By Anthony Salloum

OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA – Torture is wrong. There are no moral or legal arguments to prove that torture, under any circumstance, can ever be justified.

For almost 60 years, the international community has expressed its views on the issue of torture. And that view has been against its use. Collectively, advanced democracies, including our own, have lectured and pointed fingers at other countries accused of violating the rights of their citizens.

If we resort to the use of torture and seek to justify its use, we lose our moral high ground, and with it, our capacity to help end these violations elsewhere.

International law makes torture illegal. Chronologically speaking, there was the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which was adopted by the UN on Aug. 12, 1949, and entered into force on Oct. 21, 1950.

The Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners outlined in Resolution 663 of July 31, 1957 and Resolution 2076 of May 13, 1977 contained a “Discipline and Punishment” section which specifically prohibited torture-like treatment.

Then there was the Basic Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners contained in Resolution 45/111 of Dec. 14, 1990. And, there is the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment which was adopted on Dec. 10, 1984, and entered into force on June 26, 1987. A total of 145 states are currently parties to this convention, including the United States.

But there are hold-outs. In fact, torture is undergoing a renaissance of sorts during this so-called “war on terror.”

This month, U.S. President George Bush is expected to veto a bill that would limit the interrogation of prisoners in his “war of terror” to those techniques approved by the U.S. Army’s Field Manual.

The Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal 2008, if passed, would effectively outlaw the use of several techniques employed by the CIA—and explicitly prohibited in the manual—such as waterboarding, mock executions, the use of electric shocks, beatings, forcing prisoners to perform sexual acts and depriving prisoners of necessary food, water or medical care.

The use of these “acts of violence or intimidation, including physical or mental torture, or exposure to inhumane treatment,” would also be forbidden by any “[U.S. government] instrumentality thereof, regardless of nationality or physical location.” In other words, this bill could spell the end of Bush legacies such as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, renditions, and black sites.

The latter refers to secret prisons outside U.S. territory that are therefore outside U.S. legal jurisdiction and Congressional supervision.

President Bush feels that the rules in the U.S. Army Manual are too restrictive.

The Bush administration has had support for its use of torture in soliciting information from its “detainees,” from controversial figures such as Pulitzer Prize-winning (and Canadian-born) columnist Charles Krauthhammer.

Mr. Krauthhammer, in a 4,000-word essay in The Weekly Standard in 2005, painstakingly attempts to recategorize prisoners into three categories: “ordinary soldier captured in war,” a “captured terrorist,” and a “terrorist with information.”

The latter, he argued, should be tortured if information retrieved could save lives.

Fortunately, his argument does not impact on the views of at least 40 retired military generals who say that torture is not just immoral, but counterproductive.

Among them is former chief judge of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals Brigadier General James Cullen and Marine Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes who have said the use of torture actually threatens national security.

Canada’s actions of late have not been stellar either.

A majority of Canadians are very familiar with our government’s involvement in the arrest and deportation of Canadian citizen Maher Arar from the United States to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured for months.

Many are not aware that several other Canadians were subjected to rendition and possibly torture on foreign soil; Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.

Mr. Almalki is scheduled to tell his story on March 11 at the University of Ottawa.

Almost no one is aware of the story of Benamar Benatta, an Algerian refugee fleeing political persecution and seeking protection in Canada, was secretly driven across the border on Sept. 12, 2001, and handed over to U.S. security forces without a hearing or counsel.

Despite being cleared of any involvement in 9/11, he would spend almost five years in U.S. custody, reportedly tortured and abused, before being allowed to return to Canada.

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Note: Anthony Salloum is the program director of the Rideau Institute, an independent research, advocacy, and consulting group based in Ottawa. It is a federally registered non-profit organization, established in January 2007.

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