The United Nations urged accountability on Wednesday for CIA interrogators who had been behind the torture of terrorism suspects as disclosed by a US Senate report.
A report concluded in 2012, but made public on Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee, has revealed systematic torture of 119 terror suspects by the CIA interrogators which included waterboarding, beating and sleep deprivation. The report tracked the practices during the period 2001-2009, at the onset of the US war on terrorism that followed the September 2011 attacks in New York.
The report “has confirmed what the international community has long believed– that there was a clear policy orchestrated at a high level within the Bush Administration which allowed to commit gross violations of international human rights law,” the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, said Tuesday.
Reuters had quoted the CIA dismissing the report, arguing that information it obtained from its interrogations were valuable.
“CIA officers who physically committed acts of torture therefore bear individual criminal responsibility for their conduct, and cannot hide behind the authorization they were given by their superiors,” Emmerson maintained. “International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture,”, he added in his statement, noting that perpetrators can legally by prosecuted by any country they travel to.
