It happened yesterday but it could well be today. A woman awaits the return of her husband as the sun goes down. The dictatorship that plagued her land has just fallen, and everything is uncertain. The woman is full of fear, gripped by a secret terror that she only shares with the man she loves. During the night and the day that follows she will have to confront that fear, she will bring to justice in her living room the doctor she believes is responsible for having tortured and raped her years ago. Her husband, a lawyer in charge of a commission investigating the deaths of thousands of dissidents under the previous regime, must defend the accused man because without the rule of law the transition to democracy will be compromised; if his wife kills that doctor, the husband will not be able to help heal a sick and wounded land.

Twenty years ago, when Death and the Maiden, the play that tells this story, opened in London at the Royal Court Upstairs, the country where that woman, Paulina, awaited a constantly delayed justice, was my own Chile or the Argentina where I was born. Or South Africa. Or Hungary. Or China. So many societies that back then were being torn by the question of what you do with the trauma of the past, how to live side by side with your enemies, how to judge those who had abused power without destroying the fabric of a reconciliation necessary to move forward.

Today, as the same play is revived in London’s West End, its main drama is echoed in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Iraq, Thailand, Zimbabwe and now Libya. In fact, because torture became widespread after the criminal attacks on New York on 9/11, because the most powerful nations in the world, and particularly the US, justified or were complicit in egregious abuses of human rights in order to make themselves feel safe, because they unleashed terror to fight and avenge terror, it could be ventured that the core dilemmas of Death and the Maiden are more relevant today than they ever were.

It was not something I had anticipated, this planetary weight and import, when I wrote the play in Santiago. My goals were far more modest. Returning to my country after 17 years in exile, I saw this work as my gift to its turbulent transition. The dictator was no longer in power, but his influence, his disciples, his corrupting shadow invaded every aspect of political life. Just as today in Egypt (or Russia, for that matter), those who had benefitted from decades of privileges and oppression continued to occupy enclaves from where they controlled the economy, the judiciary, the military, and threatened to return and murder and plunder and banish.

It seemed to me the obligation of a writer was to force the country to look at itself, at what all those years of mendacity and dread had wrought. Death and the Maiden plunged its finger into the wound of Chile by showing that the executioners were among us, smiling on the streets but also interrogated the democratic elite, wondering what ideals they had forced themselves to sacrifice. Neither did I let the victims off the hook. Paulina, the woman who had been raped and tortured and betrayed, was the most violent person on that stage, so the question for her was not any easier: are you going to perpetuate the cycle of terror, how can you forgive if the price they are demanding is that you forget? But one does not create such a transgressive play in a country still reeling from many years of pain without suffering the consequences oneself. The elite of Chile hated what I had done, reviled it.

But what my compatriots did not want for themselves was celebrated by the world. And now I have come back to London, and my characters have returned to the city that embraced them when they were as homeless as I was.

I’m thrilled that Death and the Maiden has not aged over these 20 years, that it still moves people to tears, confronts them with a tragedy that has no clear solution, that it speaks to our world today with the same passion it embodied yesterday. I’m thrilled that the relations between men and women that I explored, the intricacies of memory and madness, the aftermath of violence, the uncertainty of truth and narrative, continue to capture the imagination of so many. Thrilled, yes, but it is also sobering to realise that humanity has not managed to learn from the past, that torture has not been abolished, that justice is so rarely served, that censorship prevails, that the hopes of a democratic revolution can be gutted and distorted and warped.

I can’t help but ask if 20 years from now I will be writing this phrase all over again: this story happened yesterday, but it could well be today.

The revelations from Libya show just how far we are from touching the bottom of British complicity in rendition and torture. For anyone who had hoped that, 10 years on from the catastrophic attacks on the United States which kicked off the “war on terror” we might be starting to come to terms with the abuses carried out in our name and put them behind us, the depressing news is that we seem to be further than ever from doing so.

With the caveat that these documents have yet to be fully verified, it would appear that we have been given yet another insight into our own security services getting mixed up in some of the truly appalling abuses carried out by an odious regime.

So far we have read of British intelligence services cheerfully assisting in the rendition of a suspect, along with his wife and children, back to Libya, where they must have known about the horrific treatment opponents of the regime could expect.

And we have seen our relations with anti-Gaddafi forces poisoned virtually before they could even begin, with the new security commander in Tripoli threatening to sue MI6 and the CIA for what he alleges was their role in the years of torture he suffered under the old regime. Leaving aside the terrifyingly unpredictable face Britain must present to the world – collaborating in your torture one year and bombing your enemies the next – a key sentence stands out in what Abdul Hakim Belhaj has said about his ordeal: “[I was] surprised that the British got involved in what was a very painful period in my life.”

First, it sits in stark contrast to what the CIA has said about the revelations in these documents – that it “can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats”. But more important, it shows exactly what we are at risk of losing if we continue to allow our security services to behave in the way they have done and fail to properly hold to account those involved in what happened.

People like Belhaj – and the vast majority of the British public, who find such practices abhorrent – have expressed surprise or shock that our services have been involved in the abuse of detainees. So unless we want the UK to become the kind of place where allegations of torture are met with a shrug, rather than a storm of condemnation, we need to see real action to ensure this never happens again.

This has to start with a proper inquiry, with real teeth, into the complicity of British personnel in rendition and torture. Sadly the setup for the Gibson inquiry, which is yet to commence, will not provide this. On its current lines, the inquiry lacks clout, being unable to compel the attendance of witnesses or provision of evidence; it lacks independence, with David Cameron and the head of the civil service having the final say on what, if anything, will be made public; and it lacks any meaningful way for those who have been victims of torture – and are therefore also key witnesses – to participate, and argue their side of the story.

The sad but inescapable fact is that it is hard to see any way by which the Gibson inquiry could have uncovered the evidence we have seen from Libya in the last few days: it will be reliant on what the security services choose to hand over, rather than being in a position to dig out crucial evidence itself. Moreover, we have already heard from the inquiry that it does not intend even to approach foreign personnel for evidence, thereby knocking out the chance that it would have asked for information of this kind from the Libyans or the CIA.

We have heard foreign secretary William Hague emphasising that the allegations “relate to a period under the previous government”, but the uncomfortable fact remains that they are still a problem for this one. Given Hague’s admission that he has “no knowledge … of what was happening behind the scenes at that time”, one would hope that he would be more keen than anyone to have an inquiry which can really get to the bottom of this.

There is still time for ministers to change track. We shouldn’t have to rely on the toppling of dictators to find out what abuses our own services have been involved in. Only a properly independent inquiry with real clout will let us find out on our own terms, and hold people accountable before this is allowed to do any more damage to Britain’s international reputation.

The killing of Osama bin Laden after a fierce firefight in his Abbottabad compound is a great victory for our military and intelligence forces and for our civilian leadership. But the handwringing about whether it looked as though bin Laden was reaching for a gun or suicide belt, as if this were some who-is-the fastest-gun-in-the-West movie, and about whether we violated Pakistani sovereignty by going in after him is risible.

As the code of war that Abraham Lincoln promulgated in 1863 — the first anywhere — made clear: “military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies . . . it allows of the capturing of . . . every enemy of importance to the hostile government.” Yet Lincoln’s code also said that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty . . . nor of torture.”

In this all civilized men and women agree: Torture is condemned by American law, international law and by the pronouncements of the Roman Catholic Church. In 2005 it was condemned by Congress at the instance of, among others, Sen. John McCain. Now, the same apologists who applauded President George W. Bush’s authorization of torture — and make no mistake, waterboarding is torture — are working to stain this great triumph. They argue that but for their barbaric treatment of detainees through 2003, we would never have found our man.

The claim is indecent most immediately because there is no way of knowing whether it is true, and any attempt to prove or disprove it must reveal intelligence that our security requires remain secret. But even if true, it does not make the point. However dangerous he may have been, Osama bin Laden was not the ticking bomb requiring immediate defusing, so familiar now from television dramas. And that’s just the point about making exceptions to moral imperatives that should remain exceptionless — like Lincoln’s absolute condemnation of torture, or the condemnation of sexual degradation as a weapon of war, or the judicial killing of an innocent person to keep the peace. These things must never be done. To put such moral boundaries on the same level as legal niceties about sovereignty or the need for a warrant reveals a profoundly flawed sense of proportion.

Those who defend the use of torture and who are using bin Laden’s killing to prove their point prove just the opposite. However vile, bin Laden was not the armed-nuclear-bomb-hidden-in-downtown-L.A. scenario of Jack Bauer’s “24.” The point is that once you are willing to cross the line of absolutely wrong, you must answer impossible questions: How many people must be endangered; how certain must we be of the danger; how sure must we be that this is the person who can lead us to the bomb and that the torture will work on him? What if the terrorist who planted the bomb is immune to torture or beyond our reach, but his young child is not? May we torture the child if that will make the terrorist talk? And how certain must we be that that will work?

One Bush torture apologist, like the 13th chime of the clock, has famously argued that even the torture of the child would be allowed. But, of course, the lack of a stopping place in justifying this evil shows how readily the resort to deliberate brutality metastasizes so that it can be used to justify torture to save just one person, or even if there is a chance of saving one person, or even if it involves random cruelty to soften up the next person we interrogate, as in the case of Abu Ghraib. To paraphrase Justice Robert Jackson, such an argument either has no beginning or it has no end.

As Lincoln understood, the main damage torture inflicts is on the torturer. We all suffer pain and we all must die. But while we live we must strive to be worthy of the humanity that is supposed to be the goal of our battles. Lincoln’s code proclaims: “Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God.” Francis Lieber, who drafted the code at Lincoln’s direction, elaborated: “The late proclamation of General Halleck, declaring himself ready for retaliation . . . distinctly tells his officers and soldiers not to retaliate cruelly. . . . Can we roast Indians, though they have roasted one of our own? Simple infliction of death is not considered cruelty.”

The death of Osama bin Laden may ultimately prove to be a footnote to al-Qaeda’s real moment of defeat. The same Muslim men and women bin Laden sought to recruit to jihad in the name of his Pol Pot-like caliphate are now revolting for a chance to lead decent lives in democratic nations governed by the same values that we proclaim guide us. Their goal is also our best hope for a lasting end to this war on terror. It defiles their sacrifice, as well as that of our own troops, if we who have long championed democracy embrace the brutal values of our enemies, even in the name of self-defense. We must deny bin Laden this posthumous victory.

Barely noticed amid the fanfare surrounding the announcement of an end to US combat operations in Iraq, in July the US also handed the last of some 10,000 prisoners held on security grounds to the Iraqi authorities – though the US will continue to hold about 200 detainees deemed to be “high-risk”.

Remarkably, however, this mass transfer came with no formal guarantees over humane treatment or due process. Given recent instances of the discovery – including by US forces – of horrific abuse being meted out to inmates by Iraq guards, this is extremely regrettable.

The torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners by US forces at Abu Ghraib made the US notorious when the scandal came to light in 2004. However, the sadistic mistreatment of prisoners supposedly in Iraqi official care has been a feature of the entire post-Saddam period, and in many ways the savagery of the abuse has rivalled that of the dictatorial Saddam years.

A new report from Amnesty International details some of this abuse. Methods include: rape or the threat of rape; beatings with cables and hosepipes; prolonged suspension by various limbs; removal of toenails with pliers; electric shocks to the genitals; piercing of the body with electric drills; asphyxiation with plastic bags; being forced to sit on broken bottles. Add to this vicious beatings and imprisonment for months or years – sometimes in secret prisons, generally without access for family or lawyers and invariably without formal charges being brought – and you get some idea of the degraded nature of Iraq’s response to the security threats it faces.

The US’s 10,000-strong handover has now swollen the numbers of security detainees held without trial to a staggering 30,000. The majority are Sunni Arabs, suspected of involvement in or supporting armed groups opposed to the Iraqi government and international forces. One of these is Ramze Shihab Ahmed, a 68-year-old dual Iraqi-UK national who was arrested on 7 December 2009. He was taken to a secret prison at the site of the old Muthanna airport in Baghdad where he was kept in incommunicado detention until late March. Finally it seems he was handed a phone and told to call his wife Rabiha in London to demand a fee of around $50,000 (£32,000) to secure his release. Instead he implored his wife to seek help from the UK authorities. Then, abruptly, the line went dead.

Shihab Ahmed is now in a different prison and has even been visited by UK consular officials. But he has told his wife of suffering torture at Muthanna, including with electric shocks to his genitals and suffocation by plastic bags. His claims are consistent with many other cases known to Amnesty. He remains in prison in Baghdad, still uncharged and still without his torture allegations investigated. (Amnesty’s appeal for him is here).

Shihab Ahmed is a refugee from Saddam’s Iraq and has lived in Britain since the early 2000s. Ironically he only risked travelling to Iraq last year to try to secure the release of his son Omar who himself had been detained last September. Now both have been tortured and both have been forced to sign confessions admitting to involvement in terrorism. Coerced confessions, indeed, are another hallmark of the new model Iraqi justice system.

When the Americans handed over control of its last major prison at Camp Cropper in an official ceremony in July, the Iraqi justice minister Dara Nureddine Dara was quoted as saying: “We must ensure we make this prison a model for all others in Iraq. The days of mistreatment and abuse of prisoners are gone.” Except they haven’t.

The man looked much older than his 24 years, in part because his front teeth had been smashed, he told us, during one of his interrogation sessions in the secret prison here. His emaciated body and trembling arms were those of a fragile hospital patient rather than the fearsome terrorist the security forces had accused him of being. His psychological wounds matched his physical state: He confided that after repeatedly being sodomized with a stick and a pistol, he frequently wets his bed and has trouble sleeping.

Despite overwhelming evidence that torture was routine and systematic at a secret prison in the old Muthanna airport in West Baghdad where the young man had been held, Iraqi officials at the highest level appear to be in denial, claiming the accounts by the men who were held there are fictitious. Instead of ordering an independent inquiry, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has dismissed the torture accounts as “lies” and “a smear campaign.” He told the state-run Iraqiya television that the detainees inflicted the scars on themselves “by rubbing matches on some of their body parts.”

But the wounds that my colleague and I witnessed on April 26, when we interviewed 42 of the men who had been held in that place, could not have been self-inflicted, let alone with matches. Huge scabs on their legs matched detainees’ descriptions of being suspended upside down with their lower legs trapped between bars. Deep welts on their backs were consistent with cable whipping. These scars were just the beginning of the horror the men, and the evidence on their bodies, revealed.

We hadn’t been in Wing 5 of Baghdad’s Al Rusafa detention facility for more than a few minutes before dozens of detainees pressed against the 19 overcrowded cage-like cells to which 300 of the men had been moved after the secret prison was exposed and began re-enacting the dreadful abuses that interrogators at Muthanna had subjected them to. They lifted their shirts and pant legs to reveal fresh scars, bruising, scabs and disfigurements. Each wanted to share his story, and each story was horrifically like the ones before. We had been in Iraq for about a month recording human rights violations through interviews with victims of torture and other abuses across the country, but nothing prepared us for this encounter.

The 42 men the two of us were able to interview in the three hours we spent there candidly recounted in appalling detail interrogation sessions that lasted three or four hours each. They described how their torturers kicked, whipped, beat and tried to suffocate them, gave them electric shocks, burned them with cigarettes and pulled out their fingernails and teeth. The prisoners said that interrogators sodomized some detainees with sticks and pistol barrels. Some young men said they had been forced to perform oral sex on interrogators and guards and that interrogator forced detainees to molest one another.

If the detainees still refused to confess, interrogators would threaten to rape the women and girls in their families.

The detainees were among about 430 who had been kept for months in the secret facility, which was run by the Baghdad Operations Command, one of several regional security commands set up by the prime minister that answer directly to him. All were transferred or released, with 300 of them moved to Al Rusafa, after the Human Rights Ministry inspected Muthanna in March and reported abuses to the prime minister. Until then, the detainees had no access to their families or lawyers. They didn’t even receive a case number, never mind formal charges. An investigative judge questioned many of them individually in a room just down the hall from one of the torture chambers.

The Iraqi Army had detained them between September and December 2009 during sweeps in and around Mosul, a Sunni militant stronghold, accusing them of aiding and abetting terrorism. They were forced to sign false confessions but even after they confessed, many said, torture persisted.

If the Iraqi government wants to avoid comparisons with U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib and the appalling practices of the former government of Saddam Hussein, it needs to stop stonewalling.

The sooner the Iraqi government changes course and brings those responsible to justice, the better for these victims, the government’s reputation, and for all Iraqis who hope that the country is on its way to peace and justice.

After five years of investigation, the Justice Department has released its findings regarding the government lawyers who authorized waterboarding and other forms of torture during the interrogation of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere. The report’s conclusion, that the lawyers exercised poor judgment but were not guilty of professional misconduct, is questionable at best. Still, the review reflects a commitment to a transparent investigation of professional behavior.

In contrast, the government doctors and psychologists who participated in and authorized the torture of detainees have escaped discipline, accountability or even internal investigation.

It is hardly news that medical staff at the C.I.A. and the Pentagon played a critical role in developing and carrying out torture procedures. Psychologists and at least one doctor designed or recommended coercive interrogation methods including sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation and waterboarding. The military’s Behavioral Science Consultation Teams evaluated detainees, consulted their medical records to ascertain vulnerabilities and advised interrogators when to push harder for intelligence information.

Psychologists designed a program for new arrivals at Guantánamo that kept them in isolation to “enhance and exploit” their “disorientation and disorganization.” Medical officials monitored interrogations and ordered medical interventions so they could continue even when the detainee was in obvious distress. In one case, an interrogation log obtained by Time magazine shows, a medical corpsman ordered intravenous fluids to be administered to a dehydrated detainee even as loud music was played to deprive him of sleep.

When the C.I.A.’s inspector general challenged these “enhanced interrogation” methods, the agency’s Office of Medical Services was brought in to determine, in consultation with the Justice Department, whether the techniques inflicted severe mental pain or suffering, the legal definition of torture. Once again, doctors played a critical role, providing professional opinions that no severe pain or suffering was being inflicted.

According to Justice Department memos released last year, the medical service opined that sleep deprivation up to 180 hours didn’t qualify as torture. It determined that confinement in a dark, small space for 18 hours a day was acceptable. It said detainees could be exposed to cold air or hosed down with cold water for up to two-thirds of the time it takes for hypothermia to set in. And it advised that placing a detainee in handcuffs attached by a chain to a ceiling, then forcing him to stand with his feet shackled to a bolt in the floor, “does not result in significant pain for the subject.”

The service did allow that waterboarding could be dangerous, and that the experience of feeling unable to breathe is extremely frightening. But it noted that the C.I.A. had limited its use to 12 applications over two sessions within 24 hours, and to five days in any 30-day period. As a result, the lawyers noted the office’s “professional judgment that the use of the waterboard on a healthy individual subject to these limitations would be ‘medically acceptable.’”

The medical basis for these opinions was nonexistent. The Office of Medical Services cited no studies of individuals who had been subjected to these techniques. Its sources included a wilderness medical manual, the National Institute of Mental Health Web site and guidelines from the World Health Organization.

The only medical source cited by the service was a book by Dr. James Horne, a sleep expert at Loughborough University in Britain; when Dr. Horne learned that his book had been used as a reference, he said the C.I.A. had distorted his findings and misrepresented his research, and that its conclusions on sleep deprivation were nonsense.

Dr. Horne had used healthy volunteers who were subject to no other stresses and could withdraw at any time, while C.I.A. and Pentagon interrogators used a broad array of stresses in combination on the detainees. Sleep deprivation, he said, mixed with pain-inducing positioning, intimidation and a host of other stresses, would probably exhaust the body’s defense mechanisms, cause physical collapse and worsen existing illness. And that doesn’t begin to acknowledge the dire psychological consequences.

The shabbiness of the medical judgments, though, pales in comparison to the ethical breaches by the doctors and psychologists involved. Health professionals have a responsibility extending well beyond nonparticipation in torture; the historic maxim is, after all, “First do no harm.” These health professionals did the polar opposite.

Nevertheless, no agency — not the Pentagon, the C.I.A., state licensing boards or professional medical societies — has initiated any action to investigate, much less discipline, these individuals. They have ignored the gross and appalling violations by medical personnel. This is an unconscionable disservice to the thousands of ethical doctors and psychologists in the country’s service. It is not too late to begin investigations. They should start now.

The CIA has been unsatisfied with the cooperation of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban military commander being interrogated in Pakistani custody, and has pushed for his transfer to an American-run prison in Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Times reported this past weekend. But even should that transfer occur, the United States may not have any greater success eliciting information from him — because President Obama eliminated the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program.

This raises an urgent question: Is there a reasonable middle ground that would allow the Obama administration to effectively interrogate resistant terrorist leaders without compromising its opposition to torture? There most certainly is.

To be clear, Obama did not end waterboarding; it was no longer part of the formal CIA interrogation program he inherited from the Bush administration. Indeed, former CIA Director Mike Hayden says he told Obama’s national security transition team, “All those things you think you need to do [on interrogation]? We already did them.”

Yet when Obama came into office and issued an executive order requiring adherence to the Army Field Manual, he eliminated effective interrogation techniques that no one could argue were torture: the facial hold, attention grasp, tummy slap, facial slap, a diet of liquid Ensure and mild sleep deprivation (a maximum of four consecutive days). That’s it. Former director of national intelligence Mike McConnell told me “playing high school football subjects you to more danger than these techniques.”

Even more damaging, Obama removed the veil of mystery that surrounded our interrogation techniques. Under the Bush administration, this scaled-down CIA interrogation program worked because the terrorists did not know the limits. In 2007, a senior al-Qaeda terrorist named Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was captured and taken into CIA custody. When his interrogators told him he was in the hands of the CIA, he replied: “I’ve heard of you guys. I’ll tell you anything you need to know.” Just the existence of the CIA program, and the uncertainty of what he might face, was enough to get this al-Qaeda terrorist talking. That would never happen today. Obama has revealed the secrets behind how we question terrorists. And with the Army Field Manual available on the Internet, terrorists can study our techniques and train to resist them.

By ordering strict adherence to the field manual, Obama also requires that captured terrorists receive better treatment in the interrogation room than common criminals. For instance, a local district attorney can threaten a criminal suspect with capital punishment if he refuses to cooperate. Under the Army Field Manual, a detainee cannot be threatened in any way. It is designed to comply with the highest standard imposed on any kind of custodial questioning — the “prisoner of war” privileges guaranteed by the Third Geneva Convention. Terrorists do not merit such treatment.

Obama can correct this situation without bringing back the most controversial techniques he opposes. On the morning Obama issued his executive order, Hayden called White House counsel Greg Craig and made a simple suggestion: Just add the words “unless otherwise authorized by the president.” Adding these words today would allow the administration to provide U.S. interrogators with additional lawful techniques. And it would restore a level of uncertainty for our enemies about what they would face in the interrogation room. If the techniques are kept secret, this could increase the odds that other terrorists would respond the way Abd al-Hadi did.

Obama could also strengthen interrogation by lifting the restrictions he has imposed on secret detention. Previously, some detainees were secretly interrogated for months before al-Qaeda learned they were in custody — allowing the CIA to gain invaluable intelligence before terrorist groups could cover their tracks. The Obama administration understands the importance of some period of secrecy — which is why the White House reportedly asked the New York Times to hold off revealing the detention of Mullah Baradar. But under the rules Obama has set, the United States must identify every detainee to the International Red Cross within two weeks of capture — no exceptions. These restrictions could easily be adjusted to allow longer periods of secret detention.

Of course, such adjustments are no substitute for the robust interrogation program established by the Bush administration, nor would they undo the damage Obama did by releasing the details of U.S. interrogation techniques. But they would give America a better chance of successfully interrogating captured terrorists — without requiring the president to give up his specious claims that he has “banned torture.”

Pongamos nombre y avergoncemos a esos peligrosos, endebles, complacientes e hipócritas liberales que ponen en peligro la seguridad nacional del Reino Unido, sus intereses vitales y la seguridad personal de sus ciudadanos. ¿Quiénes son? Lord Igor Judge, juez-presidente del Tribunal de Apelaciones de Inglaterra y Gales; Lord Neuberger, Master of the Rolls, que preside la Sala Civil; Sir Anthony May, presidente de Queen’s Bench, la Sala Penal; y los magistrados Lord Thomas y Lloyd Jones.

¿No se dan cuenta de que estamos en guerra? ¿No comprenden que sus sentencias simplistas obstaculizan los esfuerzos de los servicios de seguridad para salvar al Reino Unido de una amenaza constante, ponen en peligro su importantísimo intercambio de informaciones con Estados Unidos y reconfortan a sus enemigos? ¿Quién demonios se creen que son?

Ahora pensemos en sus valientes críticos: Kim Howells, parlamentario, presidente del Comité de Inteligencia y Seguridad de la Cámara de los Comunes, que no tolera una palabra en contra de los servicios que teóricamente debe supervisar y se pregunta en voz alta “a qué juega el Master of the Rolls”; el ministro de Exteriores y el de Interior, que empuñan las espadas para vengar la más mínima mirada que amenace con insultar a los servicios secretos; el director general del servicio de seguridad interior -el MI5-, Jonathan Evans, que toma la medida casi sin precedentes de escribir un artículo de prensa para defender a su intachable servicio de tales “alegaciones”; Charles Moore, de The Daily Telegraph, que critica a “esos jueces nuestros, cómodos y pagados de sí mismos”, por cómo “desautorizan” a un agente del MI5 (“Testigo B”) acusado de haber presionado verbalmente a Binyam Mohamed en Pakistán pese a saber que había sido torturado y podía serlo otra vez, “y a su servicio , que asume unos riesgos tan grandes para defendernos”; Nick Cohen, de The Observer (“los jueces no son los únicos que desean una vida fácil”); y Bruce Anderson, cuya extraordinaria defensa de la tortura en The Independent lleva este encabezamiento: “No sólo tenemos derecho a utilizar la tortura. Tenemos el deber”.

Tenemos, pues, a miembros del Parlamento, espías y periodistas: tres grupos cuya reputación de integridad, transparencia, imparcialidad y veracidad, por supuesto, está más asentada que nunca en la opinión pública británica. ¿Quién en su sano juicio va a hacer más caso, en vez de los veredictos reflexivos, escrupulosos y matizados de estas figuras de autoridad moral en nuestra nación, a las decisiones de unos simples jueces?

Quiero dejar clara una cosa. Nunca debemos menospreciar las amenazas terroristas que sufren el Reino Unido y muchos otros países libres, ni la dificultad de descubrirlas por adelantado. Todavía existen demasiados intentos descabellados de apaciguar a los islamistas radicales, algunos de ellos perpetrados y financiados por otros sectores del Gobierno británico. Y los jueces, como los políticos, los espías y los periodistas, no tienen por qué estar por encima de cualquier crítica. Pero en este caso, las críticas a los jueces no tienen fundamento. No sólo no están “desautorizando” nada sino que están defendiendo el elemento fundamental para elfuturo del Reino Unido: la combinación de seguridad y libertad bajo la ley. Proteger ese principio, en unas circunstancias diferentes, exige un ejercicio de equilibrio muy delicado.

Veamos, por ejemplo, la sentencia emitida tras un recurso, a principios de este mes, que permitió la publicación del breve resumen que había hecho un tribunal inferior de las informaciones proporcionadas por los servicios estadounidenses indicando que Mohamed había sufrido torturas. Comienza con una declaración clarísima del presidente del Tribunal Supremo en la que reconoce que “el terrorismo es una amenaza constante tanto aquí como en el extranjero” y “la inestimable contribución a la seguridad pública de la tradicional cooperación entre los servicios de inteligencia de este país y los de Estados Unidos”, que, añade convenientemente, “no circula en una sola dirección”.

