Legalization of torture
By Yadira Escobar
MIAMI – U.S. senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte apparently wish to deprive the suspect in the Boston attack, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, of his civil rights and send him to Guantánamo to be tortured.
Does anyone doubt this? Above all, I am amazed that McCain is so enthused about torturing Americans when he himself says that he was tortured in an enemy prison.
A condemnable terrorist attack against civilian society occurred in Boston that must not be utilized by politicians to eliminate civil rights. This country preaches that no one is guilty before proof is shown to a tribunal, but if torture is used in order to demonstrate guilt there is no way to learn the truth. No serious person believes the confession of a tortured person.
The Spanish Inquisition wrung incredible confessions from its hapless victims, who, tormented by pain and anguish, were capable even of saying that they unleashed storms and droughts with their magic spells.
In the imagination of many Americans, policemen with itchy trigger fingers and a hard line of untrammeled investigation are the response required for the enemies of the nation. What’s hard, however, is to define the enemy.
The suspects in the Boston terrorist attack come from Chechnya and are Muslims. Like other Muslim states formerly part of the Soviet Union, Chechnya apparently has been the target of a long campaign of intelligence from the United States, the United Kingdom, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to break Chechnya’s links with Moscow.
Fear of Russian imperialism has propitiated a plan of support for Islamic fundamentalism that, unfortunately, has bounced back and is striking the West on its own streets.
The pragmatism based fully on calculations often fails because of the cultural contempt for ideologies shown by the centers of economic power in the West. One of the biggest mistakes in foreign policy has been, for example, the Arab Spring, designed to topple centralized states that are "excessively sovereign," because it favors the creation of integrative governments that export a type of terrorism that is hard to monitor because it is not centralized.
The European press often refers to the job done by the CIA to destabilize the Balkans, but that fact is little known in the United States. Americans in general believe that when NATO bombed Serbia it did so to punish "the bad guys," whereas the purpose was to prevent Serbia from providing Moscow with a path to the Mediterranean Sea.
Returning to Chechnya, it is said that rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan sponsored by the CIA. That may be difficult to verify, but if Chechnyan rebel leader Doku Umarov truly attempted to infuse the insurgents with the global jihadist idea in order to create an Islamic emirate in the Caucasus region, it is not surprising that the tendency of fundamentalists in the past to attack Moscow and Russian civilians has changed its orientation and now the fundamentalists are thinking of attacking Western targets that the radical jihad sees as Putin’s secret allies.
Any way you look at it, it is a bad idea to turn insurgents into religious fanatics to harass the borders of a feared power, because terrorism itself is bad and changes flag more easily than changing strategy. It’s like playing with fire.
Many Americans, anguished by the cruel attack on Boston, support harsh action even if it weakens their own civil rights. That raises tension everywhere.
Right now in Guantánamo, more than half the prisoners are on a hunger strike. Sixteen are being fed by esophageal tubes. The captors continue to use torture as a way to obtain information. What today is being done against foreigners will be done tomorrow to U.S. citizens, if we allow bad habits to become institutionalized and if we justified torture against foreigners for fear of terrorism.
The authorities did not read Tsarnev his basic rights (the "Miranda Rights") after his arrest, so the agents could subject the 19-year-old man to an "unlimited" interrogation.
That type of interrogation is legal when a threat to the public remains after an arrest, but the authorities announced – after capturing Tsarnaev – that the danger was over. Therefore, if they treat Tsarnaev as "an enemy combatant" or send him to Guantánamo before proving him guilty, they will create another of those precedents that lead to "police states" where only the privileged minorities enjoy their civil rights.
Yadira Escobar lives in Hialeah Gardens and writes for Progreso Semanal/Weekly. Her blog is Yadiraescobar.com.
