Global IssuesUNITED STATES: "WE TORTURED QAHTANI."
There. A US official has finally said it. Susan Crawford, convening authority for the military commissions at Guantanamo, has admitted what Mohamed al-Qahtani, his lawyers and human rights groups have long said. Al-Qahtani, a Saudi Arabian man held in Guantanamo since 2002, was tortured there, writes Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International.
In a recent interview, President-elect Barack Obama said he believes that "water-boarding is torture". January 20, then, the US will have a President who considers that torture has been committed by US officials. He will have an obligation to ensure full individual and institutional accountability. There must be no safe haven for torturers, a principle on which the US itself relied earlier this year when it prosecuted the former head of the Liberian Anti-Terrorist Unit for torture. US officials in the "war on terror" have generally kept to the public relations mantra that all those in US custody are treated "humanely" and that "we don’t do torture". Better late than never, Susan Crawford has gone off-message. Even better still will be a demonstration by the incoming administration of the political will to do something about it.
(*) Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International
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