A continuación relata cómo hubo que arrancar las pruebas de que el MI5 sabía que Mohamed había sido torturado de las garras de los secretistas Gobiernos de Londres y Washington y cómo hubo que sopesar el peligro de hacer público algo que ya muchos habían reconocido en el Reino Unido y Estados Unidos. En el momento de escribir estas líneas, todavía aguardamos la decisión del Tribunal sobre la publicación de un párrafo de esta reciente sentencia que, al parecer, sugiere que el MI5 engañó deliberadamente al comité correspondiente de la Cámara de los Comunes a propósito de lo que sabía de este horrible asunto; un párrafo que el Master of the Rolls retiró por presiones del Gobierno, algo que resulta bastante sospechoso.

Los detractores acusan a estos jueces, las ONG y los medios de comunicación que han exigido transparencia en este caso -entre ellos, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent y la BBC, porque las voces periodísticas que antes he mencionado no representan a la profesión en general- de ser unos “liberales” que tienen un compromiso dogmático con los derechos humanos über alles.

En realidad, los argumentos de estos jueces son, muchas veces, profundamente conservadores. Para ellos, la base la constituyen los precedentes en el derecho consuetudinario inglés y, por extensión, en la historia del Reino Unido. Así, por ejemplo, la sentencia más reciente cita al secretario de Estado de la reina Isabel I, Sir Thomas Smith: “La naturaleza de nuestra nación es libre, sólida, orgullosa, pródiga con la vida y la sangre, pero no tolera injurias, palizas, servidumbre ni castigos ni tormentos serviles”. El corazón de un genuino conservador británico como Dominic Grieve, responsable de Justicia en el Gobierno en la sombra, debería emocionarse ante esta prosa antigua y enérgica. Sólo un neoconservador, es decir, un antiliberal radical, puede arrojar bilis al saborear una muestra así de viejo espíritu inglés.

Incluso después de que el tribunal dicte su sentencia definitiva con esta rebuscada frase, seguirá habiendo preguntas fundamentales sin responder sobre el comportamiento de los servicios secretos del Reino Unido durante los más de siete años de “guerra contra el terror” de George W. Bush. En cuanto se celebren las elecciones, el nuevo Gobierno británico debe cambiar las cosas. En vez de que el jefe del MI5 reprenda a los jueces, habrá que encargar a un juez que investigue la conducta pasada del MI5 (y del MI6). Una investigación judicial, que ya han pedido los demócratas liberales, el ex fiscal general Lord Goldsmith y el ex ministro de Interior de los conservadores David Davis, tendría todas las ventajas que proporciona un buen juez: sería independiente, rigurosa, imparcial, responsable y discreta.

Dicho juez, equipado con las herramientas necesarias para la investigación y el permiso para utilizarlas, debería examinar los aspectos detallados suscitados por el caso de Mohamed, pero también otros más generales.

¿Cuáles eran, en cada fase, las normas de los servicios secretos sobre la tortura, sobre la transmisión a Estados Unidos de preguntas para hacer a presos de los que se pensaba que estaban siendo torturados y sobre el uso de la información obtenida de esa manera? ¿Quién, aparte del “Testigo B”, sabía qué, y cuándo? ¿Qué hay de sus superiores, entre ellos el propio Evans, entonces responsable de antiterrorismo internacional? ¿Qué solicitudes de directrices políticas, si es que las hubo, se hicieron al Ministerio del Interior, el Ministerio de Exteriores y el 10 de Downing Street, y qué luces verdes, ámbar o rojas, formales o informales, recibieron como respuesta? El Tribunal dice que el valor del intercambio de información con Estados Unidos es “inestimable”, pero ¿quizás es calculable? ¿Sería posible dar al juez investigador, en la más estricta confidencia, algunos ejemplos específicos de cómo contribuyó todo eso en concreto a la seguridad del pueblo británico? ¿Por qué el comité de los Comunes no recibió toda la información que debería en su momento? ¿Qué lecciones podemos aprender para el futuro?

El objetivo de todo esto no es que los jueces gobiernen el Reino Unido. Todo lo contrario. Es crear los mecanismos debidos para tener un Gobierno eficiente, responsable y respetuoso con las leyes, incluso en los servicios secretos y en épocas difíciles, y un Parlamento británico que lleve a cabo su labor de supervisión democrática y vuelva a ser digno de su nombre, para que nadie necesite apelar a los tribunales. Mientras tanto, gracias a Dios -o, para ser más exactos, gracias a la Historia- que el Reino Unido tiene todavía jueces así.

Tomorrow will be one year since President Obama signed an executive order outlawing torture, yet our debate about interrogation methods continues. Though the president deserves praise for improving matters, the changes were not as drastic as most Americans think, and elements of our interrogation policy continue to be both inhumane and counterproductive.

Americans can now boast that they no longer “torture” detainees, but they cannot say that detainees are not abused, or even that their treatment meets the minimum standards of humane treatment mandated by the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (the so-called McCain amendment), United States and international law, or even Mr. Obama’s executive order.

If I were to return to one of the war zones today — as an Air Force officer, I was sent to Iraq to head an interrogation team in 2006 — I would still be allowed to abuse prisoners. This is true even though in my experience, torture or even harsh but legal treatment never got us useful information. Instead, such tactics invariably did just the opposite, convincing detainees to clam up.

The adoption last year of the Army Field Manual as the standard for interrogations across the government, including the C.I.A., was a considerable improvement. But we missed a unique opportunity for progress last August when the president’s task force on interrogations recommended no changes to the manual, which was hastily revised in 2006 in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

For example, an appendix to the manual allows the military to keep a detainee in “separation” — solitary confinement — indefinitely. It requires only that a general approve any extension after 30 days. Rest assured, there will be numerous waivers to even that minuscule requirement.

Yes, there are legitimate reasons to isolate detainees. Domestic law enforcement agencies do it to prevent suspects from colluding on alibis and allow investigators the leverage to use non-coercive interrogation techniques like confronting one detainee with the other’s statements.

But military interrogators do not operate in a vacuum. The consequences of their actions have far-reaching effects — like Al Qaeda’s exploitation of American abuse of prisoners as a recruiting tool. And, in any case, extended solitary confinement is torture, as confirmed by many scientific studies. Even the initial 30 days of isolation could be considered abuse.

If we truly wanted to come up with a humane limit on solitary confinement, we would look at the Golden Rule: what would we consider inhumane treatment if one of our own soldiers were captured by the enemy? My answer: Given the youth of our men and women in uniform, that number is probably around two weeks. This limit, however, should be determined by medical professionals, not soldiers or politicians.

The Army Field Manual also does not explicitly prohibit stress positions, putting detainees into close confinement or environmental manipulation (other than hypothermia and “heat injury”). These omissions open a window of opportunity for abuse.

The manual also allows limiting detainees to just four hours of sleep in 24 hours. Let’s face it: extended captivity with only four hours of sleep a night (consider detainees at Guantánamo Bay who have been held for seven years) does not meet the minimum standard of humane treatment, either in terms of American law or simple human decency.

And if this weren’t enough, some interrogators feel the manual’s language gives them a loophole that allows them to give a detainee four hours of sleep and then conduct a 20-hour interrogation, after which they can “reset” the clock and begin another 20-hour interrogation followed by four hours of sleep. This is inconsistent with the spirit of the reforms, which was to prevent “monstering” — extended interrogation sessions lasting more than 20 hours. American interrogators are more than capable of doing their jobs without the loopholes.

The Field Manual, to its credit, calls for “all captured and detained personnel, regardless of status” to be “treated humanely.” But when it comes to the specifics the manual contradicts itself, allowing actions that no right-thinking person could consider humane.

The greatest shame of the last year, perhaps, is that the argument over interrogations has shifted from debating what is legal to considering what is just “better than before.” The best way to change things is to update the field manual again to bring our treatment of detainees up to the minimum standard of humane treatment.

The next version of the manual should prohibit solitary confinement for more than, say, two weeks, all stress positions and forms of environmental manipulation, imprisonment in tight spaces and sleep deprivation. Unless we rewrite the book, we will only continue to give Al Qaeda a recruiting tool, to earn the contempt of our allies and to debase our most cherished ideals.

Canada, one of the largest contributors of troops to the war in Afghanistan, is embroiled in a controversy over the treatment of prisoners captured by its army. Its policy has been to turn detainees over to the Afghans, whose prisons are not exactly run according to Amnesty International standards. Now the chief of the Canadian defense staff, Gen. Walter Natynczyk, has set off a political firestorm by admitting that a detainee who had been beaten in 2006 had initially been in Canadian custody — something he had previously denied. “You continue to transfer prisoners to torture in the name of Canada,” one Liberal parliamentarian told the Conservative government. “I think you stand indicted in the court of public opinion of turning a blind eye.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his ministers have professed outrage in response, but have only themselves to blame for following the policy established in 2002 of turning detainees over to the Afghans rather than to the United States. Afghanistan’s prison and justice systems function at a pretty rudimentary level when they function at all. And they are run according to local norms, which would not find acceptance among enlightened liberals in Ottawa (or Washington). When the Afghans aren’t being too harsh with detainees, they are often too lenient — letting them go as a result of bribery or intimidation, or letting them run their own prisons.

Canada and other nations that contribute troops in Afghanistan are complicit in these abuses because they refuse to hold detainees for more than 96 hours. That means either letting detainees go or transferring them to Afghan custody. Neither option is good.

The United States alone among NATO nations has been detaining suspected terrorists longer than 96 hours but on a much smaller scale than in Iraq. We are holding roughly 700 detainees at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility; at the height of the surge in Iraq, the United States had more than 27,000 detainees in custody. That’s a glaring disparity because Afghanistan is bigger than Iraq and has at least as many insurgents.

Most U.S. troops are bound by the same 96-hour restriction as the rest of the NATO command. The major exceptions are Special Operations Forces and Task Force Paladin, which works to combat improvised explosive devices. They operate under a separate U.S. mandate as part of Operation Enduring Freedom that allows them to detain suspects indefinitely. But they tend to take only top-tier offenders. Ordinary Taliban foot soldiers, or even mid-level facilitators, are either cut loose or turned over to the Afghans — which often amounts to the same thing.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report, prepared in August, contained a scathing indictment of the Afghan detention system. It said that “hardened, committed Islamists are indiscriminately mixed with petty criminals and sex offenders, and they are using the opportunity to radicalize and indoctrinate them.” Afghan prisons, the report said, have become “a sanctuary and base to conduct lethal operations,” with “multiple national facilities . . . firmly under the control of the Taliban.”

To address this problem, McChrystal created a task force to work on the Afghan correctional system, segregating hard-core terrorists from the rest of the prison population and generally bringing conditions up to the standards U.S. authorities achieved in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib scandal. That’s a good idea, but it’s insufficient.

As more U.S. troops roll into Afghanistan, they will conduct offensive operations that result in the capture of more Taliban over the next 18 months. That is not enough time to build Afghan courts and prisons and to train guards, judges and lawyers. Even in Iraq, the legal system has had trouble coping with all of the terrorists U.S. authorities have turned over during the past year. Some have been released and have gone on to commit fresh atrocities.

Such a situation, which exists on a much bigger scale in Afghanistan, is profoundly demoralizing to troops. If service members see a “catch and release” policy in effect, they are likely to either pull back or pull the trigger prematurely. Both possibilities are worrisome. The former means more enemy fighters on the loose; the latter sullies our troops’ honor, denies them the intelligence gleaned from interrogations and leads the remaining Taliban to fight harder.

But if we try to solve this problem by pressing the Afghans to undertake widespread security detentions, we may create a fresh problem. We want the Afghan government to develop the rule of law, which means only imprisoning malefactors based on a high level of proof presented in open court. Successful counterinsurgency operations require locking up suspects based on a lower level of evidence — often based on classified intelligence that would not be admissible in a civilian court. It would be better if U.S. and allied forces undertake these kinds of security detentions while the Afghans build their own civilian legal capacity.

That means the United States, Canada and other nations need to overcome their squeamishness about detentions. The Bagram facility has been expanded to handle more than 1,200 detainees. Further expansion is necessary. Even more important, the United States and other nations should opt out of the 96-hour restriction. This is easy to do by designating all our troops as participating in Operation Enduring Freedom as well as the NATO mission. Likewise, Canada and other nations could unilaterally give their troops more detention authority than NATO rules permit. That may be distasteful, but the alternative is worse, as the Canadians are discovering.

One man has Canada in an uproar. Former second-in-command at the Canadian embassy in Kabul, Richard Colvin, told a parliamentary committee in Ottawa that all detainees handed over to the Afghanistan government by Canadian soldiers were abused. The opposition parties have called for a public inquiry, but the Harper government has called Colvin’s testimony into question. Now, Canada must yet again have a serious discussion about its role in Afghanistan.

Colvin sat before the parliamentary committee and flatly stated: “According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured. For interrogators in Kandahar, it was a standard operating procedure.” He alleged that the abuse included beatings and rape. Colvin also revealed that he wrote 16 reports that detailed his doubts about the programme that failed to follow up on detainees once they were turned over to Afghan officials. Those reports, he claims, were ignored, or actively silenced. The reply to all of this from Canada’s defense minister Peter MacKay was one of dismissal. “There has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian forces,” he said. The opposition parties roundly booed him.

The issue of Canada’s role in the treatment of Afghan detainees is not a new one. The 2005 agreement that Canada signed with the government of Afghanistan on detainee transfers did not account for Canadian monitoring of the detainees once they were in the hands of Afghan authorities. By 2007, reports surfaced of detainee abuse, and public opinion forced the Harper government to suspend, and later change, the detainee transfer program. Still, in 2008, federal court justice Anne Mactavish remained concerned, citing the fact that some detainees had disappeared and suggesting that Afghanistan’s history of human rights violations was reason to worry that torture had taken place. Though the federal government failed to admit that abuse had occurred, both it and the federal court recognised that detainee abuse was a concern.

Which makes the government’s current position strange. MacKay spent his Thursday afternoon on the major Canadian news networks, attempting to undermine Colvin’s testimony. But given Colvin’s high rank and non-partisan position, it seems difficult to imagine what Colvin might have to gain from lying. Were his concerns ignored and silenced? Or does the fact that he forwarded them at all suggest that he was not under a very strict gag order? And what of his claims that all detainees were subjugated to abuse or torture? Are they overblown or accurate? MacKay suggested that corroborating evidence is needed in order to launch a public inquiry. True, but that suggests this is a new problem with no past evidence to support Colvin’s claim. It isn’t. This is becoming an uncomfortable ongoing issue for Canadians, and we deserve to know what happened.

A public inquiry is necessary. Taking this discussion outside of partisan bickering in the House seems essential to finding out what Colvin knew, who else might have known what he did, and what role – if any – Canada has played in the abuse of Afghan civilians. Colvin’s allegations point to moral corruption – that’s not what Canadians were told would be achieved in Afghanistan. As it does for Britain or the US, Canada’s role in Afghanistan walks a fine line between defining who we want to be, and the kind of criminals we’re supposed to be fighting against. We need to know which side we’re walking on.

Public bravado aside, the defenders of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are fast running out of classified documents to hide behind. The three that were released recently by the C.I.A. — the 2004 report by the inspector general and two memos from 2004 and 2005 on intelligence gained from detainees — fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.

The inspector general’s report distinguishes between intelligence gained from regular interrogation and from the harsher methods, which culminate in waterboarding. While the former produces useful intelligence, according to the report, the latter “is a more subjective process and not without concern.” And the information in the two memos reinforces this differentiation.

They show that substantial intelligence was gained from pocket litter (materials found on detainees when they were captured), from playing detainees against one another and from detainees freely giving up information that they assumed their questioners already knew. A computer seized in March 2003 from a Qaeda operative for example, listed names of Qaeda members and money they were to receive.

Soon after Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in 2003, according to the 2005 memo, he “elaborated on his plan to crash commercial airlines into Heathrow Airport.” The memo speculates that he may have assumed that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a fellow member of Al Qaeda who had been captured in 2002, had already divulged the plan. The same motivation — the assumption that another detainee had already talked — is offered to explain why Mr. Mohammed provided details about the Hambali-Southeast Asia Qaeda network.

Mr. Mohammed must have likewise assumed that his interrogators already had the details about Al Qaeda’s organizational structure that he gave them. When I testified in the trial of Salim Hamdan, who had been Osama bin Laden’s personal driver, I provided many unclassified details about Al Qaeda’s structure and operations, none of which came from Mr. Mohammed.

Some of the information that is cited in the memos — the revelation that Mr. Mohammed had been the mastermind of 9/11, for example, and the uncovering of Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber — was gained from another terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, by “informed interrogation,” conducted by an F.B.I. colleague and me. The arrest of Walid bin Attash, one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted messengers, which was also cited in the 2005 C.I.A. memo, was thanks to a quick-witted foreign law enforcement officer, and had nothing to do with harsh interrogation of anyone. The examples go on and on.

A third top suspected terrorist who was subjected to enhanced interrogation, in 2002, was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the man charged with plotting the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole. I was the lead agent on a team that worked with the Yemenis to thwart a series of plots by Mr. Nashiri’s operatives in the Arabian Peninsula — including planned attacks on Western embassies. In 2004, we helped prosecute 15 of these operatives in a Yemeni court. Not a single piece of evidence that helped us apprehend or convict them came from Mr. Nashiri.

It is surprising, as the eighth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, that none of Al Qaeda’s top leadership is in our custody. One damaging consequence of the harsh interrogation program was that the expert interrogators whose skills were deemed unnecessary to the new methods were forced out.

Mr. Mohammed knew the location of most, if not all, of the members of Al Qaeda’s leadership council, and possibly of every covert cell around the world. One can only imagine who else we could have captured, or what attacks we might have disrupted, if Mr. Mohammed had been questioned by the experts who knew the most about him.

A lack of knowledge perhaps explains why so many false claims have been made about the program’s alleged successes. Many officials in Washington reading the reports didn’t know enough about Al Qaeda to know what information was already known and whether the detainees were telling all they knew. The inspector general’s report states that many operatives thought their superiors were inaccurately judging that detainees were withholding information. Such assessments, the operatives said, were “not always supported by an objective evaluation” but were “too heavily based, instead, on presumptions.” I can personally testify to this.

Supporters of the enhanced interrogation techniques have jumped from claim to claim about their usefulness. They have asserted, for example, that harsh treatment led Mr. Mohammed to reveal the plot to attack the Library Tower in Los Angeles. But that plot was thwarted in 2002, and Mr. Mohammed was not arrested until 2003. Recently, interviews with unnamed sources led The Washington Post to report that harsh techniques turned Mr. Mohammed into an intelligence “asset.”

This latest claim will come as news to Mr. Mohammed’s prosecutors, to his fellow detainees (whom he instructed, at his arraignment, not to cooperate with the United States) and indeed to Mr. Mohammed himself. He told the International Committee of the Red Cross that “I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear.”

The inspector general’s report was written precisely because many of the C.I.A. operatives complained about what they were being ordered to do. The inspector general then conducted an internal audit of the entire program. In his report, he questions the effectiveness of the harsh techniques that were authorized. And he slams the use of “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented detention and interrogation techniques.” This is probably why the enhanced interrogation program was shelved in 2005.

Meanwhile, the professionals in the field are relieved that an ineffective, unreliable, unnecessary and destructive program — one that may have given Al Qaeda a second wind and damaged our country’s reputation — is finished.

¿Qué hará Barack Obama ante el diluvio de revelaciones que, día a día, se van acumulando en torno al maltrato que las agencias de inteligencia de Estados Unidos han venido dando a una multitud de prisioneros desde los ataques terroristas del 2001? ¿Tratará de “pasar página”, mirar hacia el futuro y no el pasado, como parece ser su deseo? ¿O la dura, empecinada verdad de los crímenes que se llevaron a cabo en nombre de la seguridad nacional terminará forzando la mano del presidente norteamericano y de su fiscal general (ministro de Justicia), Eric Holder?

Me ha tocado jugar un rol mínimo en esta controversia, formar parte de una campaña lanzada por la sección norteamericana de Amnistía Internacional (AI), exigiendo que se enjuicie a los responsables de estas acciones brutales. Como el presidente lee todas las mañanas diez de las miles de cartas que diariamente llegan a la Casa Blanca, AI le pidió a diez personas que le escribieran un mensaje, explicando por qué era fundamental esclarecer el origen de aquellos atropellos y la necesidad de sancionar a quienes los llevaron a cabo. Fue así que agregué mi voz a la de varios interrogadores y víctimas de la tortura, amén de los escritores Stephen King y Alice Walker y el actor Martin Sheen (otro presidente, aunque un tanto más ficticio).

Entrego ahora esa carta, redactada originalmente en inglés, para los lectores de habla hispana:

Estimado presidente Obama:

Por siempre jamás. Esas son las palabras que quiero ofrecerle, las palabras que comparten tanto el hombre que tortura como su víctima, las palabras que definen el destino de ambos.

Puesto que para la víctima, el momento del dolor y de la degradación, estos múltiples momentos, jamás se terminan. La tortura no ocurre tan sólo una vez, sino que se repite en la mente y la memoria del cuerpo, más allá del agua en los pulmones o el puño contingente en la cara. Sucede y continúa una y otra y otra vez.

Y por siempre jamás es también el credo del victimario. La mano no va a descargar la corriente eléctrica, no va a llenar una boca con excrementos, los oídos no van a atreverse a registrar los alaridos, al menos que haya una promesa y certidumbre de que nadie cobrará cuentas, al menos que el causante de aquellos padecimientos se sienta a salvo de la justicia y presuma que podrá vivir, sí, por siempre jamás, en el tiempo eterno de la impunidad.

En los 40 años que llevo luchando, como escritor y como ciudadano, contra la plaga de la tortura, éste es el secreto más sucio que he descubierto acerca de tales actos viles. Que nadie tortura si cree que lo habrán de atrapar, si cree que será expuesto al escrutinio público. Nadie tortura si piensa que se lo va a desnudar y exhibir ante ojos ajenos y enjuiciadores, si sabe que va a tener que enfrentarse en un tribunal a los hombres y mujeres que él mismo dejó sin ropa ni defensa en alguna habitación escondida y lejana. Por siempre jamás es su horizonte, su coartada, su demonio guardián, el prerrequisito básico que asegura que no se conocerá la violencia que esos ejecutores han infligido o están a punto de infligir, esas son las palabras que les permiten, siempre, siempre, dormir de noche, acariciar a sus hijos, mirarse en el espejo de mañana y pasado mañana.

Es por eso que la respuesta a ese por siempre jamás, tanto para la víctima en busca de consuelo y reparación como para el criminal que rompió la ley de su país y la ley más implícita y callada que proclama que todos pertenecemos a la misma solidaria especie humana, debe ser con las palabras purificadoras, quizá celestiales: nunca más.

Son palabras que Estados Unidos necesita hoy de forma desesperada. Pero usted bien sabe que aquellas palabras, nunca más, son fáciles de pronunciar y difíciles de materializar. Esas palabras precisan, ante todo, como lo ha solicitado Amnistía Internacional, una investigación completa, imparcial y bien financiada de la verdad, para que se comprenda cómo este país aceptó torturar a sus cautivos y cómo terminó convirtiéndose en un paria internacional. Y enseguida aquellas palabras, nunca más, requieren que se someta a juicio a todos los que cometieron esos crímenes contra la humanidad, especialmente a los más poderosos que emitieron las órdenes y permitieron estas infamias.

Aceptar menos que un procesamiento cabal e íntegro es someterse a la misma política del miedo que usted ha identificado, con tanta elocuencia, como la condición primordial que ha facilitado este asalto desastroso contra los derechos humanos. Aceptar menos es invitar a una posible repetición de tales vesanias que corrompen el alma de un pueblo, si nuevos actos de terror llegaran a estas orillas en un futuro cercano.

Es una bendición que sea usted el que puede responder a esta exigencia de que es necesario purificar el mundo, una bendición ser una de las personas privilegiadas que puede ayudarnos a cambiar la historia. De todas las personas existentes en este mundo usted es el único, debido a su especial posición de poder, que puede proclamarle a su país y al resto de la humanidad que la tortura no tiene que ser, después de todo, algo que habrá de perdurar por siempre jamás.

De un poeta a otro poeta, y con gran respeto y esperanza y admiración, Ariel Dorfman.

Hasta acá la carta que mandamos a Obama. Veremos en los días y semanas y años que vienen si la sabe responder.

Torture is terror. We must reject it: no ifs, no buts. In the words of General Lord Guthrie, former chief of defence staff and one of the members of Institute for Public Policy Research’s independent commission on national security, “Torture does violence to the defenceless, using their bodies against their souls. It is illegal, unethical, counter-productive and dumb”. We must recognise that its use in the ill-conceived “war on terror” is strategic folly. History reminds us that compromising our values in the hope of quick wins against terrorists is self-defeating. In counter-terrorism, short-cuts lead to long delays.

Our public policy must reflect this stance. We must investigate allegations of torture, as is now happening in the case of Binyam Mohamed. Where they are substantiated, we must prosecute. Information that may have been extracted by torture must not be admitted in legal proceedings. But it must be acted upon by security services when it suggests an immediate threat to life. We must not deport suspect foreign nationals to countries where there is reason to believe they may be tortured. And we must speak out whenever and wherever torture rears its ugly head. In the words of Martin Luther King, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”.

The IPPR commission’s report, Shared Responsibilities, published last week, found three principles lie at the heart of its approach to exerting influence over the modern security environment: action must be distributed; co-ordinated; and legitimate. Distributed in the sense that many different actors need to be brought to bear on a problem, at various levels; co-ordinated in that they need to be made to pull in the same direction; and legitimate in that any action needs to be, and be seen to be, both lawful and right. Legitimacy in national security policy, the commission argues, is a strategic necessity, not a liberal nicety.

It is in this context that the IPPR’s commissioners welcome the decisions in the US to close Guantánamo Bay, end the CIA practices of forced disappearances and secret detentions, and forbid torture. By doing so, president Obama is re-establishing American legitimacy in the eyes of the rest of the world. But the commission goes on to state that “in the UK, we too must consider what more we can do to be unambiguously on the right side of these issues”.

It recommends that the British government should:

• ensure its own agents are properly trained as interrogators, employ only legal methods, and challenge robustly alleged or suspected torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners, wherever they encounter it.

• sign and ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

• use its relationship with the United States to encourage the US to ratify relevant international treaties, conventions and covenants including on forced disappearances; protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions; and the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court.

• avoid attempting to deport suspect foreign nationals on the basis of memoranda of understanding (MOU) or diplomatic assurances to countries that practise torture, unless such arrangements can include robust independent additional monitoring to ensure the safety of the individuals involved.

If government adopts these recommendations, it will advance the causes of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. If it does not, the world will be neither fairer, nor more secure.

A los jueces que, en 1630, condenaron en Milán a suplicios atroces a algunos acusados de haber propagado la peste con ciertos inventos tan toscos como horribles, les pareció que habían tenido un actuación tan memorable que, en la propia sentencia, después de decretar, además de los suplicios, la demolición de la casa de uno de aquellos desventurados, mandaron que en aquel lugar se elevase una columna que debería llamarse infame, con una inscripción que transmitiese a la posteridad la noticia del delito y de la pena. Y no se engañaron: aquel juicio fue sin duda memorable». Así empezaba Alessandro Manzoni, el autor de la célebre novela Los novios, su Historia de la columna infame, un alegato sin concesiones contra la tortura que publicó en 1842.
Fue, efectivamente, memorable, tanto el proceso aberrante contra aquellos desdichados, un barbero y un inspector de sanidad, torturados primero para que confesaran un delito que no habían cometido, y torturados después hasta la muerte como castigo por el delito inexistente, como la columna supuestamente conmemorativa y ejemplarizante. Y fue memorable porque casi un siglo y medio después de tamaña atrocidad, el espíritu de la Ilustración recuperó aquella vergüenza para construir sobre ella el fundamento de la abolición de la tortura.

