Ethics Newsline®

WASHINGTON
Amnesty International last week lashed out at the United States over its treatment of terrorism detainees and prisoners, saying U.S. efforts to subvert international treaties against torture have made the world a more dangerous place.

Amnesty accused the U.S. government of abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, protecting high-ranking officials implicated in abusive policies, denying legal resources to detainees, and establishing a confinement system in Cuba that has become “the gulag of our times.”

The United States also “has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding ‘ghost detainees,’ and the ‘rendering’ or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practice torture,” Amnesty’s secretary general, Irene Khan, said last week.

The charge of “ghost detainees” refers to allegations that the U.S. keeps some prisoners incommunicado and does not acknowledge their existence.

Amnesty’s “strong language” was deliberately chosen to underscore deep concern that “the United States has betrayed a very fundamental principle that this country stands for,” William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International’s U.S. operations, told the New York Times.

While the United States was not the worst human rights offender, it was the most powerful and the most watched, making its failures more damaging to the safety of prisoners around the world, the group said.

“When the U.S. government calls upon foreign leaders to bring to justice those who commit or authorize human rights violations in their own countries, why should those foreign leaders listen?” said Schulz. “And if the U.S. government does not abide by the same standards of justice, what shred of moral authority will we retain to pressure other governments to diminish abuses?”

The 2004 report also chronicled abuses by other nations, criticizing both Israel and Palestine for “crimes against humanity and war crimes” by killing civilians in tit-for-tat attacks, noted the BBC.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan last week dismissed Amnesty’s accusations as “ridiculous and unsupported by the facts,” saying the U.S. government holds “people accountable when there’s abuse. We take steps to prevent it from happening again. And we do so in a very public way….”