Waterboarding is torture, says UN

Despite what the Bush White House may think or say, the technique of waterboarding has been declared as torture and prosecutable as such by the UN Human Rights Chief:

"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.

Now if only the UN member countries had the teeth and courage to begin using the principal of universal jurisdiction to begin prosecuting members of the administration for approving and ordering waterboarding to be used on prisoners by the US.

I find the last sentence in the article a nice little finishing touch:

Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s were known to use waterboarding on political prisoners.

Mica Rosenberg, who wrote the article at Reuters: bravo.