If raining, the press conference will be held inside the building, at the Dean’s office.
CodePink event page: https://www.codepink.org
Berkeley, CA. Human rights groups will gather in person at UC Berkeley Law School on January 11, 2023 @ 1pm to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp on its 21st Anniversary, and for the prosecution of UC Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo for complicity in torture. The press conference is hosted by CodePink for Peace, Berkeley No More Guantanamos, Progressive Democrats of Oakland, Triple Justice, Extinction Rebellion Peace and others.
Press conference organizer and SF Bay CodePink Coordinator Cynthia Papermaster says “The U.S. carried out torture at Guantanamo. That is well established. Professor Yoo is complicit because he provided the legal opinions that Cheney and Bush relied on to order the torture at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo and elsewhere. Prosecution for complicity in torture is not discretionary; in other words, our Department of Justice is required to prosecute Yoo. Instead this disgraced lawyer walks free in Berkeley and teaches at our public university, at a salary of nearly $500,000/year. As a graduate of UC Berkeley I am horrified that he’s allowed to corrupt the minds of UC Berkeley Law students with his criminal theories. Yoo embodies the “banality of evil.” He must be prosecuted.”
Papermaster continued, saying “Yoo’s legal opinions were called “rubbish, shoddy research” by the Department of Justice. There were calls for his disbarment and firing from students and faculty at UC Berkeley, the American Bar Association and the National Lawyers Guild. The City of Berkeley passed resolutions condemning Yoo. UC Berkeley Faculty objected to Yoo receiving an endowed chair, but then-law school Dean Christopher Edley insisted on giving him the honor. In 2014, Erwin Chemerinsky, the current Dean of UC Berkeley Law School, and then Dean of UC Irvine Law School, said in a Nation magazine interview that Yoo should be criminally prosecuted.”
“I think he [John Yoo] should be,” Chemerinsky said. “All who planned, all who implemented, all who carried out the torture should be criminally prosecuted. How else do we as a society express our outrage? How else do we deter it in the future, except by criminal prosecutions?” https://www.thenation.com/article/prosecute-john-yoo-says-law-school-dean-erwin-chemerinsky/
Dean Chemerinsky, the Co-directors of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the law school, Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission members and law school students have been invited to speak at the press conference. Professor Yoo will be asked to contribute to the newly-established Guantanamo Survivors Fund. https://www.nogitmos.org/guantanamo-survivors-fund