Why we must insist on accountability for torture

When Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a prosecutor to investigate violations of U.S. anti-torture laws during interrogation of terrorist suspects, strong reactions erupted.

The public often sees this issue painted with divisive partisan colors. From our perspective as professionals who care for torture survivors, accountability for torture is not a political question.

For more than 20 years, the Minneapolis-based Center for Victims of Torture has treated torture survivors in the United States and around the world. We help individuals and their families recover from the devastating psychological effects of torture and rebuild their lives.

Through our treatment of approximately 18,000 survivors, we know that there is no justification for violations of fundamental human rights. The physical and emotional consequences of torture are devastating, and can persist for years if untreated. Our clients, many of whom live in Minnesota, struggle to move past the trauma that they have endured.

Many of our clients have fled countries where the governments use torture and cruelty to oppress the voices of the opposition and civil society. For these governments, there is no accountability; the violence and trauma that they perpetrate is constrained only by their own strategic interests.

If we in the United States uphold our laws prohibiting torture, we will send a compelling message to these governments that the global community does not tolerate violations of basic human dignity.

The Center for Victims of Torture is committed to working toward a world in which torture is eradicated. Mechanisms that prevent torture from occurring in the first place are important, not only to survivors, but to the clinicians who treat these individuals and all of us who are part of the torture-treatment movement.

We believe that whenever evidence of violations of the absolute ban on torture and cruelty surfaces, it should be investigated irrespective of who the perpetrator is.

There remains a need to both broaden the scope of the prosecutor's investigation and to assess how such tragic errors in judgment became U.S. policy. On the whole, however, this first step to enforce our anti-torture laws is an extraordinarily positive development.

Justice requires a full account of past mistakes. Powerful public policy reasons require that individuals responsible for lawbreaking be held accountable.

We have a responsibility to not only promise that torture will never happen again, but to take actual steps to ensure that it does not. Prosecution of responsible individuals will make clear that future abuses will not be tolerated. Upholding our anti-torture laws goes hand in hand with preventing torture.

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Rosa E. Garcia-Peltoniemi, Ph.D., L.P., has been senior consulting clinician at the Center for Victims of Torture since 1987.

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