La práctica de los suplicios se consideraba connatural al derecho de juzgar. Según decía Manzoni, «la ciega deferencia por la antigüedad y el derecho romano» impedían que se declarara injusta y absurda la tortura. Fue el jurisconsulto Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) quien arrinconó aquel obstáculo con su ensayo De los delitos y las penas, publicado en 1763, en el que promovía la abolición de la tortura, de la pena de muerte y la reforma de toda la legislación criminal.
Cinco años más tarde, un compañero de tertulias intelectuales de Beccaria, Pietro Verri, publicó Observaciones sobre la tortura, una investigación acerca del caso de aquellos infelices milaneses acusados de propagar la peste. Con ella, Verri demostraba cómo los tormentos a los que fueron sometidos les habían acabado arrancando la confesión de un delito física y moralmente imposible. «Si una sola tortura se evitase gracias al horror que expongo, daré por bien empleado el sentimiento que siento, y la esperanza de obtenerlo me recompensa», escribía aquel filósofo y economista ilustrado.

Años más tarde, Manzoni, que puede ser considerado como un predecesor de la novela histórica, incorporó aquel episodio milanés a la trama de la primera versión de su novela más conocida, Los novios, pero después la retiró, quizá, como pensaba Leonardo Sciascia, porque le parecería disonante e inadecuada la brutalidad del caso con el planteamiento de una obra de ficción, aunque tuviera base histórica.
Lo cierto es que el novelista decimonónico no dejó en un cajón lo que había podado. Por el contrario, construyó el ensayo citado al inicio sobre la historia de la columna infame y lo cargó de argumentos contrarios a la aplicación de la tortura. Lo hizo buscando y desmontando los razonamientos de aquellos teóricos que desde la época de los romanos condenaban el uso exagerado de la tortura, pero seguían considerando que su existencia era necesaria y admitían su uso de forma moderada en la administración de la justicia, como el jurista e inquisidor del siglo XVI Paride del Pozzo, que condenaba a aquellos jueces que «sedientos de sangre, anhelan estrangular, no con una finalidad reparadora o como ejemplo, sino para su propia gloria, y por ello han de considerarse homicidas». O su contemporáneo, el penalista español Antonio Gómez, que se expresaba en términos parecidos. «En estos testimonios –decía Manzoni– nunca hemos encontrado quejas contra jueces que aplicaron tormentos demasiado ligeros».

La columna que debía condenar a la infamia eterna a las víctimas de aquella forma aberrante de administrar justicia fue demolida en 1778 y, en su lugar, se levantó una casa. Sin embargo, siglos después aquel método sigue en pie. «Los males que combate el espíritu ilustrado han demostrado ser más resistentes de lo que imaginaban los hombres del siglo XVIII e incluso se han multiplicado desde entonces», escribe el pensador Tzvetan Todorov en El espíritu de la Ilustración.
Efectivamente. Basta ver las fotos de torturas ejercidas en Irak y Afganistán por soldados de Estados Unidos, las mismas fotos que el presidente Barack Obama quiere mantener en la oscuridad, como material clasificado. Y más aún, basta con escuchar lo que dice Dick Cheney, en total sintonía con quienes consideraban natural el uso de aquellas prácticas, según denunciaban los ilustrados italianos. El ex vicepresidente de la era Bush sigue insistiendo en la necesidad de aquellos métodos utilizados en los interrogatorio después del 11-S y los califica de «legales, esenciales, justificados y exitosos».

Crece en Estados Unidos el escándalo ante la desclasificación de informes secretos de la Administración de Bush sobre la tortura utilizada contra presuntos terroristas y combatientes enemigos. Métodos inadmisibles ordenados por altos cargos de dicha Administración. El escándalo radica en que todavía mucha gente creía en la versión del ex viceministro de Defensa, Wolfowitz, quien mantenía que los “abusos” habían sido obra de “unas cuantas manzanas podridas”. Sin embargo, el podrido era el propio manzano. Ya en enero de 2006, The Washington Post calificaba sin ambages a Cheney de “vicepresidente para la tortura”. En 2005, Cheney cínicamente afirmaba que en Guantánamo “los prisioneros están bien alimentados, tienen absolutamente todo lo que necesitan y viven en el trópico”.

Dirigentes que no sólo consintieron sino que ordenaron la tortura. Dirigentes que recortaron libertades civiles bajo pretexto de combatir el terrorismo (Ley Patriótica) y que, desgraciadamente, no toparon con una cámara legislativa que lo impidiera. En 2001, el Senado aprobó dicha ley por 98 votos frente a uno. Loor a Robert Byrd, demócrata por Virginia Occidental, que declaró entonces: “Tengo que poner muy seriamente en duda el buen juicio de un presidente que es capaz de proclamar que un ataque militar a gran escala, sin que medie provocación, se inserta en las más elevadas tradiciones morales de nuestro país”.

La Ley Patriótica contenía una sarta de tropelías jurídicas. En lo doméstico definía el terrorismo tan ampliamente que podía incluir un mero acto de desobediencia civil, como el corte de una carretera. En lo internacional, este grupo de dirigentes ultraconservadores de tendencias totalitarias “subcontrató” en ocasiones la tortura a otros países “amigos”, a los que enviaba presuntos terroristas. Mientras fuera creaba cárceles clandestinas, desarrollaba dentro de su propio país un vasto sistema de escuchas ilegales de ciudadanos norteamericanos.

A esa camarilla pertenecían el ministro de Defensa, Rumsfeld, y el de Justicia, Gonzales, quienes argüían que las convenciones de Ginebra eran obsoletas y no tenían por qué ser aplicadas en Irak o Afganistán. El gang incluía figuras educadas y elegantes como Condoleezza Rice, quien tajantemente afirmó: “No se tortura”. Con tan mala suerte que a los pocos días (28 de abril de 2006) los medios de comunicación de todo el mundo publicaron las espeluznantes fotos de Abu Ghraib. Por si fuera poco, los documentos desclasificados hace unas semanas atribuyen a Rice un papel director, delicado y comprometido, en el asunto de las torturas.

A pesar de todas estas evidencias, la Embajada de Washington en Madrid sostuvo: “El presidente Bush y la secretaria de Estado Rice han dejado muy claro cuál es la política de Estados Unidos respecto al trato a los detenidos. El Gobierno de Estados Unidos ni aprueba, ni permite, ni practica la tortura ni cualquier otro trato inhumano” (carta a EL PAÍS, del 5 de abril de 2006). Ya en 2004, el director de la CIA, Porter Gross, sostenía que sus agentes “no se sirven de la tortura, sólo de técnicas imaginativas”.

Ha quedado suficientemente demostrado que la Administración de Bush violó las leyes, nacionales e internacionales, de forma persistente. Tanto como para forzar la reacción -aun en tiempos de Bush- de ciudadanos y líderes, incluidos conservadores, que entienden que la ley es sagrada. Fue el caso del republicano Alberto Mora, que se convirtió en el principal denunciante dentro del sistema del tinglado torturador. Mora, cuya madre es húngara, dijo en 2006: “No existe húngaro que, tras el comunismo, no sea consciente de que los derechos humanos son incompatibles con la crueldad. El debate aquí y ahora no es sólo cómo proteger al país. Es cómo proteger nuestros valores”.

Mora libró una trascendental batalla contra aquellos que sostenían que el presidente -en función de una supuesta “doctrina de la necesidad”- puede legalizar lo ilegal. Idea que tenía su origen en funcionarios del Ministerio de Justicia que argumentaban que la autoridad de Bush como comandante en jefe para fijar métodos de interrogatorio primaba sobre los tratados internacionales y las leyes federales norteamericanas.

En 2006, Alberto Mora pregunta a John Yoo, consejero del Ministerio de Justicia: “¿Está usted afirmando que el presidente dispone de autoridad para ordenar la tortura?”. Sin disimulo alguno, lisa y llanamente, John Yoo contesta: “Sí”.

Meses antes de la agresión a Irak -mientras los fanáticos en el Gobierno de EE UU preparaban la guerra y propalaban mentiras-, Thomas Friedman escribió: “A Sadam se le puede disuadir porque ama la vida más de lo que odia a Estados Unidos. Pero a los Osama Bin Laden es imposible disuadirlos porque odian más a Estados Unidos de lo que aman sus vidas”. La política de Bush, la invasión de Irak, las torturas y humillaciones han creado numerosos Osamas. Hagamos votos para que -sensible al lamento de Gandhi (“Siempre ha sido un misterio para mí el que los hombres puedan sentirse gratificados al infligir humillación a sus semejantes”)- Barack Obama fije un nuevo y definitivo rumbo. Mientras tanto, ya digo, nunca olviden a John Yoo.

In mid-October of 2003, Specialist Sabrina Harman of the 372nd Military Police Company was assigned guard duty on the military intelligence cellblock at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. That was the block where prisoners of the American occupation forces were held pending and during interrogation. The M.P.’s had no military training as prison guards, and they were told to do whatever the interrogators — a mix of military intelligence and C.I.A. officers and civilian contractors — asked them to do to the prisoners.

Specialist Harman and her comrades were astonished to find a number of prisoners on the block naked and trussed to the bars in painful “stress positions,” their heads hooded by sandbags, or by women’s panties. In civilian life, Specialist Harman aspired to become a police crime-scene photographer, and so at Abu Ghraib she set to work at once, snapping away with her digital camera.

What were the pictures for? “Just to show what was going on,” Ms. Harman said. To say, “Look, I have proof, you can’t deny it.” Sometimes she and her fellow guards posed alongside their abused wards, but most of her photos from Abu Ghraib have a purely documentary quality — solitary prisoners, stripped and manacled in their cells, stretched over bed frames or forced to balance on a box. Cpl. Charles Graner, the M.P. in charge of the night shift on the intelligence block that fall, also took photographs. And Corporal Graner, too, spoke of his snapshots as a form of “proof.” He showed the pictures to his superior officers, medics, lawyers.

Later, he told Army investigators how he had routinely beat up prisoners for interrogators, or kept them up all night, making them crawl naked back and forth across the floor. “Was all this stuff wrong?” he said. “Yeah.” But his point was that it was no secret. He kept getting praised for his work.

Six months later, in April 2004, when the Harman and Graner photographs were leaked to the press, they shocked the world’s conscience. They also performed a great public service. They told us something about ourselves that we might have suspected but did not fully know — that the Bush administration had decided to fight terror with terror, and torture with torture.

We did not fully know this before the photographs came out, because our leaders hid it from us, and when it was revealed they denied it. “We do not torture,” Mr. Bush kept saying, even as a stream of official documents leaked to the press contradicted him.

Had a journalist taken the photos, there would have been prizes. Instead, the photographs were used by the administration and the military to frame the soldiers who took and appeared in them as rogues acting out of their own individual perversity. In this way, the exposé became the cover-up: the soldiers who revealed our corruption to us were made scapegoats and thrown in prison.

Five years later, America is again caught up in a debate about the release of photographs that show our soldiers using Bush administration “interrogation techniques” at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

Barack Obama, whose first act as president was to re-criminalize torture, initially favored making the pictures public. Then Mr. Obama changed his mind. His critics (civil libertarians, human rights advocates and press commentators) are saying that this makes him no different from his predecessor.

They are mistaken. Just as it was a public service to release the Abu Ghraib photographs five years ago, Mr. Obama is right today to say we don’t need more of them.

The president claims that a new round of images of prisoner abuse flashing around the globe would enflame America’s enemies and endanger our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. There’s no doubt about it: the policies that the photographs depict have already done terrible damage to America’s cause.

But there’s another critical consideration. Releasing additional photographs would not be telling us anything that we don’t already know. We don’t need to see a picture to know that American interrogators used waterboarding — a crime our military has prosecuted as torture for more than a century — when we can see former Vice President Dick Cheney taking credit for having people waterboarded.

Mr. Obama is not suppressing information when he opposes the release of more photographs. After all, he just made public a series of Bush administration torture policy memos that authorize the very methods for inflicting pain and suffering that the Abu Ghraib photographs represent. In fact, it is because of Mr. Obama’s leadership in bringing these dark practices to light that the press and the public — having for too long been passive to the point of complicity on the issue — are now agitating for more sensational imagery. Who are we trying to fool, if not ourselves, if we pretend that we need more photos to know what has been going on?

Crime-scene photographs, for all their power to reveal, can also serve as a distraction, even a deterrent, from precise understanding of the events they depict. Photographs cannot show us a chain of command, or Washington decision making. Photographs cannot tell stories. They can only provide evidence of stories, and evidence is mute; it demands investigation and interpretation.

I spent more than a year living with the photographs from Abu Ghraib while writing a book about the soldiers who took them and appeared in them. I saw many more pictures than were ever published in the press, including, I believe, many — if not most — of the photos that the president would now prefer that you don’t see.

Yet in order to tell the story of the pictures most effectively, I decided not to include any of them in the book. I had more than two million words of interviews to work with, and as many words again of government paperwork, and in this way I could show that most of the worst things that happened at Abu Ghraib were never photographed. What those soldier-photographers revealed to us with their cameras was just a hint of what they have to tell us if only we would listen.

Some of the most disturbing photographs from Abu Ghraib are not photographs of torture. Rather, they are photographs that show our soldiers trying — without the proper training or equipment — to do their jobs. One of the most gruesome images shows an empty cell, sticky with blood. It is an image of pure gore, like a snapshot of an abattoir floor, and if one comes upon it in a sequence of torture photographs it seems self-evidently a picture of unspeakable aftermath.

But the soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib can speak, and the story they tell of that picture is one of professional military conduct. One night an Iraqi guard at the prison smuggled a loaded pistol to a prisoner. An informant tipped off the guards. When the M.P.’s went to recover the gun, the prisoner began shooting, and the soldiers shot him in the legs. The blood in the photo is the prisoner’s, and nobody else was hurt. Meanwhile, prisoners were regularly beaten bloody in the showers during interrogation, and there are no photographs of that.

Today, with all that we know about the Bush administration’s torture policy, the discussion about the release of more photos is a sideshow. Yet, in his eagerness to move on, Mr. Obama himself sometimes seems to forget what the memos he has released tell us about the pictures he is holding back.

Several times, in the past week, he has revived the old “bad apples” theory that blames a few low-ranking “individuals” for doing what our highest leaders asked of them. Photographs can’t show us that the real bad apples were at the top of the civilian chain of command in Washington, but that is what we need to know — or, rather, since we’ve known it and gone along with it for a long time, that is what we need to come to terms with now.

Arthur Schlesinger fue un eminente historiador norteamericano: las biografías de Andrew Jackson y Robert Kennedy, su brillante análisis del poder ejecutivo, La presidencia imperial, los tres volúmenes sobre el New Deal de Roosevelt, son hitos de la historiografía norteamericana.

Durante una de mis últimas conversaciones con él, Schlesinger me comentó que el nuevo ciclo demócrata, iniciado por la presidencia de Clinton, había sido interrumpido por la elección -a mi entender, amañada- de George W. Bush sobre Al Gore, triunfador en la votación numérica popular.

Reanudado el ciclo renovador por Barack Obama, los ocho años de Bush hijo revelan, día con día, su carácter anómalo y dañino. Un evento resume los peores aspectos del poder ejecutivo norteamericano entre 2000 y 2009: la aparición del ex vicepresidente Dick Cheney ante el Comité de Inteligencia del Senado el pasado 28 de abril.

Los vicios del vice, titula su columna informativa de la ocasión la valiente y dura escritora del New York Times, Maureen Dowd. Dowd obtuvo acceso a las minutas del testimonio de Cheney ante el Comité y el retrato que emerge del segundo hombre de la Administración Bush es el de un “malo de malolandia”, como diría mi amiga Lilia Pérez Gay. Interrogado acerca del uso de la tortura de prisioneros en las cárceles de Guantánamo y Abu Ghraib, Cheney admitió que los torturados eran vestidos con “chalecos explosivos, sus heridas escarbadas con un pie, sus dolores aumentados por pentotal sódico, la amenaza de cortarles los ojos” y otras lindezas por el estilo.

Cuando el senador John McCain, candidato republicano a la presidencia, y él mismo sujeto a tortura como prisionero de guerra en Vietnam, le interrogó, Cheney le dijo: “Cierra la jeta. Todos estamos aburridos de tus apologías contra la tortura. ¿Por qué no te unes al marica Specter y te vas del otro lado?”. Estas intemperancias de Cheney fueron dirigidas al senador Alan Specter, quien acaba de cambiar del Partido Republicano al Demócrata. Peor aún, pretendían denigrar a McCain, quien luchó en una guerra -la de Vietnam- de la cual se excusó dos veces, en un alarde de cobardía, Cheney, alegando enfermedades e impedimentos probablemente ficticios.

La rabia de Cheney se manifiesta enseguida contra el presidente Barack Obama, al cual llama “la delicada orquídea de Harvard” y acusa de “arrimarse a dictadores grasosos, dándoles besos a esos comadrejas europeos a los que nuestros militares liberaron”. Obama, dice Cheney, es un “helado de crema” del cual “se aprovecharán nuestros enemigos”.

En pleno delirio, Cheney atribuye conspiraciones antiamericanas a los serbios aliados de Al Qaeda (!) y sigue su lista de horrores, admitiendo que entre los métodos de tortura implícita o explícitamente autorizados por la Casa Blanca bushista se encontraban retirarle medicinas a los detenidos, simular que se les ahogaba, el uso de serruchos para intimidar e informes falsos sobre la muerte de un hijo del detenido.

El senador Evan Bayh se atrevió a preguntarle a Cheney si los actos de terrorismo no eran, más bien, norteamericanos y destinados a favorecer el control del petróleo iraquí por la compañía privada de Cheney, la Halliburton. A lo cual Cheney contestó con cólera: “¡Nosotros somos los patriotas!”. A lo cual la presidenta de la comisión, la senadora Dianne Feinstein, contestó con la frase final: “Señor Cheney, su testimonio consiste en dar ilusiones por verdades”.

Días más tarde, el propio New York Times dio cuenta de las tensiones dentro del Gobierno de Bush en torno a este mismo tema. En junio del 2003, el presidente se declaró en contra del uso de la tortura y a favor de castigar su uso. El abogado de la CIA protestó: la declaración presidencial confundía a los agentes autorizados por el propio presidente para usar “tácticas brutales” contra miembros de Al Qaeda. La Casa Blanca reiteró entonces su aprobación a las “tácticas brutales”, pero ello, según el diario neoyorquino, no superó las tensiones internas del gabinete. Cheney -como lo comprueba su testimonio en el Senado- aprobó el uso extremo y secreto de la tortura e incluso la “desaparición” de los torturados. Condoleezza Rice, en cambio, recomendó el reconocimiento público de que EE UU tenía prisioneros terroristas. Alberto Gonzales, el malhadado procurador general, propuso entonces la teoría de la “inmaculada concepción”: llevar los prisioneros a Guantánamo, sin admitir que antes estuvieron secretamente detenidos.

La concepción fue maculada. Rice logró que los detenidos fuesen enviados a Guantánamo. Pero Cheney insistió en su política de brutalidad y tortura, y logró una orden ejecutiva autorizando toda una serie de actos de coerción (los mismos que con orgullo cínico el ex vicepresidente ha defendido en el comité senatorial).

Todo lo anterior arroja una sombra terrible sobre el Gobierno Bush-Cheney pero ilumina el cambio que significa el Gobierno Obama. Para empezar, frente a la ignorancia brutal de la Administración anterior, hoy EE UU tiene a un presidente que fue, además de joven editor de la Revista Jurídica de la Universidad de Harvard, profesor de Derecho en la Universidad de Chicago, amén de trabajador social en la gran ciudad del Lago Michigan.

Obama trae, pues, a la Casa Blanca una experiencia legal y una cultura jurídica que vienen a llenar el inmenso vacío dejado por la era Bush-Cheney. Al alegato de Cheney (la tortura era necesaria para la seguridad) Obama da a entender que la información obtenida bajo tortura suele o puede ser falsa, como lo demuestra la experiencia a posteriori de la era Bush-Cheney. La seguridad nacional, afirma Obama, no implica la violación de la juridicidad nacional o internacional. Al contrario, el apego al derecho desarma al enemigo y la violación del derecho nos asimila a él.

“Nosotros no torturamos”, afirmó Winston Churchill cuando Londres era bombardeada por la Luftwaffe y 200 individuos eran detenidos como espías. Renunciar a la tortura no es sólo un imperativo moral. Es un imperativo racional que obliga a obtener la verdad con métodos que la comprueben, tarea más difícil que el fácil camino de una tortura al cabo poco confiable. Obama propone una senda más segura y más exigente para los organismos de inteligencia nacional. Renuncia a la falsa facilidad y se impone una verdad rigurosa y difícil. ¿Hay mejor manera de gobernar en este conflictivo capítulo?

El otro ataque de Cheney a Obama -el presidente le da la mano a “dictadores grasosos” y a aliados ingratos- sólo confirma que Bush hijo practicó una política nefanda de atacar primero y postergar la diplomacia: “El eje del mal”, la Europa “antigua”, la ONU “inservible”, son ejemplos de este desprecio instantáneo que imposibilita la negociación u obliga a echarse atrás y negociar invalidado.

El cambio diplomático efectuado por Obama es notable. Estados Unidos está dispuesto a darle la mano a todo el mundo y a negociar con quien lo desee. Si alguien se niega a negociar y da el puño en vez de la mano, la culpa será del que se niega y no del que se afirma.

Obama, de este modo, recobra una vocación internacional perdida por el país que, después de todo, fundó la Organización Internacional cuando EE UU había ganado la II Guerra Mundial y daba cuenta de la mitad de la producción económica global.

¿Cómo, a fin de cuentas, combatir al terrorismo sin violar la ley? Quizá el mejor camino lo ofrece la legislación francesa. El terrorismo es tema de la competencia judicial. Los jueces inician el proceso y expiden las órdenes de detención. Los jueces del caso poseen amplios poderes, y las sentencias las expiden magistrados profesionales, no jurados populares y tampoco jurados militares. La detención indefinida está prohibida y todo se lleva a cabo con la discreción propia de un proceso judicial serio y regular, no propagandístico, partidista o militarista.

Ejemplo a seguir, sobre todo ahora que los propios jueces y abogados norteamericanos que recomendaron la tortura han sido identificados públicamente. Y aunque las autoridades del Departamento de Justicia no se proponen someterlos a juicio, es probable que los individuos señalados sean disciplinados y, aún más, despojados de sus funciones en el futuro.

Obama, de esta manera, busca un punto de equilibrio justo entre quienes, desde la derecha, le piden pasar página y quienes, desde la izquierda, le piden castigos ejemplares.

A la hora de justificar su espectacular anulación de la decisión de publicar las fotografías que muestran el maltrato de prisioneros a cargo de soldados de Estados Unidos en Iraq y Afganistán, el presidente Obama alegó que la publicación de las imágenes “exacerbaría aún más la corriente de opinión antiestadounidense y pondría a las tropas en mayor peligro”.

De hecho, la opinión mundial, en especial la de los musulmanes, juzgaría que la difusión de tales imágenes de horror representaría un giro positivo de la política estadounidense y de su política exterior en general. Se consideraría que Estados Unidos recupera su alta moral y afirma su respeto por la dignidad humana.

La asunción de la responsabilidad por parte de Obama de las iniciativas y medidas de la administración Bush, por horribles y dolorosas que sean, habrá de reforzar la ruptura con su predecesor, así como el carácter de su nuevo mensaje a la sociedad estadounidense y a la comunidad internacional: EE.UU. es un buen ciudadano del mundo, un país que se rige por leyes y que cumple escrupulosamente las leyes sobre la guerra. El nuevo mensaje del presidente cobraría así mayor fuerza y credibilidad.

No se puede negar que a corto plazo la publicación de estas imágenes de horror suministraría más munición a extremistas como Al Qaeda y otros grupos afines en guerra con Estados Unidos. Otros partidarios de la línea dura usarían y abusarían de las fotografías de los prisioneros para presentar a EE.UU. librando una guerra contra el islam y los musulmanes. Pero poco puede hacer EE.UU. para aplacar a Al Qaeda y otros militantes. La mayoría son irredimibles.

El principal objetivo ha de consistir en granjearse el favor de la opinión pública musulmana en general. Numerosos indicios y pruebas señalan que la apertura del presidente Obama a los musulmanes ha comenzado a dar sus frutos. En las encuestas y según mis propias entrevistas, cada vez más árabes y musulmanes dicen que tienen muy buena opinión del joven presidente y consideran que ejercerá un impacto positivo sobre Oriente Medio.

La diferencia esencial entre la perspectiva de buena voluntad de los árabes sobre Obama y Estados Unidos, respectivamente, guarda relación con la credibilidad del mensajero, el presidente Obama. Mientras el ex presidente Bush es odiado y se desconfía de él en el gran Oriente Medio, Obama es visto como un soplo de aire fresco que refleja la nueva faz humana de Estados Unidos. La credibilidad del mensajero es esencial, y cualquier decisión (como el bloqueo de la publicación de las fotografías de los malos tratos) susceptible de minar la confianza podría fácilmente hacer trizas la reserva de buena voluntad internacional que el presidente Obama ha edificado hasta la fecha.

El argumento de que la publicación de las fotografías exacerbaría a la opinión antiestadounidense no es de mucho peso, pues, según se ha informado, estas controvertidas fotografías reflejan una realidad menos vejatoria y humillante que las imágenes de Abu Graib en el 2004 que atizaron los sentimientos antiestadounidenses en todo el mundo. De hecho, Obama ha dicho que las fotografías en este caso no son “especialmente impactantes, sobre todo cuando se comparan con las dolorosas imágenes que todos recordamos de Abu Graib”. Muy bien. Entonces, ¿por qué no acatar la decisión del tribunal de apelaciones sobre la publicación de las imágenes?

Existe el peligro de que la nueva decisión de Obama de oponerse a la publicación de las fotografías pueda provocar el efecto contrario al esparcir rumores y teorías conspiratorias sobre lo que tales fotografías revelan, y por tanto podrían perjudicar más que beneficiar. En la era de los nuevos medios de comunicación, la transparencia es un arma poderosa en los dos ámbitos de la política interior y exterior.

Según el memorándum del 21 de enero del propio presidente Obama en honor de la ley de Libertad de Información, “el Gobierno no debe mantener la confidencialidad de la información por la mera razón de que los funcionarios públicos pudieran verse comprometidos por las revelaciones en cuestión, porque los errores y los fracasos pudieran de este modo ser revelados, o por temores teóricos o abstractos”.

El fallo de tres jueces del tribunal de apelaciones en el 2008 – que rechazó la importante aseveración de la administración Bush en el sentido de que la publicación de las fotografías añade escaso valor a la comprensión social de la cuestión-figuraba en la misma página web junto con la postura de Obama. “Este argumento omite el propósito esencial de la ley de Libertad de Información (FOIA) de promover la rendición de cuentas por parte del Gobierno”, concluyó el tribunal.

Sí, señor presidente, usted, como antiguo profesor de Derecho Constitucional, y el dictamen del tribunal de apelaciones coinciden en que la comunicación abierta y sin trabas entre el Gobierno y la ciudadanía, la transparencia y la rendición de cuentas son importantes, notablemente importantes. Los ciudadanos estadounidenses tienen derecho a conocer en su entera magnitud el horror perpetrado en su nombre.

Es menester, de forma apremiante, quedar limpio. En este caso, hacer públicas no sólo estas fotografías, sino las otras miles que presuntamente se hallan en poder del Pentágono. El secretario de Defensa, Robert Gates, atinaba al decir que había sostenido en una ocasión que acaso sería preferible “pasar el mal trago de una vez” y hacer públicas sin dilación una serie de imágenes, ya que muchas de ellas penden de resolución judicial en numerosos juicios.

