Spanish courts accuse former US officials of torture

It took a while until the American media began reporting that Criminal proceedings had begun in Spain against six senior officials in the Bush administration - Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defense; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon’s general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers- for the use of torture against detainees in Guantánamo Bay. Being that the accused were from the Bush administration, it has been mostly the conservative media such as the Wall Street Journal which has reported it as “an assault on American sovereignty and the integrity of the U.S. legal system.” The so-called liberal media has remained silent or very low key in its reporting as the Obama administration has been reluctant to comment on it. As the WSJ wrote “while some in the Obama Administration may be tempted to cheer on for partisan reasons, they risk helping to set a precedent that could easily come back to hurt them.”
As the story unfolds, the 98-page complaint is based on the Geneva Conventions and the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which is binding on 145 countries, including Spain and the United States. Countries that are party to this convention have the authority to investigate torture cases, especially when a citizen has been abused. The complain was filed by the Spanish international human rights lawyer Gonzalo Boye with the National Court in Madrid, which specializes in international crimes, charging the six top-level officials with “providing a legalistic framework to justify the use of torture of American prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.” In this case, five prisoners in Guantánamo were either Spanish citizens or residents. The court assigned the case to Judge Garzón. His acceptance of the case and referral of it to the prosecutor made it likely that a criminal investigation would follow. If Garzón decided to issue arrest warrants against the six, it would mean they would risk detention and extradition if they traveled outside the US. This would also become a difficult choice for President Barack Obama as he would have either to open proceedings against the accused or tackle an extradition request from Spain. He certainly cannot ignore this as the 1984 UN Convention against Torture, signed and ratified by the US, requires states to investigate allegations of torture committed on their territory or by their nationals, or extradite them to stand trial elsewhere.