International Day in Support of Victims of Torture: It's Time to Look "Backwards"
On this day 26 years ago, the international community committed to eradicating torture worldwide and the U.N. Convention against Torture came into effect. Since 1998, June 26 has marked International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, an occasion to commemorate the historic treaty, in which nations agreed to end torture, investigate and punish perpetrators, and provide redress to victims. Today we stand in solidarity with victims of torture everywhere.
Today of all days, we must also stop and think about the victims and perpetrators of U.S. torture. We know that during the Bush administration, many hundreds of people were abused or tortured by the CIA and Department of Defense, in Afghanistan, Guantánamo, Iraq, and elsewhere. Their cruel treatment was approved at the highest levels, including, based on his own admission, by then President Bush himself. Although President Obama signed an executive order reinforcing the ban on torture on his second day in office, his administration has decided to "look forward, not backward" at the Bush administration's torture policies, an approach that is both morally and legally wrong. As a result, torturers have escaped criminal and civil liability, and the suffering of many hundreds of victims has gone unacknowledged. This approach fails U.S. and international law, it fails American values—and most critically, it fails the victims of these abhorrent crimes.
In honor of International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the ACLU has formally laid out four steps the Obama administration must take to begin to redress the abuses perpetrated by U.S. officials. You can read about them in more detail here. On the same page, you'll also find an infographic detailing the countries that cooperated with the U.S. torture program, with the efforts that each one has undertaken—or not—to reckon with this stain.
The four steps we lay out are:
- Apology & Compensation: Most victims of U.S. torture have received no official acknowledgment of their suffering, apology for the wrongs inflicted upon them, compensation for their mistreatment, or assistance in recovering from their physical and psychological injuries. This is a tragedy that must be corrected.
- Transparency: Much of what we know about the torture program comes from more than 100,000 pages of documents released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the ACLU, congressional oversight, and media reporting. (You can access all of those documents from our .) But too much remains secret, including an extensive report by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) into the use of torture and abuse by the CIA. The Senate committee should minimally redact and then publicly release the SSCI report and other key records about the program.
- Investigation & Prosecution: The United States has failed to hold criminally accountable any of the top officials who authorized or oversaw the use of torture. The U.S. government must open a full investigation, including an examination of the role played by the senior officials most responsible for the torture program. Where there is sufficient evidence of criminal activity, offenders should be prosecuted.
- Honor Courage: Many U.S. servicemembers and civilian officials risked their careers by objecting to official torture and other cruelty. However, the stories of these American heroes are largely unknown, even as officials who authorized brutal torture methods have escaped criminal and civil liability. A former top Bush Justice Department official, James Comey, who twice signed off on legal memos authorizing waterboarding and other torture tactics, was just nominated to head the FBI. President Obama should formally honor the public servants who, when our nation went off course, stayed true to our most fundamental ideals and international commitments.
By invoking the state secrets privilege and other procedural obstacles, the government has succeeded in persuading courts not to rule on the lawfulness of the Bush administration's torture program (see examples here and here). As a result, not a single victim of U.S. torture has had their day in a U.S. court. This sends the dangerous signal to government officials at home and abroad that there will be few consequences for torture and other brutality. It also undermines American credibility abroad as a defender of human rights. We can begin to heal the wounds our government has inflicted and to rebuild our reputation as a champion of human rights by recognizing, apologizing to, and compensating the victims of the cruel policies of the Bush administration.
International Day in Support of Victims of Torture presents us with an opportunity to stop and remember the many hundreds of people victimized by the United States. Honoring victims of U.S. torture requires meaningful action on all four of those tracks. Recognizing their suffering is a critical start.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.” “The Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,”said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.” The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law’s profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court’s decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users’ First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government’s ban on TikTok as a vindication of users’ First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign “propaganda.” But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its “motivating ideology” or “perspective,” and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. “The government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. “The Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit’s erroneous ruling.” Finally, the brief underscores that the government can’t impose this type of sweeping ban unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government’s invocation of “national security” as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.” You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter IslamophobiaACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted ManTrabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man
Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.