China puts the brakes on torture of suspects, witnesses

News that China had issued new rules discouraging the use of torture to encourage suspects to confess or witnesses to testify in court is a great development for the criminal justice system there, but should be a giant stop sign for western governments trying to open trade routes to the world's most populous country. Sure, the new regulations announced Sunday bring China more in line with western ideas of justice and human rights, and are welcome, but they are long overdue. China executes more people -- 1,700 a year is Amnesty International's estimate -- than the rest of the world's countries combined, according to the New York Times. Mistreatment of suspects and, sometimes, of reluctant witnesses is common in China, the Times said. What that says about Western companies and governments doing business with China is not good, since they are supporting a terrible system. Apparently, the central government's previous attempts to liberalize the system have met with mixed results, the Times said. So, the latest pronouncement by top Chinese law enforcement and judicial bodies, while positive on the surface, will only mean improvement if enforced nationwide. The new regulations, which bar the use of confessions obtained by torture and require police officers to testify in court if a defendant alleges mistreatment, were issued a few weeks after a farmer was released from prison after 10 years after he was convicted using a confession obtained through torture. The case came to light after the alleged victim turned up alive, and caused an uproar in the normally closed society -- a huge concern for the government in Beijing, which puts a premium on social order. “Judicial practice in recent years shows that slack and improper methods have been used to gather, examine and exclude evidence in various cases, especially those involving the death penalty,” the central government said in a statement, the Times said. Legal observers in China were optimistic over the new rules. “They have come just in time because the necessity is so great,” said Zhang Xingshui, a Chinese defense lawyer. “It is a good cure for loopholes, because legal workers are often under so much pressure to get cases closed no matter what it takes.” A professor at the government-owned Chinese People's Public Security University in Beijing told the Times that the provision requiring police to testify in court was revolutionary for China. “This may be common practice for police in the West or in Hong Kong, but it is a new thing for Chinese policemen to testify in court,” Cui Min said. “We have to cultivate a new mindset, one that accepts the idea of possibly setting free a criminal over wrongfully convicting an innocent man.” Of course, it would have been a lot better if Western countries had insisted on major reforms in China before opening their markets and integrating Beijing into the world economic system. But China appears to have fully embraced the idea that there is more to be gained from peaceful relations with the rest of the world than from aggressive isolation, even if it means liberalizing how the Communist Party runs the country. And that is very good news.

Memos say Republican leader did not object to destruction of interrogation tapes

So when was it, exactly, that the inmates took control of the asylum? News from Washington that newly released documents indicate that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee did not object to CIA plans to destroy videotapes of "enhanced" interrogations of terror suspects in 2003 again raises the uncomfortable specter of a U.S. Congress abdicating its oversight responsibilities under pressure from the executive branch. The formerly secret documents were released Monday in response to freedom-of-information requests by three nonprofit organizations, according to the New York Times. The disclosures should add impetus to a criminal investigation into the destruction of the tapes started by the Justice Department in 2008. Attorney General Eric Holder, who took office last year after the inauguration of Barack Obama, a Democrat, also asked investigators to review the decision to use invasive interrogation techniques following the election of Barack Obama, a Democrat, to the presidency. The documents also show that the CIA refused to allow ranking members of Congress to see any of the covert prisons the agency used to house terror suspects captured overseas or to witness any of the "enhanced" interrogations approved by then-president George W. Bush in apparent violation of U.S. treaty obligations. The committee chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), issued a statement Monday denying that he approved the destruction of the tapes. The tapes, reported to show the interrogations of top al-Qaida operatives Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were destroyed by the CIA in 2005. But a CIA memo prepared after Roberts was briefed by the agency in February 2003 says "Senator Roberts listened carefully and gave his assent," the Times said. The nonprofit groups that requested the memos, Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University, said the 100 pages of documents, which were heavily blacked out, showed the need for a full public investigation of the interrogation program, the Times said.