Goals

1. Pass legislation that will assure that the International Committee of the Red Cross has access to all detainees held by the U.S. government.

2. Pass legislation that requires the videotaping of all interrogations performed by the CIA (extending the videotaping requirement that now applies to the military).

3. Pass the “Golden Rule,” which would require the President to affirm publicly that every interrogation technique authorized for use by American interrogators would be both moral and ethical if used upon a captured American.

4. Create a House Select Committee on Interrogations and Detention.

5. Pass the Prison Abuse Remedies Act – a bill that reforms the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act to remove unreasonable restrictions on prisoners’ ability to sue when they have been tortured or otherwise abused.

6. Ratify the Optional Protocol of the Convention Against Torture, which would assure that outside investigators monitor U.S. prisons, detention centers, and police stations for torture.

7. Pass legislation that provides incentives for other countries to end their use of torture.

8. Encourage the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to use data in the human rights reports to create a “torture watchlist” that lists the countries that have the worst record with respect to torture.

1. Securing an Executive Order banning torture.  President Obama signed this Executive Order on January 22, 2009 – just two days after taking the Oath of Office.  He did so following a year-long advocacy campaign -- Campaign to Ban Torture -- sponsored by NRCAT, the Center for Victims of Torture, and Evangelicals for Human Rights and the efforts of other human rights groups.  The Order halted the use of torture by all U.S. government personnel, closed secret prisons, and ended the use of rendition for torture.

2. Monitoring the special task force created by the Executive Order on interrogations.  On August 24, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the President had agreed to the task force’s recommendations – including one single, public, humane standard for all interrogations by all government agencies and new safeguards against rendition for torture (sending detainees for interrogation to other countries that are known to torture).  The task force recommended that all federal agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), use the interrogation standards in the Army Field Manual.  Prior to this decision, NRCAT lobbied very aggressively for a single, public standard for conducting all interrogations and met with the special task force to make this recommendation.

Additional Goals:
a) Fixing or removing Appendix M of the Army Field Manual.  Appendix M allows for the use of three practices, which, if used inappropriately, could amount to torture.  These practices are:  the use of sleep and sensory deprivation and isolation.
b) Ensuring that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is closed as quickly as possible while preserving the basic rights of those detained there.

3. Ensuring that all interrogations are videotaped.  On October 28, President Obama signed a bill into law that included a provision requiring that all interrogations of detainees in Department of Defense custody be videotaped.  The legislation allows the Secretary of Defense to waive this requirement in specific instances if he/she explains his/her actions to the relevant committees of Congress.  NRCAT aggressively lobbied Members of Congress to support the videotaping provision.