CCR Praises Obama Orders, Cautions Against Escape Hatch for Torture

In response to President Obama's signing of new executive orders today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued the following statement:

We welcome the beginning of the end of lawlessness. Under
the previous administration, executive orders became synonymous with
secrecy, torture and attempts to override the Constitution. It is
genuinely uplifting to see them now used to set things right. President
Obama's orders today are an important first step in restoring the rule
of law; let us take the next steps with great care not to open the way
for a return to the darkness of these last years.

The order to close Guantanamo, though it provides little detail
and allows perhaps too much time to get it done given the pressing
issues at stake, is a good start. We believe the president will be able
to close Guantanamo in less than a year: the priority must be to
repatriate the many men who can go home and find safe havens for the
approximately 60 who would face torture or persecution.

The government has to charge the rest of the detainees in
federal criminal court. There can be no third way, no new schemes for
indefinite or preventive detention or alternative national security
courts. Any move in that direction would discredit all of the new
administration's efforts in the eyes of the world.

The order to close the CIA black sites where people were
held in secret for the purpose of torture is to be applauded. There is
no place for such black holes in a democracy. Their intended purpose is
to circumvent the Geneva conventions and our own laws. If the order
leaves the option of reviving those sites, it is more symbolic than a
true reversal.

The order to make all agencies abide by the Army Field
Manual's acceptable interrogation tactics is perhaps the most important
gesture toward restoring our moral authority as a nation. The Center
for Constitutional Rights represents so many men who were brutally
tortured by our government that this hits home for us in a way that it
may not for those with no faces and lives to attach to the story.

Again, we caution that the order may leave an escape hatch
if the CIA should want more tactics, i.e. torture, available in its
arsenal. The Geneva conventions should be the only arbiter of what is
possible for governments to do to human beings.

Today's orders are filled with promise. In addition, to ensure
no future administration will take us back to these dark times, there
needs to be individual accountability for the torture program, and other
crimes committed. Prosecution is the only way to deter future
lawbreakers. These orders are the right start, let us make sure this
does not happen again.

To read the text of the executive orders, click here or download the attachments below.

CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years -
sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the
first attorney to meet with a former CIA "ghost detainee." CCR has been
responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono
lawyers across the country in order to represent the men at Guantanamo,
ensuring that nearly all have the option of legal representation. CCR
represented the detainees with co-counsel in the most recent argument
before the Supreme Court on December 5, 2007.