President Bush is lying to the American people.

Those are words that I have never uttered before in public. To make such a serious allegation against my country’s leader is not something I do lightly.

Consider the President’s words in Panama: “We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do … to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture.”

As the President well knows, the sad fact for all Americans is that many of the interrogations we have conducted are not within the law. As many current and former government and military officials recently told PBS’ Frontline, we have tortured - and even killed - prisoners in our custody.

Government documents obtained through our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit describe hundreds of incidents of torture and abuse in excruciating detail. It is clear that these are not the actions of a few rogue soldiers. The mere existence of thousands of government documents on torture underscores the systemic nature of the problem. There are also videos and photos showing torture and abuse that government lawyers are fighting like mad to suppress.

If the President really wished to solve the torture scandal that has marred America’s standing at home and abroad, he would own up to what has happened. He would ask the Attorney General to appoint a special counsel to investigate and prosecute the torture and abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. He would not threaten to veto the legislation proposed by Senate Republicans led by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, which would ensure that no one is above the law, and no one - regardless of their office or rank - can order anyone else to break the rules and abuse detainees.

Holding high-level government officials accountable for torture and abuse is the only way to ensure that we will not repeat these mistakes. And upholding the rules of war will help ensure that no member of the U.S. military is subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment when they are captured by the enemy.

But our president’s lies merely add insult to the very real injury that has already occurred.

In London, at Amnesty International’s Global Struggle Against Torture Conference

I have just spent two days listening to heartbreaking testimony from men who were unlawfully detained and tortured by U.S. officials at Guantanamo Bay. I am at a conference in London convened by Amnesty International and Reprieve to bring together men who have been released, human rights advocates who continue to work for the release of other prisoners, and family members of men still locked up in the black hole of Guantanamo. 

These men are from multiple countries – England, Russia, Bosnia, Pakistan. All of them are innocent, but were locked up for years without charges. They ended up in Guantanamo because they were in Afghanistan at the wrong time, or because they were kidnapped in other countries at the direction of the U.S. government. Seeing them close up immediately breaks the Mohammed Atta stereotype of the so-called “terrorism detainee.” They were black, brown, white. Some spoke clipped British English, some perfect German.

These men say that words are incapable of describing what it is like to be tortured, how it feels to live day after day in 2×2 cages. I am now struggling to capture the power of their personal testimony in words. I’ll try.

The first speaker was Moazzam Begg, a British citizen. He is a slight man, with wire-rimmed glasses and a professorial air. Moazzam described in stark language how U.S. forces – in the name of fighting terrorism – engaged in acts of terror against him and other human beings. “It is terrifying to be interrogated repeatedly with cocked guns pointed at your head. It is terrifying to sit in a cage day after day and believe that you will never see your children again. It is terrifying to watch and hear others humiliated by guards all around you.”

Jamal al Harith, a soft-spoken British national of Jamaican descent, spent two years, three weeks, and six days in Guantanamo before his release. He was beaten, stripped naked, and interrogated repeatedly. He spent weeks in solitary confinement, where he was exposed to extreme temperatures and bright lights day and night. Jamal, who was captured by the Taliban while in Afghanistan, noted with irony that when the Americans arrived in Afghanistan, he was relieved — he thought they would treat him fairly and help him get home.

Tarek Dergoul spoke from behind a curtain. He told us how he was beaten with baseball bats and left in a freezing cage. When military forces refused to treat his frostbite, one of his toes and part of his arm had to be amputated. 

Feroz Abbasi spent one year and seven months in solitary confinement at Guantanamo. Yet Feroz and several other men said the most painful experience for them was witnessing the abuse of other prisoners, and listening to their screams night after night.

Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal look like shy, scared kids. They were two of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights to challenge the unlawful detention of Guantanamo detainees. In one of the few victories in the ongoing legal struggle, the Supreme Court held last year that they had a limited right to challenge their detention. While still in Afghanistan, Shafiq and Asif were both packed into containers for transport. When the containers were opened, most of the people inside had suffocated to death. Some of the guards shot bullets into the containers to provide air holes, and one of those bullets struck Shafiq.

Rustam Akhmarov, a Russian, was sold by Pakistani police to U.S. forces for $5000. Rustam said that he and other men at Guantanamo were given injections by force, and were later diagnosed with Hepatitis B. Though a number of Russian detainees have been released and cleared, Russian officials keep them and their family members under constant surveillance. They can’t get work because employers fear they will be tainted by the stigma of hiring former Guantanamo detainees.

Though it was painful to hear the former prisoners speak of their ordeals, these men realize they are among the fortunate few who are now free. It was even more devastating to hear the pleas of the family members of those still locked up. 

Rabiye Kurnaz is the mother of Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen who was a long-time resident of Germany. Murat is twenty-three years old and has been in Guantanamo for four years. The German government won’t help secure Murat’s release because he is not a citizen, and the Turkish government refuses to help. Rabiye said that she tries to keep news about Guantanamo from her other children, but that they hear about it on the news and on the Internet.

Nadja Dizdarevic is the wife of ElHadj Doudellaa of Bosnia. A small woman in full hijab, Nadja is the mother of four children. One son, now four years old, has never seen his father. Nadja said the children are suffering because both of their parents are absent – she must spend hours and hours each day advocating for the release of her husband. Nadja ended with a poignant thank you to “all of you who have sacrificed precious time with your own families to be here to listen to my testimony.”

Yet anger and horror were not the only emotions provoked by this gathering. 

It was incredible to hear several former prisoners insist that others had it far worse than they. Martin Mubanga, another British citizen, talked about the strong spirit of Yusef El Gharani, who was sent to Guantanamo when he was just 14 years old. Shafiq Rasul talked about Jamil el-Banna, who remains at Guantanamo because the British government won’t negotiate the release of non-citizens. Shafiq said, “I have no children and yet they finally let me go. Jamil has five children who desperately need him – he deserves to be released more than I did.”

Meeting other people who had been detained was a powerful experience for many of the men present. Moazzam realized that he had spent six weeks in Kandahar lying face down in a freezing cell next to a Russian man who he never saw face to face until this weekend.

Several of the former prisoners were asked how they coped. Martin Mubanga found relief in poetry and rap. Moazzam memorized everything he could remember from school. Jamal learned not to think about his family. 

A filmmaker in the audience asked whether any of the guards expressed kindness towards the prisoners. Several said they formed powerful bonds with some guards, especially while in solitary confinement. Moazzam and Tariq came to realize that many of the guards had no real choice but to join the army, and were putting in their time because they had to. There are different forms of imprisonment, they implied.

These moving testimonies are not isolated instances but part of a widespread and systemic policy of abuse. And yet one rarely sees these victims or hears their stories in mainstream media or anywhere else in the United States. Worse, our government officials continue to dismiss the overwhelming evidence of torture. When two courageous Iraqi men who are suing Rumsfeld for torture were in the U.S. last week, Rumsfeld’s sick response to their testimony was that “terrorists are trained to lie about their treatment, and they do it consistently, and it always works.”

As Moazzam pointed out, the iguana is a protected species at Guantanamo. Human beings are not. What have we become in America?

As a follow-up to yesterday’s formal briefing of the UN’s Committee Against Torture, today I met in person with the two experts put in charge of reviewing and responding to the U.S.’s woefully deficient report on compliance with the Convention Against Torture. Somewhat surprisingly, it is much easier to get access directly to UN experts than it is to get face time with members of Congress.

Fernando Marino-Mendez is from Spain, Guibril Camara from Senegal. Both are experts on torture and human rights who have monitored abuses around the world. Marino was interested in learning more about the similarity between torture and cruel treatment by U.S. forces outside the U.S., and torture committed by government agents inside the United States.

