Katrina vanden Heuvel: Stop the Outsourcing of Torture (The Nation)

[marmar]

BLOG | Posted 03/08/2007 @ 3:28pm
Legislation Watch


Earlier this year, as the new Democratic Congress gathered, I highlighted 10 pieces of legislation that I believe deserve to be passed – they would certainly help put our nation back on a path toward a more perfect union. One of the ten bills featured was Representative Ed Markey's Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act which was reintroduced on Tuesday as H.R. 1352.

In the last session of Congress the bill had 33 original cosponsors. There are now 45 original cosponsors of the new bill, and on Wednesday, Rep. Tom Lantos – Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs – also signed on.

"I feel a rising optimism that we can end this repugnant and counterproductive practice of outsourcing torture during the 110th Congress," Markey said.

Let's hope he's right. The practice of sending individuals detained by our government off to other countries that torture – known in Orwellian speak as "extraordinary rendition" – flies in the face of the international Convention Against Torture, ratified by the United States in 1994, and the 1998 Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act. It has led to the reprehensible and tragic cases of Maher Arar, Khaled El-Masri and Abu Omar – and in all likelihood the torture of many other innocent victims that we have not yet heard from. ....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=173207