NOVANEWS
Outside the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California, human rights activists call for the firing and prosecution of law professor John Yoo, who rendered legal opinions justifying torture in the George W. Bush administration. Staff photo Phil Pasquini.
On Dec. 12—three days after the release of 528 pages of the 6,000-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture during the George W. Bush administration—CODEPINK and other human rights organizations held a press conference outside the Berkeley School of Law on the University of California campus calling for the firing and prosecution of Prof. John Yoo. The activists also demanded that the tenured law professor’s recent faculty chair endowment be rescinded.
As deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration, Yoo drafted memoranda justifying torture during interrogation of detainees.
“Yoo’s recent faculty chair endowment is a slap in the face to the human rights community,” Cynthia Papermaster, one of the organizers of the press conference, told attendees. In the memos Yoo wrote while with the Department of Justice, he redefined “torture” as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which he deemed to be legal. “Yoo gave the legal green light to the Bush administration to do what they were already doing at the time, which was waterboarding detainees,” she pointed out. “Under the United Nations Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment any complicity in torture must be prosecuted, and our attorney general must act to prosecute John Yoo.”
George Lippman of the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission reminded the crowd that “international treaties are the supreme law of the land, and anyone who violates these laws is subject to prosecution.”
For several years, activists throughout the San Francisco Bay Area have relentlessly campaigned to bring the “torture memo writer” to justice for his role in supporting torture, indefinite detention and other violations of the Geneva Conventions on humane treatment of prisoners.
In addition to Yoo, the human rights activists called for the prosecution of former Vice President Dick Cheney, his former chief of staff and longtime government attorney David Addington, and Judge Jay Bybee (Yoo’s former colleague in the Bush administration).
In his 50-page “Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzalez, Counsel to the President,” otherwise known as the “Bybee” or “Torture” memo, Bybee concluded that the Convention Against Torture prohibits only “extreme acts.” He also stated in his memorandum that “for an act to constitute torture…it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure.” To any ordinary individual, waterboarding of any length would be “difficult to endure,” but Bybee considered less than 40 seconds to be allowable. He also provided legal justification for sleep deprivation of up to 11 days and “walling” (slamming a prisoner’s head against a wall).
CODEPINK and other activist groups gathered more than 100 signatures of UC alumni, current students and members of the community on a petition calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate Yoo. Papermaster, accompanied by Washington Report staff photographer Phil Pasquini, delivered the petition to Areca H’Lael Smit, chief of staff to University of California Dean of Law Sujit Choudhry. Papermaster also requested a meeting with Dean Choudhry.