Many Americans think of “torture,” even when committed by U.S. officials, as something that happens only at Abu Ghraib — and not within our own borders. Unfortunately torture is alive and well at home – in the epidemic of prison rape and sexual abuse in the nation’s prisons, in the police brutality suffered daily and disproportionately by people of color, in the use of vicious weapons like tasers.

The United States has conveniently wiggled out of full responsibility under the Convention Against Torture by limiting its understanding of what constitutes “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” through a “reservation” to the treaty. That’s how it has justified practices like waterboarding (mock drowning) and intimidation by vicious dogs at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan, and how it avoids any serious discussion of electro-shock weapons by police or sexual abuse in U.S. prisons.

It is up to organizations like the ACLU to show how the United States’ narrow and self-serving definition of “torture” is out of touch with the rest of the civilized world – and has led directly to abuses abroad and at home.

I’m in Geneva at the twice-yearly session of the United Nations’ Committee Against Torture. Five years ago, such a trip would have seemed exotic and outside the ACLU’s mandate, but now it is necessary and routine. High-level U.S. officials authorized the torture and abuse of hundreds, probably thousands, of people detained in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo … and the devil only knows where else. Despite widespread evidence that links our government’s torture policies all the way up the chain of command, not a single senior military or civilian official has yet to be held accountable. Congress has yet to authorize any independent investigation into the abuses, and the military’s own investigations have largely been whitewashes that resulted in slight hand-slaps to low-level soldiers. The White House and DOD continue to promote the primary perpetrators of the torture policies.

To counteract this sorry state of affairs, the ACLU – along with many other U.S. based human rights groups — is using every tool and every forum available to hold the United States accountable for torture and abuse suffered by prisoners detained by U.S. forces. We’ve filed a FOIA lawsuit to get documents about the torture and abuse, we’ve sued Donald Rumsfeld and several other officials on behalf of Iraqi and Afghani torture victims, we’ve supported the McCain amendment to outlaw cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and we’ve urged experts at the United Nations to hold the U.S. accountable for violating long-established universal human rights principles that prohibit torture at any time for any reason.

Today I and representatives of other human rights groups – Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists – provided a briefing to CAT committee members at the Palais des Nations. The CAT committee monitors a country’s compliance with the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Last May, the United States submitted its long-overdue report on its compliance with CAT. Big surprise here – the report says the U.S. does not condone torture! Well that’s really good to know. Now an impressive group of U.S. civil rights and human rights groups are working together to provide the real facts to the CAT committee.

CAT Committee members are a diverse group of experts on torture from around the world – Senegal, Spain, Denmark, Russia, Ecuador etc. At today’s briefing, the CAT members asked perceptive questions about U.S. conduct that show they are more informed about the government’s interrogation policies than some of our elected representatives. Let’s hope our collective pressure on multiple fronts will finally lead to justice.

While cynics justifiably question the effectiveness of U.N. mechanisms that rely primarily on shaming rather than direct sanctions, I am inspired by the founding principles at work here. That every country should care about how every other country treats its citizens and all other persons under its control. That all members of the human family have equal rights deriving from the inherent dignity of every human being. That no human being should ever be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Those principles come into sharp focus when one talks to torture victims. Last week I met Sherzad Kamal Khalid and Thahe Mohammed Sabbar, two Iraqi men who were tortured by U.S. forces and who have courageously joined our lawsuit against Rumsfeld. They were visiting the United States to obtain treatment and to raise public awareness by putting a human face on what we all still tend to discuss too abstractly, too clinically. At dinner with them one night, I asked Sherzad what he thought of the trial of Saddam Hussein. He said, “It is a beautiful thing, to see him get justice in a fair trial.” We can quarrel over details here, but the point is that Sherzad knows the power of the rule of law. We owe it to Sherzad and countless other torture victims to enforce the same rule of law when our own leaders commit human rights abuses.