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'Fleeting pain okay' - Justice
08/06/2004 10:06 - (SA)
Washington - The US Justice Department advised the White House in an August 2002 memo that torture during interrogations in the war against terrorism could be justified, The Washington Post said Tuesday.
The memo, sent by the Justice Department's office of legal council in response to a Central Intelligence Agency request for legal guidance and addressed to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez, said international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in the war on terrorism.
It said torturing a suspect in captivity "may be justified" if the US government employee applying the torture "would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the Al-Qaeda terrorist network."
Arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later, said the 50-page document signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay Baybee that was obtained by The Washington Post.
The memo, the daily said, served as basis for a March 2003 classified report Pentagon lawyers prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained that they were not getting enough information from prisoners. The Wall Street Journal on Monday revealed the 2003 report.
The August 2002 memo, The Washington Post said, also argued that inflicting moderate or fleeting pain did not necessarily constitute torture, which "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death".
The Post said US Army manuals on interrogations were more restrictive, banning such practices as pain induced by chemicals or bondage; forcing an individual to stand, sit or kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time; and food deprivation.
A Human Rights Watch official expressed dismay at the 2002 memo.
"It is by leaps and bounds the worst thing I've seen since this whole Abu Ghraib scandal broke," said Tom Malinowski, referring to the prison outside Baghdad where US military guards abused Iraqi prisoners.
"It appears that what they were contemplating was the commission of war crimes and looking for ways to avoid legal accountability. The effect is to throw out years of military doctrine and standards on interrogations," he added.
- AFP
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