Torture

On Tuesday, President Obama suggested that the United States might consider prosecution of some of the individuals who are connected with the harsh interrogations techniques used by the CIA on Al Qaeda detainees (see here). Earlier, the US President had made it clear previously that those CIA personnel who had relied in good faith on the legal memos…

Having now read the four recently released ‘torture’ memos, I was perhaps most struck with their bureaucratic tone and the sterile overall narrative that they presented. The earlier Yoo/Bybee memos dealing with general issues such as the meaning of the term ‘torture’ in the UN Convention against Torture and US implementing legislation were rightly criticized for their facetious analysis.

The Obama administration has just released four new ‘torture’ memos, written by lawyers working in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice in the Bush administration. The release of these memos has been long anticipated, and seems to have produced much wrangling within the Obama administration, with the CIA pressing to keep them classified. Some portions of…

Nehal Bhuta is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Toronto and a member of the EJIL’s Scientific Advisory Board. . He has worked with the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch and was a consultant with the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York. In 2008/2009 he is a Hauser Research Scholar…