By Salama A Salama The issue of torture in US prisons is a serious one. Torture is becoming official policy, systematically committed in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other secret interrogation locations in European and Arab countries. It is time human rights groups and international organisations took a stand on the matter. Thanks to the US, torture has spread across the globe, especially in the Third World, with little regard for democracy, justice and human rights. When torture becomes an integral part of the foreign policy of the world's unrivalled superpower, the writing is on the wall. When that power, the country claiming to be sponsoring democracy in the Middle East, defends torture with righteous zeal, one cannot be surprised when security services in Arab and non-Arab countries do the same. The world has been gripped with terror over bird flu, a medical problem that can be confronted through a variety of ways. Bird flu can be defeated through precautionary measures. But what do we do when torture and degradation become standard practice in the much-hyped fight against terror? The virus of injustice and arrogance is one that runs deep in the human psyche; one for which humanity has found no antidote. Torture is a form of moral and psychological decay that has the potential to undermine any regime of government. The US is trying to establish an international system of oppression and torture. It is sponsoring forms of repression that the world thought were dead along with Nazism and the totalitarianism of the Soviet regime. One of the winning films in the Berlin Festival is The Road to Guantanamo, which is based on a true story. When fresh photographs were recently released of torture in Abu Ghraib, the world was horrified by the extent of the atrocities. Atrocities couldn't have happened in such a systematic manner without approval at the highest echelons of the US military. The acts of torture we've recently seen cannot be explained by psychopathic propensities alone. This is why the UN secretary-general has broken four years of silence to demand the closure of the Guantanamo detention facilities and the referral to trial of its inmates. Reports by the UN human rights office on the treatment of Guantanamo inmates leave us in no doubt about the seriousness of the matter. The current US political culture views torture as a legitimate political tool. Washington has rejected the UN secretary-general's request, saying that the reports were groundless. The US is committing crimes against humanity, and this is not the entire story. The US is a major power that can claim innocence and buy loyalties anywhere in the world. Right now, the US is encouraging small countries to engage in torture. Recently, The Sunday Times ran a report about a new centre the US created near Rabat with the purpose of interrogating Al-Qaeda suspects. Human rights groups in Egypt and other countries are duly worried. These groups have denounced US practices and are trying to uncover the irregularities underway in Arab prisons. But what happened in Abu Ghraib, and what is happening in Guantanamo, calls for immediate action. Human rights groups and organisations should file lawsuits at the International Criminal Court concerning US practices. The UN Office of the Higher Commissioner for Human Rights has issued a report detailing US practices: there is enough material in that report for legal action against US officials.
