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- As the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence feuds with the CIA
over the declassification of its 6,000-page report on the agency's
secret detention and interrogation programs, we host a debate between
former CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo and human rights attorney
Scott Horton. This comes as the United Nations Human Rights Committee
has criticized the Obama administration for closing its investigations
into the CIA's actions after September 11. A U.N. report issued Thursday
stated, "The Committee notes with concern that all reported
investigations into enforced disappearances, torture and other cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment that had been committed in the context of
the CIA secret rendition, interrogation and detention programmes were
closed in 2012 leading only to a meager number of criminal charges
brought against low-level operatives." Rizzo served as acting general
counsel during much of the George W. Bush administration and was a key
legal architect of the U.S. interrogation and detention program after
the Sept. 11 attacks. He recently published a book titled, "Company Man:
Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA." Attorney Scott
Horton is contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and author of the
forthcoming book, "The Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and
America's Stealth Foreign Policy."
Guántanamo
Bay. The head of the US delegation to Geneva said the country was
‘continually striving to improve’. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP
The
US came under sharp criticism at the UN human rights committee in
Geneva on Thursday for a long list of human rights abuses that included
everything from detention without charge at Guantánamo, drone strikes
and NSA surveillance, to the death penalty, rampant gun violence and
endemic racial inequality.
At the start of a two-day grilling of
the US delegation, the committee’s 18 experts made clear their deep
concerns about the US record across a raft of human rights issues. Many
related to faultlines as old as America itself, such as guns and race.
Other
issues were relative newcomers. The experts raised questions about the
National Security Agency’s surveillance of digital communications in the
wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations. It also intervened in this week’s
dispute
between the CIA and US senators by calling for declassification and
release of the 6,300-page report into the Bush administration’s use of
torture techniques and rendition that lay behind the current CIA-Senate
dispute.
The committee is charged with upholding the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a UN treaty that the US
ratified in 1992. The current exercise, repeated every five years, is a
purely voluntarily review, and the US will face no penalties should it
choose to ignore the committee’s recommendations, which will appear in a
final report in a few weeks’ time.
But the US is clearly
sensitive to suggestions that it fails to live up to the human rights
obligations enshrined in the convention – as signalled by the large size
of its delegation to Geneva this week. And as an act of public shaming,
Thursday’s encounter was frequently uncomfortable for the US.
The
US came under sustained criticism for its global counter-terrorism
tactics, including the use of unmanned drones to kill al-Qaida suspects,
and its transfer of detainees to third countries that might practice
torture, such as Algeria. Committee members also highlighted the Obama
administration’s failure to prosecute any of the officials responsible
for permitting waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation”
techniques under the previous administration.
Walter Kälin, a
Swiss international human rights lawyer who sits on the committee,
attacked the US government’s refusal to recognise the convention’s
mandate over its actions beyond its own borders. The US has asserted
since 1995 that the ICCPR does not apply to US actions beyond its
borders - and has used that “extra-territoriality” claim to justify its
actions in Guantánamo and in conflict zones.
Answering
UN criticisms of detentions at Guantánamo Bay, the US delegation said:
‘It is the policy of the US to support the preservation of life in a
humane manner.’ Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
The
US has put up its defence at the United Nations in Geneva over charges
that it is guilty of widespread human rights violations, claiming that
the military commissions at Guantanámo Bay meet – and exceed – fair
trial standards and that agencies engaging in mass surveillance are
subject to “rigorous oversight”.
The US delegation delivered its
rebuttal on Friday to the strong criticism it has faced from members of
the UN human rights committee. Over two days, the committee has pressed hard questions about the US human rights record, from National Security Agency data mining to racial discrimination and rampant gun violence.
The
interaction between the US and the committee is part of a process,
completed every five years, to review whether the country is meeting its
commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR), which the US ratified in 1992. At the end of the
process, the committee will produce a non-binding final report that is
aimed at encouraging the US at all levels of government to improve its
policies in areas of perceived weakness.
US officials sought to
fend off the committee’s criticisms, focusing particularly on Guantánamo
and the mass dragnet of data exposed by Edward Snowden. The delegation
insisted that the 154 detainees still being held in Guantánamo are there
“lawfully both under international law and US law”.
Officials
disputed that any of the detainees had been “cleared for release”.
Rather, they were subject to review board assessments every six months
to see whether “continued lawful detention is necessary to protect
against a continuing threat against the US”.
Just three days after the first Guantánamo detainee lodged the first legal challenge
to force feeding at the base in a US federal court, alleging he had
been subjected to a form of torture known as the “water cure”, the US
delegation in Geneva claimed detainees had “access to exceptional
healthcare” and said: “It is the policy of the US to support the
preservation of life in a humane manner.”
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