China Wednesday led a global outcry of outrage and demands to sanctions against the United States over its report on torture practices by the CIA.
Police vehicles are stationed outside the US embassy in London before the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the CIA's anti-terrorism tactics on Tuesday. US officials moved to shore up security at American facilities around the world as a precaution. (Reuters photo)
"China has consistently opposed torture," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a briefing in Beijing today in reference to the report. "We think the US should reflect on that and correct related practices, to earnestly abide by and honour the regulations of international conventions."
Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee yesterday published a summary of their still-classified 6,000-page investigation into the interrogation of terrorism suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency in the years after the Sept 11 attacks. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the panel's chairman, said the treatment of detainees amounted to torture in some cases.
China led criticism of the report in Asia, where some US embassies issued warnings of a possible backlash against American citizens. US embassies in Thailand and Afghanistan - host to two of the secret facilities where prisoners were brutally interrogated - along with Pakistan issued warnings of the potential for anti-American protests and violence. The US Consulate in Chiang Mai also issued the warning.
In identical notices to Americans in the three countries, the embassies said ''the release of declassified versions of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's study on the CIA's rendition, detention and interrogation program could prompt anti-U.S. protests and violence against U.S. interests, including private U.S. citizens.''
The notices urged Americans to be alert to their surrounding and take appropriate safety precautions, including avoiding demonstrations or confrontational situations.
In China, which the US has continually criticised for prosecuting rights activists and dissenters in the Communist country, the Beijing-based Legal Evening News said the CIA report was full of "hair-raising details" that even 6,000 pages could hardly do it justice.
This undated file photo provided by US Central Command shows Abu Zubaydah, the CIA’s “guinea pig.” He was the first high-profile al Qaida terror suspect captured after the Sept 11 attacks and the first to vanish into the spy agency’s secret prison in Thailand. (AP photo)
The State-run Xinhua news organization compiled articles on the report under the title "How Long Can the US Still Masquerade as Human Rights Defender?"
Amnesty International response
Human rights groups said the report should only be the start of efforts to punish perpetrators and compensate victims.
"Torture is a crime and those responsible for crimes must be brought to justice," Steven W. Hawking, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said on the group's website. "It's time for accountability, including a full investigation, prosecutions and remedy for victims."
The report found that suspects were held for days at a time in the dark, handcuffed by the wrists to an overhead bar, and subjected to waterboarding as part of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Such harsh measures after Sept 11 were described by the US government as necessary to defend the country, and by opponents as a betrayal of the American tradition of civic rights and freedoms.
Ben Emmerson, the United Nations special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, said those responsible for the "criminal conspiracy" revealed in the report must be brought to justice.
Mr Emmerson, in a statement on the UN website, said the report's findings confirm "what the international community has long believed, that there was a clear policy orchestrated at a high level within the Bush administration," which allowed it "to commit systematic crimes and gross violations of international human rights law."
Litigation 'flood'
The report's publication could lead to "a flood of litigation," said Manfred Nowak, a former UN special rapporteur who helped draft the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture.
"It's a big step forward but there's still a long way to go," Mr Nowak said in a phone interview from Vienna. "For example, we have proof that the US operated black sites in the European Union - Poland, Lithuania and Romania - that hasn't been officially recognized."
Clare Algar, executive director at the UK-based human rights group Reprieve, said many of the names of victims were still missing from the report. "We are still a long way from acknowledging the horrors of the CIA's torture program, and achieving real accountability," she said in an e-mail.
'Moral authority'
David Cameron, the UK prime minister, said that "after 9/11 there were things that happened that were wrong," when he was asked about the US report.
"Those of us who want to see a safer, more secure world, who want to see this extremism defeated, we won't succeed if we lose our moral authority, if we lose the things that make our systems work and our countries successful," Mr Cameron said at a press conference in Ankara late yesterday.
In this June 9, 2011 file photo, then-CIA director-nominee Leon Panetta testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. After U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011, top CIA officials secretly told lawmakers that information gleaned from brutal interrogations played a key role in what was one of the spy agency’s greatest successes. (AP photo)
Malik Muhammad Rafique Rajwana, a member of the Pakistan Senate's defence committee, said the torture was a severe crime that should be taken to the International Court of Justice.
"You can't pick up people, do what you want, then after some time disclose it and go away just because you're powerful," he said by phone from Islamabad. "It's a slap in the face of the civilized world."
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's office and the Foreign Office didn't respond to requests for comment. Shekib Mostaghni, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry, also declined to comment in a call.
There were no immediate signs of protests directed at any US embassies or other government facilities overseas in connection with the report. Republicans in Congress who argued that the document shouldn't be published had cited the risk of such attacks.
'High alert'
Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said during a visit to Iraq that he remains concerned about the potential fallout the report's findings could have on US troops stationed in the Middle East.
"I have ordered all our combatant commanders to be on high alert everywhere in the world," Mr Hagel said at a press conference in Baghdad yesterday. He said there was no specific intelligence suggesting any imminent threat.
In Canada, the Senate report was raised in parliament, with opposition New Democratic Party lawmaker Peter Julian pointing to its findings as he asked the government to prohibit the country's security agencies from using information obtained through torture.
Mr Harper responded by saying the Senate report "has nothing whatsoever to do with the government of Canada."