Washington's 'lawless example' condemned

US: The United States has done "enormous damage" to the global system of human rights by its use of torture and other coercive…

US: The United States has done "enormous damage" to the global system of human rights by its use of torture and other coercive interrogation techniques, according to Human Rights Watch, the largest independent human rights organisation based in the US, reports Conor O'Clery from New York

In its 15th annual world report, Human Rights Watch also castigates the US and other countries for not taking steps to end the slaughter in Darfur.

In a scathing indictment of the Bush administration over the Abu Ghraib scandal, it charges that Washington's "lawless example" has weakened human rights worldwide.

Abu Ghraib is the prison in Baghdad which US forces took over and turned into a detention and interrogation centre after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003. In May 2004, photographs of the ill-treatment of people held there in US custody shocked the world.

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"To make matters worse, the Bush administration has developed outrageous legal theories to try to justify many of its coercive techniques," the report states. "Whether defining torture so narrowly as to render its prohibition meaningless, suggesting bogus legal defences for torturers, or claiming that the president has inherent power to order torture, the administration and its lawyers have directly challenged the absolute ban on abusing detainees."

The US embrace of coercive interrogation had moreover given countries like Egypt, Malaysia, Russia and Cuba cover for their own violations of human rights.

"The US government is less and less able to push for justice abroad, because it is unwilling to see justice done at home," said the organisation's director, Mr Kenneth Roth. "Washington can't very well uphold principles that it violates itself."

The report calls on Mr Bush and the US Congress to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate responsibility and to establish a fully-independent commission of inquiry.

The unlikely prospect of that happening was underlined by a report in yesterday's New York Times that the White House successfully urged Congressional leaders last month to drop part of a bill that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of torture and inhumane treatment.

In a comparison likely to infuriate the White House, the report concludes that the two fundamental threats to human rights in the world today are the ethnic cleansing in Darfur and the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Each has an insidious effect, one involving "indifference in the face of the worst imaginable atrocities", the other emblematic of "a powerful government flouting a most basic prohibition".

Washington's disregard for international standards is "senseless" and "counterproductive", said Mr Roth. When the most vocal advocate of democracy deliberately violated human rights "it undermines democratically inclined reformers and strengthens the appeal of those who preach more radical visions."

The report notes that although Mr Bush vowed wrongdoers in the Abu Ghraib scandal would be brought to justice, no one above the rank of sergeant has faced prosecution. It challenges the finding of the US Schlesinger report that abuses at Abu Ghraib resulted from "management failure".

They were rather the direct product of "an environment of lawlessness" created by policy decisions taken at the highest levels of the Bush administration and supported by "a chorus of partisan pundits and academics" in the US who were "all too eager to abandon the principles on which their nation was founded", says the report.

These decisions included:

The decision not to apply the Geneva Conventions to prisoners held at Guantanamo, which ensured that "the gloves came off";

The decision to interpret "torture" narrowly and to "disappear" 11 or more terrorist suspects mainly in Afghanistan where beatings, threats and sexual humiliation were still being reported and six persons died in US custody;

The refusal to prosecute soldiers implicated in two deaths in Afghanistan in 2002 ruled as homicides;

The approval by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to allow interrogation at Guantanamo that violated the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and possibly the ban on torture;

The approval by a Bush administration official of "water boarding" where the victim is made to believe he is drowning;

Sending suspects to Syria, Uzbekistan and Egypt, which practise systematic torture;

The decision to undermine the International Criminal Court;

And the decision "to concoct dubious legal theories to justify torture."

Human Rights Watch also argues that a "warped and dangerous logic" lay behind the use of torture as it was less likely to produce reliable information. The report also faults EU governments Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and the UK for returning or trying to return prisoners to countries where they are at risk of torture, and says the UK helped erode human rights standards by allowing foreign terrorist suspects to be detained without trial. This compromised the EU's ability to fill the void left by Washington.

The US is also accused of violating the laws of war in Iraq through killing incapacitated combatants, using unnecessary force against civilians and detaining hundreds of Iraqis "in accordance with no evident law".

The report also accuses the US of domestic human rights violations, including the misuse of a federal material witness law "to secretly arrest and detain Muslim men in the US without charge", and the violation of the rights of immigrants. It notes that harsh sentencing policies mean that the US with less than 5 per cent of the world's population holds 23 per cent of the world's prisoners.

The situation in Darfur meanwhile "is making a mockery of our vows of 'never again'," said Mr Roth, referring to the UN failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda.

The situation "cried out" for international involvement but the US, the UK and Australia were bogged down in Iraq, France was committed elsewhere, Canada was cutting back its peacekeeping commitments and Nato and the EU were preoccupied in Afghanistan and Bosnia so that "everyone has something more important to do than save the people of Darfur."

The US has gone so far as to say that "no new action is dictated" by its determination that genocide was taking place.

The 527-page report also accuses dozens of other countries of human rights abuses. It charges Israel with serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and the West Bank, and accuses the Palestinian Authority of failing to take steps to halt suicide bombings.

It accuses Russia of widespread police torture and of further eroding human rights in the conflict over Chechnya.