PRESIDENT Barack Obama has backed away from support for a truth commission to investigate the use of torture by CIA interrogators during the Bush administration, telling congressional leaders that he does not want to litigate the past.
Earlier this week, the president suggested that he could support an independent commission to investigate the abuses but at a White House meeting with Democratic and Republican leaders, he said such an inquiry could open the door to a protracted, backward-looking discussion.
“The president determined the concept didn’t seem altogether workable in this case,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters later.
“The last few days might be evidence of why something like this might just become a political back and forth.” Republicans reject the idea of a truth commission but Democrats are divided on the issue, with House speaker Nancy Pelosi and senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy expressing support and Senate majority leader Harry Reid favouring an intelligence committee hearing instead.
“It would be very unwise, from my perspective, to start having commissions, boards, tribunals until we find out what the facts are,” Mr Reid said.
“I don’t know a better way to get what the facts are than through the intelligence committee. I think that’s a pretty good way to do it.” House minority leader John Boehner said that a commission of inquiry would yield nothing new and might even make the country less safe.
“I don’t see what we’re going to learn that congressional leaders didn’t already know,” he said.
Ms Pelosi, who was the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee when the Bush administration authorised the CIA to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” on detainees, insisted that she was never told that the harsh techniques would actually be used. “We were not, I repeat, we were not, told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used,” she said.
Peter Hoekstra, who was the ranking Republican on the committee, disputes Ms Pelosi’s account, writing in the Wall Street Journal that the senior members of the committee were fully briefed on the techniques the CIA interrogators were using.
“We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses,” he wrote.
A federal appeals court yesterday rejected for a second time a lawsuit by Guantanamo Bay detainees who say they were tortured and denied religious rights. Four British men claim they were beaten, chained in painful stress positions and threatened by dogs during their detention. They also say that guards tried to prevent them from practising their religion, forcing them to shave their beards, interrupting their prayers, and throwing a copy of the Koran into a toilet.
An appeals court ruled against them early last year, saying that because the men were foreigners held outside the United States, they do not fall within the definition of a “person” protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Later last year, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees have some rights under the US Constitution but the appeals court yesterday threw out the case because the four detainees had been released from Guantanamo before the Supreme Court ruling.
Yesterday’s ruling came amid media reports that the Obama administration is preparing to allow as many as seven Chinese Uighur Muslims held at Guantanamo to settle in the US. US authorities acknowledge that the 17 Uighurs detained at Guantanamo pose no threat but China insists they are terrorists and wants them to be repatriated to face trial.
A US district court last year ordered the Uighurs’ release but the decision, which was appealed by the Bush administration, was overturned by a higher court.
Three years ago, the US released five Uighurs into Albania but after pressure from Beijing, Albania declined to take any more.
The Obama administration is to release scores of new pictures showing abuse of prisoners held by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The pictures were taken between 2001 and 2006 at detention centres other than Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison, confirming that abuse was much more widespread than the US has so far admitted. The Bush administration repeatedly blocked appeals from human rights groups to release the pictures, which are held by the army criminal investigation division. But the Obama administration late on Thursday lifted all legal obstacles and they will be published by May 28th.