The recent release of the Bybee memos outlining Bush-era justification for the use of harsh interrogation techniques raises the issue of legal consequences for former White House officials, not to mention the effectiveness of torture as a method of intelligence gathering.

U.S. President Barack Obama last week said the White House would not pursue legal claims against officials involved in the justification or the practice of so-called torturous techniques — isolation, humiliation, waterboarding – used to illicit “confessor” behavior in detainees.

While lawmakers on both sides of the aisle offered praise to the forward-looking release of the Bybee memos, former CIA Director Michael Hayden lashed out at Obama, telling The Associated Press the release of the memos gives terrorists the information needed to prepare for such interrogation techniques, adding it shows Washington “can’t keep anything secret.”

Meanwhile, Mark Thiessen, a speechwriter (!?) for U.S. President Bush, has come forward in The Washington Post and elsewhere giving tacit approval for such harsh interrogations techniques, saying they led to countless confessions of alleged plots against the United States.

He goes on to use fear mongering — as President Bush had in his campaign for a second term — to justify the continued use of torture.

“President Obama’s decision to release these documents is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible acts ever by an American president during a time of war — and Americans may die as a result,” he writes.

Please.

This is in stark contrast to CIA officers and academics alike who state extreme interrogation techniques are not useful in gleaning factual information from detainees.

“Where physical violence was inflicted during the course of such an attempt (at gathering information), the attempt was particularly likely to fail completely,” writes Albert Biderman in his seminal article, Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War.

In a more recent account, storied CIA officer Robert Baer writes in a recent edition of Time magazine that the intelligence community does not view so-called torture as a valid interrogation technique.

“The wisdom inside the CIA has always been that the best intelligence is obtained through persuasion rather than coercion,” he writes.

With Obama reversing course, suggesting a truth panel similar to the 9/11 Commission convene to examine these techniques, one thing is assured, if Khalid Sheik Mohammed — the self-confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and recipient of over 180 waterboardings – is not a stark raving terrorist lunatic, he certainly is one now.

That is not American justice.

“The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers”

- Carl Gustav Jung

Today is Yom HaShoah, the Jewish holiday commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. It’s particularly appropriate to take a moment to remember those victims this year; the day before Yom HaShoah, a UN Conference allowed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to deliver an address vehemently critical of Israel and which, in its original draft, referred to the Holocaust as “ambiguous and dubious”.

Of course, the Holocaust is neither ambiguous nor dubious. From remember.org, anyone with a computer can take a virtual tour of the extermination camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau, and the German government, far from trying to evade its responsibility, has made Holocaust denial a crime. In no other criminal case in human history have so many people doubted a defendant who not only confessed, but said over and over, generally uncoerced, that she wanted no one, anywhere, ever, to doubt her guilt, and punished those within her power to punish who denied her guilt.

It is remarkable that point needs to be made - and it probably does not need to be made to those educated in Western classrooms, or to an audience reading an English-language blog (though even in parts of the West, teaching the Holocaust is now controversial, even, ludicrously, offensive). In much of the world, however, it needs to be said over and over. So today, take a moment, remember, and if you’re a person of faith, say a prayer for the victims of the greatest crime in modern history.

I’ll get back to pirate-blogging tomorrow, schedule permitting.

I wrote last week about the difficulties in prosecuting pirates, even high-profile ones, and the increase in pirate attacks after the Navy Seals’ awesome and heroic rescue of the Maersk Alabama.

As Eugene Kontorovich notes, the surviving Maersk Alabama pirate will be tried in New York. Other pirates detained by the German navy are suing their captors for defense funds.

Meanwhile, the South African Star reports American and Canadian ships pursued a pirate vessel for several hours yesterday, and on Saturday Dutch marines freed 16 Yemeni fishermen taken prisoner by the pirates, and Der Spiegel reports increased cooperation between pirates and violent Islamic extremist groups in the week since the Maersk Alabama rescue.

Legally, we can hope the proceedings against the surviving Maersk Alabama survivor will be a step towards a workable piracy prosecution system. Kontorovich is skeptical:

I anticipate this case to be a relatively straightforward one. The crime in question was at the center of global attention for a week. This guy was likely filmed by several Navy drones, aircraft and other assets. And given the groundbreaking nature of the case, I’m sure vast efforts will be taken to get it right.

But this is just one pirate. Hundreds have been captured and released by the NATO-lead coalition. It is not clear if this prosecution could be replicated on such a scale, and in many less-well documented cases.

