What about with the alleged al-Qaida cell broken up in Portland, Ore., or the Lackawanna terror case in New York?

I've seen no evidence that those cases would not have been effectively pursued and cracked, absent the PATRIOT Act. The key issue here is whether or not the attorney general, in effect, can make decisions unilaterally, without having subpoenas approved by a court. As I read the long New York Times account of the Lackawanna case, I didn't see any element of that case which depended on bypassing the traditional subpoena route. Judges almost always agree to the government's subpoena requests [in these types of cases]. So from a pragmatic point of view this looks like a most unwise, and at the very least unnecessary, short-circuiting of that process. I don't think John Ashcroft has tried to make the case that there were major cases over the last two years that would have posed a great threat to American security had the PATRIOT Act not been in place. Nor have I seen any evidence that using the traditional court system is inadequate, not just in terms of the subpoena process, but once the arrest is made, when the individual should be promptly told of the charges against him, and provided an attorney.

In the book you say that supporting human rights does not require being pacifist. When is the use of violence appropriate?

I personally believe that in the face of genocide the world community should intervene militarily. That situation clearly trumps national sovereignty. I think it was the Clinton administration's greatest shame that it blocked the United Nations from intervening in Rwanda. I think the intervention in Kosovo is defensible on human rights grounds, and there may be others.

But there are also profoundly destructive human rights situations, such as Zimbabwe today -- where the free press is being stifled, where political opposition leaders are being tossed into jail -- that don't necessarily warrant military intervention, at least not at this point. In Zimbabwe's current case, the international community should use all the other tools that are available to it to try to bring pressure on the Mugabe government.

Do you feel the same was true of Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion?

To the best of my knowledge, neither Amnesty nor any other human rights organization had documented active genocide going on in Iraq. There were profound human rights violations going on, and I think there's an arguable case that those violations may very well have justified some sort of international military intervention. That's a case I'm certainly prepared to discuss.

Was there a more clear case for military intervention with Saddam's slaughtering of the Shiia in southern Iraq when the U.S. pulled out after the first Gulf war? Or with Saddam's gas attacks on the Kurds?

Well, the attack on the Kurds was in 1988, but you were asking about 2003, and to the best of my knowledge there was not active genocide going on in Iraq in 2003. I do think in those instances, the attacks against the Kurds and later against the Shiia, were situations that might very well have justified military intervention. Absolutely.

There've been credible news reports from Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay that U.S. officials have used coercion -- what some would call torture -- to interrogate terror suspects. Is there ever a case where this can be justified to any degree? In particular I'm thinking of the capture of al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, where there is near certainty that he has valuable information which could unlock terrorist plans and potentially save many lives.

The judgment about whether something spills over into cruel, inhumane, degrading treatment has to be made on a case by case basis, and not just by Bill Schulz; there are international courts that determine this. I don't know what techniques are being used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed, nor does Amnesty International. That, of course, is part of the problem here: It's very difficult to make judgments without information. Some of the descriptions from the New York Times and the Washington Post of the types of interrogations taking place would, I think, be described by an international court or a human rights commission, as cruel, inhumane, degrading treatment -- as torture. For example, being shackled in painful positions for a long period of time.

On the other hand, the reports of prisoners being misled into thinking they've been transferred to the New York City police department or some foreign government, techniques of disorientation and duplicity ... I think that those probably don't fall into that category. In the book I cite that the FBI has [dozens] of interrogatory techniques that have proven effective without using physical coercion.

Why has there been so little outcry from the American public about the rounding up of roughly 1,200 Arabs and Muslims in the United States after 9/11, or about the reports of coercive techniques used on suspects and prisoners?

The government has led the general public to believe that these actions are necessary to keep it safe. Even though we know that of the 1,200 [domestic] detainees not a single one of them was charged with anything having to do with terrorism. Only about 100 of them were charged with any crime other than visa violations, and those crimes had nothing to do with terrorism. Human rights groups have frequently requested access to these prisoners, and we've consistently been turned down.

I think the government has certainly implied that the stress and duress techniques [of interrogation] are yielding significant information which is helping protect the public. I have no idea whether that's the case. It's very difficult to tell. So much of this is veiled in secrecy, not just from human rights groups and the media, but from the courts themselves -- some of it with the courts' connivance, as in the [Federal Appeals] court decision that the courts have no jurisdiction in Guantánamo.

It's an entire system of incarceration without oversight of any kind, except that of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ICRC took a remarkable step and broke a decades-long tradition of never speaking out publicly: They criticized the indefinite detention at Guantánamo, with no access to lawyers for the detainees. To the best of my knowledge, it's the only oversight agency that's had any access to Guantánamo, and it hasn't had access to Baghram airbase in Afghanistan, or to wherever prisoners have been transferred in Egypt, Morocco or Syria, or elsewhere. I think if you're going to undermine the most fundamental rights in the U.S. justice system, and the Geneva Conventions, as the United States has clearly done in Guantánamo, at the very least you have an obligation to allow appropriate parties access to those individuals to make a judgment as to their conditions and treatment.

Freedom from torture is a non-derogable right agreed to under every international human rights treaty, including the Convention Against Torture, which the United States has ratified. The president himself has issued a statement that torture is absolutely unacceptable. So in this respect all we're asking is that the U.S. government hold itself to its own standards.

What if there is another major attack on U.S. soil? What would that portend for civil and human rights?

I think there's no doubt it would have a very damaging impact. It would provide an excuse for even deeper forays into violations of human rights, and in the long run that would be tragic and utterly self-defeating.

With the war on terror, we're faced with convincing millions and millions of people around the globe who may be yet undecided about whether or not to opt for support of extremism rather than democratic values and respect for human rights. We have to win the loyalty of those people -- to say nothing of maintaining the loyalty of those predisposed to supporting the United States in the first place, whether it's the moderate Muslim world, or our European or other allies.

It's utterly critical for the human rights community to take the threat of terrorism seriously and do whatever it can to articulate and carry out a strategy for diminishing that threat -- stopping violent attacks is part of that. But promoting human rights is a profoundly important weapon in the struggle to defeat terrorism. It's a far more important one than the Bush administration has acknowledged.

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