Geneva – A U.N. human rights expert voiced alarm on Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump might allow torture in interrogations and called for senior officials from George W. Bush’s administration to be prosecuted for allowing the illegal practice.
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U.S. officials responsible for the secret detention, rendition and torture programs run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) included “those in the most senior positions” under Bush, said Ben Emmerson, U.N. special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism.
“To hear President Trump, in the first days after his inauguration, glibly extolling the virtues of torture as a weapon in the fight against terrorism, and confirming his personal willingness to authorize the use of torture if asked to do so, was enough to make my blood run cold,” Emmerson said.
Trump has acknowledged that U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis disagrees with him about the usefulness of torture in interrogation and said he would defer to him on the issue.
There was no immediate response from the U.S. delegation to the 47-member state forum in Geneva.
Emerson, a British barrister and international criminal justice expert, said that Trump’s comments showed a “staggering level of ill-preparedness to govern.” He was making his final speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council after six years in the independent post.
A veteran CIA clandestine service officer who ran one of the agency’s “black site” prisons set up after the 9/11 attacks has named deputy director of the U.S. spy agency.
Trump’s nominee to be the director of national intelligence, former Republican Senator Dan Coats, has raised concerns over his record on the previous U.S. use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, which are widely seen as torture.
“If one of the most powerful nations in the world, a permanent member of the Security Council, is once again prepared to abandon our collective values on the pretext of defending them, then one is left to wonder whether anything at all has been achieved in the last 15 years,” Emmerson said.
Torture has been a proven method of extracting information for thousands of years. People would not have used torture if it wasn’t effective. The only obstacle to torture is because these animals know that their silly jewish liberal lawyer will bail them out.
And to be honest yes its a violation of human rights. And it has no place our cultured 21st century society, But these muslim terrorists are not humans and don’t deserve rights granted to POW’s under the Geneva convention.
Let all liberals light their hair on fire.
This meddling UN menace already has Ice cold blood every report he comes out with is rife with criticism of Israeli counter terrorism to protect it’s innocent civilians against islamic terror.
Did anyone here this guy complaining that his blood runs cold because isis hama tortcherd millions of their fellow islamists, but real barbarian tortcher not just a little waterboarding. About a little waterboarding hes concerned! ‘kol shehu merachem al achzury soi shehu achzuri al hamrachaim’
If you don’t like it you can do it all Democrats said thinking I’ll leave the country if Trump wins