PRESS RELEASE
National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) Delivers Testimony on Torture to Closed Senate Hearing

(Washington, DC, September 25, 2007) - The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), today, submitted testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, calling on Congress to shut down the CIA's "alternative interrogation techniques" program.

NRCAT asked that the testimony be included in the hearing record of the Committee's closed hearing on "alternative interrogation techniques." Last Friday NRCAT had urged the Committee to make the hearing open to the public. "Torture undermines victim and torturer alike," Rev. George Hunsinger, founder of NRCAT, told the committee in his written statement. "It corrodes the society that permits it. It overthrows the rule of law, and then destroys the tyrannies that it spawns. Corrupting the soul, it eventually corrupts everything in its path. Torture is itself the ticking bomb."

Rev. Hunsinger said, "Continuation of the CIA's "alternative" interrogation program, including the use of secret prisons and rendition for torture, is wrong. As people of faith -- who value our common humanity and our religious responsibility to treat all people with decency and the due process protections of civilized law -- we urge you immediately to stop the use of the 'alternative interrogation techniques', to close all secret prisons, and to stop rendition to torture." The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is a campaign of over 125 religious organizations working together to abolish U.S. policy permitting torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of anyone, without exception. NRCAT members include representatives from the Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Orthodox Christian, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish, Quaker, Muslim, and Sikh communities. A copy of Rev. Hunsinger's complete statement is available at the NRCAT website:http://www.tortureisamoralissue.org/

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CONTACT: Linda Gustitus, 202-557-8867