Sin embargo, tanto él como el presidente mudaron de parecer cuando los generales estadounidenses en Iraq y Afganistán, yel general David Petraeus, mando de mayor rango en ambas guerras, expresó su “gran preocupación ante la eventualidad de que la difusión de tales fotografías cueste vidas estadounidenses”, según el informe de Gates al comité de las Fuerzas Armadas de la Cámara de Representantes.

Los generales, con razón, temen que la publicación de las fotografías podría socavar aún más la posición militar de Estados Unidos en el país y en el extranjero, aunque es difícil afirmar que la publicación costaría vidas estadounidenses.

El comandante en jefe debe sopesar seriamente los posibles temores de sus generales frente a las más amplias preocupaciones propias de los intereses públicos y nacionales y de la comunicación abierta y sin trabas entre el Gobierno y la ciudadanía. Esta última cuestión no es un lujo, sino una necesidad a la luz de lo ocurrido durante los últimos ocho años. El esfuerzo de lograr quedar limpio constituiría una dilatada tarea a fin de reparar cualquier perjuicio simbólico infligido a los militares y evitar una repetición de tales delitos en el futuro.

La administración Bush ya se manifestó en contra de la publicación por motivos de seguridad nacional… y perdió. El tribunal de apelaciones manifestó en septiembre del 2008: “Es claramente insuficiente sostener que cabe dar por sentado que la publicación de los documentos podría plausiblemente poner en peligro a miembros indeterminados de un grupo tan grande como el conjunto de los efectivos de las fuerzas armadas de Estados Unidos, de las fuerzas de la coalición y de los civiles en Iraq y Afganistán”.

“Se dice que la luz del sol es el mejor de los desinfectantes”, dijo Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), el “abogado del pueblo”, que fue posteriormente juez del Supremo, en una serie de artículos sobre la “Nueva Libertad”. Se espera que la Administración Obama abrace la luz del sol y la transparencia y levante el velo del secreto que ha perjudicado, en la mayoría de casos, los intereses nacionales de Estados Unidos.

Los intentos del presidente Obama por impedir la desclasificación de las fotografías de los abusos de presos estadounidenses es un error que se puede enmendar. El presidente actúa de buena fe, comprendiendo los desquiciados tiempos que atraviesa la sociedad en la que vive. Por sí solo eso supone un avance en la Casa Blanca. Los ex aliados de Obama se lanzan a acusarle de hipocresía y cobardía moral por contradecirse en el asunto de las torturas y la transparencia. El premio a la hipérbole instantánea odiosa es para Anthony D. Romero, director de la Unión Americana de Libertades Civiles, que sugería que Obama «está encubriendo no solamente a Bush, sino también a sí mismo».

Ay, letrado. ¿Tiene usted pruebas que avalen una acusación de tan censurable fechoría? ¿O está usted decidido a reducir a la Unión Americana de Libertades, una de las organizaciones vitales de la democracia estadounidense, a un lobby que ejerce su influencia mediante la ampulosidad y la presión de la opinión pública en lugar de los argumentos? No se engañe. Muchos de aquellos que condenan ferozmente a Obama y presionan por la difusión de las al menos 44 instantáneas pretenden hacer más que informar a la opinión pública. También quieren imputar a funcionarios y agentes de la Administración Bush a base de agitar la repulsa de la opinión, incluso si las fotografías no contienen ninguna prueba directa de complicidad a alto nivel en los maltratos o las torturas. Aliados en esta campaña son los disidentes contrarios a la profunda implicación de Obama en Afganistán.

Pero la política de las torturas y el maltrato de los prisioneros es una herramienta difícil de manejar. Amputa a todo aquel que toca, como han descubierto Bush, Obama, Nancy Pelosi y la CIA, entre otros. La claridad moral que deberían aportar las mismas palabras de «torturas» o «abusos» desaparece en cuanto son invocadas para favorecer causas partidistas que -al igual que la propia tortura- dependen de que los fines justifiquen los medios. En cuanto a las contradicciones, Obama está haciendo en la práctica distinciones, y juicios basados en distinciones, a la hora de decidir si solicita a un tribunal de apelaciones que no levante el secreto que pesa sobre las fotografías solicitadas por la Unión de Libertades, hasta desclasificar primero los memorandos «de interrogatorio avanzado» de la Administración Bush para que la opinión pública debata y juzgue. Estas opciones son dos caras de la misma moneda para este presidente, que es consciente de que vivimos en una era digital visual en la que las fotografías y los videos abruman los contextos y las palabras. Su dominio de los símbolos visuales y motivadores le llevó a la victoria el pasado noviembre. No va a renunciar a controlarlos ahora en favor de otros. Obama podría haber calculado mal su efecto, pero su actuación con los memorandos de las torturas y las fotografías de los abusos surgen al mismo tiempo que la sensación de que el país quiere pasar página con respecto a la época de trauma y temor que siguió al 11 de septiembre de 2001.

El Obama candidato prometió «ganar» la «guerra buena» en Afganistán. Era difícil por entonces juzgar si ese lenguaje era simplemente una táctica de campaña o un compromiso sincero. Él sostiene que pensaba en esto último al seguir las peticiones de sus mandos militares de no cooperar en la publicación de imágenes que servirán sobre todo para azuzar emociones mientras 21.000 efectivos estadounidenses adicionales se despliegan en Afganistán. Un máximo jefe del ejército que pone en peligro la integridad de fuerzas estadounidenses no debería hacer menos.

Pero la eliminación integral de imágenes o palabras es mala política, hasta cuando las intenciones son sinceras. La censura siempre despierta una desconfianza mayor y se puede utilizar para proteger a los malhechores. Las fotografías entran en dos categorías: las instantáneas tipo Abú Ghraib tomadas despreocupada y repugnantemente por aquellos que cometen los abusos -no se moleste en preguntar lo que hacen- y las fotografías de las víctimas recogidas por el Gobierno en una investigación. Cualquier fotografía que el Gobierno utilice como prueba en una imputación judicial forma parte de un sumario público que debería ser difundido. Después de todo, algunos de los autores de las instantáneas las difundieron entre amigos de forma digital. El resto debería ser archivado como material de investigación para su posible uso como prueba. No todo lo que hay en los archivos policiales es publicable. Este enfoque debería restar parte del encanto ilícito que tiene este material. Se ha convertido en una especie de pornografía de guerra destinada a segmentos de una audiencia que recurre a la argumentación pseudo-política en busca de placer o estimulación. En último término, la Casa Blanca sabe que tiene escasos argumentos para defender la censura.

La decisión del presidente Obama de dar a conocer los documentos sobre las prácticas interrogatorias de Guantánamo y Abu Ghraib y, al mismo tiempo, no ordenar la investigación de quienes llevaron a cabo tales prácticas, me recordó un caso bien anterior, en el que el sistema legal es también utilizado para justificar la tortura, y en el cual el torturador tampoco es condenado por sus acciones. Ocurre casi al final del viaje al infierno de Dante, en el Canto XXXII de su Comedia.

Siguiendo a Virgilio por los varios círculos infernales, Dante llega al lago glacial en el que las almas de los traidores son presas hasta el cuello en el hielo. Entre las terribles cabezas que gritan y maldicen, Dante cree reconocer la de un cierto Bocca degli Abati, culpable de haber traicionado a los suyos y haberse aliado al enemigo. Dante pide a la inclinada cabeza que le diga su nombre y, como es ya su costumbre a lo largo del mágico descenso, promete al pecador fama póstuma en sus versos cuando vuelva al mundo de los vivos. Bocca le contesta que lo que desea es precisamente lo contrario, y le dice a Dante que se vaya y no lo fastidie más.

Furioso ante el insulto, Dante coge a Bocca por el pescuezo y le dice que, a menos que confiese su nombre, le arrancará cada pelo de la cabeza. “Aún si me dejases calvo”, le contesta el desdichado, “no te diría quien soy, no te mostraría mi cara/ aunque mil veces me azotases”. Entonces Dante le arranca “otro puñado de pelo”, haciendo que Bocca lance aullidos de dolor. Mientras tanto, Virgilio, encargado por la voluntad divina de guiar al poeta, observa y guarda silencio.

Podemos interpretar ese silencio de Virgilio como aprobación. Varios círculos antes, en el Canto VIII, cuando los dos poetas navegan a través del Río Estigio, Dante, viendo cómo uno de los condenados se alza de las aguas inmundas, le pregunta, como siempre, de quién se trata. El alma pecaminosa no le da su nombre, sólo le dice que es “uno que llora” y Dante, sin conmoverse, lo maldice ferozmente. Virgilio, sonriente, toma a Dante en sus brazos y lo alaba con las palabras que San Lucas usó para alabar a Cristo. Entonces Dante, alentado por la reacción de su maestro, le dice que nada le daría mayor placer que ver al condenado volver a hundirse en el fango atroz. Virgilio le dice que así ocurrirá, y el episodio concluye con Dante agradeciendo a Dios la concesión de su deseo.

A través de los siglos, los comentadores de Dante han intentado justificar estos actos como ejemplos de “noble indignación” u “honorable cólera”, que no es un pecado como la ira (según Santo Tomás de Aquino, uno de las fuentes intelectuales de Dante), sino una virtud nacida de una “causa justa”. El problema, claro está, reside en la lectura del adjetivo “justo”. En el caso de Dante, “justo” se refiere a su comprensión de la incuestionable justicia de Dios. Sentir compasión por los condenados es “injusto” porque significa oponerse a la imponderable voluntad divina.

Tan sólo tres cantos antes, Dante cae desmayado de piedad cuando el alma de Francesca, condenada a girar para siempre en el vendaval que castiga la lujuria, le cuenta su triste caso. Pero ahora, más avanzado en su ejemplar descenso, Dante ha perdido su flaqueza sentimental y su fe en la autoridad es más robusta.

Según la teología dantesca, el sistema legal impuesto por Dios no puede ser tachado ni de erróneo ni de cruel; por lo tanto, todo lo que decrete debe ser “justo” aun cuando se halle más allá del entendimiento humano. Las acciones de Dante -la tortura deliberada del prisionero preso en el hielo, su sórdido deseo de ver al otro prisionero ahogarse en el lodo- deben ser entendidas (dicen los comentadores) como una humilde obediencia a la Ley y a una incuestionable Autoridad Mayor.

Un argumento similar es propuesto hoy en día por quienes argumentan contra la investigación y condena de los torturadores. Y sin embargo, habrá pocos lectores de Dante que no sientan, al leer esos pasajes infernales, un mal sabor de boca. Quizás sea porque, si la justificación de la aparente crueldad dantesca yace en la naturaleza de la voluntad divina, entonces, en lugar de sentir que las acciones de Dante son redimidas por la fe, el lector siente que la fe es envilecida por las acciones de Dante.

De la misma manera, el implícito perdón a los torturadores, sólo porque los abusos ocurrieron en un pasado inmutable y bajo la autoridad y ley de otra administración, en lugar de alimentar la fe en la política del Gobierno actual, la envilece. Peor aún: tácitamente aceptada por la Administración de Obama, la vieja excusa de “sólo obedecí las órdenes” adquirirá renovado crédito y servirá de antecedente para futuras exoneraciones.

G. K. Chesterton dijo alguna vez: “Obviamente, no puede haber seguridad en una sociedad en la que el comentario de un juez de la Corte Suprema, diciendo que asesinar está mal, sea visto como un epigrama original y deslumbrante”. Lo mismo puede decirse de una sociedad que, bajo no importa qué circunstancias, rehúsa investigar y condenar infames actos de tortura.

When President Obama announced this week that he would renege on his promise to release a set of detainee abuse photos at the end of this month, he said three factors drove his decision: that “these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals,” that they would “further inflame anti-American opinion” and that they would “put our troops in greater danger.” But those may not have been the real rationales. By appealing the court order authorizing the photos’ release and thereby delaying publication of viscerally powerful evidence of detainee abuse, Obama may be attempting to reduce political pressure to investigate Bush administration officials who crafted arguably illegal policies on interrogation and detention. In choosing this tack, Obama makes clear how deeply potential prosecution is affecting every decision he faces about detention, interrogation and torture.

Coming on the heels of the newly released Justice Department memos on interrogation and a Senate Armed Services Committee report, these photos, allegedly numbering in the thousands, are expected to demonstrate that detainee abuse wasn’t merely a case of a few bad apples but a systematic policy for which no policymakers have been held accountable. Shockingly, Obama said that guilt for these crimes has already been addressed. In his words, the Pentagon has “gone through the appropriate and regular processes” to investigate these abuses. Moreover, “the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken” against this “small number of individuals.”

There are reportedly hundreds of American troops involved in the activities shown in these pictures, not just a few. Yet the architects of abusive treatment of detainees in American custody — at the top levels of government — have avoided public acknowledgment of their creation of a policy that, despite secret memos crafted to provide a patina of legality, violated U.S. law, not to mention the integrity of the American people. However many Lynndie Englands have been tried or penalized for crimes of abuse, mistreatment and torture, no one at the upper levels has been punished, reprimanded or even officially accused of the wrongdoing that is at the heart of creating a torture policy.

Now, there is nothing wrong with recommending exemptions for lower-level individuals involved in torture and abuse. There may also be nothing wrong with an eventual decision not to prosecute high-ranking public officials. But there is something wrong with using a politically opportunistic reluctance to prosecute as a reason to avoid a fact-finding commission — avoiding, in other words, a public airing of the truth.

The facts need to come out. Keeping the public in the dark about government illegality is corrosively antidemocratic. We may not need the photographs to understand what was done in the people’s name, but we do need to know who did what, when and to what effect. We need to know how many prisoners died in U.S. custody because of abuse, how many were harmed and who approved that abuse at the highest levels of government.

If President Obama wants to withhold the photographs, he needs to do so not on the grounds that all culpability has been addressed but because, in exchange for withholding the pictures, he promises a full investigation of what happened, when and at whose hands.

The president must also demonstrate to the U.S. military that he will not offer its members up as fodder for a principle. He can do this by pledging to release the photographs after the United States has essentially pulled out of the war zones. While we’re engaged in battle, it arguably would be irresponsible to give Iraqis and Afghans reasons to support those who are attempting to kill our troops every day. This was a concern around the release of the first abuse photos five years ago and remains a serious matter. Even for retired Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who wrote the first military report on detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, the prospect of retaliation makes release of the pictures wrong. In an interview with me this week, Taguba cited the April 2004 beheading of American Nicholas Berg, whose executioners claimed that they acted in response to the “satanic degradation” of prisoners in Iraq.

It is one thing to wait to release the photographs in a way that satisfies the U.S. military, which has sacrificed so much in the fight against terrorism. But it is another thing to commingle the call to protect our troops with the politically shrewd reluctance to investigate out of fear that prosecutions might follow. If Obama does nothing else as president, he needs to stand up for the integrity of factual truth and clear thinking rather than the convenience of government-led obfuscation. Not releasing the pictures to reduce public pressure for an investigation of Bush administration officials should not be confused with genuinely protecting the safety of our troops. If it is, Obama cedes the one power he was elected to exercise: the power of leadership in the name of candor, lawfulness and clarity rather than deceit, secrecy and spin.

This month, I wrote a column outlining two exceptions to the no-torture rule: the ticking time bomb scenario and its less extreme variant in which a high-value terrorist refuses to divulge crucial information that could save innocent lives. The column elicited protest and opposition that were, shall we say, spirited.

And occasionally stupid. Dan Froomkin, writing for washingtonpost.com and echoing a common meme among my critics, asserted that “the ticking time bomb scenario only exists in two places: On TV and in the dark fantasies of power-crazed and morally deficient authoritarians.” (He later helpfully suggested that my moral deficiencies derived from “watching TV and fantasizing about being Jack Bauer.”)

On Oct. 9, 1994, Israeli Cpl. Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis captured the driver of the car. He was interrogated with methods so brutal that they violated Israel’s existing 1987 interrogation guidelines, which themselves were revoked in 1999 by the Israeli Supreme Court as unconscionably harsh. The Israeli prime minister who ordered this enhanced interrogation (as we now say) explained without apology: “If we’d been so careful to follow the [1987] Landau Commission [guidelines], we would never have found out where Waxman was being held.”

Who was that prime minister? Yitzhak Rabin, Nobel Peace laureate. The fact that Waxman died in the rescue raid compounds the tragedy but changes nothing of Rabin’s moral calculus.

That moral calculus is important. Even John McCain says that in ticking time bomb scenarios you “do what you have to do.” The no-torture principle is not inviolable. One therefore has to think about what kind of transgressive interrogation might be permissible in the less pristine circumstance of the high-value terrorist who knows about less imminent attacks. (By the way, I’ve never seen five seconds of “24.”)

My column also pointed out the contemptible hypocrisy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is feigning outrage now about techniques that she knew about and did nothing to stop at the time.

My critics say: So what if Pelosi is a hypocrite? Her behavior doesn’t change the truth about torture.

But it does. The fact that Pelosi (and her intelligence aide) and then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss and dozens of other members of Congress knew about the enhanced interrogation and said nothing, and did nothing to cut off the funding, tells us something very important.

Our jurisprudence has the “reasonable man” standard. A jury is asked to consider what a reasonable person would do under certain urgent circumstances.

On the morality of waterboarding and other “torture,” Pelosi and other senior and expert members of Congress represented their colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable person verdict. What did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.

Moreover, the circle of approval was wider than that. As Slate’s Jacob Weisberg points out, those favoring harsh interrogation at the time included Alan Dershowitz, Mark Bowden and Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter. In November 2001, Alter suggested we consider “transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies” (i.e., those that torture). And, as Weisberg notes, these were just the liberals.

So what happened? The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at the time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly reelected the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken. It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions — our blindness to al-Qaeda’s plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that the interrogation would extract intelligence that President Obama’s own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed “high-value information” — and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

And they were right.

You can believe that Pelosi and the American public underwent a radical transformation from moral normality to complicity with war criminality back to normality. Or you can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years, but changes in circumstances (threat, knowledge, imminence) alter the moral calculus attached to any interrogation technique.

You don’t need a psychiatrist to tell you which of these theories is utterly fantastical.

Los documentos relativos a las prácticas de tortura empleadas en las cárceles de la CIA que el Gobierno de Obama hizo públicos el pasado 16 de abril arrojan una nueva luz sobre esta cuestión: ¿cómo explicarse la facilidad con la que han aceptado la tortura y la han aplicado a sus prisioneros unas personas que actúan en nombre del Gobierno estadounidense?

Los documentos que se acaban de publicar no revelan los casos de tortura concretos: éstos son de sobra conocidos por todos los que en su día quisieron enterarse. Sin embargo, aportan abundante información sobre la forma en la que se llevaban a cabo las sesiones de tortura y sobre cómo la entendían los agentes que la practicaban.

Lo más sorprendente es descubrir la existencia de una normativa increíblemente meticulosa, formulada en los manuales de la CIA y retomada, a su manera, por los responsables jurídicos del Gobierno de George W. Bush. Hasta ahora era posible imaginar que tales prácticas eran una muestra de lo que se suele denominar “atropellos”, infracciones involuntarias de las normas provocadas por la urgencia del momento. Por el contrario, lo que se percibe en los documentos recién conocidos es que se trata de unos procedimientos pautados hasta en sus menores detalles, al milímetro, perfectamente cronometrados.

Así, las formas de tortura son 10, número que posteriormente será elevado a 13. Se dividen en tres categorías, cada una de ellas con diversos grados de intensidad: preparatorias (desnudez, manipulación de la alimentación, privación del sueño), correctivas (los golpes) y coercitivas (duchas de agua fría, encierro en cajas, suplicio de la bañera).

En el caso de las bofetadas, el interrogador, según estos manuales, debe golpear con los dedos separados, en un punto equidistante entre el extremo de la barbilla y la parte inferior del lóbulo de la oreja.

La ducha de agua fría aplicada al prisionero desnudo puede durar 20 minutos si el agua está a cinco grados, 40 minutos si está a 10 grados, y hasta 60 minutos si está a 15 grados.

La privación del sueño no debe ser superior a 180 horas, pero tras un reposo de ocho horas, se puede recomenzar.

La inmersión en la bañera puede durar hasta 12 segundos, durante un periodo que no debe exceder las dos horas diarias, y ello durante 30 días seguidos (un preso particularmente resistente pasó por este suplicio 183 veces en marzo de 2003).

El encierro en una caja de dimensiones muy reducidas no debe ser superior a dos horas, pero si la caja permite que el prisionero esté de pie, se puede prolongar hasta ocho horas seguidas, 16 por día. Si se introduce un insecto en el interior, no se le debe decir al prisionero que la picadura será dolorosa o incluso mortal.

Y así sucesivamente durante páginas y páginas.

Nos enteramos también por estos documentos de cómo se forma a los torturadores. La mayoría de esas torturas está copiada del programa que siguen los soldados americanos que se preparan para enfrentarse a situaciones extremas (lo que permite a los responsables concluir que se trata de pruebas absolutamente soportables). Y lo que todavía es más importante, se elige a los torturadores entre aquellos que han tenido “una larga experiencia escolar” en este tipo de pruebas extremas; dicho en otras palabras, los propios torturadores han sido torturados en una primera fase de su formación. Tras la cual, un cursillo intensivo de cuatro semanas basta para prepararlos para su nuevo trabajo.

Los socios indispensables de los torturadores son los consejeros jurídicos, cuya labor es garantizar la impunidad legal de sus colegas. Esto constituye otra novedad: la tortura ya no se presenta como una infracción de la norma común, lamentable pero excusable, sino que se convierte en la propia norma legal. En este caso, los juristas recurren a otra serie de técnicas. Para librarse de la ley, los interrogatorios deben realizarse fuera del territorio nacional de Estados Unidos, aunque puedan efectuarse en bases norteamericanas en terceros países.

Tal como se define legalmente, la tortura implica la intención de producir un gran sufrimiento. Se sugerirá, por consiguiente, a los torturadores que nieguen la presencia de esa intención. De tal modo que no se abofetea al preso para producirle dolor, sino para sorprenderlo y humillarlo. En cuanto al objetivo de encerrarlo en una caja de reducidas dimensiones no es provocar un desorden sensorial, sino producirle cierta sensación de incomodidad.

El verdugo debe insistir siempre en su “buena fe”, en sus “convicciones sinceras” y en lo razonable de sus premisas. Se han de utilizar sistemáticamente eufemismos: “Técnicas reforzadas”, en lugar de tortura; “experto en interrogatorios”, en lugar de torturador.

También se evitará dejar huellas físicas, y, por esta razón, se preferirá la destrucción mental a los daños físicos; asimismo, se destruirán inmediatamente las posibles grabaciones o tomas visuales de las sesiones.

Otros colectivos colaboran en la práctica de la tortura: el contagio se extiende allende el limitado círculo de los torturadores. Aparte de los juristas que se encargan de dar legitimidad a sus actividades, en los documentos se menciona sistemáticamente a los psicólogos, a los psiquiatras y a los médicos (obligatoriamente presentes en todas las sesiones), además de a las mujeres (los torturadores son hombres, pero la humillación es aún mayor, más grave, cuando hay mujeres presentes) y a los profesores de universidad que proveen justificaciones morales, legales o filosóficas.

¿A quién debemos considerar hoy responsable de esta perversión de la ley y de los principios morales más elementales?

Los ejecutores voluntarios de la tortura lo son menos que los altos cargos y los magistrados que la justificaron y la fomentaron; y éstos, menos responsables, a su vez, que quienes teniendo el poder de tomar decisiones políticas les pidieron que lo hicieran.

Los Gobiernos extranjeros aliados, sobre todo los europeos, también tienen su parte de responsabilidad: pese a haber estado siempre al corriente de la existencia de estas prácticas y de haberse beneficiado de la información obtenida por estos medios, nunca, ni antes ni ahora, se preocuparon por alzar la más mínima protesta, ni siquiera hicieron el más leve signo de desaprobación. Quien calla otorga. ¿Habría que sentarlos en el banquillo?

En una democracia, la condena de los políticos consiste en privarlos del poder no reeligiéndolos. Y con respecto a los otros profesionales, se esperaría que sean sus iguales quienes les impongan el castigo, pues ¿quién querría ser alumno de semejante profesor, paciente de un médico tal o juzgado por un juez así?

Si se quiere comprender por qué estos valientes estadounidenses aceptaron tan fácilmente convertirse en torturadores, de nada vale intentar encontrar argumentos en el odio o en un miedo ancestral a los musulmanes o a los árabes. No. La situación es mucho más grave.

Lo que nos enseñan los documentos estadounidenses que acaban de hacerse públicos es que, siempre y cuando forme parte de un colectivo y esté respaldado por él, cualquier hombre que obedezca a los nobles principios dictados por el “sentido del deber”, por la necesaria “defensa de la patria”, o que se deje arrastrar por un temor elemental por la vida y el bienestar de los suyos, puede convertirse en torturador.

Cuando en septiembre del 2006 se le preguntó si había algo malo en cómo trataban los interrogadores estadounidenses a los prisioneros “valiosos” en Guantánamo y otros lugares, George W. Bush dio la célebre respuesta: “Nosotros no torturamos”.

La definición de la tortura es notablemente escurridiza, pero desde hace tiempo sabemos que el ex presidente había sido, por decirlo de alguna forma, mezquino con la verdad. Como mínimo, los interrogadores estadounidenses estaban violando las Convenciones de Ginebra contra el trato “cruel, inhumano o degradante” ratificadas por EE. UU.

Atar a una persona a una tabla y sumergirla hasta casi ahogarla una y otra vez, u obligar a un preso – desnudo y cubierto de sus propios excrementos-a estar de pie con las manos encadenadas al techo durante días hasta que sus piernas se hincharan el doble de su tamaño normal puede no haber sido tortura en los documentos preparados por los abogados del Gobierno, pero esas prácticas ciertamente son crueles, inhumanas y degradantes.

El primer acto de Obama como presidente fue prohibir la tortura inmediatamente. Ahora la pregunta es qué hacer con respecto a lo sucedido, y específicamente en cuanto al hecho de que los funcionarios más altos de EE. UU. no sólo toleraron sino que ordenaron estas acciones. ¿Se debe acaso enjuiciar a los funcionarios responsables, incluido Bush, por haber violado la ley? ¿Se deben dar a conocer y publicar todos los detalles de lo sucedido? ¿Debe establecerse una comisión especial para investigar? ¿O sería mejor, en palabras de Obama, “mirar hacia el futuro y no hacia el pasado”?

El ex vicepresidente Dick Cheney ha dicho varias ocasiones que no se arrepiente de lo que él llama técnicas de “interrogatorio mejorado”, como los simulacros de ahogamiento, porque “mantuvieron a nuestro país” libre de ataques terroristas. En su opinión, la prohibición de Obama hace que EE. UU. sea “vulnerable”. Es decir, los escrúpulos liberales sobre la moralidad, la legalidad y las convenciones internacionales sobre la tortura son insensatas e irresponsables. La implicación es clara: si hay otro ataque terrorista contra Estados Unidos, sabremos a quién culpar.

Así pues, es mucho lo que está en juego en el “debate sobre la tortura” que se ha apoderado de EE. UU. De un lado están Cheney y sus aliados, que ven la tortura en términos pragmáticos; si hay una amenaza grave a la seguridad colectiva, incluso una democracia liberal debe ensuciarse las manos. A nadie le gusta torturar, pero la seguridad es más importante que los escrúpulos morales, y las leyes siempre tendrán que ajustarse o afinarse. Del otro lado están quienes condenan la tortura como abominación moral que no puede admitirse en ninguna circunstancia.

Pero estas no son las bases sobre las que actualmente se está llevando a cabo el debate sobre la tortura en EE. UU.. Por razones comprensibles, muchos de quienes apoyan la decisión de Obama de prohibir la tortura están tratando de responder a la visión pragmática de Cheney con un argumento igualmente pragmático. Sostienen, a diferencia de Cheney, que la tortura no es la mejor forma de mantenernos seguros. Una persona que sufre un dolor extremo dirá cualquier cosa y proporcionará información poco fiable. Afirman que hay otros métodos de interrogatorio más sofisticados, que no sólo son más humanos (y legales), sino también más efectivos.

