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</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3><b>FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE: April 9, 2008<br><br>
<br><br>
</b>Contact: Marjorie Cohn, NLG President,
<a href="mailto:marjorie@tjsl.edu">marjorie@tjsl.edu</a>;
619-374-6923<br><br>
Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director,
<a href="mailto:director@nlg.org">director@nlg.org</a>; 212-679-5100,
x11<br><br>
<b>NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CALLS ON BOALT HALL TO DISMISS LAW PROFESSOR
JOHN YOO, WHOSE TORTURE MEMOS LED TO COMMISSION OF WAR CRIMES<br><br>
</b>New York. In a memorandum written the same month George W. Bush
invaded Iraq, Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo said the Department of
Justice would construe US criminal laws not to apply to the President's
detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. According to Yoo, the
federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming and stalking do not
apply to the military in the conduct of the war. <br><br>
The federal maiming statute, for example, makes it a crime for someone
"with the intent to torture, maim, or disfigure" to "cut,
bite, or slit the nose, ear or lip, or cut out or disable the tongue, or
put out or destroy an eye, or cut off or disable a limb or any member of
another person." It further prohibits individuals from
"throwing or pouring upon another person any scalding water,
corrosive acid, or caustic substance" with like intent. <br><br>
Yoo also narrowed the definition of torture so the interrogator must kill
the person or cause organ failure or permanent loss of significant body
functions in order to constitute torture; Yoo's definition contravenes
the definition in the Convention Against Torture, a treaty the US has
ratified which is thus part of the US law under the Constitution's
Supremacy Clause. Yoo said self-defense or necessity could be used as a
defense to war crimes prosecutions for torture, notwithstanding the
Torture Convention's absolute prohibition against torture in all
circumstances, even in wartime. This memo and another Yoo wrote with Jay
Bybee in August 2002 provided the basis for the Administration's torture
of prisoners.<br><br>
"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the
torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes
Act," said National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn. <br><br>
Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that
would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from
September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and
he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country's
premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall and
tried as a war criminal.<br><br>
The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the
American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the
National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human
rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New
York and it has chapters in every state.<br><br>
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