From January 2009:
In remarks that aired on German television last night, Manfred Nowak, the
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, urged the U.S. to pursue former President George W. Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld
on charges that they authorized torture and other harsh interrogation techniques:
“Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation” to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld. <…> He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required “all means, particularly penal law” to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.
“We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld,” against detainees at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Nowak said.
Indeed, a bipartisan Senate report released last month found that Rumsfeld “
bore major responsibility” for abuses committed at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and other military detention centers. Just last week, a Bush administration official overseeing Gitmo trials said Rumsfeld
approved the torture of one particular detainee. Bush himself said last year that he was
aware of his advisers’ discussions on torture and recently admitted that he
personally authorized waterboarding Kalid Sheik Muhammad.