Product Description

'May well be the best bit of contemporary investigative journalism you will read! follows a paper trail and nails the truth' - Rod Liddle, "Sunday Times". 'Gripping, furious and very serious indeed' - John le Carre. After 9/11, the Bush administration declared that it would have to work through 'the dark side'. And it did: the Administration turned its back on the rules and on America's commitment to the dignity of every human person. It embraced torture, looking for legal advice that justified cruelty, and making sure that it found it. Voices of dissent - in the military and elsewhere - were pushed aside, as ideology and incompotence led to illegal interrogation techniques encouraged by Jack Bauer in 24. In "Torture Team", Philippe Sands travels around America, tracking down those responsible. In their own words, he shows how war crimes were committed. He opens the door to accountability and justice. 'It was not skulking renegades who emboldened ordinary Americans to strip and leash their captives, to expose them to snarling dogs and to half-drown them. It was suited attorneys' - Sadakat Kadri, "Daily Telegraph". 'How did a state conceived in awe of The Rights of Man make psychopaths of its children? Meticulously, soberly, astonishingly, [Sands] finds the answer' - Rafael Behr, "Observer".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56564 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
'A gripping book ... one day we'll see the captains of the torture team in court.' - Michael Byers, Guardian 'May well be the best bit of contemporary investigative journalism you will read ... follows a paper trail and nails the truth.' - Rod Liddle, Sunday Times 'Gripping furious and very serious indeed.' - John le Carre

About the Author
Philippe Sands QC has been Professor of Law at University College London since 2002 and has also taught at Boston College Law School, Cambridge University and New York University Law School. He is the author of the acclaimed Lawless World: Making and Breaking Global Rules as well as several other books on international law. He participated in the negotiation of the 1992 Climate Change Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. He is also a practising barrister at Matrix Chambers and has been involved in leading cases before English and international courts including those concerning Senator Augusto Pinochet and the Guantanamo and Belmarsh detainees. He lives in London with his wife and three children.

Customer Reviews

an elegant, coherent and important book
Torture Team is the story of how the United States came to torture prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, flying in the face of international law.

Much of the information here will not be new to people who know something of the subject, but Sands writes with such humanity that it, even to those familiar with the history, it is shocking.

His thesis, that lawyers, particularly those employed in-house, can be seduced into making an argument rather than presenting the law, is clearly expounded.

Beyond this is the fascinating insight he gives into the personalities involved and the way that they appear to have been influenced by the second series of 24.

This is a great book, highly recommended.

Fine study of how the US state reintroduced torture
Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Law at University College London, wrote the acclaimed Lawless World. In this new book he investigates how the US state introduced aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

He interviewed key figures in the US Department of Defense, including Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Major General Michael Dunlavey, Commanding Officer of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo until 8 November 2002, General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General James Hill, Commander of US Southern Command.

Sands shows that the highest US authorities authorised criminal acts. As Abraham Lincoln said in 1863, "military necessity does not admit of cruelty ... nor of torture to extract confessions." Aggressive interrogation techniques, as well as being immoral, are unnecessary because they are unreliable, and they are also counter-productive because they discredit the user, undermine the user side's war effort and increase the risks to the user side's POWs. A National Defense Intelligence College study of 2006 concluded that there was almost no scientific evidence to support their use.

Yet in February 2002, President George W. Bush ruled that none of the Guantanamo detainees could rely on any of the protections granted by the Geneva Conventions. This ruling was intended to remove all constraints on interrogation, as Douglas Feith confirmed to Sands. On 2 December 2002 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed an `Action Memo' one of whose four attachments authorised the use of eighteen interrogation techniques. These all contravened US Army Field Manual 34-52, the rule book for military interrogation, and broke Common Article 3 of the Conventions, which prohibits cruel or inhumane treatment and `outrages upon personal dignity', without exceptions for `necessity' or national security.

Further, as former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger concluded in his report, "the augmented techniques for Guantanamo migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded." US pressure also led British forces in Iraq to adopt more aggressive interrogation techniques, as Brigadier Ewan Duncan, responsible for British HUMINT operations, acknowledged to Sands.

In June 2006 the US Supreme Court ruled that Bush's decision was unlawful and that Common Article 3 applied to all Guantanamo detainees. As Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "violations of Common Article 3 are considered `war crimes'." All acts of torture and all acts of complicity or participation in torture are criminal offences.

Hard to get through!
If there is a book I wanted to read and enjoy, this was the one, for many important personal reasons. I could not finish it because I never got to grips with it from the outset.