A razor blade, circumstance, and forced isolation are the only tools the US military tribunal need to charge 29-year old British national Binyam Mohamed with an alleged al-Qaida dirty bomb plot. Whether or not Mr. Mohamed is actually guilty can not excuse the US from engaging in medieval practices dating back to the 13th century. Who will charge the US government of torture?
Roman law and the examples of confessions through torture by the Catholic Inquisition should not be lost to history. Indeed, it wasn't until Voltaire's zealous pursuit of Enlightenment humanism that attitudes began to change in France, Europe and in the American colonies. Now over two hundred years since Volaire's Treatise on Tolerance on the Occasion of the Death of Jean Calas, the ideals of humanism and due process are being pummeled by Bush's medieval “war against terror.”
