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London mayor tells Bush to stay away from Britain

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Nov 25, IRNA -- London mayor Boris Johnson Thursday warned former US President George W. Bush to stay away from Britain and other European countries to promote his memoirs, saying that he may face arrest for torture.

“It is not just that every European capital would be brought to a standstill, as book-signings turned into anti-war riots,” Johnson said.

“The real trouble — from the Bush point of view — is that he might never see Texas again,” he warned, suggesting that he may be arrested if he attends such annual literature festivals as the one in Wales at Hay-on-Wye.

“Some embarrassed member of the Welsh constabulary could walk on stage, place some handcuffs on the former leader of the Free World, and take him away to be charged,” he said.

The outspoken Conservative mayor believed that Bush could face the same fate as former president of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested in London in 1998 after being indicted for human rights violations, including 94 counts of torture.

But unlike Pinochet who was eventually released after a 16-month legal battle, the former US president has admitted to authorising and sponsoring the use of torture by way of 'waterboarding' prisoners.

Waterboarding is a “disgusting practice by which the victim is deliberately made to think that he is drowning,” Johnson said. “It is not compatible either with the US constitution or the UN convention against torture. It is deemed to be torture in this country.”

“It is no wonder, with orders like that coming from the top, that the (US) troopers misbehaved so tragically in Abu Ghraib” prison in Iraq, he said in an article for the Daily Telegraph.

“If your end is the spread of freedom and the rule of law, you cannot hope to achieve that end by means that are patently vile and illegal,” the mayor said.

He questioned “how could America complain to the Burmese generals about the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, when a president authorised torture?”

“How can we talk about human rights in Beijing, when our number one ally and friend seems to be defending this kind of behaviour? I can't think of any other American president, in my lifetime, who would have spoken in this way.”

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Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 30091571