Para hacer entender este punto al público en general, al que en EE. UU. todavía es muy fácil convencer del punto de vista de Cheney de que la tortura es justificable si salva vidas, los comentaristas y políticos liberales han solicitado que se establezca una comisión especial que investigue a fondo el historial de la administración pasada. Creen que esto demostrará claramente que la tortura es contraproducente. No sólo daña en gran medida la imagen del país y el Estado de derecho, sino que es probable que haga aumentar, y no disminuir, el terrorismo.

Pero, ¿son estos realmente los términos adecuados en que se debe llevar a cabo el debate? Si la tortura es un mal absoluto, independientemente de las circunstancias, la cuestión de su efectividad es irrelevante. Debatir en esos términos amenaza con diluir el principio moral.

Queda la pregunta de por qué debe condenarse absolutamente la tortura, mientras que otros actos de guerra, como los bombardeos, que causan más daño a la vida humana, podrían ser aceptables como consecuencia inevitable de la defensa nacional. Naturalmente los bombardeos pueden ser crímenes de guerra si se utilizan como acto de terrorismo contra personas desarmadas. Pero a menudo las operaciones militares en las que mueren o resultan heridos civiles no pueden calificarse automáticamente como crímenes, siempre que su objetivo no sea infligir deliberadamente dolor o humillación a un individuo indefenso, aunque sea un enemigo. En el caso de la tortura, ese es el objetivo y por ello es distinta de otros actos de guerra. Un destacado comentarista de derechas estadounidense opinó recientemente que todo intento de pedir cuentas a los torturadores y sus jefes de la administración Bush sería una burla “de los esfuerzos de los duros y valientes estadounidenses que nos cuidan mientras dormimos”. Aparte de que torturar personas no es lo mismo que combatir y requiere muy poco valor, es una interpretación totalmente errónea. Tras años de torturar gente en una de las “guerras sucias” más salvajes de América del Sur, los generales de Brasil decidieron acabar con ella, porque su uso institucionalizado estaba socavando la disciplina y la moral de las fuerzas armadas. Estaba ridiculizando a hombres que debían ser duros y valientes, pero que se habían convertido en matones.

President Obama’s passivity before the threatened foreign prosecution of Bush administration officials achieves by inaction what he fears doing directly. This may be smart politics within the Democratic party, but it risks grave long-term damage to the United States. Ironically, it could also come back to bite future Obama administration alumni, including the president, for their current policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Obama has taken ambiguous, and flatly contradictory, positions on whether to prosecute Bush administration advisers and decision makers involved in “harsh interrogation techniques”. Although he immunized intelligence operatives who conducted the interrogations, morale at the CIA is at record lows. The president has played to the crowd politically, but the principles underlying his policies are opaque and continually subject to change. This hardly constitutes leadership.

Despite uncertainties here, developments overseas proceed apace. Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón opened a formal investigation last week of six Bush administration lawyers for their roles in advising on interrogation techniques. Garzón did so over the objections of Spain’s attorney general, as he did in 1998 in proceeding against former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet. Under Spain‘s inquisitorial judicial system, Garzón is essentially unaccountable, whatever the views of Spain’s elected government.

Asked repeatedly about Garzón’s investigation, the state department has said only that it is a matter for the Spanish judicial system. Last week, attorney general Eric Holder went further, implying that the Obama administration could cooperate. “Obviously, we would look at any request that would come from a court in any country and see how and whether we should comply with it,” Holder said.

This is deeply troubling. Obama appears to be following the John Ehrlichman approach, letting the US lawyers “twist slowly, slowly in the wind“. Garzón’s is far from a run-of-the-mill police investigation in which an American tourist abroad runs afoul of some local ordinance. Indeed, from what appears publicly, US consular officials would do more for the tourist than Obama is doing for the former Bush officials. If Obama is attempting to end the Garzón investigation, it is one of our best-kept secrets in decades.

Although the six lawyers are in a precarious position, they are only intermediate targets. The real targets are President Bush and his most senior advisers, and the real aim is to intimidate US officials into refraining from making hard but necessary decisions to protect our national security.

There is never a shortage of second-guessers about US foreign policy. For example, former UN high commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson said during the Nato-Serbia war over Kosovo that “civilian casualties are human rights victims”. She asked: “If it is not possible to ascertain whether civilian buses are on bridges, should those bridges be blown?”

The question here is not whether one agrees or disagrees with the advice the lawyers gave, or with their superiors’ operative decisions concerning interrogation techniques. Nor is it even whether one believes our justice department should launch criminal investigations into their actions. (I believe strongly that criminalising policy disagreements is both inappropriate and destructive.)

Instead, the critical question is who judges the official actions that US personnel took while holding government office. Is it our own executive and judicial branches, within our constitutional structures and protections, or some unaccountable foreign or international magistrate in some unaccountable distant court? The proper US position is to insist that our constitution alone governs any review of our officials’ conduct.

This issue is not abstract. For the six lawyers, it has immediate effects on their lives, careers and families. Moreover, whether or not Obama has decided against prosecuting CIA agents, his decision in no way binds the creative mind of Señor Garzón, a man who has never shied from spotlights. Indeed, UN special rapporteur Manfred Nowak has already said that the other 145 states party to the Convention Against Torture must launch their own criminal investigations if the United States does not.

Behind-the-scenes diplomacy is often the best, and sometimes the only, way to accomplish important policy objectives, and one hopes that such efforts are underway. But in this case, firm and public statements are necessary to stop the pending Spanish inquisition and to dissuade others from proceeding. The president must abandon his Ehrlichman-like policy and pronounce unequivocally that Spain should take whatever steps are necessary to stop Garzón.

Otherwise, in four or eight years, like Mary Robinson before them, future second-guessers will decide, say, that US drone attacks in Pakistan constitute war crimes, and that former commander in chief Obama must be hauled before the bar of some mini-state to stand trial. After all, his decisions involve risking civilian deaths, not just shoving terrorists into a wall (and no protective neck braces, either).

Will President Obama’s successor vigorously dispute the legitimacy of foreign prosecutions, or will she follow the current Obama policy and let the foreign investigation proceed, perhaps even to trial? Obama and his advisers should think carefully about that second scenario – now.

This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.

La publicación de una serie de documentos secretos sobre las técnicas de interrogatorio a los detenidos en la ‘guerra contra el terrorismo’ ha situado a los altos dirigentes políticos de la Administración Bush en el punto de mira de los operadores jurídicos norteamericanos (incluido el fiscal general, Eric Holder), por si pudieran ser objeto de una imputación penal como responsables de las presuntas torturas infligidas a los prisioneros de Guantánamo. Ahora bien, para que prosperase dicha imputación debería demostrarse, en primer lugar, que las técnicas de interrogatorio constituyen ‘tortura’; en segundo lugar, que el presidente Bush, el vicepresidente Cheney, el secretario de Defensa Rumsfeld o la consejera presidencial Rice tuvieron pleno conocimiento de las mismas; y, en tercer lugar, que exista un procedimiento para culparles por ellas aunque obviamente no hayan practicado, ni presenciado siquiera, las técnicas de interrogatorio a los detenidos en dicha prisión.

En términos jurídicos, la Convención de Naciones Unidas de 1984 -ratificada por Estados Unidos diez años más tarde- define la tortura como «todo acto por el cual se inflijan intencionadamente a una persona dolores o sufrimientos graves, ya sean físicos o mentales, con el fin de obtener de ella o de un tercero información o una confesión, de castigarla por un acto que haya cometido, o se sospeche que ha cometido, o de intimidar o coaccionar a esa persona o a otras, o por cualquier razón basada en cualquier tipo de discriminación, cuando dichos dolores o sufrimientos sean infligidos por un funcionario público u otra persona en el ejercicio de funciones públicas, a instigación suya, o con su consentimiento o aquiescencia». Aunque las autoridades norteamericanas han sostenido siempre que el trato a los detenidos por terrorismo no incurría en esta aberrante práctica, informes neutrales de Amnistía Internacional (2004), Naciones Unidas (2006) o Cruz Roja Internacional (2007) han afirmado lo contrario. Pero ninguno de estos informes resulta tan revelador como el emitido en noviembre de 2008 por el propio Senado estadounidense (‘Inquiry into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody’), fruto del análisis exhaustivo de más de 200.000 páginas de documentos -incluidos los considerados secretos hasta esta semana-, que ofrece todo lujo de detalles sobre el modo en que se realizaban los interrogatorios a los detenidos por terrorismo.

Una mera lectura de sus 19 conclusiones revela que Rumsfeld y asesores directos de Bush (Alberto Gonzales) y de Cheney (David Addington) fueron los artífices de la elaboración de un estatus ‘paralegal’ de los detenidos, a los que no sólo se privaría de los derechos reconocidos en la Convención de Ginebra sobre prisioneros de guerra, sino que se aplicaría el manual de técnicas de interrogatorio utilizado en las academias militares para adiestrar a sus alumnos en la resistencia frente a una eventual captura por el enemigo; técnicas que incluyen el ahogo por inmersión, el sometimiento a posturas estresantes o a ruido ensordecedor durante días, la privación del sueño, la aplicación de altas o bajas temperaturas, la amenaza con graves daños al detenido o a su familia y otras vejaciones semejantes que encajan a la perfección en el concepto de tortura y cuya práctica fue ‘ordenada’ por el Gobierno norteamericano, de acuerdo con ese informe del Senado. ¿Sería posible entonces una persecución penal contra los responsables políticos de esta violación de los derechos humanos?

El Derecho penal democrático sólo permite sancionar a un ciudadano cuando se acredita su «responsabilidad personal» en el hecho cometido, ya sea como autor o como partícipe. Sin embargo, a raíz del atroz genocidio cometido por el régimen nazi, los penalistas han trabajado para fundamentar la imputación del delito no sólo a quien realiza directamente la conducta punible, sino a quien maneja la estructura de poder en cuyo seno se comete. Desde el juicio a Eichmann en Jerusalén (1961) -por la matanza de miles de judíos- hasta la condena a los jefes políticos de la Alemania Oriental (1994) -por los crímenes del Muro-, pasando por el ejemplar castigo a la Junta Militar Argentina (1985) -por la desaparición y asesinato de miles de personas durante la dictadura, justificadas también por el embate del terrorismo-, distintos tribunales se han enfrentado a este problema. Y todos han condenado como asesinos a quienes no habían matado directamente a nadie, creando una valiosa jurisprudencia que podría aplicarse sin duda al caso norteamericano. De acuerdo con esos precedentes, quien domina un aparato de poder, dotado de estructura jerárquica, donde las decisiones tomadas ‘arriba’ son ejecutadas desde luego por los subordinados, no es sólo instigador de los delitos cometidos por éstos, sino el auténtico ‘autor’ del hecho, porque lo domina y tiene capacidad para decidir si se comete o no. Exactamente eso es lo que ha ocurrido con las torturas infligidas a cientos de personas por miembros de las Fuerzas Armadas de Estados Unidos desde 2001 en la sedicente ‘guerra contra el terror’, torturas que son patrimonio del Gobierno Bush, cuyos altos dirigentes podrían ser condenados como autores de las mismas, si nos atenemos al escalofriante informe del Senado norteamericano y a la elocuente afirmación del fiscal general, Eric Holder, quien ha declarado recientemente que «nadie está por encima de la ley» en ese país.

La asombrosa vitalidad de la libertad de prensa, en su sentido más lato, y la hipó- tesis de que todos los errores, horrores, contradicciones y pecados saldrán a la luz, para vergüenza y escarnio de sus protagonistas, retornan a la candente actualidad en Estados Unidos con el tenebroso asunto de las torturas empleadas por la CIA contra algunos sospechosos de terrorismo. Luego de que la Casa Blanca publicara los memorandos redactados por los leguleyos para justificar las más duras técnicas de interrogatorio, asistimos al espectáculo de aparente masoquismo con el que muchos norteamericanos hurgan en las heridas que produjeron las controvertidas actuaciones de sus políticos, espías y soldados.
Diluvia sobre un terreno pantanoso porque recordamos las matanzas, los bombardeos y las películas de Vietnam, la filtración de los papeles del Pentágono sobre el falso origen de la guerra y otras mentiras; las intervenciones de la CIA con presidentes de todos los colores, detalladas en libros innumerables; los dislates paranoicos de Nixon aventados por el Watergate; la venta de armas a Irán con destino a los insurgentes de Nicaragua; los fracasos reiterados para eliminar a Castro o la frustración por no haber llegado hasta el cora- zón del Kremlin en más de 30 años de guerra fría.

DESPUÉS DE cada traumatismo nacional, las cloacas del imperio irrumpen en las calles. En esta ocasión, las revelaciones vienen de lo más alto porque el presidente Barack Obama, según su promesa electoral, ordenó la entrega a la prensa de cuatro memorandos secretos, parcialmente expurgados, que confirman las torturas practicadas por la CIA en los interrogatorios de 28 prisioneros durante la guerra contra el terrorismo declarada por el presidente Bush, en el 2002 y el 2005. Los documentos contienen la opinión de los abogados del Ministerio de Justicia para justificar tan reprobables métodos y remover los escrúpulos de los agentes encargados de practicarlos.
Los detalles y las precisiones macabras de los burócratas sobre las cautelas médicas y alimenticias, a fin de asegurar la supervivencia del detenido, son lo más parecido a la pornografía del horror y revelan los estragos jurídicos y políticos de esa combinación diabólica entre la psicosis de la seguridad, derivada de los atentados terroristas de Nueva York y Washington en el 2001, y la voluntad de la Administración de Bush de inventar la tortura legal, sin reparar en los valores democráticos, el Estado de derecho y el control puntilloso del Ejecutivo por parte del Congreso y la opinión publicada, últimas trincheras de la resistencia a la opresión de un sistema proclive al aumento incesante de las prerrogativas presidenciales.
La decisión de Obama, pese a las presiones adversas, incluidas las del director de la CIA, fue debatida al más alto nivel y salió adelante porque las torturas “socavan nuestra autoridad moral y no mejoran nuestra seguridad”, pero causó un gran revuelo y provocó una tormenta mediática con inevitable repercusión en el Congreso, donde se enconaron las posiciones partidistas. La opinión también está desgarrada entre la repugnancia por la vulneración de los principios y los dictados de la moral utilitaria. Las encuestas muestran que la mitad de los norteamericanos y el 52% de los independientes (sin partido) creen que los casos graves de terrorismo justifican que el Gobierno pondere el empleo de la tortura.
Con la publicación de los memorandos secretos, el presidente Obama trata de clausurar un capítulo poco edificante de la historia reciente en el que gobernantes y funcionarios asestaron duros golpes al imperio de la ley (rule of law) y los derechos humanos con el pretexto de la protección. Ahora bien, el repudio de la Administración de Bush no es suficiente para exonerar de culpa a unos poderes legislativo y judicial que cooperaron o se abstuvieron, literalmente miraron para otro lado, mientras se creaba un clima propicio para los excesos en la lucha contra el terrorismo.

LA VOLUNTAD de Obama del borrón y cuenta nueva suscitó acerbas críticas en los sectores izquierdistas, que demandan con una lógica aplastante la persecución judicial de los culpables de las atrocidades. Unos, como Mark J. McKeon, fiscal en el Tribunal Internacional para Yugoslavia, consideran que el derecho de gentes (la convención de la ONU sobre la tortura) fue vulnerado; otros arguyen que la actuación de los jueces será una prueba moral para EEUU, aunque advierten de que, a efectos prácticos, sería necesario que el país estuviera unido, lo que no es el caso, para resolver el dilema de principios o responsabilidad tras el que se oculta la problemática ra- zón de Estado.
Con su promesa de cerrar Guan- tánamo y de proscribir la tortura en la lucha contra el terrorismo, restaurando plenamente la legalidad, pero protegiendo a sus contraventores, la proclama moral de Obama queda amputada y el alegato jurídico-político corre el riesgo de ahondar el debate entre los partidos sobre las enormes responsabilidades compartidas en una desviación de poder asumida por la clase política. Bush y los republicanos estuvieron acompañados por demasiados demócratas, a la defensiva en asuntos de seguridad, en el tortuoso camino hacia el infierno legal. ¿Hasta qué nivel y qué extensión debe alcanzar la investigación judicial, si se produce? ¿Se arriesgará Obama en el laberinto de una regeneración política explosiva?

El candidato a la presidencia de los Estados Unidos Barack Obama se fijó en Guantánamo para visibilizar el cambio que prometía, por eso, al día siguiente de su toma de posesión anunció el cierre de ese extraño lugar, declarando ilegal la tortura que allí se practicaba. Era un gesto ético que debía devolver la confianza de sus conciudadanos en los valores humanitarios sobre los que se había construido el país y que había que mantener “también en tiempos difíciles”.

Pero la ética tiene sus exigencias. Hay una ética complaciente que interpreta el crimen o la tortura como atentados a la moralidad de la ley, de suerte que bastaría ajustar la ley a los derechos humanos para que todo quedara sanado. Y hay otra ética que exige, a quien la invoque, hacerse cargo de los destrozos que las torturas legales causan en la sociedad para poder “mirar hacia delante y no hacia atrás” como quiere su jefe de Gabinete, Rahm Enmanuel. La ética política propia de los tiempos que corren es de ese tipo. La autoridad de la ley, con ser importante, lo es menos que los daños en humanidad que causa un crimen o la tortura en la sociedad, es decir, en el verdugo, en la víctima y en el resto de ciudadanos.

La sociedad, es verdad, no reacciona de la misma manera ante el crimen político que ante la tortura porque ve en el crimen una amenaza a lo más propio y, en la tortura, un instrumento del Estado, a veces exagerado, destinado a proteger vidas y haciendas. Minusvalorar la tortura es, sin embargo, un grave error porque su práctica mina las bases de la convivencia.

El crimen mata, en efecto, físicamente, mientras que la tortura busca la deshumanización del torturado. Jean Améry, un superviviente de Auschwitz que no pudo sacudirse nunca la ignominia de los castigos que padeció, dejó escrito un testimonio esclarecedor de esa bajada a los infiernos. “Con el primer golpe”, dice, “se quebranta la confianza en el mundo del que esperas cuide de tu ser físico y metafísico. Es como una violación sexual. La violación corporal es una forma consumada de aniquilación total de la existencia”. Aniquilación de la existencia humana porque el dolor obliga a renunciar a las convicciones más profundas para concentrarse en el cuerpo. Sólo se es piel, carne y huesos. La vergüenza por haber sacrificado su vida espiritual le acompañará de por vida. La última etapa de ese proceso de deshumanización consiste en reconocer la superioridad del torturador. “¿Cómo puede uno recibir golpes”, dice Robert Antelme, otro superviviente, “y pretender tener razón?”. Quien es capaz de reducir a un hombre a mero cuerpo tiene que ser “un dios o al menos un semidiós”, precisa Améry.

Lo que sí es innegable es que mediante la tortura el ser humano alcanza el éxtasis del poder, a saber, expulsar al otro de la condición humana. De Guantánamo nos vino una sobria confesión que coincide con las noticias que nos han llegado de los campos nazis: “Ahora soy medio animal y dentro de un mes seré un animal del todo”.

La deshumanización alcanza también al torturador. En la escuela de Himmler se preparaba a los cachorros nazis para sus futuras tareas enseñándoles “a soportar el sufrimiento ajeno”. Recibían el certificado de aptitud cuando lograban extirpar de sí mismos todo sentimiento de piedad. Y es que no se viola en vano la dignidad del otro. Hay que pagar con el precio de la propia indignidad. El funcionario de la prisión de Guantánamo podrá volver a casa, una vez cumplido el horario, y oír música, pero seguirá con la infamia que se ha ganado. La ley de obediencia debida, que invoca Obama, podrá liberarle de la condena pero no del destrozo humanitario.

Tampoco queda intocada la humanidad del espectador. El ciudadano de una sociedad con Guantánamo al fondo sólo puede vivir su vida si considera aquel lugar como un espacio marginal en el que se han suspendido excepcionalmente los derechos humanos. Un lugar así sólo es soportable a la buena conciencia si se nos presenta como un paréntesis, como una excepcionalidad.

Guantánamo es, desde luego, un lugar marginal, excepcional, extramuros de la polis estadounidense. No una cárcel, donde sí hay derechos, sino un “espacio sin ley” en el que los retenidos no son acusados de nada preciso, ni hay tribunales a los que recurrir, ni juicio a la vista, ni siquiera son declarados prisioneros de guerra sino inscritos como “combatientes ilegales”. Se les priva del derecho pero no se les deja en paz, sino que quedan sometidos al albur del carcelero cuya voluntad es la única ley. Guantánamo era lo más parecido a un campo de concentración, con un agravante. Una de las pocas normas que los nazis observaron con regularidad prusiana con los deportados consistía en desnaturalizarlos completamente, es decir, en despojarlos de los pocos derechos civiles que les habían dejado las leyes de Nürenberg de 1935. Por eso una orden del capitán de la SS, Dannecker, ordenaba que los judíos “deberían ser privados de su ciudadanía bien antes o bien en el día de su deportación”. Llegaban al Lager desprovistos de su categoría de sujetos de derechos para que fuera legal el uso de toda forma de violencia. Por lo que sabemos, a los “combatientes ilegales” de Guantánamo se les ahorraba esa formalidad, aunque las consecuencias eran parecidas en cuanto a la privación de derechos. Lo problemático de Guantánamo es que, aunque física y legalmente sea un lugar marginal o excepcional, moralmente está en el centro. Esa ciudad sin ley no se la inventaron los carceleros, sino que la decidieron los Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, es decir, los estrategas de una política que ha sacudido al mundo.

Éstas son las secuelas sociales de la tortura, un proceso de deshumanización que afecta al torturado, al torturador, al dirigente y al ciudadano que hizo su vida en ese tiempo como si Guantánamo no existiera.

Si Obama se plantea dejar atrás el legado de George W. Bush y “colocar a Estados Unidos en el buen lugar de la historia”, no le bastará con cerrar Guantánamo, cambiar la ley sobre torturas y aceptar que el fiscal general persiga a los abogados de los informes que cuadraron el círculo haciendo que actos de lesa humanidad adquirieran el rango de prácticas legales. Al fin y al cabo, los abogados hacen informes, dan opiniones y eso no parece que sea delito, por muy descabelladas que sean. La responsabilidad alcanza desde luego a los dirigentes políticos, y, más allá de las responsabilidades políticas, el problema es la salud moral de una sociedad que vivió felizmente teniendo al lado un campo de concentración.

Reflexionando sobre la significación de Guantánamo, el politólogo italiano, Giorgio Agamben, ha llegado a decir que el campo es el símbolo de la política moderna. Es desde luego una exageración pero el exabrupto apunta en una dirección que debería dar que pensar. Se multiplican, por un lado, los “espacios sin ley” aplicados preferentemente a emigrantes sin papeles, mientras que, por otro, “tres cuartas partes del mundo han recurrido a la tortura en los últimos años”, según Amnistía Internacional. ¿Será que vamos hacia una democracia con muchas leyes y poco derecho?

Elie Wiesel dejó dicho que “los santos son los que mueren antes del final”. La resistencia del ser humano respecto a la tortura tiene un límite. Mientras no se supere ese punto es posible la dignidad, pero una vez alcanzado no hay santidad ni heroicidad que valgan. El torturador busca ese límite porque en él está el secreto que espera arrancar del torturado. Dick Cheney lo justifica diciendo que gracias a esas confesiones se ha garantizado la seguridad de los que ahora le critican. En La Obra, Kafka también habla de un ser vivo tan obsesionado con la seguridad que al final los túneles que deberían protegerle se convirtieron en su propia trampa.

Son muchos los que afirman que todo ser humano es un torturador en potencia, aunque sólo ejercerá como tal si se dan las circunstancias propicias para ello. Según esta teoría, si todavía somos respetables ciudadanos adversos a la tortura es sólo porque la vida no nos ha deparado aún ninguna situación suficientemente extrema, en la que todos llegaríamos a practicarla. Inquietante posibilidad, que, en la siniestra hipótesis de resultar cierta, rebajaría drásticamente nuestra autoestimación como especie viviente.

Recordemos algunos casos de especial significación. El doctor Josef Mengele era un joven médico y antropólogo alemán que, en la II Guerra Mundial, fue reclutado para una unidad de infantería. Herido en el frente ruso, fue declarado no apto para el combate. La enfermedad de un oficial médico del campo de concentración de Auschwitz motivó que fuera designado para sustituirle. Allí Mengele se encontró con miles de condenados a muerte a su absoluta disposición para todo tipo de atroces experimentos de laboratorio. Aquello hizo emerger su verdadera y profunda naturaleza criminal, que en otras circunstancias (sin guerra, sin nazismo, sin campos de exterminio) probablemente no hubiera llegado a manifestarse jamás.

En 1957 el entonces comandante francés Paul Aussaresses participaba en la llamada batalla de Argel contra las fuerzas del FLN que luchaban por la independencia de aquel territorio. En un libro publicado en 2001, siendo ya un anciano general alejado del servicio activo, Aussaresses confesó desvergonzadamente las indignidades (asesinatos disfrazados como suicidio, torturas hasta la muerte a simples sospechosos) que él había protagonizado personalmente 44 años atrás. Crímenes y torturas perfectamente inútiles, pues Argelia logró su independencia pocos años después. Aquel tardío alarde, cínicamente publicitado, le valió ser expedientado, despojado de su rango y del derecho a usar el uniforme, y expulsado de la Orden de la Legión de Honor por decisión de su Gran Maestre, el entonces presidente Chirac.

Si Francia hubiera asumido sólo diez años antes el carácter inevitable del proceso descolonizador no hubiera existido la batalla de Argel ni la de Indochina, y los grandes torturadores uniformados como Aussaresses hubieran permanecido toda su carrera como hombres de honor supuestamente intachables, cuyas manos nunca se hubieran pringado en actos bochornosos. Pero, una vez más, fue la circunstancia histórica la que creó la oportunidad, revelando al torturador vocacional que llevaban dentro.

En 1973, el capitán Jorge Silva, de la Fuerza Aérea de Chile, fue capturado por su actitud adversa al golpe de Pinochet. En la AGA (Academia de Guerra Aérea) fue torturado con brutales descargas eléctricas. En una ocasión, como consecuencia de un exceso de voltaje, se le produjo una hemorragia nasal. Sus torturadores, creyendo que estaba sin conocimiento o tal vez muerto, le retiraron la capucha, lo que, pese a su estado, le permitió verles las caras. ¿Y quiénes eran? Pues nada menos que los entonces comandantes de su mismo cuerpo Edgar Ceballos y Ramón Cáceres (hoy condenados por la justicia chilena), a los que Silva conocía y apreciaba. Sin aquel golpe militar, ambos comandantes hubieran seguido siendo aparentemente dignos de aprecio como compañeros y como superiores. Pero llegó la barbarie pinochetista y pudieron dar rienda suelta a su insospechada capacidad criminal.

En la obra teatral La muerte y la doncella de Ariel Dorfman -adaptada después como gran película por Roman Polanski-, un médico suramericano ejercía su profesión con toda normalidad en una ciudad del Cono Sur. Pero llegaron las dictaduras militares de los años setenta y el doctor Miranda fue contratado por las fuerzas de seguridad para prestar apoyo técnico a los represores. Se trataba de evitar que, por falta de práctica y conocimientos médicos de los torturadores, sus víctimas murieran entre sus manos de forma prematura, antes de haber podido exprimir toda su posible información. Pero el ámbito de impunidad garantizada que ofrecía el antro de tortura, clandestino, oficialmente inexistente, con sus víctimas encapuchadas que jamás podían ver la cara de sus verdugos, y la certeza de saber que de allí sólo salían muertas, creó una situación tan delirante que el respetable doctor, saltando por encima de los límites de su función técnica inicial, acabó sucumbiendo a la tentación de dedicarse, él también, a todo tipo de torturas y abusos sexuales, perpetrados contra víctimas femeninas en particular. Esta terrible vena sádica del doctor nunca hubiera emergido sin la dictadura.

