As part of a series of events to promote political awareness, Stand Up magazine – “the University’s Progressive Voice” – will be screening the 2007 film “Rendition,” starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, on Wednesday at 6:15 in MLC Room 147.

I encourage you to come watch the movie and stay for discussion about the film’s topic: extraordinary rendition.

Extraordinary rendition refers to the government’s practice of kidnapping terrorism suspects and transferring them to “black sites” – off-the-record prisons in foreign countries – where they can be tortured.

Many believe torture ended on Jan. 20. This isn’t exactly true. Yes, President Barack Obama has promised to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

However, The Los Angeles Times reports, “Obama Preserves Renditions as A Counter-Terrorism Tool.” And former Attorney General John Ashcroft, when interviewed by The New Yorker about how he feels Obama’s policies will differ from Bush’s, told them, “The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’” There is one way to assure that Obama – and future administrations – never again use torture: prosecute those who did.

After all, there are a wide range of U.S. and international laws that render torture illegal. In fact, the U.N. Convention Against Torture, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994, actually requires that signatory nations prosecute those who violate it.

Even Obama’s own attorney general stated during his confirmation hearings that waterboarding – a torture tactic that both Cheney and Bush admitted on national television to authorizing against detainees – is unequivocally “illegal.”

Yet Obama recently ordered the Department of Justice to block the necessary documents from being released that would have allowed a group of tortured detainees who filed lawsuits to bring their torturers to justice under U.S. law. One of the men, as British High Court documents showed, had his “genitals … sliced with a scalpel.”

In June 2008, Army Major General Antonio Taguba, after an extensive review of U.S. policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo, concluded that the Bush administration “authorized a systemic regime of torture … there is no longer any doubt as to whether the … administration … committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Obama apparently thinks the answer is “no.”

When asked what he thought about prosecutions at a press conference, he said he’d “rather look forward than backward.” Would Obama say that if he was tortured? What about his wife or kids? Some of the Guantanamo prisoners are as young as 14.

Some argue prosecutions would be politically unpopular. A Gallup poll released this month disagrees; it found that “two-thirds of Americans want an investigation into alleged Bush administration misdeeds.”

I encourage all those against torture prosecutions to listen to the words of Mohamed Farag Bashmilah, a recently released innocent Yemeni who was shackled to the floor and beaten on a daily basis for 19 months straight in a CIA-run “black site.” Writing an open letter to Obama, he says, “It is my hope that the President … will investigate and prosecute those who broke American laws in ordering the torture and disappearance of people like me.”

As far as I’m concerned, either we bring his torturers to justice or we admit that by ignoring their crimes, we are no better than they are.

- Zaid Jilani is a senior from Kennesaw majoring in international affairs.