The legal evils of Guantanamo Bay: The Rumsfeld Memo

[maddezmom]

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 27/04/2008



Alasdair Palmer reviews Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law by Philippe Sands

Torture Team centres on a single document: a memo, signed by the former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, authorising the use of additional methods of interrogation on those interned at Guantanamo Bay. Taken together, Philippe Sands believes these amount to torture.

He believes that the memo holds the key to unlocking the Bush administration's policy on the treatment of the non-American citizens it suspected of involvement in al-Qa'eda-inspired terrorism.

He thinks this policy, which involved torture and a retreat from the Geneva Convention, is both unique and uniquely evil.

It seems to me, however, that what is different this time isn't the fact of torture: it is the attempt to make it legal. That attempt left a paper trail and it is the release to the public of that trail that has made this book possible.

It is based around Sands's interviews with some of the key people involved. Not surprisingly, he was unable to get to Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush. Predictably, those lower down the hierarchy say that what happened wasn't their fault: 'Oh no, Sir, it wasn't me. I didn't do it', seems to be the most common response.


more:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/27/bosan127.xml