Linda Rigas: August 2008 Archives

Experts Predict Slew of Torture Suits:
Courts Begin to Consider Whether Torture Victims
May Seek Legal Redress

Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals announced that its full court would reconsider the disturbing case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen arrested by U.S. authorities at JFK airport in 2002 and forcibly extradited to Syria for interrogation. As U.S. officials surely expected, Arar was questioned under torture for the next year in a Syrian prison. He was eventually released without charge.

One of the first known victims of the Bush administration's secret "extraordinary rendition" policy, Arar sued U.S. authorities in 2004 for conspiring in his torture. A three-judge panel dismissed the case in January, saying that as an alien deported by immigration authorities, he had no right to bring a claim. But as more such cases are being filed, it appears the courts are beginning to reconsider. The entire Second Circuit court -- all 22 judges -- last week announced sua sponte that it would take a second look at Arar's case. Meanwhile, similar cases filed by former detainees apparently tortured under the direction of U.S. officials could be headed to the Supreme Court.

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/experts-predict-slew

"The one thing that is missing is an understanding of the lawyers on the other side: the darker figures of the story. Lawyers like Prof. John Yoo (who is given passing reference in the book) and Prof. Viet D. Dinh are viewed by many law professors and civil libertarians as grotesque and even monstrous in their work to excuse torture and to deny the basic rights of detainees. They remain cutout caricatures in books examining the tribunals."

from How a Jihadist Curtailed a President's Authority
by Jonathon Turley

Recently, The Daily Californian published a piece titled "Bear Naked: Getting to Know John Yoo."

The following is a critical response to the above article, written to challenge the author's complicity in defending John Yoo's presence at Boalt Hall and to call on students and community members to take action against torture and against abetting war criminals.

Editor,

Torture practices continue due to the purposeful misrepresentation of anti-torture policies and disregard for law that preserves fundamental human rights and needs. Evidence of abuse and torture practices, including but not limited to beatings, electric shocks, sexual humiliation, waterboarding, and harming the children of detainees cause lasting physical, psychological, and mental suffering, anguish, and discomfort. These methods are illegal and unwarranted, and the U.S. employing torturous interrogation practices has become an issue of global concern. At the core of these torture violations is John Yoo, who is invested in emphasizing bureaucratic rule, expanding presidential power, and funding the militarization of capitalist hegemony. John Yoo's authorizations of torture and interrogation abuses have directly resulted in the most egregious assaults on human lives during our time.

Andrew Kim not only explicitly professes that there was no prior legal precedent to torture, but also negligently and recklessly advocates that a fictitious "war on terror" that employs the propaganda of fear and hysteria as it's primary mechanism should not be challenged even when individual liberties, due process, habeas corpus, and human lives are being extinguished in violations of the law. These assertions are unconscionable and have no basis in reality. Is Kim aware that John Yoo developed the definition for torture pursuant to a health statute, violating the rule of law established in the Youngstown and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld cases and international treaties against torture, to which the U.S. is a signatory? Is Kim aware that millions are being detained interminably with no recourse; no legal right to representation, and without having been charged and knowing why they are being unlawfully confined? How many more lives being lost as a direct result of the torture interrogation techniques John Yoo has implemented are acceptable to Kim to justify the Bush Administration's advocacy of an empire torture state?

Reasonable people cannot uphold Kim's uncritical representations that ineffectively attempt to mitigate John Yoo's role as a pedagogical instrument of power at UC Berkeley. In trying to gain readership, Kim has gone beyond being silent in speaking out against torture; Kim seeks to protect John Yoo's presence at UC Berkeley, as "a man." As a sports writer, Kim admits to being incompetent to commenting on a political story. What then was Kim's motivation in offering a political opinion that is complicit to allowing and upholding torture and abuse? What does Kim think about aiding and abetting a war criminal? Is Kim willing to defend John Yoo further?

Past times have shown us that abusive interrogation tactics have been used as weapons against human lives. John Yoo has committed war crimes against humanity and should be held responsible for his deplorable violations of law and professional ethics. We will not back down; we will not compromise until NO TO TORTURE is on the world agenda.

Linda Rigas
No To Torture--John Yoo Must Go!
www.firejohnyoo.net

Coco Fusco, a multimedia artist who uses performance, writing, and video, pushes the boundaries of what is accepted in the cultural realm through her most current work titled A Field Guide for Female Interrogators (2008), a book that offers a mirror image of America's current use of torture.

In order to not only expose the realities of torture via interrogation abuses, but to also provide a critical commentary that reveals political truth, Coco Fusco underwent instruction and training in interrogation techniques at the Prisoner of War Interrogation Resistance Program run by a private entity Team Delta, which consists of former intelligence interrogators in the United States military who seek to provide "authentic military experiences" by allowing trainees to play prisoners of war and instructors to take on the role of interrogators. By the end of the simulation program, each trainee has been interrogated several times to experience what these interrogation tactics feel like.

Immediately after this simulation course, Fusco made the video "Operation Atropos," (2006) which emphasizes through repetition the image of women prisoners being forced to their knees, yelled at, pushed, prodded, and insulted by all-male interrogators. By the end of the film, the detainee women are shown to have been psychologically abused as a direct ramification of threats of death and violence. The film exposes the inevitable results of interrogation that confine prisoners within strict boundaries as they are strainfully forced to give confessions.

"Americans need to grow up and admit that as adults we are responsible for what we do, and so are soldiers in uniform. That does not mean that I fail to recognize that orders to engage in abuse came from above -- I believe they did, and I would argue that all those involved in authorizing abuse at Abu Ghraib should also be held responsible." --Coco Fusco: A Field Guide for Female Interrogators

Fusco expanded on this video work further by augmenting the role of women in interrogation abuses and how female-bodied interrogators use their sexuality on male-bodied detainees. In her book, Fusco underscores the abusive torture tactics currently being used by drawing on actual accounts of detainee treatment in US military prisons. By constructing images based on verbal and psychological abuse, Fusco provides a complex analysis beyond the exposure of images from Abu Ghraib. Fusco explores the "psychology of capture" through interrogation abuses that subject prisoners to believing via threats and insinuations that physical violence will be used. Furthermore, detainees are led to believe that nearby screams of trauma and pain are coming from fellow prisoners, a tactic that Fusco learned is particularly useful against women.

This critical exposure of abuse addresses how interrogation tactics are being used as weapons against human lives. We must continue to expose torture as a method to fight against a prison torture state. We cannot back down; we cannot compromise until NO TORTURE is on the world agenda!