¿Simple personaje teatral y cinematográfico? De ninguna manera. Los doctores Mengele y similares, igual que los muy reales comandantes Aussaresses, Ceballos, Cáceres y tantos más, existieron, existen, y volverán a existir cada vez que surjan situaciones que vuelvan a colocar patas arriba los valores morales, legales y simplemente humanos que hacen posible la convivencia digna y mantienen en pie esta delicada construcción que llamamos la civilización.

¿Podemos concluir, en consecuencia, que todos nosotros, tan respetables dentro de un mundo normal regido por leyes (aunque imperfectas) y castigos (aplicados a las conductas criminales), nos convertiríamos en desalmados torturadores tan pronto como esas leyes dejaran de regir y esos castigos dejaran de amenazarnos? Nuestra respuesta es rotundamente negativa.

No todos los seres humanos somos torturadores en potencia. Pero algunos sí que lo son. No todos lo somos, ni lo seríamos aunque nos garantizaran la impunidad. Ni aunque nos pagaran grandes sumas por ejercer esa repugnante actividad. Pero, incluso afirmando que no todos seríamos capaces de hundirnos en esa infamia, la cuestión es: ¿sólo lo sería un pequeño porcentaje de sádicos y psicópatas, o también lo sería un número considerable de individuos tenidos por normales?

Lamentablemente, los estudios efectuados en diversas universidades norteamericanas (experimento Milgram y otros) registraron porcentajes preocupantes de individuos normales capaces de torturar a sus semejantes, con el simple requisito de que se les proporcione una motivación supuestamente válida: la obediencia a una autoridad que les garantice la impunidad.

A la vista de tantos casos trágicos -reales y nada experimentales- que llenan los informes de las diferentes Comisiones de la Verdad y de los organismos defensores de derechos humanos, no podemos sustraernos a la gran pregunta: ¿cuántos de nuestros vecinos, cuántos de nuestros colegas de profesión, cuántos de nuestros parientes, cuántas de las personas aparentemente normales con las que departimos y nos cruzamos a diario, demostrarían su capacidad como torturadores si se dieran determinadas situaciones? ¿Cuántos se pondrían a aplicar descargas eléctricas de alto voltaje al cuerpo de sus semejantes, o tantas otras formas de destrozar a un ser humano? ¿Cuántos y quiénes lo harían si colapsaran las admirables garantías que, por ejemplo, proporciona una Constitución como la nuestra?

Recordemos, una vez más, la frase de Ernesto Sábato, tras promulgarse en Argentina las leyes de impunidad de 1986 y 1987, y los posteriores indultos de 1989 y 1990: “Hoy, los argentinos tenemos la inmensa vergüenza de saber que, al recorrer nuestras calles y plazas, nos cruzamos con cientos de asesinos y torturadores de la peor especie que circulan con plena libertad”. En términos similares, pero pasando del pasado al futuro (Sábato se refería a torturadores ya identificados como tales), nosotros diríamos: los ciudadanos de cualquier sociedad en paz y democracia tenemos que convivir con la penosa incógnita de cuántos de nuestros semejantes con los que nos cruzamos, no identificados en absoluto como peligrosos, serían capaces de aniquilar nuestra dignidad e integridad física si las circunstancias se lo permitieran.

Esto nos ratifica en una valiosa conclusión: son precisamente las leyes democráticas, pese a su a veces desesperante imperfección, las que ejercen la impagable función de defender nuestra integridad física y moral, protegiéndonos de las ocultas fieras de apariencia humana que se mueven entre nosotros, sin ningún cartel identificador que las señale como los temibles torturadores que podrían llegar a ser.

Las muchas vías de investigación de las abusivas «técnicas de interrogatorio» practicadas por la administración Bush conducen a un hecho inconveniente y terco: la tortura no es sólo inmoral, sino también ilegal. Esto significa que una vez que sepamos toda la verdad, estaremos obligados por ley a actuar al respecto.Comprensiblemente, la Administración Obama quiere evitar entramparse en un largo y agotador drama legal que casi seguro será partidista y divisorio. Pero no estoy seguro de que sea posible esquivar las implicaciones delictivas de lo que ya sabemos, por no hablar de lo que podríamos descubrir en el curso de una investigación integral de estilo «comisión de la verdad» con acceso a todos los testigos y documentos relevantes.

Con la cuestión moral, el Gobierno ha sido directo y honrado.Una de las primeras acciones del presidente Obama fue anunciar que Estados Unidos no va a practicar más el interrogatorio por ahogamiento ni ningún otro método abusivo, diciendo que tales aberraciones son contrarios a los valores y las tradiciones de la nación. El fiscal general Eric Holder afirmaba durante su vista de confirmación que «el interrogatorio por ahogamiento es constitutivo de tortura». Esta claridad refrescante y admirable supone un acusado contraste con la neblina de equívocos legalistas entre los que la Administración Bush disimulaba sus cárceles secretas.

Con la cuestión legal, sin embargo, el equipo Obama viene siendo mucho menos tajante. Esto es lo que decía Dennis Blair, director de Inteligencia nacional, a su personal acerca de los abusos en los interrogatorios a través de una nota la semana pasada: «Me gusta pensar que yo no habría aprobado esos métodos en el pasado, pero no critico a aquellos que tomaron las decisiones en aquel momento, y decididamente defenderé a aquellos que llevaron a cabo los interrogatorios cumpliendo las órdenes que recibieron».Por dejar constancia de lo evidente, esto no tiene ni pies ni cabeza. Si Blair no ha autorizado «esos métodos» -parte de los cuales cumplen claramente la definición legal de tortura, en mi opinión- entonces ¿por qué exonerar a aquellos que ordenaron los abusos y a aquellos que los llevaron a cabo?

Al menos Blair, a cargo de los agentes que desempeñaron los abusos, tiene motivos para mostrarse tan equívoco a propósito de la transparencia.Y podemos estarle agradecidos por refutar de forma tajante la defensa de la tortura que se cita con mayor frecuencia: que la asfixia por ahogamiento, la privación del sueño, las posturas tensionales y los demás abusos eran necesarios para obtener información vital que protegió a los estadounidenses de otro ataque de Al Qaeda. «La información más importante salió de interrogatorios en los que se utilizaron esos métodos», escribía Blair. Pero en un comentario independiente, añadía que «no existe forma de saber si esa misma información se podría haber obtenido o no a través de otros medios».

La gente se derrumba bajo torturas y canta lo que sabe, junto a lo que no sabe y lo que piensa que sus torturadores quieren escuchar. Pero no hay manera de estar seguros de si esa valiosa información habría surgido por métodos tradicionales -y legales- de interrogatorio. Incluso si los expertos tienen opiniones encontradas acerca de la eficacia de la tortura, hay un punto en el que no pueden discrepar: la tortura viola el Derecho estadounidense y el internacional. ¿Qué abusos son constitutivos legalmente de tortura? Eso probablemente dependa del criterio legal que se aplique. Como mínimo, me parece que está claro que la asfixia por ahogamiento sería declarada ilegal en caso de ser sometida a escrutinio judicial. La práctica se ha considerado tortura por lo menos desde la Inquisición española, excepto, al parecer, entre las paredes de la Oficina de Asesoramiento Legal de George W. Bush. No sé qué más vamos a descubrir si un panel burocrático de investigación de algún tipo se constituye. Pero lo que ya sabemos es suficiente para poder asegurar que antes o después, los abusivos métodos de interrogatorio autorizados por George W. Bush y Dick Cheney entre otros funcionarios van a chocar con la ley. Nuestro sistema, actuando sin intervención, no está diseñado para dar a conocer y después ignorar actos ilegales.

La Administración Obama no lo tiene fácil. Nadie quiere ver caer a agentes de base de la CIA especializados en interrogatorios por lo que sus superiores les dijeron que era legal, especialmente si los superiores no rinden cuentas. Pero la imputación criminal de funcionarios de máxima graduación de la administración anterior carecería de precedentes, y no está claro adónde podría conducir.Va a ser difícil detener este tren una vez en marcha, no obstante.El Estado de Derecho es uno de los principios fundacionales de EEUU. No es algo opcional. Nuestras leyes contra la tortura exigen ser obedecidas.

The many roads of inquiry into the Bush administration’s abusive “interrogation techniques” all lead to one stubborn, inconvenient fact: Torture is not just immoral but also illegal. This means that once we learn the whole truth, the law will oblige us to act on it.

Understandably, the Obama administration wants to avoid getting bogged down in a long, wrenching legal drama that almost certainly would be partisan and divisive. But I’m not sure it’s possible to skirt the criminal implications of what we already know, let alone what we might find out in a full-scale “truth commission” investigation with access to all relevant witnesses and documents.

On the moral question, the administration has been straightforward and righteous. One of President Obama’s first acts was to declare that the United States will no longer practice waterboarding or other abusive interrogation methods, saying that such depredations are inimical to our nation’s values and traditions. Attorney General Eric Holder stated at his confirmation hearings that “waterboarding is torture.” This refreshing and admirable clarity stands in stark contrast to the fog of legalistic sophistry in which the Bush administration cloaked its secret prisons.

On the legal question, though, the Obama team has been far less definitive. This is what Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, told his staff about the interrogation abuses in a memo last week: “I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

To state the obvious, this makes no sense at all. If Blair would not have sanctioned “those methods” — some of which clearly meet the legal definition of torture, in my view — then why would he give a pass to those who ordered the abuses and those who carried them out?

At least Blair, charged with leading the agents who performed the abuses, has a reason for going all fuzzy on the matter of accountability. And we can thank him for definitively refuting the most commonly cited pro-torture argument: that waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions and other abuses were necessary to obtain vital information that kept Americans safe from another al-Qaeda attack.

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used,” Blair wrote in the memo. But in a separate statement, he added that “there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.”

Yes, people break under torture and tell what they know, along with what they don’t know and what they think their torturers want to hear. But there is no way to be certain that the valuable information wouldn’t have been extracted through traditional — and legal — methods of interrogation.

Even if experts have differing views about torture’s effectiveness, there is one point on which they cannot disagree: It violates U.S. and international law.

What abuses legally qualify as torture? That probably depends on which of several possibly applicable legal standards is applied. At a bare minimum, though, it seems clear to me that waterboarding will almost certainly be deemed illegal if put under judicial scrutiny. The practice has been considered torture at least since the Spanish Inquisition — except, apparently, in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush.

I don’t know what more we’ll find out if a blue-ribbon investigative panel of some kind is formed. But what we already know is enough to ensure that sooner or later, the abusive interrogation methods authorized by Bush, Dick Cheney and other officials are going to be measured against the law. Our system, left to its own devices, is not designed to let illegal acts be revealed and then ignored.

From the viewpoint of the Obama administration, the alternatives may be unattractive or even unacceptable. No one wants to see low-ranking CIA interrogators go down for doing what their superiors told them was legal, especially if the superiors are not held to account. But pursuing criminal charges against the highest-ranking officials of the previous administration would be unprecedented, and it is unclear where such a process might lead.

It will be hard to stop this train, though. The rule of law is one of this nation’s founding principles. It’s not optional. Our laws against torture demand to be obeyed — and demand to be enforced.

For seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

It was the right decision to release these memos, as we need the truth to come out. This should not be a partisan matter, because it is in our national security interest to regain our position as the world’s foremost defenders of human rights. Just as important, releasing these memos enables us to begin the tricky process of finally bringing these terrorists to justice.

The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.

Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).

My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.)

As we move forward, it’s important to not allow the torture issue to harm the reputation, and thus the effectiveness, of the C.I.A. The agency is essential to our national security. We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We’re making a good start: President Obama has limited interrogation techniques to the guidelines set in the Army Field Manual, and Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, says he has banned the use of contractors and secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects (the so-called black sites). Just as important, we need to ensure that no new mistakes are made in the process of moving forward — a real danger right now.

In releasing highly classified documents on the CIA interrogation program last week, President Obama declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists “did not make us safer.” This is patently false. The proof is in the memos Obama made public — in sections that have gone virtually unreported in the media.

Consider the Justice Department memo of May 30, 2005. It notes that “the CIA believes ‘the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.’ . . . In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including [Khalid Sheik Mohammed] and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques.” The memo continues: “Before the CIA used enhanced techniques . . . KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, ‘Soon you will find out.’ ” Once the techniques were applied, “interrogations have led to specific, actionable intelligence, as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding al Qaeda and its affiliates.”

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques “led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.” KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that “information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the ‘Second Wave.’ ” In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.

The memo notes that “[i]nterrogations of [Abu] Zubaydah — again, once enhanced techniques were employed — furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda’s ‘organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi’ and identified KSM as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.” This information helped the intelligence community plan the operation that captured KSM. It went on: “Zubaydah and KSM also supplied important information about al-Zarqawi and his network” in Iraq, which helped our operations against al-Qaeda in that country.

All this confirms information that I and others have described publicly. But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved.

Yet there is more information confirming the program’s effectiveness. The Office of Legal Counsel memo states “we discuss only a small fraction of the important intelligence CIA interrogators have obtained from KSM” and notes that “intelligence derived from CIA detainees has resulted in more than 6,000 intelligence reports and, in 2004, accounted for approximately half of the [Counterterrorism Center's] reporting on al Qaeda.” The memos refer to other classified documents — including an “Effectiveness Memo” and an “IG Report,” which explain how “the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogations of KSM, Zubaydah and others . . . has yielded critical information.” Why didn’t Obama officials release this information as well? Because they know that if the public could see the details of the techniques side by side with evidence that the program saved American lives, the vast majority would support continuing it.

Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos note that, “as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, ‘brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship.” In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can — and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that “Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable.” The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.

This is the secret to the program’s success. And the Obama administration’s decision to share this secret with the terrorists threatens our national security. Al-Qaeda will use this information and other details in the memos to train its operatives to resist questioning and withhold information on planned attacks. CIA Director Leon Panetta said during his confirmation hearings that even the Obama administration might use some of the enhanced techniques in a “ticking time bomb” scenario. What will the administration do now that it has shared the limits of our interrogation techniques with the enemy? President Obama’s decision to release these documents is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible acts ever by an American president during a time of war — and Americans may die as a result.

Insects have been conscripted as weapons of war, tools of terrorism and instruments of torture for thousands of years. So should we be surprised by the news that the C.I.A. considered using these creatures to instill fear in Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist suspect? Yes, and here’s why.

The earliest hypothesized uses of insects in human conflicts involved bees and wasps. During the Upper Paleolithic period, nests of stinging insects — evidently contained within baskets or pottery — were heaved into rocky caves or thorny stockades to drive an enemy into the open. Employing insects to destroy crops or transmit disease would not develop until modern times (unless we include Yahweh’s assaults on Pharaoh in Exodus). However, entomological torture continued to play a role throughout history.

The ancient Persians developed a gruesome practice called scaphism, which involved force-feeding a person milk and honey, lashing him to a boat or hollow tree trunk, and then allowing flies to infest the victim’s anus and increasingly gangrenous flesh. Siberian tribes simply tied a naked prisoner to a tree and allowed mosquitoes and other biting flies to deliver as many as 9,000 bites per minute — a rate sufficient to drain a person’s blood by half in about two hours. And the stories of Apaches staking captives on anthills to ensure lingering and painful deaths are not merely the stuff of Hollywood westerns.

The epitome of insectan torture was developed by a 19th-century emir of Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan. He threw political enemies into a bug pit, a deep hole covered with an iron grille and stocked with sheep ticks and assassin bugs. The bite of the latter has been compared to being pierced with a hot needle, and the injected saliva digested the victims’ tissues until, in the words of the emir’s jailer, “masses of their flesh had been gnawed off their bones.”

So what’s surprising about the United States exploiting a prisoner’s entomophobia? This appears to be the first case in which insects would have been used to inflict psychological terror. Solzhenitsyn described the use of bedbug-infested boxes in the Soviet gulags, but it seems that these were intended to cause physical suffering — and the Central Intelligence Agency operatives evidently planned to use a physically harmless insect. (A caterpillar was mentioned.)

After having seemingly exhausted the nefarious uses of insects as unwitting agents in human conflict, the United States managed to find a new way — 100,000 or so years after humans first inflicted pain on one another with bees and wasps — to exploit the natural world as a means of creating suffering.

There are many arguments against torture. One is practical: If we torture others, they might torture us. This applies to psychological torture, too.

What if a terrorist group announced that their operatives had introduced Rift Valley fever into the United States? This mosquito-borne disease would make West Nile virus look like a case of the sniffles. Given that virtually every corner of America has a native species of mosquito capable of transmitting the virus, Rift Valley fever could spread across the nation. Hundreds of thousands of people could be sickened, with thousands dying and many more falling blind. The livestock industry could lose billions of dollars as animals aborted their fetuses and succumbed to bloody diarrhea. Imagine the fear if every mosquito bite this summer could be the precursor of a disease that would cause your brain to become inflamed or your internal organs to hemorrhage?

The chances of this happening are slim. The terrorists might even be bluffing. But terrorism — and torture — can be psychological.

The four secret US department of justice opinions released this week are jaw-dropping in their detail. They reveal how far the Bush administration was prepared to go in sanctioning interrogation techniques that plainly amount to torture.

The long-awaited publication of the August 2002 memo, signed by Jay Bybee but largely written by John Yoo, authorises 10 previously unlawful interrogation techniques. These include slapping, stress position and sleep deprivation, right up to waterboarding. It is doubtful a more shocking legal opinion has ever been written. It even purports to analyse if incarcerating a detainee in a small box with an insect for company would amount to mental torture (it depends what you tell him about its sting).

This is the stuff of dark nightmares, the rubber-stamping of policy rather than legal advice in the sense usually understood. It indicates how far the Bush administration fell, the kind of reasoning that infected a raft of policies and to which the British government often turned a blind eye. It has caused untold damage to US national security, and to its reputation.

When the memo was written, the administration had already fixed a policy of abuse, and the torture had already started. Lawyers were needed to provide the “golden shield” against prosecution. The memo did not benefit from the usual consultations; the many lawyers who would have objected were simply cut out of the process. A small group of lawyer-ideologues became participants in international crime, acts for which any state may, under the 1984 torture convention, exercise criminal jurisdiction. The evidence suggests complicity with the consequences that flowed from these flawed opinions – which went on to underpin CIA and military interrogations in Guantánamo, Iraq and beyond in the rendition programme.

On releasing the opinions, President Obama explained he was motivated by a desire for truthfulness. He has made clear that the CIA interrogators who relied on them in good faith should not be prosecuted, and in so doing confirmed that crimes have been committed. He chose his words with evident care: he could have said there would be no prosecutions – but he didn’t. He did not offer a general get-out-of-jail-free card; rather, he has pointed the finger of responsibility at the lawyers, one of his early acts being to prohibit future interrogators from relying on any department of justice advice prepared between 9/11 and January 2009.

Obama walks a tightrope on an issue that may yet come to dog his first term: what to do about torture practised during a “dark and painful” period? He balances an understandable desire for bipartisanship with obligations under the torture convention to pursue criminal investigations. “This will be worked out over time,” he told Spanish CNN on Thursday, referring to possible criminal investigations by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón of the “Bush Six”, the administration officials who played a central role in devising the policy of abuse. It seems no coincidence that this week’s developments occurred within a few hours of the move by Spain’s attorney general to head off a criminal investigation of the Bush Six, reasoning that the real targets should include those who physically carried out the torture.

If there was co-ordination, it seems to have gone askew. Obama is right not to target the interrogators in the sense that real responsibility lies much higher up. The senior lawyers and their patrons should derive little comfort from his intervention: they remain at risk of criminal investigation – or worse, in a legal black hole of their own making.

On a bright sunny day two years ago, President George W. Bush strode into the East Room of the White House and informed the world that the United States had created a dark and secret universe to hold and interrogate captured terrorists.

“In addition to the terrorists held at Guantánamo,” the president said, “a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the United States, in a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

At these places, Mr. Bush said, “the C.I.A. used an alternative set of procedures.” He added: “These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.” This speech will stand, I believe, as George W. Bush’s most important: perhaps the only historic speech he ever gave. In his fervent defense of his government’s “alternative set of procedures” and his equally fervent insistence that they were “lawful,” he set out before the country America’s dark moral epic of torture, in the coils of whose contradictions we find ourselves entangled still.

At the same time, perhaps unwittingly, Mr. Bush made it possible that day for those on whom the alternative set of procedures were performed eventually to speak. For he announced that he would send 14 “high-value detainees” from dark into twilight: they would be transferred from the overseas “black sites” to Guantánamo. There, while awaiting trial, the International Committee of the Red Cross would be “advised of their detention, and will have the opportunity to meet with them.”

A few weeks later, from Oct. 6 to 11 and then from Dec. 4 to 14, 2006, Red Cross officials — whose duty it is to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and to supervise treatment of prisoners of war — traveled to Guantánamo and began interviewing the prisoners.

Their stated goal was to produce a report that would “provide a description of the treatment and material conditions of detention of the 14 during the period they were held in the C.I.A. detention program,” periods ranging “from 16 months to almost four and a half years.”

As the Red Cross interviewers informed the detainees, their report was not intended to be released to the public but, “to the extent that each detainee agreed for it to be transmitted to the authorities,” to be given in strictest secrecy to officials of the government agency that had been in charge of holding them — in this case the Central Intelligence Agency, to whose acting general counsel, John Rizzo, the report was sent on Feb. 14, 2007.

The result is a document — labeled “confidential” and clearly intended only for the eyes of those senior American officials — that tells a story of what happened to each of the 14 detainees inside the black sites.

A short time ago, this document came into my hands and I have set out the stories it tells in a longer article in The New York Review of Books. Because these stories were taken down confidentially in patient interviews by professionals from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and not intended for public consumption, they have an unusual claim to authenticity.

Indeed, since the detainees were kept strictly apart and isolated, both at the black sites and at Guantánamo, the striking similarity in their stories would seem to make fabrication extremely unlikely. As its authors state in their introduction, “The I.C.R.C. wishes to underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided separately by each of the 14 adds particular weight to the information provided below.”

Beginning with the chapter headings on its contents page — “suffocation by water,” “prolonged stress standing,” “beatings by use of a collar,” “confinement in a box” — the document makes compelling and chilling reading. The stories recounted in its fewer than 50 pages lead inexorably to this unequivocal conclusion, which, given its source, has the power of a legal determination: “The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Perhaps one should start with the story of the first man to whom, according to news reports, the president’s “alternative set of procedures” were applied:

“I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately 4 meters by 4 meters. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed. After some time, I think it was several days, but can’t remember exactly, I was transferred to a chair where I was kept, shackled by hands and feet for what I think was the next two to three weeks. During this time I developed blisters on the underside of my legs due to the constant sitting. I was only allowed to get up from the chair to go [to] the toilet, which consisted of a bucket.

“I was given no solid food during the first two or three weeks, while sitting on the chair. I was only given Ensure and water to drink. At first the Ensure made me vomit, but this became less with time.

“The cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold. Very loud, shouting-type music was constantly playing. It kept repeating about every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. Sometimes the music stopped and was replaced by a loud hissing or crackling noise.

“The guards were American, but wore masks to conceal their faces. My interrogators did not wear masks.”

So begins the story of Abu Zubaydah, a senior member of Al Qaeda, captured in a raid in Pakistan in March 2002. The arrest of an active terrorist with actionable information was a coup for the United States.

After being treated for his wounds — he had been shot in the stomach, leg and groin during his capture — Abu Zubaydah was brought to one of the black sites, probably in Thailand, and placed in that white room.

It is important to note that Abu Zubaydah was not alone with his interrogators, that everyone in that white room — guards, interrogators, doctor — was in fact linked directly, and almost constantly, to senior intelligence officials on the other side of the world. “It wasn’t up to individual interrogators to decide, ‘Well, I’m going to slap him. Or I’m going to shake him,’” said John Kiriakou, a C.I.A. officer who helped capture Abu Zubaydah, in an interview with ABC News.

Every one of the steps taken with regard to Abu Zubaydah “had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations. So before you laid a hand on him, you had to send in the cable saying, ‘He’s uncooperative. Request permission to do X.’”

He went on: “The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific…. No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard.”

Shortly after Abu Zubaydah was captured, C.I.A. officers briefed the National Security Council’s principals committee, including Vice President Dick Cheney, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, in detail on the interrogation plans for the prisoner. As the interrogations proceeded, so did the briefings, with George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, bringing to senior officials almost daily reports of the techniques applied.

At the time, the spring and summer of 2002, Justice Department officials, led by John Yoo, were working on a memorandum, now known informally as “the torture memo,” which claimed that for an “alternative procedure” to be considered torture, and thus illegal, it would have to cause pain of the sort “that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result.” The memo was approved in August 2002, thus serving as a legal “green light” for interrogators to apply the most aggressive techniques to Abu Zubaydah:

“I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.”

The prisoner was then put in a coffin-like black box, about 4 feet by 3 feet and 6 feet high, “for what I think was about one and a half to two hours.” He added: The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside…. They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.”

After this beating, Abu Zubaydah was placed in a small box approximately three feet tall. “They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about three months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don’t know how long I remained in the small box; I think I may have slept or maybe fainted.

“I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly, and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited.

“The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless.”

After being placed again in the tall box, Abu Zubaydah “was then taken out and again a towel was wrapped around my neck and I was smashed into the wall with the plywood covering and repeatedly slapped in the face by the same two interrogators as before.

“I was then made to sit on the floor with a black hood over my head until the next session of torture began. The room was always kept very cold.

This went on for approximately one week.”

Walid bin Attash, a Saudi involved with planning the attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998 and on the Navy destroyer Cole in 2000, was captured in Pakistan on April 29, 2003:

“On arrival at the place of detention in Afghanistan I was stripped naked. I remained naked for the next two weeks…. I was kept in a standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running across the width of the cell. The cell was dark with no light, artificial or natural.”

This forced standing, with arms shackled above the head, seems to have become standard procedure. It proved especially painful for Mr. bin Attash, who had lost a leg fighting in Afghanistan:

“After some time being held in this position my stump began to hurt so I removed my artificial leg to relieve the pain. Of course my good leg then began to ache and soon started to give way so that I was left hanging with all my weight on my wrists.”

Cold water was used on Mr. bin Attash in combination with beatings and the use of a plastic collar, which seems to have been a refinement of the towel that had been looped around Abu Zubaydah’s neck:

“On a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room. It was also placed around my neck when being taken out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead me along the corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the corridor during such movements.

“Also on a daily basis during the first two weeks I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets…. I would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold water for several minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation.”

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the key planner of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003.

After three days in what he believes was a prison in Afghanistan, Mr. Mohammed was put in a tracksuit, blindfold, hood and headphones, and shackled and placed aboard a plane. He quickly fell asleep — “the first proper sleep in over five days” — and remains unsure of how long the journey took. On arrival, however, he realized he had come a long way:

“I could see at one point there was snow on the ground. Everybody was wearing black, with masks and army boots, like Planet X people. I think the country was Poland. I think this because on one occasion a water bottle was brought to me without the label removed. It had [an] e-mail address ending in ‘.pl.’”

He was stripped and put in a small cell. “I was kept for one month in the cell in a standing position with my hands cuffed and shackled above my head and my feet cuffed and shackled to a point in the floor,” he told the Red Cross.

“Of course during this month I fell asleep on some occasions while still being held in this position. This resulted in all my weight being applied to the handcuffs around my wrist, resulting in open and bleeding wounds. [Scars consistent with this allegation were visible on both wrists as well as on both ankles.] Both my feet became very swollen after one month of almost continual standing.”