I share Kontorovich’s skepticism and his sense that a pirate’s life is rough enough that prosecution, and even years in Western prison, will not serve as a meaningful deterrent. The international force will nonetheless have to craft some deterrent, or acquiesce to paying million-dollar ransoms many times a year and fighting Sisyphean battles against a ragged and ill-equipped group of pirates.

Spanish prosecutors Thursday advised against going forward with investigations into six former U.S. officials charged with sanctioning torture as Washington releases memos justifying the use of waterboarding.

Spanish Attorney General Candido Conde Pumpido said the decision to hold back on the probe stemmed from the fact that none of the six - including former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - did not take part in the torture of suspects at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

“If action is taken for the crime of mistreating prisoners of war, the complaint should target the actual authors of the crime,” he told reporters.

U.S. President George Bush made repeated claims …..click here to read more

We’ve talked about piracy a few times - it’s certainly been one of the primary unlawful uses of force in global news over the last year. Of course, this week we have some very good news: US Navy Seals rescued the captain and crew of the Maersk Alabama, an American cargo ship seized by pirates.

However, since the rescue, pirates have stepped up operations, seizing four ships and kidnapping at least 60 people over the last 48 hours. Foreign Policy Passport has this exceptional map of global piracy.

Meanwhile, Eugene Kontorovich - an international law specialist who’s written on the history of piracy law - has these posts at the Volokh Conspiracy detailing the problems with prosecuting pirates (as Julian Ku notes, it isn’t even clear where the lone survivor of the attack on the Maersk Alabama will be tried). Ruth Wedgwood has another piece here, and Charli Carpenter analyzes what might be next. Noam Schachtman doesn’t think any of the options are very good.

Without pretending to be an expert in piracy law, I’ll merely note that I think (as Kontorovich seems to) that this is a pretty good microcosm of the difficulties nation-states have had in enforcing criminal law against armed non-state actors; the rules of engagement are unclear; it’s not entirely clear who has a compelling enough interest to take the risks associated with enforcement or whose responsibility enforcement is; post-enforcement, international criminal procedure recognizes considerable protections; and prosecuting states will inevitably be villified by defendants and defense attorneys to change the narrative away from very serious allegations. (As Kontorovich points out, the difficulties with prosecuting pirates exist even though piracy is the original international crime - Douglas Burress cites Cicero for the oft-repeated proposition that pirates are “hostis humani generis,” the enemies of all mankind). Remarkably, millenia later, numerous international navies have adopted a catch and release policy that reflects a distressing underestimation of the threat, in part out of fears that the pirates will claim asylum.

An international force in the Gulf of Aden was a useful first step to combat piracy, but there are a number of steps that will have to be taken to really cut into pirate threats in the Gulf and elsewhere; developing the rule of law in Somalia, where many of the pirates are based and improving monitoring throughout the Gulf are certainly among them. However, one immediate priority has to be beginning the end of catch and release by establishing a coherent international legal framework for prosecuting and imprisoning captured pirates. The legal status quo is not working and, as often, inadequate legal structures are creating poor policy incentives. The international community must do better.

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was convicted today of creating a military death squad that killed 50 people and kidnapped many more during his rule.

Fujimori, who disbanded Peru’s legislature and purged its judiciary during his first term, is widely credited with winning the government’s long military campaign against terrorist groups Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. After he left office, the Peruvian Truth & Reconciliation Commission concluded the insurgents and the Peruvian military had both committed violations of the law of war, though the insurgents had committed the great majority of violations. Though he had fled the country, he was extradited back to Peru to stand trial while visiting Chile.

Fujimori will be sentenced later today.

A top Israeli army official denied statements made by members of the Israeli military that soldiers had committed war crimes in the offensive on the Gaza Strip.

Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi discounted allegations raised in February that Israeli soldiers had violated the laws of war regarding actions against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

“We were all, myself included, disturbed by the ‘testimonies’ attributed to soldiers regarding inappropriate actions and the ostensible intentional harm visited upon the civilian population,”he said in statements published by The Jerusalem Post.

Graduates of the Oranim-Yitzhak Rabin Pre-Military Academy claimed in February that soldiers had violated the military code of ethics in what the Israelis call Operation Cast Lead.

The reports, published in various outlets, claim soldiers shot and killed noncombatants and encouraged families to evacuate to defined no-entry zones.

A source to the Post said the allegations of shooting civilians and the no-entry zone violations were based on rumors and false reports.

Several human rights groups had also claimed earlier that Israel had committed war crimes in its use of white phosphorus against civilians during the siege on Gaza.