Johann Hari: The Republicans' dirty secret... torture

Allen West oversaw the brutal treatment of an Iraqi. Now he is running for Congress

So what will be left of the Republican Party after next week's US election? The answer lies in the sands of Florida, where the sunshine-state Republicans have nominated an unrepentant torturer as their candidate for Congress. They view his readiness to torture an innocent Iraqi not as a source of shame, but as his prime qualification for office. This is American conservatism in the dying days of Bush – and it points out the direction that Sarah Palin would like to take it in 2012.

In August 2003, Colonel Allen West – commanding a US unit in Baghdad – heard a rumour that one of the Iraqi policeman he was working with was a secret insurgent. He ordered his officers to go and seize Yehiya Hamoodi, a thin, bespectacled 31-year-old, from his home. They dragged him into a Humvee, beat him, and then handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded him. In a dank interrogation room, they told him he had better start talking

Yehiya explained he didn't know what they were talking about. West told Yehiya he was going to be killed. While his men beat him again, he explained he had one last chance to save his life – by talking.

Yehiya protested: I am innocent! What are you talking about? So West took him outside, had him pinned down, and began to shoot. He fired into the air and right next to his head. Then he began to count down from five. Finally Yehiya began to scream out names – any name he could think of, just to make it stop.

The men he named were seized and roughed up in turn. Today, Yehiya is severely traumatised. The story only came to light after one of West's soldiers began to protest against these practices, and the Pentagon launched an investigation. At a pre-trial hearing, West was fined $5,000, and now concedes grudgingly: "It's possible I was wrong about Mr Hamoodi." But he says he would do it again.

West has even taken to joking about it, gaining applause for telling Republican audiences: "It wasn't torture. Seeing Rosie O'Donnell naked would be torture". But the 1994 Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is explicit: "Threat of imminent death" is the third form of torture it outlaws.

Yet the Republican Party has rallied to the defence of this torturer, and of torture in general. The Bush administration has ordered the simulated drowning of "high-value" suspects, and set up secret black ops sites across the world where it is practiced. After Afghan detainees were hanged from the ceiling and beaten to death, the officers responsible were merely given a "letter of reprimand".