CIA waterboarding is torture: International Red Cross

Simulation of waterboarding technique used by the CIA during the Bush administration.

Fri Aug 8, 2014 6:0PM GMT

The International Committee of the Red Cross has broken its silence on the use of waterboarding employed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on terror suspects, calling it torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions.

It was the first time that the Red Cross, based in Geneva, Switzerland, has publicly declared that a specific interrogation technique constitutes torture.

"The definition of torture is any technique that causes severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, inflicted for a purpose, such as obtaining information or a confession, exerting pressure, intimidation or humiliation," Anna Nelson, the Red Cross spokeswoman in Washington, said on Friday.

"Waterboarding fits into this category and therefore qualifies as torture" under US and international law, she added.

Nelson said the recent public defense of waterboarding in the US prompted the Red Cross, which historically hasn't commented publicly on specific detention practices, to break its traditional silence.

"Given that this debate has been going on for years and continues to come up, we do not want our silence to be misconstrued as tacitly condoning this technique as permissible," she said.

Many human rights activists and legal scholars have long maintained that waterboarding and other cruel techniques inflicted on detainees during the George W. Bush administration were torture, which is prohibited by US federal law.

"There is no way any competent and knowledgeable attorney can say that waterboarding is legal under the Geneva Conventions, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or the Convention Against Torture," said retired Major General Thomas Romig, a former US Army judge advocate general.

The new condemnation over the CIA’s cruel techniques comes amid renewed US debate over the spy agency’s practices after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which included waterboarding several detainees at so-called secret black sites overseas. The CIA and US lawmakers have been fighting over publication of parts of an extensive Senate Intelligence Committee report that is critical of the spy agency's conduct.

Last Friday, President Barack Obama said at a news conference the coming CIA report would show some terrorism suspects suffered techniques "any fair-minded person would believe were torture."

 

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