UK refuses to condone Bush use of waterboarding
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, Nov 9, IRNA -- The British government Tuesday sought to distance itself from former US president George W Bush’s admission of authoring waterboarding by saying it considered the simulated drowning technique as “torture.”
'We don't condone it (torture), nor do we ask others to do it on our behalf,' Prime Minister David Cameron’s official spokeswoman told reporters at her daily briefing.
The British government stood “firmly against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment,' the spokeswoman insisted.
In his newly published memoirs, Bush defended the use of waterboarding, claiming that British lives were saved by the use of information obtained from terrorist suspects.
Amnesty International human rights group expressed its 'shock' at Bush's comments. 'Amnesty is still quite shocked that the former president is clinging to this view that waterboarding is somehow legal,' said spokesman Neil Durkin.
Former chairman of Britain’s intelligence and security committee Kim Howells said Bush needed to try to justify what he did to the world but that he did not believe UK intelligence services had anything to do with it.
'What is very difficult to decide is whether or not our intelligence partners have as scrupulous an attitude towards this as we believe the British intelligence service has,' Howells told the BBC's Today programme.
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