The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on 17 April said that a nonpartisan, independent review of post-9/11 interrogation and detention programmes, which concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” shows a need to stop the “disturbing erosion of American principles.”
The 577-page report by an 11-member panel convened by the Constitution Project and released on 16 April, says the use of torture “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.” According to the report, there is “no firm or persuasive evidence” that torture produced information that could not have been obtained by other means. The panel studied how prisoners were treated at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in CIA prisons. Panelists visited a number of detention sites and interviewed dozens of officials and former detainees. An appendix to the report explains why what the US did was torture.
CAIR called on national leaders to take corrective action, beginning with the renewal of CAIR’s call for the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and “by prosecuting officials who broke our nation’s laws and ignored treaties prohibiting detainee abuse.”