More on the prisoner abuse scandal
May. 22nd, 2004 01:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyTo the Editor:
The Pentagon-approved interrogation techniques that deprive prisoners of sleep and force them to stand in "stress positions" for extended periods (front page, May 15) are both disturbing and illegal.
In 1999, a federal court of appeals ruled that conditions intended to prevent a prisoner from sleeping would violate the Constitution. In 2002, the Supreme Court held that handcuffing an Alabama prisoner to a hitching post and making him stand with his arms raised for seven hours was "obvious cruelty" and "antithetical to human dignity."
While the military has now stated, as a result of public pressure, that these illegal techniques are banned in our prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are still allowed in other military prisons like Guantánamo Bay. It is time for the military to unequivocally ban such officially sanctioned abuse of prisoners.
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER
Director
A.C.L.U. National Prison Project
Washington, May 18, 2004
http://nytimes.com/2004/05/22/opinion/L22ACLU.html
The Pentagon-approved interrogation techniques that deprive prisoners of sleep and force them to stand in "stress positions" for extended periods (front page, May 15) are both disturbing and illegal.
In 1999, a federal court of appeals ruled that conditions intended to prevent a prisoner from sleeping would violate the Constitution. In 2002, the Supreme Court held that handcuffing an Alabama prisoner to a hitching post and making him stand with his arms raised for seven hours was "obvious cruelty" and "antithetical to human dignity."
While the military has now stated, as a result of public pressure, that these illegal techniques are banned in our prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are still allowed in other military prisons like Guantánamo Bay. It is time for the military to unequivocally ban such officially sanctioned abuse of prisoners.
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER
Director
A.C.L.U. National Prison Project
Washington, May 18, 2004
http://nytimes.com/2004/05/22/opinion/L22ACLU.html
