Calls for penalties over CIA torture

Senior US officials found to have sanctioned the use of torture by the CIA should face the “gravest penalties”, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism said.

Ben Emmerson said individuals in George Bush’s administration who authorised the use of waterboarding and other so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques were “as criminally responsible as those who actually perpetrated it”.

The international lawyer said officials and politicians involved in the programme could face arrest in any country because torture is a crime of universal jurisdiction.

He said: “Criminal liability obviously follows the evidence. Any individual official in the US government who authorised the use of techniques that amount to the international crime of torture is just as much criminally responsible as those who actually perpetrated it.

“Indeed, arguably, the gravest penalties should be reserved for those who sanctioned this clear violation not just of human rights but of international law and of domestic law.”

But he said former president Bush could be protected by immunities from prosecution granted to heads of state.

Asked whether Bush would face arrest if he left the US, Emmerson said: “The position of a president is a rather special one, because there are immunities attached to the acts of heads of state... which need to be worked through on the facts of particular cases.

“But certainly those who were involved at a higher level in the authorisation of waterboarding were engaged in an agreement to commit an international crime.”

He said the authorities in Italy had already convicted 22 CIA agents in their absence for involvement in an abduction.

Within the US, he said attorney general Eric Holder was now “under a legal obligation to reopen the inquiries into prosecution for those who perpetrated these crimes and those who ordered and authorised them”.

There may have been the “odd case” where British agents were aware of torture being carried out by the CIA, a former security minister said.

Admiral Lord West said torture was “abhorrent” and was not used by the British because “we have to be whiter than white” in the battle against international terrorists.

But the Labour former minister, who was previously chief of defence intelligence, acknowledged it was possible individual agents in the field knew what US counterparts were doing to detainees.

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has acknowledged a full judicial inquiry may still be required into allegations of British complicity in torture if police and parliamentary probes fail to answer key questions.