Letter to President Obama Regarding Accountability for Torturers

Letter to President Obama Regarding Accountability for Torturers

11 December 2015

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

As a person of faith working toward humanized society and the diminishing of barbarity, allow me to recommend to you and your administration to act for and promote accountability per the findings of the Senate Select Committee’s Report on Torture. It has been one year since the report’s release, and the Torture Report has been reported to remain unread in its entirety, while the designers and practitioners of illegal torture have escaped legal and historical accounting for their actions. History teaches us that in such an environment of unaccountability, torture and associated illegalities done by US bureaucracies are almost certain to recur.

I stand fully in agreement with the Physicians for Human Rights conclusions (page 15 at https://s3.amazonaws.com/PHR_Reports/truth-matters.pdf) regarding responses to the infamy of torture done by and in the name of US Government personnel. Specifically, per PHR, I request the following four actions by the United States Administration under your direction and leadership:

1.       Based on a thorough investigation, the Department of Justice should bring charges against those individuals who designed the torture program, implemented the torture program, and/or ordered torture be used.

2.       The U.S. government should release the entire Senate torture report and allow investigators access to other documents relevant to the investigation into the use of torture.

3.       Detainees subjected to torture should be provided the means to seek redress against the government and individuals who tortured them.

4.       Detainees subjected to torture by agents of the U.S. government – regardless of where the crime was committed – should be provided with a full range of reparations for their suffering and rehabilitation.

I thank you for your addressing the ongoing need for thorough accountability in this area of depravity and illegality. I stand ready to assist you in any way toward this goal.

Very truly yours in Christ,

Rev. Douglas Olds, Presbyterian Church (USA)