'US govt. lawyers okayed torture'

Philippe Sands is a British lawyer at Matrix Chambers
and is ‎a professor of international law at University
College London


Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=138719§ionid=3510203


Senior US government lawyers of the Bush administration schemed to circumvent the Geneva Conventions in order to torture the Guantanamo detainees more aggressively, a certified Queen's Counsel says.

In an interview with Press TV, Philip Sands, the author of Torture Team, blamed lawyers close to former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for marginalizing international laws to sanction the torture of detainees at US-run prisons.

Sands cited a memo that Rumsfeld signed on December 2, 2002 as proof of the US officials' crime. The memo sought to help the US government coerce imprisoned suspected terrorists into revealing intelligence.

The memo authorized the use of controversial practices that were later employed at prisons in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Many human rights activists have criticized these techniques, saying they are in violation of international definitions of torture such as Common Article 3 of the 1941 Geneva Conventions.

In 2006, the US Supreme Court ruled that President George W. Bush's decision to waive the Geneva Conventions was wrong and illegal.