world over when their
abuses are discovered-cover up the scandal and shift blame downwards,"
said Brody. "A wall of immunity surrounds the architects of the policy
that led to all these crimes."

Human Rights Watch requested the appointment of a special
prosecutor, saying that because Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was
himself deeply involved in the policies leading to these alleged
crimes, he had a conflict of interest preventing a proper investigation
of detainee abuse. U.S. Department of Justice regulations call for the
appointment of an outside counsel when such a conflict exists and the
public interest warrants a prosecutor without links to the government.

Human Rights Watch also repeated its call to Congress and the
president to establish a special commission, along the lines of the
9/11 Commission, to investigate the issue of prisoner abuse. Such a
commission would hold hearings, have full subpoena power, and be
empowered to recommend the creation of a special prosecutor to
investigate possible criminal offenses, if the attorney general had not
yet named one. Although Human Rights Watch said that existing evidence
already necessitated criminal investigations, it emphasized that an
independent commission could compel evidence that the government has
continued to conceal, including the directives reportedly signed by
President Bush authorizing the CIA to establish secret detention
facilities and facilitating the "rendition" of suspects to brutal
regimes.