In the name of the "war on terrorism," the Bush administration has made torture and indefinite detention part of the U.S. government's standard operating procedure.

Shamefully, the U.S. Congress has now given these practices a seal of approval. By passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Congress has given the president permission to detain people indefinitely without charges or access to legal recourse, and the authority to redefine torture, outside of the Geneva Conventions.

Global Exchange condemns this new legislation. The policies that Congress has endorsed are un-American, inhumane and illegal.

More Information About the Military Commissions Act of 2006

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which passed the House and Senate at the end of September 2006, includes the following provisions, among others:

•Eliminates habeas corpus for individuals accused of being enemy combatants. Habeas corpus is a legal remedy used by prisoners who want to argue in a US court that they are being unlawfully detained or that their conditions of detention violate the law.
•By eliminating habeas corpus in these cases, Congress has taken away the rights of hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees to challenge their detentions. These detainees have been held for years, many of them without having been charges with any crime. Some have been tortured.
•Redefines the term "unlawful enemy combatant" to make it so loose that many legal scholars believe the president now has unrestricted power to deem anyone an unlawful enemy combatant, even a US citizen.
•Gives the president the authority to interpret which interrogation tactics he believes violate Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions, which applies to the treatment of prisoners of war. This means the president can decide which abusive acts qualify as "humiliating and degrading treatment." This is the president under whose watch U.S. officials have carried out cruel and unusual acts such as the use of dogs, sexual humiliation, beatings, death threats, sleep deprivation, electric shocks, desecration of the Quran, and even actual death of prisoners who were in detention.
•Legalized US war crimes committed before December 30th, 2005.

From the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba to detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq, reports have surfaced that U.S. officials are practicing torture and other forms of cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. is also sending detainees to be interrogated in countries like Egypt and Uzbekistan, where torture is actually legal, and earlier this year it was reported in the Washington Post that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating detainees in secret prisons in Eastern Europe.

Congress should be putting a halt to these practices, not condoning them. We cannot insist that other countries respect human rights and international law if we are not willing to do so ourselves.

More Information

Amnesty International USA
Center for Constitutional Rights
Human Rights Watch