Philippe Sands believes former Bush administration lawyers should think twice before they travel abroad in the future. Sands says that these attorneys approved interrogation procedures for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay that may have crossed the line into torture. And while nothing might happen to them in the United States, Sands argues that these lawyers could face criminal charges in other countries for violating international laws against torture.
Sands, an English lawyer who has done some work on behalf of British detainees at Guantanamo, makes his case in his just-published book “Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.” The memo in question, which authorized a range of aggressive interrogation techniques, was signed by former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on December 2, 2002; it was retracted two months later.
