US, UN Differ On The Law And Torture

Today was a day for two different opinions on how torturers should be punished by the law - that of the US and that of the UN.

First the US:

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cannot be tried on allegations of torture in overseas military prisons, a federal judge said Tuesday in a case he described as ``lamentable.''

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job.

The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners.

``This is a lamentable case,'' Hogan began his 58-page opinion.

No matter how appealing it might seem to use the courts to correct allegations of severe abuses of power, Hogan wrote, government officials are immune from such lawsuits. Additionally, foreigners held overseas are not normally afforded U.S. constitutional rights.

``Despite the horrifying torture allegations,'' Hogan said, he could find no case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as unprecedented.

Then the UN:

States that commit acts of torture should be forced to pay for victims' rehabilitation, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak has said.
Mr Nowak said torture victims required long and costly treatment, and usually rich nations footed the bill rather than the offending states.

Mr Nowak said the EU was the biggest donor to torture rehabilitation centres, providing $29m (22m euros).

He was presenting his annual report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

"Countries where torture is widespread or even systematic should be held accountable to pay," the UN rapporteur said.

Mr Nowak suggested that such states could then even pass the bill on to the individual torturers.

"If individual torturers would have to pay all the long-term costs, this would have a much stronger deterrent effect on torture than some kind of disciplinary or lenient criminal punishment.

"In reality, it's almost never the state that tortures, but other states who provide asylum, who take victims of torture and who are then providing in state institutions rehabilitation."

Mr Nowak said the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture was the second biggest financier of torture rehabilitation, providing $17m (13m euros).

He also called for the application of a provision for universal jurisdiction within the UN convention against torture, which obliges countries to arrest alleged torturers who arrive on their territory.

Draw your own conclusions.