Change you can believe in

From the blog, The Lift:

A group of 4 lawyers which are part of the ‘Association for the Dignity of Prisoners’ (Asociacion pro dignidad de los presos y presas de espana) Boyé Gonzalo, Isabel Elbal, Luis Velasco and Antonio Segura), filed a criminal complaint against Jay Bybee, Douglas Feith, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, John Yoo and William J.Haynes II on the 17th of March at Spain’s Audienca nacionial for committing crimes under Chapter III of Title XXIV of the Spanish Criminal Code (”Crimes against protected persons and property during an armed conflict”). The lawsuit claimed the six former aides.

“participated actively and decisively in the creation, approval and execution of a judicial framework that allowed for the deprivation of fundamental rights of a large number of prisoners, the implementation of new interrogation techniques including torture, the legal cover for the treatment of those prisoners, the protection of the people who participated in illegal tortures and, above all, the establishment of impunity for all the government workers, military personnel, doctors and others who participated in the detention centre at Guantánamo”.
The case was not formally accepted by the court yet, but Baltasar Garzon has ordered the prosecution to start a criminal probe against the six. Gonzalo Boyé, one of the four lawyers who wrote the lawsuit, said the prosecutor would have little choice under Spanish law but to approve the prosecution.

“The only route of escape the prosecutor might have is to ask whether there is ongoing process in the US against these people,” Boyé told the Observer. “This case will go ahead. It will be against the law not to go ahead.” Boyé predicted that Garzón would issue subpoenas in the next two weeks, summoning the six former officials to present evidence.

If Garzón decided to go further and issued arrest warrants against the six, it would mean they would risk detention and extradition if they travelled to Spain or any of the 24 nations that participate in the European extraditions convention (it would have to follow a more formal extradition process in other countries beyond the 24).. It would also present President Barack Obama with a serious dilemma. He would have either to open proceedings against the accused or tackle an extradition request from Spain.
Philippe Sands, whose book Torture Team first made the case against the Bush lawyers and which Boyé said was instrumental in formulating the Spanish case, said yesterday:

“What this does is force the Obama administration to come to terms with the fact that torture has happened and to decide, sooner rather than later, whether it is going to criminally investigate. If it decides not to investigate, then inevitably the Garzón investigation, and no doubt many others, will be given the green light.”

Signatories to CAT [Convention Against Torture--mtn] have the authority to investigate torture cases, especially when their own nationals have been involved. The current criminal case evolved out of an investigation into allegations, sustained by Spain’s Supreme Court, that Spanish citizens had been tortured in Guantánamo.

Read the rest here.

More discussion at Opinio Juris.

If America doesn't pursue investigation into its own crimes--and shame on the Obama administration for not taking the lead on this--then thank God someone else will.

For good measure, take a look at Scott Horton's interview with Jane Mayer. Her book, The Dark Side, claims that the Red Cross concluded that the CIA's 'interrogation regime' is torturous. The torture part may not be news, but the declaration by a major international institution is.