Maha Helal, a researcher in the field of Islamophobia, asserted in an article for Middle East Eye that torture will remain an "American value" as long as successive US administrations are unable to carry out real accountability for those responsible, and do not take the necessary measures to correct this path.

Maha Hilal added that the US administration has always said - as President Joe Biden does - that torture contradicts American values, and calls for other countries to be held accountable, but it does not take decisions that end the path of torture, which is a "systematic and permanent practice."

The writer explains that the method of torture was further entrenched with the so-called war on terrorism, as the United States practiced it in the name of protecting national security in Bagram in Afghanistan, Fallujah and Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and in CIA detention sites around the world.


Investigation

The writer added that Washington should hurry to investigate the practiced methods of torture and take decisive decisions about them if it is serious about the human rights slogans it raises, and is not satisfied with repeating that annual record of rights and freedoms and rejecting torture, which everyone has learned by heart.

And she talked about the case of "Abu Zubaydah", who is detained in Guantanamo Bay, who was arrested in 2002 on the pretext of belonging to Al-Qaeda, and was subjected to a systematic program of torture represented in the illusion of drowning 80 times, and forcing him to spend 11 days in a box the size of a coffin.

She added that although US officials admitted in 2006 that "Abu Zubaydah" was not a member of al-Qaeda, he is still being held in Guantánamo without any hope of his release, and stated that his release would be a good step by the Biden administration in the way of combating torture. .


face to face

The writer explained that the White House governors were forced on several occasions to deal with torture cases face to face, as former President George W. Bush did with the Abu Ghraib case in Iraq after it turned into a global scandal, when he stated that “the American people were horrified by the abuse of detainees.” In Abu Ghraib, Iraq, they were wrong actions and contrary to our policies and values ​​as a nation."

"But Bush did not talk about repairing the damage," says the writer, "and he focused - like others - on the well-known narratives about "American values."

Despite all the documents and evidence proving the method of torture in Abu Ghraib, the conviction included only 11 soldiers, and none of them was an official with a high military rank.


The writer said that former President Barack Obama himself spoke in a statement issued in 2015 on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture;

He said that "no country is perfect," and that the United States should openly face its past and mistakes, explaining that he had ended the CIA's detention and interrogation program and declassified key details of that program.

But - the writer continues - that the failure to declassify all the details related to that program means that no official will be held accountable.

She added that Obama's statement that he "must look forward" is understood to be closing the doors of judicial accountability for torture forever.