Torture and International Human Rights - Mark Levine

Torture and International Human Rights
A roundtable discussion with Francis Boyle, Michael Mandel, Liz Holtzman, H. Victor Conde, and Mark Levine

Boyle et al interviewed by January 09, 2005
Mark Levine

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=80&ItemID=6987

As the Abu-Ghraib prison scandal began to pierce through the public consciousness, Contributing Editor Mark LeVine brought together four leading experts on international and American constitutional law to explore the implications of the scandal and the larger issue of the violations of international and American law that have become part of the fabric of the US-led occupation of Iraq.

The extent of the daily violations of international law, including systematic war crimes by the US (and of course, other coalition forces and the insurgents as well), become impossible to ignore when you are on the ground in Iraq, which Levine visited in the early spring. What he saw first hand, and learned from speaking to people around the country - especially health professionals, NGO workers, lawyers, engineers, and academics - was how much the systematic commission of war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law were part of the routine of the occupation. As important, it was clearly the result of official US policies that would seem to extend directly to the White House and senior US political and military officials, including the President, Vice President and Secretary of Defense.

This was the context for contacting the four participants in this roundtable, all of whom have a wealth of expertise on the issue of the culpability of members of the US military and senior politicians for violations of civil and human rights, and the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Elizabeth Holtzman was a Congresswoman who drafted the impeachment papers for President Nixon during the Watergate hearings and has been researching the legal culpability of President Bush and his subordinates for the torture at Abu Ghraib and other crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Francis Boyle is a leading expert on the laws of war and the relationship between civilian and military personnel in investigating war crimes and other violations of humanitarian war, with particular experience in Israel/Palestine.

Viewing the situation from Canada, Michael Mandel has been among the leading voices bringing together lawyers across North America and Europe to deepen our understanding of the implications of the events and policies discussed in this roundtable, while Victor Conde has been among the foremost experts in defining the terminology and scope of international humanitarian war. While this roundtable was originally conducted in the summer of 2004, the ongoing revelations related to this story--that President Bush and other top officials were directly informed of abuses at Abu Ghraib and did nothing to stop them, or the declaration by Kofi Anan that the invasion of Iraq was "illegal" and violated the UN Charter (and thus was also a crime under the US Constitution)--only serve to confirm the arguments made by the roundtable participants.

-- then starts the roundtable discussion --

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=80&ItemID=6987