IN THIS SECTION:

• Take Action Now on Current Legislation
  
• NRCAT Press Releases
• NRCAT in the News
• Recent News on Torture

NRCAT's mission to help abolish U.S.-sponsored torture concentrates on three areas of U.S. policy that directly result in the use of torture:

1. Brutal and abusive intelligence interrogation techniques that violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions banning torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment;
2. The use of secret prisons, with its accompanying approval of "ghost detainees" and "disappeared" suspects;
3. The use of rendition to imprisonment in countries known to use torture.

In addition, NRCAT recognizes that other aspects of current U.S. rules on the detention of enemy combatants provide the circumstances under which torture, secret prisons, and rendition to torture can be utilized and covered up, avoiding the scrutiny of independent courts and investigation. NRCAT has been active in its support of restoration of the capacity of U.S. courts to hear habeas corpus appeals, rather than the truncated Combat Status Review Tribunal procedure established by the administration at Guantanamo Bay. We support the use of battlefield determinations of military combatant status under the Geneva Conventions, as provided by military regulations. We decry the use of unreliable hear-say evidence against combatants, failure to provide meaningful legal representation for detainees imprisoned for months and years as a result of flawed procedures, and failure to provide for full substantive independent appeal of initial determinations of status as enemy combatants. In addition, the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay must be closed, bringing the U.S. back to a nation that governs its affairs under the rule of law.