Bush: Treaty Outlawing Torture Doesn't Apply Beyond US Soil

Bush: Treaty Outlawing Torture Doesn't Apply Beyond US Soil: "October 29, 2005 by OneWorld.net | by Niko Kyriakou

SAN FRANCISCO - Echoing recent comments by White House officials, a U.S. government report submitted to the United Nations last Friday bears a message that the brutal treatment of people held in U.S. military custody abroad is and should be legal.

The report, which was submitted to the UN's Human Rights Committee and is designed to document U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), fails to mention a number of U.S violations of the treaty that took place off of U.S. soil in places like Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, human rights groups say.

"This is not a sufficient report," said Ann Fagan Ginger, Executive Director of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute based in Berkeley, California.

"The government continues its arrogant and illegal refusal to report major violations...in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan," she told OneWorld Friday.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was signed by the U.S. in 1992 and outlaws torture or degrading treatment.

The treaty mandates signatories to submit reports on their compliance with the treaty every five years to the Human Rights Committee, which reviews reports and presents its findings to the United Nations. The U.S. reports were many years overdue. ...
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While McCain's proposal would, in effect, remedy many U.S. violations of the civil and political rights treaty, rights groups are not waiting around for domestic law to do what they say is already done by international law.

"This is yet another example of how the U.S. government is trying to deflect responsibility for its international obligations," Jamil Dakwar, staff attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) national legal department, told OneWorld.

At an hour-long hearing to discuss the report held at the State Department yesterday, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, Global Rights, and several smaller organizations railed the U.S. report. ...
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The State Department, for its part, held to its argument that the U.S. has never accepted the application of the treaty beyond its borders, affirming that this "has nothing to do with the post 9-11 policies," Dakwar said.

But rights groups retorted that the Human Rights Committee has already reached numerous decisions in which the treaty was deemed applicable to countries occupying foreign lands, according to Dakwar. ...