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Waterboarding should be prosecuted as torture: U.N.
Fri Feb 8, 2008 6:43pm EST
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The controversial interrogation technique
known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as
torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.
"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling
under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.
Arbour made her comment in response to a question about whether U.S.
officials could be tried for the use of waterboarding that referred to
CIA director Michael Hayden telling Congress on Tuesday his agency had
used waterboarding on three detainees captured after the September 11
attacks.
Violators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted
under the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' which allows countries
to try accused war criminals from other nations, Arbour said.
"There are several precedents worldwide of states exercising their
universal jurisdiction ... to enforce the torture convention and we
can only hope that we will see more and more of these avenues of
redress," Arbour said.
The U.S. Congress is considering banning the practice, in which
prisoners are immobilized and water is poured into their breathing
passages to simulate drowning.
Arbour referred to an arrest warrant issued in 1998 by a Spanish judge
for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006, on
charges of torture, murder and kidnapping in the years that followed
his 1973 coup.
Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s were known to use
waterboarding on political prisoners.
(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Patricia Zengerle)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0852061620080208
Fri Feb 8, 2008 6:43pm EST
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The controversial interrogation technique
known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as
torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.
"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling
under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.
Arbour made her comment in response to a question about whether U.S.
officials could be tried for the use of waterboarding that referred to
CIA director Michael Hayden telling Congress on Tuesday his agency had
used waterboarding on three detainees captured after the September 11
attacks.
Violators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted
under the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' which allows countries
to try accused war criminals from other nations, Arbour said.
"There are several precedents worldwide of states exercising their
universal jurisdiction ... to enforce the torture convention and we
can only hope that we will see more and more of these avenues of
redress," Arbour said.
The U.S. Congress is considering banning the practice, in which
prisoners are immobilized and water is poured into their breathing
passages to simulate drowning.
Arbour referred to an arrest warrant issued in 1998 by a Spanish judge
for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006, on
charges of torture, murder and kidnapping in the years that followed
his 1973 coup.
Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s were known to use
waterboarding on political prisoners.
(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Patricia Zengerle)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0852061620080208
