Torture

David Cole on the torture of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was dispatched to Syria by US authorities for one year where he was tortured even though he was innocent. US courts have recently rejected his attempts to sue the US government.
He also makes the important point that US courts have accepted trials and suits by foreigners against foreigners for crimes committed abroad, but this is not acceptable for US officials:
The usual reluctance to have a US court pass judgment on overseas conduct not involving any American citizens was overcome by the fact that the prohibition on torture is universal. Since that decision, US courts have adjudicated human rights claims involving brutality in Burma, South Africa, Yugoslavia, Nigeria, Mexico, the Philippines, Argentina, and many other nations. The Supreme Court upheld the practice in 2004. Yet according to the Second Circuit, the same sorts of claims are too sensitive to permit adjudication when brought against US officials.

The notion that domestic courts can hold another country's torturers accountable is not an American anomaly, as the Italian case illustrates. International law recognizes a principle of "universal jurisdiction," which holds that torturers can be held to account anywhere. Applying that principle, a Spanish judge in 1998 issued an arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity, including torture. Great Britain's highest court, the Law Lords, ruled that the warrant could be enforced to extradite Pinochet from England to stand trial. (In the end, Pinochet was returned to Chile on medical grounds, but was then indicted there.) The same Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, is currently investigating whether criminal charges should be leveled against the Bush administration lawyers responsible for authorizing torture at Guantánamo—John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Jay Bybee, William Haynes, and Douglas Feith. The torture they authorized was inflicted on several Spanish citizens at Guantánamo, causing terrorist charges against them in Spain, also prosecuted by Garzón, to be dismissed.

The principle of universal jurisdiction recognizes that if a country is responsibly pursuing accountability for its own wrongs, a foreign court should defer to the domestic process. In his speech at the National Archives on May 21, 2009, President Obama insisted that the Justice Department and the courts "can work through and punish any violations of our laws or miscarriages of justice." Cases like Arar's belie his confidence, as does the Justice Department's failure even to investigate the lawyers who authorized the CIA and the military to engage in torture and disappearances as a means of getting suspects to talk. If we fail to carry out this responsibility, other nations, using principles that the US did much to develop, may take up the charge.