Background 2009 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Convention, adopted in 1984 and ratified by 146 countries, is the clearest and most detailed expression of the international community’s repudiation of such inhumane acts. Torture not only scars the body and afflicts the psyche; it is a brutal assault on human dignity, the value at the heart of every human rights principle. And international law is unequivocal: torture and ill-treatment are prohibited absolutely, in all situations and at all times, and can never be justified. Indeed, states are under a strict duty to prosecute anyone who tortures or who is complicit in it. Global counterterrorism efforts have done incalculable damage to this most basic principle. The public account is still incomplete but what is already known about the scale of US abuses is staggering. In the years following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US officially sanctioned the use of torture and ill-treatment (including waterboarding or simulated drowning, painful stress positions, and exposure to cold); held and abused terrorism suspects in secret CIA detention; and “rendered” dozens of terrorism suspects to torture in other countries.1 Although European governments eventually distanced themselves publicly from the US-led “war on terrorism,” there is credible evidence of European complicity in serious abuses. The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly concluded in June 2006 that some member states were responsible for hosting secret prisons, handing over suspects to the United States for illegal detention, and facilitating renditions by providing information and allowing use of national territory and airspace, among other abuses.2 The European Parliament of the European Union adopted a damning report in February 2007 after its own inquiry criticizing many EU countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom, for allowing their airspace to be used for CIA rendition flights.3 1 See Human Rights Watch reports, Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention, vol. 19, no.1(G), February 2007, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/02/26/ghost-prisoner; Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan, 1-56432-300-5, April 2008, www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/04/07/double-jeopardy-0; The Road to Abu Ghraib, June 2004, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2004/06/08/road-abu-ghraib-0; Off the Record: U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the “War on Terror,” June 2007, www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/06/07/record. 2 Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe, “Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states, June 12, 2006, http://assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2006/20060606_Ejdoc162006PartII-FINAL.pdf (accessed November 11, 2009). 3 European Parliament, “Report on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners,” January 30, 2007, http://www.europarl.europa.edu/comparl/tempcom/tdip/final_report_en.pdf (accessed November 11, 2009). 5 Human Rights Watch | June 2010