For interrogation, Mr. Mohammed was taken to a different room. The sessions lasted for as long as eight hours and as short as four.

“If I was perceived not to be cooperating I would be put against a wall and punched and slapped in the body, head and face. A thick flexible plastic collar would also be placed around my neck so that it could then be held at the two ends by a guard who would use it to slam me repeatedly against the wall. The beatings were combined with the use of cold water, which was poured over me using a hose-pipe.”

As with Abu Zubaydah, the harshest sessions involved the “alternative set of procedures” used in sequence and in combination, one technique intensifying the effects of the others:

“The beatings became worse and I had cold water directed at me from a hose-pipe by guards while I was still in my cell. The worst day was when I was beaten for about half an hour by one of the interrogators. My head was banged against the wall so hard that it started to bleed. Cold water was poured over my head. This was then repeated with other interrogators. Finally I was taken for a session of water boarding. The torture on that day was finally stopped by the intervention of the doctor.”

Reading the Red Cross report, one becomes somewhat inured to the “alternative set of procedures” as they are described: the cold and repeated violence grow numbing. Against this background, the descriptions of daily life of the detainees in the black sites, in which interrogation seems merely a periodic heightening of consistently imposed brutality, become more striking.

Here again is Mr. Mohammed:

“After each session of torture I was put into a cell where I was allowed to lie on the floor and could sleep for a few minutes. However, due to shackles on my ankles and wrists I was never able to sleep very well…. The toilet consisted of a bucket in the cell, which I could use on request” — he was shackled standing, his hands affixed to the ceiling — “but I was not allowed to clean myself after toilet during the first month…. I wasn’t given any clothes for the first month. Artificial light was on 24 hours a day, but I never saw sunlight.”

Abu Zubaydah, Walid bin Attash, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — these men almost certainly have blood on their hands. There is strong reason to believe that they had critical parts in planning and organizing terrorist operations that caused the deaths of thousands of people. So in all likelihood did the other “high-value detainees” whose treatment while secretly confined by the United States is described in the Red Cross report.

From everything we know, many or all of these men deserve to be tried and punished — to be “brought to justice,” as President Bush vowed they would be. The fact that judges, military or civilian, throw out cases of prisoners who have been tortured — and have already done so at Guantánamo — means it is highly unlikely that they will be brought to justice anytime soon.

For the men who have committed great crimes, this seems to mark perhaps the most important and consequential sense in which “torture doesn’t work.” The use of torture deprives the society whose laws have been so egregiously violated of the possibility of rendering justice. Torture destroys justice. Torture in effect relinquishes this sacred right in exchange for speculative benefits whose value is, at the least, much disputed.

As I write, it is impossible to know definitively what benefits — in intelligence, in national security, in disrupting Al Qaeda — the president’s approval of use of an “alternative set of procedures” might have brought to the United States. Only a thorough investigation, which we are now promised, much belatedly, by the Senate Intelligence Committee, can determine that.

What we can say with certainty, in the wake of the Red Cross report, is that the United States tortured prisoners and that the Bush administration, including the president himself, explicitly and aggressively denied that fact. We can also say that the decision to torture, in a political war with militant Islam, harmed American interests by destroying the democratic and Constitutional reputation of the United States, undermining its liberal sympathizers in the Muslim world and helping materially in the recruitment of young Muslims to the extremist cause. By deciding to torture, we freely chose to embrace the caricature they had made of us. The consequences of this choice, legal, political and moral, now confront us. Time and elections are not enough to make them go away.

On Jan. 22, President Obama signed an executive order banning torture and establishing a panel to examine America’s interrogation methods. The ban on torture is a major step toward reclaiming our heritage as a nation of laws and a people of character. And it will enhance the country’s security by undermining Al Qaeda’s most effective recruiting theme — its portrayal of the United States as a dishonorable superpower that sanctions the type of abuses so graphically captured in the images from Abu Ghraib.

The challenge now for the panel is to reconsider the ancient practice of interrogation and bring it into the modern age. That will require making an effort to objectively assess which strategies are actually effective.

One might think that any interrogation method considered legal must also be effective. But many techniques that have been deemed lawful by lawyers at the Justice Department, the Defense Department and even the White House have never been tested for how well they elicit information from people who resist providing it. In fact, none of the methods contained in the current Army manual on interrogation have ever been scientifically tested for effectiveness.

As military interrogators, each of us has questioned hundreds of prisoners of war, terrorists and insurgents in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia — during both Iraq wars and the 1989 invasion of Panama — and we have supervised thousands of other interrogations. While we speak only for ourselves, we have seen firsthand that many standard approaches are rarely useful in eliciting reliable intelligence, and often serve only to harden a detainee’s resistance. Widely employed tactics like “fear-up harsh,” which is meant to scare a person into answering questions, or “pride and ego down,” which uses humiliation to try to overcome a person’s resistance, are actually counterproductive in establishing the kind of relationship — one based on trust — that is almost always necessary to win a detainee’s cooperation.

The most effective strategies for relationship building are the kind that interrogators used to extract critical information from high-level Japanese and German prisoners during World War II. Interrogators who were familiar with the detainees’ language and culture, and who exhaustively studied each prisoner’s case, used charisma and empathy to patiently elicit vital intelligence. Similarly, it was a relationship-building approach that we used to persuade a detainee to give us information on the whereabouts of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia — information that led to his being located and killed in 2006.

Interrogation is likely to remain critical to waging the global war on terrorism and other future wars. Unfortunately, though, we have not yet taken a scientific approach to improving the way we practice it. While other forms of intelligence-gathering have benefited from research and technological advances — intelligence officers can intercept telephone and Internet communications or use satellite images to find people — interrogation has suffered from a lack of innovation. And our military lacks an elite unit of highly trained interrogators to call upon when high-level people in terrorist organizations are captured. Too often, the questioning is left to whoever is closest at hand.

The president’s new panel has a fresh opportunity to solve these problems. The group should include experienced interrogators and policymakers who recognize the need to examine longstanding interrogation methods objectively. The panel should consider creating a research center devoted to gathering and analyzing the valuable lessons that interrogators have learned in the course of our current conflicts, establishing a clear and stringent standard of conduct and ethics and building a cadre of skilled interrogators. Researchers at such a center could also evaluate all strategies now used in questioning and identify other methods that are both effective and consistent with our legal and moral traditions.

Interrogation is both art and science; like any profession, it is a dynamic endeavor with potential for continual improvement. Learning to be really good at handling and questioning detainees is prelude to becoming truly great as a nation.

When former Vice President Dick Cheney warned last week that terrorists will be emboldened by President Barack Obama’s decision to close Guantánamo and to ban harsh interrogation techniques, I was reminded of a story.

During wartime service in Vietnam with the C.I.A. from 1970 to 1972, I was in charge of intelligence operations in the 10 provinces surrounding Saigon. One of my tasks was to prevent rocket attacks on Saigon’s port.

Keeping Saigon safe required human intelligence, most often from captured prisoners. I had a running debate about how North Vietnamese prisoners should be treated with the South Vietnamese colonel who conducted interrogations. This colonel routinely tortured prisoners, producing a flood of information, much of it totally false. I argued for better treatment, and pressed for key prisoners to be turned over to the C.I.A., where humane interrogation methods were the rule, and more accurate intelligence the result.

The colonel finally relented and turned over a battered prisoner to me, saying, “This man knows a lot but he will not talk to me.” We treated the prisoner’s wounds, reunited him with his family and allowed him to make his first visit to Saigon. Surprised by the city’s affluence, he said he would tell us anything we asked. The result was a flood of actionable intelligence that allowed us to disrupt planned operations, including rocket attacks against Saigon.

Admittedly, it would be hard to make a story from nearly 40 years ago into a definitive case study. But there is a useful reminder here. The key to successful interrogation is for the interrogator — even as he controls the situation — to recognize a prisoner’s humanity, to understand his culture, background and language. Torture makes this impossible.

There’s a sad twist here. Mr. Cheney forgets that the Bush administration followed this approach with some success. A high-value prisoner subjected to patient interrogation by an Arabic-speaking F.B.I. agent yielded highly useful information, including the final word on Iraq’s weapons programs.

His name was Saddam Hussein.

As a friend, ally and admirer of the United States, and one who has had the privilege to work for many years with its military, I applaud its new Commander-in-Chief for honouring his promise and ordering an end to its use of torture. This symbolic act re-establishes an American legitimacy that had been forsaken in the eyes of the world.

President Obama has consigned to the past a shameful period in his nation’s proud history. The previous Administration sought to justify the unjustifiable. It narrowed its definition of torture to the infliction of “excruciating” pain to legitimise simulated drowning. It coined the euphemistic doublespeak of “enhanced interrogation” and “extraordinary rendition”. But its dissimulation did nothing to diminish the barbarity of its practice. Torture does violence to the defenceless, using their bodies against their souls. There must be no going back. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “necessity does not admit of cruelty”.

Torture is illegal. It is a crime in both peace and war that no exceptional circumstances can permit. The Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, firewalls for our collective humanity, expressly forbid it. It is prohibited without qualification in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – a document signed by people from every corner and culture of the Earth who had survived the suffering of both world wars, the horrors of fascism, and the evil of the Holocaust. They understood well that global humanitarian norms and a rules-based world order are in all our interests.

There can be no exceptions to our laws, and no attempts to bend them. Those who break them should be judged in court.

Torture is wrong. People are ends in themselves, never merely means. Absolute human rights represent a limit to utilitarian calculations and speculations on national interest. They are the Rubicon that no hypothetical consequences, even in dire “ticking bomb” scenarios, must force us across. Everyone, even the terrorist, is human. There are no untermenschen. To label the criminal subhuman is to exonerate him.

Torture rarely works. Sometimes, of course, important intelligence is extracted. But this is not the television world of 24 and we are not the Gestapo. Guantánamo Bay has seen more suicides than convictions. Information from the tortured is notoriously unreliable. Conspirators change their plans when one of their number is captured. The victim will say anything to stop the pain.

Torture is self-defeating. We need to distinguish ourselves from our enemies. We must not, in the false name of moral equivalence, degrade ourselves to their level. Once we do, Pandora’s Box is difficult even for presidents to shut. If an interrogator is told by his superior to extract information from a prisoner, he will not want to fail. Torture then becomes a temptation, or worse, a habit, from cages in Cuba to the outrages of Abu Ghraib. It is imperative that the clear message from the very top is that there is no circumstance in which it is to be sanctioned. Soldiers and security services must be properly trained in lawful interrogation techniques. This is no job for amateurs.

Torture is bad strategy. The French tortured members of the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) in the 1950s, turning ordinary Algerians against them. The British Army’s use of stress positions in Northern Ireland had the same effect. We cannot afford to alienate foreign populations and large swaths of our own. Western use of torture to counter terror has been a propaganda coup for al-Qaeda and a recruiting sergeant for its global jihad. Our hypocrisy has radicalised our enemies and corroded the power we base on our proclaimed values. We save more lives in the long term by rejecting torture than we do by perpetrating it.

The UK cannot claim to be blameless. We have condoned with our silence torture committed by others. Three UK residents – Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen, Jamil al-Banna, a Jordanian refugee, and the focus of the present furore, the Ethiopian asylum seeker Binyam Mohamed – were all arbitrarily rendered to the torment of indefinite, extrajudicial detention without charge or trial in Camp Delta. Our continent has played host to black sites and ghost prisons, facilitating a perverse regime of state-sanctioned kidnap and franchised-out torture. By our complicity, collaboration or acquiescence, we undermine our status as a civilised people.

However ruthless or disrespectful our foes, however seemingly persuasive the argument to resort to atrocity, however acute the dilemmas we face, there remains a fundamental incoherence in the idea that we can sacrifice our morality nobly. That is a rule that has not changed, nor ever will. Human rights are the object of terrorist attacks, and they are integral to the credibility of any counter- terrorist response. Torture is not only illegal, unethical, ineffective, cruel and counter-productive, it is also dumb.

David Miliband was right when he wrote on these pages that the use of the term “war on terror” has been a mistake. But the main problem with the war on terror has not been language, but conduct. This week the joint committee on human rights held a hearing on allegations of British complicity in torture in Pakistan, to which Jacqui Smith has been asked to respond. They suggest a policy of condoning torture in the interests of national security.

Take the case of Salahuddin Amin, a British citizen convicted in 2007 for plotting attacks against targets including London’s Ministry of Sound nightclub. Amin says that while in Pakistani custody he was met by British intelligence officials on almost a dozen occasions between sessions of torture.

Zeeshan Siddiqui, another British citizen, was detained in Pakistan in 2005 and tortured by the ISI – Pakistan’s main intelligence service – while being interrogated over his alleged membership of al-Qaida. He reports being beaten, chained, injected with drugs and threatened with sexual abuse. British intelligence officials, who he says visited him, must have known from visible injuries that he had been mistreated.

Rangzieb Ahmed, from Rochdale, says he was beaten with sticks, whipped with electric cables and deprived of sleep; over a three-day period, he says, his fingernails were pulled out as ISI officials interrogated him. He was convicted of being an al-Qaida member and of directing terrorism. Crucially, at his trial the government did not deny defence claims that MI5 sent the ISI questions to put to Ahmed during interrogation and that MI5 questioned him while he was in ISI custody.

What is most disturbing about these accounts is that the British government knew full well the techniques the ISI and Pakistani law enforcement agencies use in interrogations, particularly in terror cases. The use of torture is widespread, systematic, routine and well documented. Even George Bush’s state department criticised the use of torture in its annual human rights reports (though this did not stop the US from working hand in hand with the ISI). Asking Pakistan’s security services to interrogate a detainee is essentially a request to use torture to obtain information.

Torture is banned and made punishable by life imprisonment in the UK through the Criminal Justice Act of 1988. Ministers insist that this ban is “absolute” and that Britain never uses or condones torture. But take a closer look and you will see a major loophole: “It shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section in respect of any conduct of his to prove that he had lawful authority, justification or excuse for that conduct.”

Where does “lawful authority” come from? This can be found in the James Bond-style “licence to kill” provisions in the Intelligence Services Act 1994, which says: “If, apart from this section, a person would be liable in the United Kingdom for any act done outside the British islands, he shall not be so liable if the act is one which is authorised to be done by virtue of an authorisation given by the secretary of state under this section.” This may explain why the government has confidently issued blanket denials of illegality in these cases.

A public inquiry should be held to look into these cases, to establish whether British security services have been complicit in torture, illegal detentions and enforced disappearances. Meanwhile, the home secretary’s appearance before the human rights committee would be a good opportunity for the government to end its blanket denials and establish an exemplary policy consistent with British rhetoric on rights and liberty.

In the wake of the Abu Ghraib revelations, the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2005 that “we care very much about finding out what happened and holding people accountable.”

There is now ample reason to believe that Mr. Gonzales was among those at the highest level of government who allowed Americans to engage in torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of those in our custody. Mr. Gonzales’s misleading and cowardly testimony certainly deprives him of any claim to our indulgence, but nonetheless neither he nor any of the others who participated in this abuse of detainees should be criminally prosecuted — not for their sakes but for the country’s.

Some argue that torture is justified if our survival is threatened, but even apart from the elasticity of this justification, it is flawed because it depends on an equivocation. Our physical survival is not what is of overriding moral importance (people give up their lives all the time for some higher value) but our survival as decent human beings acting for a decent society. And we cannot authorize indecency without jeopardizing our survival as a decent society.

President-elect Barack Obama understands this, as did Senator John McCain, and we can expect that the practice will stop (if it has not already) in the incoming administration, for the election was a definitive repudiation of the Bush administration and its principal characters. There are those for whom this will not be enough to vindicate the values of decency and humanity that the Bush administration flouted as it defended us against further terrorist attacks. There are those who will press for criminal prosecutions, but this should be resisted.

It is a hallmark of a sane and moderate society that when it changes leaders and regimes, those left behind should be abandoned to the judgment of history. It is in savage societies that the defeat of a ruling faction entails its humiliation, exile and murder.

In contrast, by turning away from show trials and from the persecution of even the worst of their past regimes’ miscreants, new democracies like Spain and South Africa showed that they had moved decisively beyond a politics of hate and revenge. To South Africa and its Truth and Reconciliation Commission compare the barbarism and desolation of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

Think too of the succession of Roman emperors, of the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin, or of the night of the long knives when Hitler eliminated his closest associates and rivals. It is only an exaggeration to see the urge to criminalize our soon-to-be-former leaders, to make into courtroom drama the tragedy of the last eight years, as an extension of this same practice.

Of course ours would not be Stalin-type show trials, but they would have a kind of absurdity distinctive to our own over-lawyered culture. Consider what criminal prosecutions would really look like. First, we would have the investigations, the subpoenas, the depositions and grand juries, much of this directed at tripping up the targets, so that they can more handily be prosecuted for the ancillary offenses of making false statements, perjury or obstruction of justice.

Then, we would have the trials themselves — protracted, interspersed with motions and delays, obsessively followed by cable channels filling in the many dull spots with endless commentary from teams of so-called experts, the whole spectacle stupefying rather than edifying the public and doing little to enhance respect for the law. A feast for lawyers and legal junkies, criminal prosecutions would be an embarrassment and distraction for the rest of the society that wants to get on with solving the great problems of the present and the future.

But should the high and mighty get off when ordinary people committing the same crimes would go to prison? The answer is that they are not the same crimes. Administration officials were not thieves lining their own pockets. Theirs were political crimes committed by persons whose jobs were to exercise the powers of government on our behalf. And the same is even truer of the lower-level officers who followed their orders.

And what about Nuremberg and the trial of the Japanese war criminals? Were those a mistake, too? Not at all. Those were crimes against whole populations in wars of aggression. An analogous point holds for the criminal leaders of Rwanda, Serbia and Sudan.

If you cannot see the difference between Hitler and Dick Cheney, between Stalin and Donald Rumsfeld, between Mao and Alberto Gonzales, there may be no point in our talking. It is not just a difference of scale, but our leaders were defending their country and people — albeit with an insufficient sense of moral restraint — against a terrifying threat by ruthless attackers with no sense of moral restraint at all.

Our veneration of the rule of law makes us believe that courts and procedures and judges can put right every wrong. But we must remember: our leaders, ultimately, were chosen by us; their actions were often ratified by our representatives; we chose them again in 2004. Their repudiation this Nov. 4 and the public, historical memory of them is the aptest response to what they did.

Should Bush administration officials be put on trial for crimes such as authorizing torture?

Personally, I’m just relieved to have this crowd heading out of office and its policies — on torture, on indefinite detention, on warrantless wiretapping, on overweening executive power — soon to be inoperative.

But the imminent arrival of the Obama administration has sparked a renewed clamor for criminal investigation and prosecution in some quarters on the left. Vice President Cheney stoked the flames with an ABC interview in which he was typically unrepentant about the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and particularly explicit about his own involvement.

Meanwhile, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a report concluding that Donald Rumsfeld‘s decision as defense secretary to authorize “aggressive interrogation techniques” was “a direct cause of detainee abuse” at Guantanamo Bay.

New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey demanding a special prosecutor. (Good luck with that.) The New York Times called the Senate report “a strong case for bringing criminal charges” against Rumsfeld and Pentagon legal counsel William Haynes, and maybe even Alberto Gonzales and Cheney aide David Addington.

Not that President-elect Obama seems particularly eager to take that plunge.

“If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” Obama said in April. Still, he said, “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

I touched briefly on this subject the other day, writing that “ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated . . . may be more important than punishing those who acted wrongly in pursuit of what they thought was right.”

How, some readers asked, could future law-breaking be prevented if past misdeeds go unpunished?

First, criminal prosecution isn’t the only or necessarily the most effective mechanism for deterrence. To the extent that they weigh the potential penalties for their actions, government officials worry as much about dealing with career-ruining internal investigations or being hauled before congressional committees. Criminal prosecution and conviction requires such a high level of proof of conscious wrongdoing that the likelihood of those other punishments is much greater.

Second, the looming threat of criminal sanctions did not do much to deter the actions of Bush administration officials. “The Terror Presidency,” former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith‘s account of the legal battles within the administration over torture and wiretapping, is replete with accounts of how officials proceeded despite their omnipresent concerns about legal jeopardy.

“In my two years in the government, I witnessed top officials and bureaucrats in the White House and throughout the administration openly worrying that investigators acting with the benefit of hindsight in a different political environment would impose criminal penalties on heat-of-battle judgment calls,” Goldsmith writes.

Third, punishment is not the only way to prevent wrongdoing. If someone is caught breaking into your house, by all means, press charges. But you might also want to consider installing an alarm system or buying stronger locks. Responsible congressional oversight, an essential tool for checking executive branch excesses, was lacking for much of the Bush administration.

Fourth, there is a cost to pursuing criminal charges. As appalling as waterboarding is, for example, it was pursued with the analysis and approval of lawyers who concluded, however wrongly, that it did not rise to the level of torture. If government officials cannot safely rely on legal advice, they will err on the side of excessive timidity.

Fifth, focusing governmental energy on uncovering and punishing the actions of the past will inevitably drain energy and political capital from the new administration. It would be a better use of the administration’s time to figure out how to close Guantanamo and deal with the remaining prisoners.

I am not arguing against any criminal prosecution of any Bush administration official no matter what the facts — I’m just saying that the bar is awfully high. Lying to investigators and covering up questionable activities should be prosecuted because such conduct frustrates the capacity of other government checks to function.

And prosecution would be justified if there is evidence, as Obama put it, of “genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies . . . that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws.”

Really bad policies? No question about that. Conscious law-breaking? I’m doubtful — and skeptical, too, that the symbolic benefit of any such prosecution would outweigh the inevitable costs.

Que la tortura, sobre todo la que se comete desde el aparato institucional, es una de las lacras más terribles que puede incubar una comunidad política, es algo que nadie se atrevería a negar públicamente. ¿Cómo se explica entonces que la reciente condena de tres mossos por abusar de un ciudadano rumano, al que confundieron con un atracador, haya generado un inusual cierre de filas entre la clase política y algunos conspicuos formadores de opinión?
Quizá no sea ocioso recordar que estamos hablando de un caso en el que, según el fallo de la Audiencia Provincial, los funcionarios condenados cometieron hechos que resultarían aberrantes perpetrados por delincuentes ordinarios. Pusieron una pistola en la boca de la víctima, Lucian, entraron en su casa sin orden judicial, le vejaron, golpearon y obligaron a confesar con frases como “reconócelo todo o te tiramos por el barranco”. Además, detuvieron y agredieron a su novia, embarazada de tres meses.

PESE AL estremecedor relato de la sentencia, y a que la hipótesis acusatoria había sido defendida por otros fiscales y una jueza instructora, las respuestas institucionales han sido inquietantes. La consellera de Justícia, Montserrat Tura, no solo elogió públicamente a los condenados, alguno de ellos ascendido estando ella al frente de Interior, sino que solicitó del Tribunal Supremo la revisión de la sentencia. El expresident Jordi Pujol cuestionó la gravedad de caso, ya que la víctima no había sido hospitalizada. Tampoco faltaron los tertulianos de guardia que se enfurecieron porque se prestara más credibilidad al testimonio de las víctimas que al de los propios policías. Los partidos conservadores, finalmente, llegaron a pedir la dimisión del conseller Joan Saura y este se defendió asegurando que pondría a disposición de los afectados “los mejores abogados”.
¿A qué atribuir estas reacciones? ¿Cómo explicar que una consellera de Justícia, en lugar de defender a los tribunales o de hacerse cargo del drama humano de las víctimas, ensalce la actuación policial? ¿Cómo calificar las declaraciones de un expresidente de la Generalitat que ha padecido la cárcel y que parece ignorar que la tortura puede no dejar secuelas físicas y provocar, sin embargo, un tormento mayor al de un suplicio corporal? ¿Qué tipo de presiones pueden llevar a un conseller de Interior a anunciar para la policía un tipo de protección –”los mejores abogados”– que no reclamaría para los ciudadanos de a pie?
Si estas reacciones se producen en un caso en el que las víctimas eran probadamente inocentes, causa zozobra pensar qué se habría dicho si se tratara de situaciones menos claras. Como ha denunciado Amnistía Internacional en su reciente informe titulado Sal en la herida, dar más crédito a la policía que a las víctimas u otros testigos es uno de los motivos principales de impunidad en la violencia institucional. Esto explica que la mayoría de denuncias de malos tratos policiales se enfrenten a toda una carrera de obstáculos y a resistencias de todo tipo. Tan es así que solo un 1% de los casos llegan a juicio y, si llegan, suelen terminar en absolución por la imposible identificación de los responsables.

ASÍ OCURRIÓ, por ejemplo, cuando la Audiencia de Vizcaya, en 1998, o la de Girona, en el 2004, reconocieran la violación de una mujer brasileña o las torturas a un joven marroquí, respectivamente, pero exculparon a los agentes, que se encubrieron entre ellos. Es más, incluso, si hay condenas, resulta habitual que la impunidad se produzca por vía de un indulto gubernamental, tal como se puede comprobar en un rápido rastreo del BOE.
En realidad, casos como el de Lucian parecen confirmar que cada acto de tortura encierra un crimen de Estado cuya negación comporta, en el fondo, un ejercicio de contemporización con la crueldad institucional, una suerte de autoindulto que el Estado se concede a sí mismo. Que en Catalunya y en el resto de la península ocurran este tipo de hechos ya no puede sorprender a nadie. Después de todo, el español es el cuarto Estado del mundo con más condenas por violaciones del pacto de derechos civiles y políticos y uno de los pocos condenados ante el Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos en el 2004 por falta de respuesta en un caso de torturas (causa Martínez Sala y otros contra España).

MUCHOS DE los que se indignan por la resolución del caso Lucian y piden defender la honorabilidad de la policía deberían reflexionar sobre esta realidad. Sobre todo ahora que se cumplen 60 años de la aprobación de la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos. Si la apelación a este tipo de documentos es sincera, si de verdad se cree en la necesidad de erradicar todos los Guantánamos y los Abu Graib del mundo, debería aceptarse, de una vez por todas, que unas instituciones que son capaces de investigar y condenar actos de tortura no son unas instituciones débiles o buenistas. Son instituciones que pueden, con credibilidad, apelar al reconocimiento de sus propios ciudadanos. Lo otro, la banalización de la tortura, la justificación de la brutalidad policial y la entronización de la “razón de Estado”, solo puede ser fuente de nuevos maltratos, además del camino más seguro al descrédito de los cuerpos de seguridad y de sus propios superiores.

En los diez primeros meses de este año, los jueces de Catalunya han dictado 225 resoluciones penales respecto de los Mossos d’Esquadra, de las cuales el 95% han sido exculpatorias. Por ello, es evidente que el poder judicial está amparando de forma amplia y extensa a dicho cuerpo policial frente a lo que ya dije en otra ocasión: un exceso de denuncias que resultan infundadas. Es una realidad, en cualquier caso, preocupante, porque afecta injustificadamente al honor profesional de los agentes denunciados y a la propia credibilidad del cuerpo.
En este contexto, causa consternación la reacción ante la sentencia de la Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona del pasado 20 de noviembre, que condenaba a varios agentes de dicho cuerpo por delitos de notoria gravedad, como son los de tortura y contra la integridad moral de las personas. Aunque la sentencia aún no es firme, han quedado acreditados, como probados, hechos gravísimos que atentan contra la dignidad de las personas que fueron víctimas de los abusos policiales que se describen. Con independencia de la sentencia que dicte el Tribunal Supremo (TS), es inadmisible, en el marco de un Estado democrático, el ataque que ha sufrido el tribunal, el rechazo descalificatorio de la resolución, tachada de injusta y carente de fundamento, cuando no la expresión de una vindicación corporativa. Y se han sumado a ello sindicatos policiales y hasta responsables políticos que, en nombre de un corporativismo tan trasnochado como insolidario con las víctimas, han emitido una más o menos velada llamada a la impunidad de los agentes por ser “de los nuestros”.
Los Mossos d’Esquadra merecen todo el respeto y la confianza como policía democrática que son, pero los agentes que han sido condenados no pueden, no deben, ser tratados con el mismo rasero que la aplastante mayoría que actúa con arreglo a las leyes y los valores democráticos. Por ello, los agentes condenados están justificadamente separados del servicio, en aplicación de una norma de 1995 que no exige la firmeza de la sentencia para la adopción de esa medida. La sentencia merece un mayor respeto del que ha recibido. Por varias razones.

