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“INTRODUCTION OF THE ``TORTURE OUTSOURCING PREVENTION ACT''” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E474 on March 6, 2007.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
INTRODUCTION OF THE ``TORTURE OUTSOURCING PREVENTION ACT''
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HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY
of massachusetts
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Mr. MARKEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce, for the third time, legislation to prohibit the outsourcing of torture by the United States government. I am hopeful that this Congress the House will finally take up legislation on this matter.
I know that policy battles can drag on for seemingly endless lengths of time. I remember that Senator Proxmire spent nearly 20 years arguing that the United States needed to ratify the Convention Against Genocide before finally succeeding to rally the Senate to action. But I know too that we cannot delay any longer in addressing the Administration's practice of transferring detainees for interrogation or other purposes to countries where there are substantial grounds for believing that the transferred individuals could face torture. I feel a rising optimism that we can end this repugnant and counterproductive practice of so-
called extraordinary rendition soon, and certainly within the timeframe of this Congress.
There is no doubt that the United States is greatly challenged by violent extremists, and the terrible attacks of September 11 were not so much attacks upon our country as upon the values of liberalism, openness and democracy that we champion throughout the world. But there is a right way and a wrong way to conduct ourselves as we defend the United States from murderous criminals and terrorists.
The wrong way is to lower our standards of conduct further and further for the sake of expediency. The wrong way is to compromise our core values of human rights and dignity for all people in the face of an enemy who disdains such ideals. The wrong way is to undermine and destroy international treaties guaranteeing all people security from cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment; especially when these treaties are the last line of defense for our soldiers and personnel overseas unfortunate enough to be captured on the battlefield.
The right way is to proudly and publicly hold the United States to the highest standards and prove again that our nation is founded upon the rule of law.
The practice of extraordinary rendition is a travesty, and it is illegal under any reasonable reading of U.S. and international law. The Convention Against Torture, ratified by the Senate in 1986, provides that the United States may not ``expel, return, or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.'' And in 1998, this Congress passed the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act
(FARRA), which states that ``it shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise affect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.''
Both the Convention Against Torture and FARRA prohibit the transfer of an individual to a state where there are ``substantial grounds for believing'' that the individual will face torture. How has the Administration gotten around this prohibition when sending detainees to countries like Syria, Jordan, Uzbekistan, and Egypt; countries which our own State Department reports are habitual abusers of human rights? The Administration has received, and accepted, so-called ``diplomatic assurances'' from these torturing countries that they will not abuse transferred detainees. It is shocking that the Bush Administration has repeatedly and cynically accepted the word of known torturers without any mechanism to ensure that these promises were not broken.
The Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act will require that the Secretary of State compile an annual list of all countries in the world known to use torture; it will be illegal to transfer individuals to the countries on this list, regardless of the citizenship or physical location of the individuals. Furthermore, the Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act will close the loophole of ``diplomatic assurances'' which the Administration has exploited to outsource the torture of prisoners to countries such as Syria.
The Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act provides waiver authority over the prohibition to the Secretary of State when it is certified to the appropriate Congressional committees that the country in question no longer practices torture and there is a verifiable mechanism in place to assure that the person transferred will not face torture.
The Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act does not inhibit treaty-based extraditions in any way. In those cases, current law already provides that an individual facing extradition may challenge the extradition in the courts with an assertion of their rights under the Convention Against Torture.
Madam Speaker, it is past time for the Congress to end the practice of extraordinary rendition. I urge adoption of this important legislation.
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