AAAS Forum Explores Whether the U.S. is Sliding Down a Slippery Slope on Torture

Some prisoners are stripped and threatened with ferocious dogs. Some are sexually humiliated. Some are deprived of sleep, and others are kept for long periods in isolation. Many are denied visits from family, lawyers and the International Red Cross. And in select cases, the prisoners simply disappear into a shadow-world of secret detention centers scattered around the globe.

Every new disclosure brings new questions about whether the United States, as it battles tyrants and terrorists while professing the cause of human rights, is violating those rights in order to obtain information and suppress opposition.

At a half-day forum on Monday 28 June, panelists convened by AAAS concurred that in fighting the war on terror and the war in Iraq, the United States had engaged in patterns of prisoner mistreatment that constitute torture. And, they warned, the mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay in the Caribbean and at other detention centers clearly violates a range of international pacts, from the Geneva Conventions of 1949 to the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture.

For more information, read the related article.

See also PDFs of panelist presentations:
   • Martha Huggins
   • Allen S. Keller

For background information on Meredith Larson's presentation, see a report on detainees in the Gulf and Guantanamo bay that came out on June 22 and focused largely on the effects on families of detainees.