I 
109TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. R. 952
To prohibit the transfer or return of persons by the United States, for 
the purpose of detention, interrogation, trial, or otherwise, to countries 
where torture or other inhuman treatment of persons occurs. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
FEBRUARY 17, 2005
Mr. MARKEY (for himself, Mr. FILNER, Mr. OWENS, Mr. FRANK of Massachu-
setts, Mr. LEWIS of Georgia, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. 
HONDA, Ms. MCCOLLUM of Minnesota, Mr. KUCINICH, Mr. HINCHEY, 
Mr. LANTOS, Mr. PASTOR, Mr. SERRANO, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. 
BLUMENAUER, Mr. MCGOVERN, Mr. SANDERS, Mr. GEORGE MILLER of 
California, Mr. HOLT, Mr. OLVER, Mr. STARK, Mrs. DAVIS of California, 
Ms. LEE, Ms. WOOLSEY, Mr. WAXMAN, Mr. SABO, Mr. DOGGETT, Mr. 
CONYERS, Mr. TIERNEY, Mr. ALLEN, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Mrs. 
MALONEY, and Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD) introduced the following 
bill; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations 
A BILL 
To prohibit the transfer or return of persons by the United 
States, for the purpose of detention, interrogation, trial, 
or otherwise, to countries where torture or other inhu-
man treatment of persons occurs.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Torture Outsourcing 
Prevention Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
The Congress finds the following: 
(1) The Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights states that ‘‘No one shall be subjected to tor-
ture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or 
punishment.’’. 
(2) The United Nations Convention against 
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading 
Treatment or Punishment (in this Act referred to as 
the ‘‘Convention against Torture’’ ) defines torture 
as ‘‘any act by which severe pain or suffering, 
whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted 
on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him 
or a third person information or a confession. . . .’’, 
and which may be ‘‘inflicted by or at the instigation 
of or acquiescence of a public official or other person 
acting in an official capacity.’’. 
(3) Article 4 of the Convention against Torture 
obligates State parties to ensure that all acts of tor-
ture are criminal offenses under domestic legislation, 
and current United States law, under section 2340A 
of title 18, United States Code, makes torture a 
crime when committed outside of the United States.
(4) Article 3 of the Convention against Torture 
expressly prohibits sending a person to another 
State ‘‘where there are substantial grounds for be-
lieving that he would be in danger of being subjected 
to torture.’’ It further provides that in making such 
determinations, governments must take into account 
the existence of ‘‘a consistent pattern of gross, fla-
grant, or mass violations of human rights.’’. 
(5) In order to discourage the use of torture in 
interrogation, Article 15 of the Convention against 
Torture requires all state Parties to ‘‘ensure that 
any statement which is established to have been 
made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as 
evidence in any proceedings’’. 
(6) The prohibition on torture and other ill 
treatment has been incorporated into the numerous 
international and regional human rights treaties, in-
cluding—
(A) Article 7 of the International Covenant 
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified 
by 154 countries, including the United States in 
1992; 
(B) the Convention against Torture, rati-
fied by 139 countries, including the United 
States in 1994;
(C) the American Convention on Human 
Rights; 
(D) the European Convention for the Pro-
tection of Human Rights and Fundamental 
Freedoms; and 
(E) the African Charter on Human and 
Peoples’ Rights. 
(7) The prohibition against torture and inhu-
mane treatment is also fundamental to the laws gov-
erning the conduct of parties in armed conflicts, as 
enshrined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and 
their Protocols, which establish a duty to protect the 
life, health, and safety of civilians and other non-
combatants, including soldiers who are captured or 
who have laid down their arms, prohibit ‘‘violence of 
life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, 
mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture’’, ‘‘outrages 
upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating, and 
degrading treatment’’, and prohibit the use of force 
to obtain information, stipulating that ‘‘No physical 
or moral coercion shall be exercised against pro-
tected persons, in particular to obtain information 
from them or from third parties.’’. 
(8) The United States Government informed 
the United Nations in 1999 that in the United
States, the use of torture ‘‘is categorically denounced 
as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority 
. . . No official of the government, Federal, State, 
or local, civilian, or military, is authorized to commit 
or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. Nor 
may any official condone or tolerate torture in any 
form . . . Every act of torture within the meaning 
of the [Convention against Torture] is illegal under 
existing Federal and State law, and any individual 
who commits such an act is subject to penal sanc-
tions as specified in criminal statutes.’’. 
(9) In the United States, the practice of torture 
violates numerous provisions of the United States 
Constitution and its Bill of Rights, including the 
right under the Fourth Amendment to be free of un-
reasonable search or seizure, which encompasses the 
right not to be abused by the police, the right under 
the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, 
which encompasses the right to remain silent during 
interrogations, the guarantees of due process under 
the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments, which 
ensure fundamental fairness in criminal justice sys-
tem, and the right under the Eighth Amendment to 
be free of cruel or unusual punishment.
(10) In numerous cases, the United States Su-
preme Court has condemned the use of force 
amounting to torture or other forms of ill treatment 
during interrogations, including such practices as 
whipping, slapping, depriving a prisoner of food, 
water, or sleep, keeping a prisoner naked or in a 
small cell for prolonged periods, holding a gun to a 
prisoner’s head, or threatening a prisoner with mob 
violence. 
