Torture Survivors Should Have the Right to Sue

by Michael Jones · 2010-02-05 09:42:00 UTC
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TortureImagine if your next door neighbor was a former foreign military official who ordered the use of torture, rape, and murder on innocent civilians in their home country. Wouldn't you like to see them brought to justice, instead of living an accountability-free life here in the United States?

If only common sense could judge this one. Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court will, when it hears arguments next month in the case of Samantar v. Yousuf. At issue will be whether the nine Justices believe that former foreign government officials who take up residence in the U.S. can have charges brought against them for egregious human rights violations they may have committed back in their home country.

Human rights abusers and torture proponents would like immunity here in the States. That would afford them a life where they can buy a nice home in the suburbs, snag a great cable TV package, have groceries delivered to their house, and put up a nice picket fence. Meanwhile, the people they tortured would still have to live with the daily nightmares of their pain and anguish.

Oh, Supreme Court. First you hand over our elections to foreign corporations. Now might you hand over immunity to human rights abusers, too?

Human rights groups aren't taking this one lying down. Instead, they're pummeling the U.S. Supreme Court with briefs urging the nation's highest court to rule that a piece of U.S. legislation -- the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act -- does not give immunity to foreign leaders who abuse their citizens. One of the briefs, signed by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, and Human Rights First (among others), argues that torturers shouldn't be given a Get Out of Jail Free card.

"Survivors of torture have a legal right to a remedy. U.S. courts must enforce that right," said Vienna Colucci, Senior Advisor for Policy at Amnesty International USA. Seriously, would Justice Scalia or Justice Alito really want to tell torture survivors to just keep their torments and pain to themselves?

The specific case in question centers around a former Somali military general, Mohamed Ali Samantar. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia now, but years ago he ordered the torture of Bashe Abdi Yousuf, a former Somali citizen who now lives here in the U.S. What did Samantar order? Well, he had military officers tie Yousuf up. He had officers electrocute Yousuf. And then he ordered that Yousuf be pinned under heavy rocks for hours at a time.

Does the U.S. Supreme Court really want to affirm that kind of behavior?

Photo credit: takomabibelot

Michael Jones
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