EN PRIMER lugar, por los hechos que describe, detenciones injustificadas de dos inmigrantes rumanos por agentes de paisano que no se identifican, un uso desproporcionado de la violencia, golpes y puñetazos reiterados, arrojar al suelo a uno de ellos esposándolo de forma brusca, insultos y amenazas de muerte, además de la privación de libertad carente de todo fundamento. Un comportamiento de una evidente brutalidad abiertamente contrario al mandato legal de que la actuación de los agentes de policía “no sea arbitraria, abusiva o discriminatoria”. Los hechos relatan una aparatosa desviación del uso del poder de coerción. No es de extrañar la calificación de tales hechos como tortura y “tratos inhumanos o degradantes”, según el derecho internacional.
La sentencia, además, recuerda que los derechos fundamentales de todos los seres humanos “emanan de la dignidad inherente a la persona”. Particularmente, la prohibición de la tortura, que está en el núcleo del sistema democrático y de la Constitución española. Durante el curso de la actuación policial descrita, los agentes obraron como si no rigiera el derecho, como en una especie de vacío democrático, infligiendo padecimientos físicos y psíquicos que vejaban a las víctimas y generaban en ellas un fuerte sentimiento de miedo, angustia e inseguridad.
En tercer lugar, no ha cesado de invocarse el derecho a la presunción de inocencia de los agentes condenados. Es un derecho que los pactos internacionales solo predican de los “acusados”. Porque, en efecto, esa presunción ha sido provisionalmente destruida por la sentencia condenatoria. El TS valorará si la actividad probatoria de cargo se ha ajustado a las garantías constitucionales y procesales. Pero, en este momento, parece que en las pruebas han concurrido los requisitos de oralidad, inmediación, publicidad y contradicción, y que se ha fundado razonadamente la culpabilidad de los agentes. No se advierten graves errores ni vacíos probatorios. Y, desde luego, las víctimas han declarado siempre con una evidente coherencia y persistencia, sin temor alguno a los que tanto daño les causaron.

ASIMISMO, la sentencia ha encendido una señal de alarma, porque ya hay una condena firme anterior contra un mosso por un delito de “tratos degradantes”, con elementos similares a este caso, por hechos ocurridos en la provincia de Lleida el 9 de julio del 2003.
Frente a tanta retórica corporativista, la sentencia, como otras tantas resoluciones judiciales, cuando sea confirmada por el TS, contribuirá a fortalecer a las policías de Catalunya. El fallo condenatorio, que se limita a hechos concretos y aislados, cometidos hace más de dos años, no debe generar sonrojo alguno entre los miembros de dicho Cuerpo: antes al contrario, debe contribuir a fortalecer los principios democráticos y respetuosos de los derechos humanos que presiden generalmente su actuación. Con la certeza de saber que quien, excepcionalmente, se aparte de dichos principios no merece pertenecer a una policía democrática y debe ser excluido de ella con una aplicación rigurosa de las reglas del Estado de derecho.

“I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.”

That unequivocal passage from President-elect Barack Obama‘s first extended interview since the election, broadcast on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, was a big step toward healing the damage that the Bush administration has done not just to our nation’s image but to its soul.

Amid the excitement of the election and the urgency of the economic crisis, it has been easy to lose sight of the terrorism-related “issues” that defined George W. Bush‘s presidency and robbed America of so much honor, stature and goodwill.

I put the word issues in quotation marks because torture can never be a matter of debate. Yet the Bush administration sought to numb Americans to what has traditionally been seen as a clear moral and legal imperative: the requirement that individuals taken into custody by our government be treated fairly and humanely.

This doesn’t mean handling nihilistic, homicidal “evildoers” with kid gloves. It means being as certain as possible that the people we are holding are, indeed, real or would-be terrorists, not unlucky bystanders; and treating these detainees in accordance with international law, as we would expect detained U.S. personnel to be treated.

At Guantanamo, at Abu Ghraib and in a little gulag of secret CIA prisons overseas, the Bush administration failed to live up to these basic responsibilities and thus sullied us all.

We will look back on the Bush years and find it incredible, and disgraceful, that individuals were captured in battle or “purchased” from self-interested tribal warlords, whisked to Guantanamo, classified as “enemy combatants” but not accorded the rights that that status should have accorded them, held for years without charges — and denied the right to prove that they were victims of mistaken identity and never should have been taken into custody.

A new study by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, based on interviews with 62 men who were held for an average of three years at Guantanamo before being released without being accused of a crime, found that more than a third said they were turned over to their American captors by warlords for a bounty. Those who reported physical abuse said most of it occurred at the United States’ Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where about half the men were initially held before being taken to Guantanamo.

Two-thirds of the former detainees reported suffering psychological problems since their release, and many are now destitute, shunned by their families and villages. None has received any compensation for the ordeal, according to the report, titled “Guantánamo and Its Aftermath.”

Years from now, we will be shocked to see those pictures of naked prisoners being humiliated and abused at Abu Ghraib — and we will be ashamed of a U.S. government that punished low-level troops for their sadism but exonerated the higher-ups who made such sadism possible.

Years from now, we will know the full truth of the clandestine, CIA-run prisons where “high-value” terrorism suspects were interrogated with techniques, including waterboarding, that both civilized norms and international law have long defined as torture. From what we already know, it’s hard to say which is more appalling — the torture itself or the tortured legal rationalizations that Bush administration lawyers came up with to “justify” making barbarity the official policy of the U.S. government.

Obama’s clarity on the issues of Guantanamo and torture stands in contrast to his necessary vagueness about how he will deal with the economic crisis. Torture is wrong today and will still be wrong tomorrow, whereas today’s economic panacea can be tomorrow’s drop in the bucket. Who would have thought that these “war on terror” issues would be the easy part for the new president?

Not that easy, though. More reports like the UC-Berkeley study will come out, but this is not a task that can be left to academic researchers alone. The new Obama administration has a duty to conduct its own investigation and tell us exactly what was done in our name. Realistically, some facts are going to be redacted. Realistically, some officials who may deserve to face criminal charges will not. But to restore our national honor and heal our national soul, we at least need to know.

As the US presidential election reaches a climax against the background of the financial crisis, another silent, dark, time bomb of an issue hangs over the two candidates: torture. For now, there seems to be a shared desire not to delve too deeply into the circumstances in which the Bush administration allowed the US military and the CIA to embrace abusive techniques of interrogation – including waterboarding, in the case of the CIA – which violate the Geneva conventions and the 1984 UN torture convention.

The torture issue’s cancerous consequences go deep, and will cause headaches for the next president. New evidence has emerged in Congressional inquiries that throw more light on the extent to which early knowledge and approval of the abuse went to the highest levels. What does a country do when compelling evidence shows its leaders have authorised international crimes?

For three years I have followed a trail which leads unambiguously to the conclusion that the real bad eggs were not Lyndie England or others on the ground in Abu Ghraib, but the most senior officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the department of justice. Over recent months, Congress has been looking into the role of senior officials involved in the development of interrogation rules. These have attracted relatively scant attention; little by little, however, senators and congressmen have uncovered the outlines of a potentially far-reaching criminal conspiracy.

The first hearings were convened before the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, at the instance of its chairman, Congressman John Conyers, apparently off the back of my book Torture Team. Parallel hearings have been held before the Senate armed services committee.

The evidence that has emerged is potentially devastating. It confirms, for instance, that the search for new interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo began not with the local military but in the offices of Donald Rumsfeld and his chief lawyer, Jim Haynes. It shows that when the career military expressed objections on legal grounds, Haynes intervened to stop the normal process of review. And it shows a previously unknown interplay between the department of defence and the CIA: a visit to Guantánamo in September 2002 by the administration’s most senior lawyers was followed days later by a senior CIA lawyer, to brief on the new techniques. “If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used,” he explained, “the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental.”

Last month the Senate armed services committee received new material from Condoleezza Rice, the first cabinet-level official to confirm high-level involvement in discussions on interrogation techniques. “I participated in a number of meetings in 2002 and 2003 … at which issues relating to detainees in US custody, including interrogation issues, were discussed,” she said. Those present at such meetings included Rumsfeld, attorney general John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and CIA director George Tenet. The meetings, which concerned the CIA programme, “occurred inside the White House”. Rice confirmed she was aware of the existence of, but did not read, the justice department legal advice of August 1 2002 that abandoned the international definition of torture and replaced it with a definition drawn from a US Medicare statute.

Buried away in this testimony lies the most dangerous material of all: evidence which may establish that abuses on detainees in Iraq in September 2003, in the period perhaps including the events at Abu Ghraib, were the result of decisions taken at the highest levels of the administration. The administration has long proclaimed it did not allow aggressive interrogations in Iraq, since the Geneva conventions applied. Last month we learned this was false: not everyone had protection under Geneva. If you were considered to be a terrorist, you had no protection at all. A senior US intelligence officer visited Iraq in September 2003. He witnessed abusive interrogation techniques that violated Geneva and complained. The response? He was told the techniques “were pre-approved by DoD GC or higher”. DoD GC is the general counsel at the department of defence, Jim Haynes. Who could be higher? His boss: Rumsfeld.

I have testified before Congress on these issues, and have been asked if there should be criminal investigations and prosecutions. At the very least, the next US president must ensure the full facts are established. It will then be for others to decide what follows. But if the US doesn’t get its own house in order and restore its reputation for the rule of law, others will surely step in.

Hace dos semanas hice entrega del Premio de Periodismo Martha Gellhorn 2008 a un joven palestino, Mohammed Omer. Otorgado en memoria de la gran corresponsal de guerra estadounidense, el premio se destina a periodistas que pongan de manifiesto la labor propagandística de las instancias oficiales, «las chorradas oficiales», como las denominaba Gellhorn. Mohammed compartió los más de 6.250 euros del premio con Dahr Jamail. A sus 24 años, ha sido su ganador más joven. Como se lee en la exposición de motivos del premio, «informa cada día desde una zona en guerra en la que él es además un prisionero. Su tierra natal, Gaza, sufre un asedio, hambre, ataques y olvido. El es un testigo profundamente humano de una de las grandes injusticias de nuestro tiempo. Es la voz de los que no la tienen». Mohammed, el mayor de ocho hermanos, ha visto cómo la mayoría de ellos han caído muertos, heridos o han resultado mutilados. Una excavadora israelí arrasó su casa mientras su familia estaba dentro e hirió de gravedad a su madre. Aún así, según el ex embajador holandés Jan Wijenberg, «es una voz moderada que insta a los jóvenes palestinos no a cultivar el odio sino a buscar la paz con Israel».

Llevar a Mohammed a Londres para que recibiera el premio requirió una operación diplomática de gran envergadura. Israel ejerce un control insidioso sobre las fronteras de Gaza y sólo se le permitió salir con la escolta del embajador holandés. El 26 de junio, en su viaje de vuelta, tenía que encontrarse en el paso fronterizo del Puente de Allenby con un representante del Gobierno holandés, que esperaba a las puertas del edificio israelí, ignorante de que Mohammed había sido detenido por el Shin Bet, los servicios israelíes de seguridad, de triste fama. Mohammed fue conminado a desconectar su teléfono móvil y a quitarle la batería. Preguntó si podía hacer una llamada a su escolta de la embajada holandesa y, de manera brusca, se lo negaron. Un hombre empezó a curiosear en su equipaje, rebuscando minuciosamente entre sus documentos. «¿Dónde está el dinero?», preguntó. Mohammed sacó unos pocos dólares estadounidenses. «¿Dónde están esas libras inglesas que tienes?».

«Caí en la cuenta -ha manifestado Mohammed- de que iba detrás del importe del premio Martha Gellhorn. Le respondí que no lo llevaba conmigo. ‘¡Estás mintiendo!’, exclamó. Yo estaba rodeado por ocho agentes del Shin Bet, todos ellos armados. El hombre al que llamaban Avi me ordenó que me quitara toda la ropa. Ya me habían hecho pasar por una máquina de rayos X. Me quité toda la ropa menos los calzoncillos y me insistió en que tenía que quitarme absolutamente todo. Cuando me negué, Avi echó mano a su arma. Yo empecé a sollozar: ‘¿Por qué me tratan así ustedes? Yo soy un ser humano’. ‘Esto no es nada comparado con lo que vas a ver ahora’, dijo. Desenfundó su pistola, me apretó el cañón contra la cabeza y, dejando caer todo el peso de su corpachón sobre mí, me quitó los calzoncillos a la fuerza. A continuación, me obligó a bailar una especie de danza. Otro hombre, que se reía a carcajadas, me preguntó ‘¿Por qué has traído perfumes?’. Le contesté ‘Son regalos para personas que quiero’. ‘¡Vaya, vaya! ¿En vuestra cultura sabéis qué es el amor?’, replicó».

«Cuando se mofaban de mí -ha contado Mohammed-, con lo que más disfrutaban era burlándose de las cartas que había recibido de lectores en Inglaterra. En aquel momento llevaba 12 horas sin comer ni beber, y sin ir al retrete, y como me habían obligado a estar de pie, las piernas se me doblaban. Vomité y perdí el conocimiento. Sólo recuerdo a uno de ellos que me clavaba las uñas en las ojeras, debajo de los ojos, y me arañaba y me desgarraba. Me cogió la cabeza y me hundió los dedos con fuerza por detrás de las orejas, en el nervio auditivo, entre la cabeza y el tímpano. El dolor se volvió insoportable cuando me clavó dos dedos a la vez. Otro hombre me pisó en el cuello, presionando fuerte contra el suelo. Estuve así, tirado, más de una hora. La habitación me pareció un compendio de dolor, ruido y terror».

Llamaron a una ambulancia y encargaron que trasladaran a Mohammed al hospital, pero sólo después de que hubiera firmado una declaración que eximía a los israelíes de los padecimientos sufridos durante su detención. El médico palestino, en un alarde de valor, se negó y advirtió que iba a ponerse en contacto con el acompañante de la embajada holandesa. Alarmados, los israelíes permitieron que se marchara la ambulancia. La respuesta israelí ha sido la habitual en estos casos, que Mohammed era «sospechoso» de contrabando y que «perdió el equilibrio» en el curso de un interrogatorio realizado con todas las garantías, según informó el martes la agencia de noticias Reuters.

Grupos israelíes de defensa de los derechos humanos han documentado las torturas que sufren los palestinos por agentes del Shin Bet con «palizas, inmovilizaciones dolorosas, flexión de la espalda, potro y privación prolongada del sueño». Amnistía Internacional ha informado en numerosas ocasiones de que Israel recurre generalmente a la tortura, cuyas víctimas terminan saliendo de ella como meras sombras de lo que en su día fueron; algunas ni siquiera aparecen. Israel figura en uno de los lugares más altos de la clasificación internacional en asesinatos de periodistas, especialmente de periodistas palestinos, que no reciben más que una atención mínima en comparación con la información prestada al caso de Alan Johnston, de la BBC.

El Gobierno holandés ha manifestado su conmoción por el trato dado a Mohammed Omer. El ex embajador Jan Wijenberg ha declarado que «no se trata de un incidente aislado sino que forma parte de una estrategia a largo plazo para acabar con la vida social, económica y cultural de los palestinos. Soy consciente de la posibilidad de que en un futuro no lejano Mohammed Omer caiga asesinado a manos de cualquier francotirador israelí o por un bombardeo».

Mientras Mohammed recibía el premio en Londres, el nuevo embajador de Israel en Gran Bretaña, Ron Proser, se quejaba públicamente de que hay muchos británicos que ya no aprecian como antes la singularidad de la democracia israelí. Quizá ahora ya la aprecien.

Le contesta Raphael Schutz, embajador de Israel en España: Basta de mentiras (periodísticas) (EL MUNDO, 12/07/08)

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Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Awarded in memory of the great US war correspondent, the prize goes to journalists who expose establishment propaganda, or “official drivel”, as Gellhorn called it. Mohammed shares the prize of £5,000 with Dahr Jamail. At 24, he is the youngest winner. His citation reads: “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless.” The eldest of eight, Mohammed has seen most of his siblings killed or wounded or maimed. An Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while the family were inside, seriously injuring his mother. And yet, says a former Dutch ambassador, Jan Wijenberg, “he is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel”.

Getting Mohammed to London to receive his prize was a major diplomatic operation. Israel has perfidious control over Gaza’s borders, and only with a Dutch embassy escort was he allowed out. Last Thursday, on his return journey, he was met at the Allenby Bridge crossing (to Jordan) by a Dutch official, who waited outside the Israeli building, unaware Mohammed had been seized by Shin Bet, Israel’s infamous security organisation. Mohammed was told to turn off his mobile and remove the battery. He asked if he could call his embassy escort and was told forcefully he could not. A man stood over his luggage, picking through his documents. “Where’s the money?” he demanded. Mohammed produced some US dollars. “Where is the English pound you have?”

“I realised,” said Mohammed, “he was after the award stipend for the Martha Gellhorn prize. I told him I didn’t have it with me. ‘You are lying’, he said. I was now surrounded by eight Shin Bet officers, all armed. The man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: ‘Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.’ He said, ‘This is nothing compared with what you will see now.’ He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said, ‘Why are you bringing perfumes?’ I replied, ‘They are gifts for the people I love’. He said, ‘Oh, do you have love in your culture?’

“As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror.”

An ambulance was called and told to take Mohammed to a hospital, but only after he had signed a statement indemnifying the Israelis from his suffering in their custody. The Palestinian medic refused, courageously, and said he would contact the Dutch embassy escort. Alarmed, the Israelis let the ambulance go. The Israeli response has been the familiar line that Mohammed was “suspected” of smuggling and “lost his balance” during a “fair” interrogation, Reuters reported yesterday.

Israeli human rights groups have documented the routine torture of Palestinians by Shin Bet agents with “beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation”. Amnesty has long reported the widespread use of torture by Israel, whose victims emerge as mere shadows of their former selves. Some never return. Israel is high in an international league table for its murder of journalists, especially Palestinian journalists, who receive barely a fraction of the kind of coverage given to the BBC’s Alan Johnston.

The Dutch government says it is shocked by Mohammed Omer’s treatment. The former ambassador Jan Wijenberg said: “This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life … I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future.”

While Mohammed was receiving his prize in London, the new Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Proser, was publicly complaining that many Britons no longer appreciated the uniqueness of Israel’s democracy. Perhaps they do now.

El último informe del Síndic de Greuges, Rafael Ribó, presentado el pasado 18 de febrero en el Parlament de Catalunya, pone de manifiesto el aumento de denuncias contra los Mossos d’Esquadra por malos tratos a detenidos, y también la situación no aislada, sino recurrente, de malos tratos en las cárceles. El Síndic cita especialmente la prisión de Brians, y hace referencia a la investigación, completamente insuficiente, según el informe, que hizo el Departament de Justícia de la Generalitat.
No hace mucho más, el pasado mes de noviembre, Amnistía Internacional publicaba un informe sobre el Estado español titulado Sal en la herida, en el que, después de hacer un repaso exhaustivo de las carencias existentes en materia de protección contra los malos tratos policiales, la organización no gubernamental exponía los relatos de numerosos casos de brutalidad policial, y denunciaba la impunidad asociada a este tipo de delitos.

ENTRE ESTOS dos acontecimientos, a principios de febrero, la Coordinadora para la Prevención de la Tortura, una plataforma que agrupa a una cuarentena de entidades de todo el Estado español que trabajan por la erradicación de la tortura desde diferentes ámbitos, ha organizado unas jornadas con el objetivo de analizar los avances que ha habido en el Estado en los últimos dos años. Este periodo de valoración incluye la ratificación, por parte del Gobierno español, del protocolo facultativo de la Convención contra la Tortura de Naciones Unidas, y el consiguiente compromiso de creación de mecanismos de prevención de la tortura, como se desprende de este texto legal.
Hay que decir que, en contra de lo que se podría pensar, los datos provisionales aportados en estas jornadas sobre la cifra de denuncias por malos tratos presentadas a lo largo del año 2007 no muestran ninguna tendencia de que estas vayan a disminuir. Al contrario: en el caso de Catalunya, se produce un aumento de casos denunciados. El propio presidente del Comité para la Prevención de la Tortura del Consejo de Europa, Mauro Palma, apuntó de forma expresa que en la última visita del Comité Europeo ha-
bían podido comprobar cómo “se utilizaban de forma abusiva los medios coercitivos en las cárceles catalanas”. La cifra más espeluznante la dan las más de 4.000 denuncias acumuladas en lo que va de siglo, una cantidad de casos que es cada vez más difícil de esconder y que requiere medidas urgentes y eficaces para su erradicación.

SIN EMBARGO, las autoridades siguen actuando tímidamente y expresando dudas sobre la existencia de esta violencia institucional. Hace muy poco, la Secretaria d’Execució Penal de la Generalitat de Catalunya archivó una serie de denuncias procedentes de Can Brians que, paradójicamente, son las mismas denuncias que apunta el Síndic de Greuges en su último informe como casos que se cerraron prematuramente sin argumentaciones ni garantías claras.
En la misma línea, la respuesta del Departament de Justícia a las peticiones mandadas por organismos de derechos humanos catalanes para visitar las cárceles con el fin de entrevistarse con los internos que se lo han pedido por escrito ha sido la prohibición rotunda de estas visitas. El argumento esgrimido por las autoridades es que aún no se ha implantado el mecanismo nacional de prevención previsto en el protocolo de la ONU ya citado.
Hay que recordar que la Coordinadora para la Prevención de la Tortura presentó e hizo pública hace más de un año una propuesta de diseño de mecanismo catalán para la prevención de la tortura que se ajustaba a la línea y el espíritu apuntados por el texto del protocolo facultativo. Una propuesta de mecanismo que ha sido presentada a diferentes instancias institucionales y políticas del país. En este sentido hizo llegar, también, una petición de comparecencia ante la Comisión de Justicia del Parlament, con el objetivo de explicar a los diputados la citada propuesta, petición que no ha sido ni tan solo contestada.

MIENTRAS los casos de denuncias por malos tratos se acumulan, la población reclusa aumenta sin parar y los informes procedentes de diversas instancias se multiplican, pero la realidad que estos informes revelan es negada por las autoridades, temerosas de las protestas y con miedo a que determinadas organizaciones sindicales paralicen la vida institucional. Actitud, esta, que pone de manifiesto la ausencia de una auténtica voluntad política de luchar contra una lacra que persiste y que aumenta de forma alarmante.
Se hace difícil aceptar que la dinámica política del país, enredada en continuas contiendas electorales y equilibrios de fuerzas para gestionar el poder, tenga en materia de derechos humanos una asignatura pendiente, todavía, como es la práctica de la tortura y la existencia de maltratos. Se hace difícil aceptar que, teniendo el Govern las competencias en materia de prisiones, centros de reclusión de menores, Mossos d’Esquadra y policía local, aún no se haya empezado a implantar el mecanismo catalán de prevención, tal como emana del mandato del protocolo facultativo aprobado por el Gobierno español hace ya más de un año.

Twenty-seven years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.”

Today, Tom Ahern might have to say: “We don’t do stuff like that very often.” Or, “We generally don’t do stuff like that.” That is a shame. Virtues requiring caveats are not virtues. Saying a man is honest is a compliment. Saying a man is “generally” honest or honest “quite often” means he lies. The mistreatment of detainees, like honesty, is all or nothing: We either do stuff like that or we do not. It is in our national interest to restore our reputation for the latter. (All opinions here are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Air Force or Defense Department.)

Some accounts of detainee abuse in the war on terrorism are overblown, but others are not. After humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib by forcing them to strip naked and lie in a pile like a stack of firewood or simulating the drowning of detainees to persuade them to talk, we can no longer say we “don’t do stuff like that” — and we do not have to look far to see the damage. The disclosure last month of a manual for Canadian diplomats listing the United States as a country where prisoners might face torture, referring specifically to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was an embarrassment on both sides of the border.

During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the Iraqi armed forces surrendered by the tens of thousands because they believed Americans would treat them humanely. Our troops reached the outskirts of Baghdad in 100 hours and suffered fewer than 150 combat-related fatalities in large part because of these mass surrenders.

Would it have been different if the perception of us as purveyors of torture and humiliation existed back then? Would tens of thousands of Iraqis have put down their weapons if they believed they were going to be humiliated, abused or tortured, or would they have fought? Had they chosen to fight, the war would have lasted longer and cost more and casualties would have skyrocketed. Our reputation in 1991 as the good guys paid dividends and supported our national interests. We must regain that reputation.

We can start by renouncing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees and unreservedly committing to uphold the Detainee Treatment Act, which passed Congress in 2005 but was diluted by a presidential signing statement. We must also reaffirm our adherence to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which the Senate ratified in 1990.

Just as important, we need to come to grips with the practice known as waterboarding, the simulated drowning of a person to persuade him to talk. There was some progress in recent weeks: the C.I.A.’s director, Gen. Michael Hayden, told Congress that the practice may be illegal under current law; the director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, told a reporter, “Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture”; Attorney General Michael Mukasey, after being asked if waterboarding would be torture if done to him, said that “I would feel that it was”; and on Wednesday, Congress passed a law forbidding the C.I.A. to use waterboarding and other harsh techniques.

Why a few others in positions of power still find it so difficult to admit the obvious about waterboarding is astounding. We can never retake the moral high ground when we claim the right to do unto others that which we would vehemently condemn if done to us.

Once we condemn and stop all waterboarding, what do we do in cases where it was conducted? An obvious step is to prohibit the use of evidence derived by waterboarding in criminal proceedings against detainees. Regardless of whether the technique has produced actionable intelligence, it did not produce reliable evidence with a place in our justice system. Imagine the outrage if the Iranian government tied down an American, convinced him the choices were to cooperate or die, and then used his “confession” as evidence in a death-penalty trial.

My policy as the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo was that evidence derived through waterboarding was off limits. That should still be our policy. To do otherwise is not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.

Unfortunately, I was overruled on the question, and I resigned my position to call attention to the issue — efforts that were hampered by my being placed under a gag rule and ordered not to testify at a Senate hearing. While some high-level military and civilian officials have rightly expressed indignation on the issue, the current state can be described generally as indifference and inaction.

At a Senate hearing in December, the legal adviser for the military commissions, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, refused to rule out using evidence obtained by waterboarding. Afterward, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is also a lawyer in the Air Force Reserves, said that no military judge would allow the introduction of such evidence. I hope Senator Graham is right about military judges, and it is unfortunate that any might be put in a position where he has to make such a decision.

Regrettably, at a Pentagon press briefing last week announcing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and five others had been charged and faced the death penalty, General Hartmann again declined to rule out the use of evidence acquired through waterboarding. Military justice has a proud history; this was not one of its finer moments.

That is not to say those subjected to waterboarding get a free pass. If the prosecution can build a persuasive case without using the coerced “confession,” then whether a defendant endured waterboarding is immaterial in determining guilt or innocence.

There are some bad men at Guantánamo Bay and a few deserve death, but only after trials we can truthfully call full, fair and open. In that service, we must declare that evidence obtained by waterboarding be banned in every American system of justice. We must restore our reputation as the good guys who refuse to stoop to the level of our adversaries. We are Americans, and we should be able to state with conviction, “We don’t do stuff like that”.