Monday, August 17
1:30 PM – 4:30 PM
University of California Law School (Boalt Hall), College and Bancroft, Berkeley. 1:30 Press conference followed by protest in front of the Law School.
“Torture professor” John Yoo resumes teaching at UC Berkeley Law School on Monday, August 17 after spending last year at Chapman College in Southern California. While on leave from UC in 2001 Yoo worked for the DOJ and wrote legal memos advising Cheney and Bush that torture, warrantless wiretapping and suspension of posse commitatus– use of the military on American Soil and a violation of the Constitution– were legal. Yoo was wrong; those crimes are never legal.
He is being sued by U.S. citizen Jose Padilla and his mother for torture, and the Spanish courts are prosecuting him for the torture of Spanish citizens. Meanwhile he writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer, gives interviews and insists that the enhanced interrogation techniques he approved, which have lead to the deaths of about 100 detainees and the torture of children, were justified and necessary to protect America from terrorists. That’s just plain wrong. A coalition of human rights, accountability, and social justice groups will show up to protest his continuing employment at UC and to ask for his prosecution by U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
National Accountability Network, CODEPINK, Progressive Democrats of America, National Lawyers Guild, Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, Bay Area Religious Campaign Against Torture, others.
