I could not agree more with the recent decision taken that American forces will be handing over control of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison to the newly elected Iraqi authorities.

When this is done the line will have been drawn under one of the most shameful episodes of the Iraq war.

It seems that the request was made by Iraq’s new human rights minister, Bakhtiar Amin, who sought control of the four main detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib.

It is an important sign of Iraq’s newly emerging sovereignty that the new authorities will take charge of its detainees and its detention facilities.

Let us sincerely hope that the shameful incidents that took place during both the Saddam Hussein era and in the post-Hussein period will not be repeated under the new administration in Baghdad.

In writing I say so as one strongly committed to the fight against terrorism.

This was the gist of my intervention in Warsaw during a recent Council of Europe meeting when I said that we need to strike a fine balance between human rights needs and security considerations. We cannot afford to tilt the scale either way, particularly in the post 9/11 scenario.

There are many who stand to be blamed for this shameful behaviour: those who sanctioned such behaviour, those who deployed it and those who gave it the tacit nod of approval.

What worries me even more about the torture inflicted in these prisons is that most of the people who were being tortured there were actually innocent. And they are, in their near absolute majority, Muslims.

There are two particular books which should provide discomfort not only to their readers but also to the governments directly responsible for the deeds perpetrated therein.

I am referring to The Torture Papers : The Road To Abu Ghraib as well as Chain Of Command : The Road From 9/11 To Abu Ghraib.

They both provide a blow by blow account of how torture was often used as a standard policy after the events of 11 September 2001.

There is nothing but a strongly perverted sense of logic in the argument of deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo, who wrote a memo in which he reasoned that because Afghanistan under the Taliban was a “failed state” and because al-Qaeda was not a state, then the Geneva Conventions were applicable to neither the Taliban nor to al-Qaeda operatives, given that the conventions dealt only with “states”.

People were in two minds about what shocked them most. Whether it was the torture sessions caught on film and photograph at Abu Ghraib or the fact that torture in these centres had become routine.

I do not intend to draw on past experiences that we read about of goings on in Vietnam and Cambodia, but no matter the level of terrorism, the institutionalisation of torture by a country’s armed forces can never be accepted or tolerated.

Torturers apparently enjoyed what they did so much that they took photos and even kept a record of it all, as if it was one big orgy. Which indeed it was – an orgy of violence.

I recently read an article by Ziauddin Sardar who could not have summarised it all more succinctly and accurately.

He wrote: “Almost every segment of society has been involved, one way or another, in sanctioning torture: the highly educated writers of the memos that argued for torture, the military that denied its use, the intelligence services that suppressed the evidence, the lawyers who misinterpreted the law in ‘the cause of evil’, the press, which underplayed the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the film and TV industry that represents torture as necessary and routine and the public that refused to believe the truth.’

Now nobody has anymore excuses.

We all know the truth.

By supporting and sanctioning such policies, that make torture normal, routine and “democratic”, we will only be exposing ourselves to public shame and embarrassment. And yes, condemnation.

If we take Iraq, it not only needs a new constitution but it is also crying out for a credible justice and penal system.

Lest this article be interpreted as being weak on the anti-terrorist campaign, this could not be further from the truth. I have personally always condemned terrorism without reservation, while our party even included a specific condemnation of the 9/11 incident in a policy document.

In fact the other day I even lamented the fact that the new EU coordinator for its anti-terrorist strategy had complained that Europe was still weak in its anti-terrorism campaign one year or so after Madrid. The main reason for this – according to the EU chief coordinator – is that little has changed in practical cooperation among member states, as they failed to implement what they had agreed upon.

This obviously does not necessarily entail making recourse to Abu Ghraib tactics!

e-mail : [email protected]

Leo Brincat is the main opposition spokesman on Foreign Affairs and IT.

I could not agree more with the recent decision taken that American forces will be handing over control of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison to the newly elected Iraqi authorities.

When this is done the line will have been drawn under one of the most shameful episodes of the Iraq war.

It seems that the request was made by Iraq’s new human rights minister, Bakhtiar Amin, who sought control of the four main detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib.

It is an important sign of Iraq’s newly emerging sovereignty that the new authorities will take charge of its detainees and its detention facilities.

Let us sincerely hope that the shameful incidents that took place during both the Saddam Hussein era and in the post-Hussein period will not be repeated under the new administration in Baghdad.

In writing I say so as one strongly committed to the fight against terrorism.

This was the gist of my intervention in Warsaw during a recent Council of Europe meeting when I said that we need to strike a fine balance between human rights needs and security considerations. We cannot afford to tilt the scale either way, particularly in the post 9/11 scenario.

There are many who stand to be blamed for this shameful behaviour: those who sanctioned such behaviour, those who deployed it and those who gave it the tacit nod of approval.

What worries me even more about the torture inflicted in these prisons is that most of the people who were being tortured there were actually innocent. And they are, in their near absolute majority, Muslims.

There are two particular books which should provide discomfort not only to their readers but also to the governments directly responsible for the deeds perpetrated therein.

I am referring to The Torture Papers : The Road To Abu Ghraib as well as Chain Of Command : The Road From 9/11 To Abu Ghraib.

They both provide a blow by blow account of how torture was often used as a standard policy after the events of 11 September 2001.

There is nothing but a strongly perverted sense of logic in the argument of deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo, who wrote a memo in which he reasoned that because Afghanistan under the Taliban was a “failed state” and because al-Qaeda was not a state, then the Geneva Conventions were applicable to neither the Taliban nor to al-Qaeda operatives, given that the conventions dealt only with “states”.

People were in two minds about what shocked them most. Whether it was the torture sessions caught on film and photograph at Abu Ghraib or the fact that torture in these centres had become routine.

I do not intend to draw on past experiences that we read about of goings on in Vietnam and Cambodia, but no matter the level of terrorism, the institutionalisation of torture by a country’s armed forces can never be accepted or tolerated.

Torturers apparently enjoyed what they did so much that they took photos and even kept a record of it all, as if it was one big orgy. Which indeed it was – an orgy of violence.

I recently read an article by Ziauddin Sardar who could not have summarised it all more succinctly and accurately.

He wrote: “Almost every segment of society has been involved, one way or another, in sanctioning torture: the highly educated writers of the memos that argued for torture, the military that denied its use, the intelligence services that suppressed the evidence, the lawyers who misinterpreted the law in ‘the cause of evil’, the press, which underplayed the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the film and TV industry that represents torture as necessary and routine and the public that refused to believe the truth.’

Now nobody has anymore excuses.

We all know the truth.

By supporting and sanctioning such policies, that make torture normal, routine and “democratic”, we will only be exposing ourselves to public shame and embarrassment. And yes, condemnation.

If we take Iraq, it not only needs a new constitution but it is also crying out for a credible justice and penal system.

Lest this article be interpreted as being weak on the anti-terrorist campaign, this could not be further from the truth. I have personally always condemned terrorism without reservation, while our party even included a specific condemnation of the 9/11 incident in a policy document.

In fact the other day I even lamented the fact that the new EU coordinator for its anti-terrorist strategy had complained that Europe was still weak in its anti-terrorism campaign one year or so after Madrid. The main reason for this – according to the EU chief coordinator – is that little has changed in practical cooperation among member states, as they failed to implement what they had agreed upon.

This obviously does not necessarily entail making recourse to Abu Ghraib tactics!

e-mail : [email protected]

Leo Brincat is the main opposition spokesman on Foreign Affairs and IT.