(Newswire.net — October 28, 2014) — Twelve Nobel Peace Prize winners wrote an open letter to fellow laureate, US President Barack Obama, that was posted on TheCommunity.com. The letter asks for “full disclosure to the American people of the extent and use of torture and rendition by American soldiers, operatives, and contractors, as well as the authorization of torture and rendition by American officials.”
In the letter published Sunday, Nobel Prize winners asked for a concrete action to close secret CIA’s international prisons, as well as the notorious US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. These “black site” prisons were used in post 9/11 war on terror period to detain and Interrogate anyone who was connected, suspected do be connected or even remotely involved in the alleged plot against US.
“In recent decades, by accepting the flagrant use of torture and other violations of international law in the name of combating terrorism, American leaders have eroded the very freedoms and rights that generations of their young gave their lives to defend,” the laureates wrote.
The Nobel Peace Prize winners point out in the letter that the US government has set a negative example for other regimes around the world to follow, using torture as a legitimate practice including against American soldiers abroad. “In losing their way, they have made us all vulnerable,” wrote the laureates.
The letter addressed to the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner, US President Barack Obama, urges him to follow principles of international law outlined in the Geneva Conventions and in the UN Convention Against Torture.
The CIA’s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program was active from September 11, 2001 to 2006. The investigation by the US Senate Intelligence Committee revealed, among other findings, that the CIA purposely deceived the US Justice Department to obtain legal justification for the use of inhuman interrogation methods. The investigation ran from March of 2009 to December 2012 and a 6,000 page report, of which only 500 pages, partially-redacted, will be released released for the public to see.
The report emphasizes 20 main conclusions about the CIA’s intensive interrogation program that intentionally evaded the White House and Congress.
Sources familiar with the unreleased report on the US Senate’s $40 million investigation, say the CIA is blamed for interrogation tatics amounting to torture based on international legal standards, not top officials of the George W. Bush administration.
The open letter to Obama was signed by past Nobel winners José Ramos-Horta, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, F.W. De Klerk, Leymah Gbowee, Muhammad Yunus, John Hume, Bishop Carlos X. Belo, Betty Williams, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Jody Williams, Oscar Arias Sanchez, and Mohammad ElBaradei.