(11) Section 2242(a) of the Foreign Affairs Re-
form and Restructuring Act of 1998 (Public Law 
105–277; 8 U.S.C. 1231 note) states that ‘‘It shall 
be the policy of the United States not to expel, ex-
tradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of 
any person to a country in which there are substan-
tial grounds for believing the person would be in 
danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of 
whether the person is physically present in the 
United States.’’ . To do otherwise would violate our 
obligations under Article 3 of the Convention against 
Torture. 
(12) Transferring, rendering, removing, return-
ing, or extraditing persons in the custody of the 
United States to any other country where torture or 
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment is commonly
used in the detention and interrogation of individ-
uals is inconsistent with international human rights 
law, including various human rights treaties ratified 
by the United States, the Constitutional protections 
against torture or inhuman treatment, and the val-
ues and principles upon which the United States was 
founded. 
(13) Recent practices have weakened the safe-
guards under applicable laws, such as the procedures 
under the immigration laws of the United States 
governing removals from the United States, and per-
sons have been transferred from the custody of the 
United States to that of other governments entirely 
outside of any legal framework. 
(14) It is critically important that all transfers 
of individuals to other countries occur with full due 
process of law and in conformity with the obligations 
of the United States under article 3 of the Conven-
tion Against Torture. 
(15) The reliance on diplomatic or other assur-
ances from a government that it will not torture or 
ill-treat a person returned to that government is an 
ineffective safeguard for protecting persons from 
torture or ill treatment. Such assurances from a gov-
ernment known to engage in systematic torture are
inherently unreliable. There is strong evidence that 
governments such as those of Egypt, Syria, and 
Uzbekistan have violated such assurances they have 
provided. 
(16) The United Nation’s leading expert on tor-
ture, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, recently ex-
amined the practice of rendition in situations that 
implicate the prohibition on returning persons to 
countries where they may face torture. The Special 
Rapporteur noted with concern that such practices 
appear to be on the rise over the past 3 years. After 
examining the growing use of diplomatic or other as-
surances described in paragraph (14), the Special 
Rapporteur stated that such assurances may not be 
used in circumstances where a country has a record 
of ‘‘systematic practice of torture’’. In such cases, 
the individual’s right not to be subjected to torture 
must be respected, and the individual may not be re-
turned to that country. 
SEC. 3. TRANSFER OF PERSONS. 
(a) REPORTS
TO CONGRESS.—Beginning 30 days 
after the date of the enactment of this Act and every 12 
months thereafter, the Secretary of State shall complete 
and submit to the appropriate congressional committees 
a list of countries where there are substantial grounds for
believing that torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading 
treatment is commonly used in the detention of or interro-
gation of individuals. The list shall be compiled on the 
basis of the information contained in the most recent an-
nual report of the Secretary of State submitted to the 
Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Com-
mittee on Foreign Relations of the Senate under section 
116(d) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 
2151n(d)). 
(b) PROHIBITION
ON TRANSFERRING PERSONS.—
Any person who is imprisoned, detained, or held for trans-
fer to another country by, or is otherwise in the custody 
of, a department, agency, or official of the United States 
Government, or any contractor of any such department 
or agency, may not be transferred, rendered, or re-
turned—
(1) to a country included on the most recent list 
submitted under subsection (a), for the purpose of 
detention, interrogation, trial, or otherwise; or 
(2) to any other country if there are substantial 
grounds to believe that the person will be transferred 
to a country included in the most recent list sub-
mitted under subsection (a). 
(c) WAIVERS.—
(1) AUTHORITY.—The Secretary of State may 
waive the prohibition contained in subsection (b) 
with respect to the government of a country if the 
Secretary certifies to the appropriate congressional 
committees that—
(A) that government has ended the acts of 
torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treat-
ment that were the basis for the inclusion of 
that country on the list; and 
(B) there is in place a mechanism that 
assures the United States in a verifiable man-
ner that a person transferred, rendered, or re-
turned will not be tortured or subjected to 
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in that 
country, including, at a minimum, immediate, 
unfettered, and continuing access, from the 
point of return, to each such person by an inde-
pendent humanitarian organization. 
(2) ASSURANCES
INSUFFICIENT.—Written or 
verbal assurances made to the United States by the 
government of a country that persons transferred, 
rendered, or returned to the country will not be tor-
tured or subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading 
treatment, are not sufficient to meet the require-
ments of paragraph (1)(B).
(d) TREATY-BASED EXTRADITION EXEMPTION.—(1) 
The prohibition contained in subsection (b) shall not be 
construed to apply to the legal extradition of a person 
under a bilateral or multilateral extradition treaty if, prior 
to such extradition, that person has recourse to a court 
in the United States of competent jurisdiction to challenge 
the extradition on the basis that there are substantial 
grounds for believing that the person would be in danger 
of being subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrad-
ing treatment in the country requesting such extradition. 
(2) ASSURANCES INSUFFICIENT.—Written or verbal 
assurances made to the United States by the government 
of a country that persons transferred, rendered, or re-
turned to the country will not be tortured or subjected 
to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, are not suffi-
cient basis for believing that the person would not be in 
subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treat-
ment in the country requesting such extradition pursuant 
to paragraph (1). 
SEC. 4. IMPLEMENTATION OF OBLIGATION NOT TO RE-
TURN TO RISK OF TORTURE. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—Section 2242 of the Foreign Af-
fairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (8 U.S.C. 
1231 note) is amended by striking subsection (b) and in-
serting the following: