Torture will make terrorism – not America – great again, OMCT warns

In a live interviewwith ABC News, President Trump said yesterday he believed torture workedand that his country should “respond to fire with fire”. Yet he added he would leave it to his DefenseSecretary James Mattis and Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo todecide what should be done to keep the U.S. safe, saying he wanted “to do everythingwithin the bounds of what you're allowed to do legally.” These statementscame after a Trump Administration draft executive order about reopening the CIA’soffshore “black site” prisons where terrorism suspects are detained andtortured was leaked to the press.

These comments in line with President Trump’s campaignstatements constitute a U-turn in U.S. policy, which had under PresidentBarak Obama aimed at closing such torture sites and punishing the use ofso-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” instated under the BushAdministration to combat terrorism after the 9/11 attacks. OMCT, which leads acoalition of over 200 anti-torture NGOs around the world, stresses that sacrificingwhat is a core principle of international law and democracy will not yielduseful information to combat terrorism, but only lead to more attacks aroundthe world.

“Torture will maketerrorism – not America – great again,” said OMCT SecretaryGeneral Gerald Staberock. “We won’t defeat the Islamic State by being moreruthless and brutal than it is. We will only manage that feat if we– contrary to those who torture and murder – go by the rules ourselves anduphold human rights against the violations we want to stop.”

Torture and disappearing suspects in secret detention,as was done during the “War on Terror” under President George Bush, will onlypush people across the world to support or sympathize with extremist groupssuch as the Islamic State. OMCT therefore encourages European and other long-standingpartners of the U.S., notably the United Kingdom, to speak out against suchdeclarations by the new U.S. President to make clear that they would not beable to cooperate with U.S. intelligence if torture were authorized.

At odds with his own andwith the facts

Mr.Trump’s declaration is at odds with his own newly appointed intelligence chief Mr. Pompeo,who during his confirmationhearing officially ruled out using torture.

Mostpractitioners agree that torture does not yield useful intelligence, as an authoritativestudy by the United States Senate has concluded in 2014. “The Committee finds, based on a review of CIA interrogation records,that the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques was not aneffective means of obtaining accurate information or gaining detaineecooperation,” the report read.

Republican SenatorMcCain[1],himself a prisoner of war who has been tortured, has also concurred: “I knowfrom personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad thangood intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionallymisleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know theywill say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believeit will stop their suffering. ”

About the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)

OMCT is short for the World Organisation Against Torture – in French, asthe organization created in 1985 is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. OMCTworks for, with and through an international coalition of over 200non-governmental organizations – the SOS-Torture network – fighting torture,summary executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and allother cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment in the world.

For more information, please visit: www.omct.org.

For our latest campaign #HumanAgainstTorture:www.joinhat.org.

Follow us online: Twitter, Facebook, https://vimeo.com/omct, Instagram.

For all media inquiries: Lori Brumat, OMCT Head of Communciations: lb@omct.org.

[1]Sen. John McCain,remarks in CongressionalRecord,daily edition, vol. 160, no. 149 (December 9, 2014), p. S6411