BORDC Campaign Against U.S. Use of Torture, Rendition, and Ghost Prisoners

End U.S. Use of Torture, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, and Rendition

For more than a century, until recently, U.S. policy prohibited torture. Since September 11, 2001, however, members of the Bush administration, including President Bush and former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, have made statements and issued memos, many of them classified, that signal shifts in that policy.

For example:

* Descriptions of abuse, torture, and murder at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison match experiences of detainees in prisons from Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Brooklyn, and elsewhere around the world.
* Most of the reported 108 deaths of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan have been caused by torture and abuse.
* Since September 11, 2001, the CIA has sent between 100 and 150 suspects overseas for interrogation. The U.S. government euphemistically refers to the practice as "extraordinary rendition," but it is commonly being called "outsourcing torture." The best known rendition incident is that of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian who was diverted to Syria for more than a year of interrogation and torture after changing planes at New York's JFK Airport while returning home from a trip overseas.
* A March 19, 2005, article in The Guardian reported, "The floating population of 'ghost detainees', according to US and UK military officials, now exceeds 10,000." A March 2005 article in the Washington Post reveals that the U.S. Army and the CIA agreed on the ghost detainees at Abu Ghraib.

The American public and the press overwhelmingly condemned torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment as morally wrong. Their use violates U.S. law and international treaties and endangers U.S. military personnel should they be captured.

Find out what you can do.