Prosecution of All Torturers, Ouster of Torture Professor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, January 9, 2015
World Can’t Wait

On Guantanamo Prison’s 13th Anniversary (2002-2014)
Protesters Call for Prosecution of All Torturers, Ouster of Torture Professor

Tuesday, January 13, 2015
UC Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall), Bancroft and College
Western entrance plaza
1:00 PM Press Conference and Speak-Out
1:30 PM Delegation of Conscience will march

Marking the start of the fourteenth year of U.S. operations at the illegal prison at Guantanamo Bay, protest demonstrations and events are set for several U.S. cities this month.

In the SF Bay Area, a press conference and demonstration have been called by a group of organizations long working to stop illegal U.S. rendition and torture. The World Can’t Wait, the National Lawyers Guild (SF Bay Area), Code Pink, and others will gather at UC Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall) where John Yoo continues teaching as a tenured professor. The protesters demand: Close Guantanamo NOW! Prosecute All the Torturers! Fire, Disbar and Prosecute John Yoo!.

Yoo was a principal legal architect of the torture program established under the Bush-Cheney administration. A delegation of conscience will arrive at Boalt Hall to deliver letters and a National Lawyers Guild petition bearing 2,500 signatures demanding that the University of California remove John Yoo from teaching law to the next generations of lawyers and judges.

In the wake of the December release of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report, documenting the criminal history of the official government torture program, a New York Times 12/21/14 editorial called for prosecution of torturers from ex-vice-president Cheney on down through naming John Yoo and Jay Bybee. "Prosecutions are the very best way to ensure that officials don't torture again," said Curt Wechsler of the national organization World Can’t Wait.

Another World Can’t Wait leader, Stephanie Tang, claims that UC Berkeley Law’s new dean, Sujit Choudry, has a special relationship to Guantanamo and the problem of torture, through Choudry’s attorney role in the case of former Guantanamo child prisoner Omar Khadr. A Canadian citizen, Khadr was 15 years old when he first entered Guantanamo. In 2010 as an attorney with the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Sujit Choudry was co-counsel on a brief on behalf of Omar Khadr when Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that the Canadian government had violated Khadr’s rights.

“If Dean Choudry remembers Omar Khadr and his 10 years of torture at Guantanamo, “ said Tang, “he surely has to find it intolerable that the lawyer responsible for this criminal torture would be rewarded with not merely a tenured professorship, but an endowed law school chair. John Yoo is unfit to teach at any law school. Dean Choudry has the power to initiate a university investigation that could lead to Yoo’s discharge from the Boalt faculty. Will he?”

ENDS

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