The UN has led international condemnation of the CIA’s interrogation and detention programme laid bare by the Senate’s intelligence committee. Its special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights has called for the criminal prosecution of Bush-era officials involved.



Here is a roundup of world reaction to Dianne Feinstein’s report:



Ben Emmerson, UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights



It is now time to take action. The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes. The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the US government provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal accountability. International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture. This applies not only to the actual perpetrators but also to those senior officials within the US government who devised, planned and authorised these crimes. As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice. The UN convention against torture and the UN convention on enforced disappearances require states to prosecute acts of torture and enforced disappearance where there is sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction. States are not free to maintain or permit impunity for these grave crimes. The heaviest penalties should be reserved for those most seriously implicated in the planning and purported authorisation of these crimes. Former Bush Administration officials who have admitted their involvement in the programme should also face criminal prosecution for their acts. President Obama made it clear more than five years ago that the US government recognises the use of waterboarding as torture. There is therefore no excuse for shielding the perpetrators from justice any longer. The US attorney general is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges against those responsible. Torture is a crime of universal jurisdiction. The perpetrators may be prosecuted by any other country they may travel to. However, the primary responsibility for bringing them to justice rests with the US Department of Justice and the attorney general.

David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister

Let’s be clear: torture is wrong; torture is always wrong. in Britain we have had the Gibson inquiry and that inquiry has now produced a series of questions that the intelligence and security Ccmmittee will look at. But I am satisfied that our system is dealing with all these issues and I, as prime minister, have issued guidance to all of our agents and others working around the world about how they have to handle these issues in future.



Iran

The Twtter account of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, condemned the US’s record on torture as “shameful”.



Any noble man would feel the sweat of shame about #GTMO; then-US.Pres. order on torture is shameful. #TortureReport #HumanRightsDay 1/3/08 — Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) December 10, 2014

They claim #humanrights &trample its basics in their prisons,in interactions w nations &even w their own ppl.#TortureReport #Ferguson 2/8/10 — Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) December 10, 2014





China’s state news agency Xinhua

[The US] should clean up its own backyard first and respect the rights of other countries to resolve their issues by themselves. America is neither a suitable role model nor a qualified judge on human rights issues in other countries, as it pertains to be.

Yet, despite this, people rarely hear the US talking about its own problems, preferring to be vocal on the issues it sees in other countries, including China.

North Korea’s news agency KCNA



Why [is] the United Nations security council turning its face from the inhuman torture practiced by the CIA? If the UNSC handles the ‘human rights issue’ in the DPRK [North Korea] while shutting its eyes to the serious human rights issue in the US, one of its permanent members, while failing to settle the pending and urgent issues directly linked with the world peace and security, it will prove itself its miserable position that it has turned into a tool for US arbitrary practices just as everybody can hear everywhere.

Poland



Poland’s former president confirmed that his country hosted one of the CIA’s “black sites” for the first time following the release of the report.

Aleksander Kwasniewski said that during his term Poland offered the CIA a site for a secret prison but did not authorise the harsh treatment of inmates.

His comments were the first time that a Polish leader has admitted the country hosted a secret CIA site. Reports say it operated from December 2002 until the fall of 2003. Kwasniewski was in power from 1995-2005.

Kwasniewski said the activity in Poland was terminated under pressure from Poland’s leaders. He gave no dates for the site’s operation. Until now, Polish leaders at the time have denied the site’s existence, but their successors in 2008 ordered a probe.

Before the release of the report, current president Ewa Kopacz said:



It will not harm US-Polish relations.

Moazzam Begg, former British inmate of Guantánamo Bay

The former terrorism suspect said CIA torture had fuelled violence and the rise of Islamic State.

The legacy of this torture has been that for the past 13 years we’ve seen people being dressed in orange suits and executed, whether it’s Iraqi groups during the first occupation by America or whether it’s Iraqi groups now under IS. Those who have committed crimes have to be held accountable regardless of who they are.

Nazeeh Alemad, legal adviser to Yemen’s ruling party



The New York Times quoted him saying:



It makes no difference. People here are not looking for more proof of torture [by the United States] They deal with it as a fact. What makes a difference is what happens here, not some report published over there.

Egypt

Egypt, where the US rendered scores of prisoners under Hosni Mubarak and the government continues to torture Egyptian dissidents with impunity, gave a muted response to the report. A government spokesman declined to comment.

Those who did react said the report highlighted the hypocrisy of the US, who have often condemned Egypt’s recent human rights abuses. “America cannot demand human rights reports from other countries when this proves they know nothing about human rights,” said a pro-regime television host, Tamer Amin, on his show.

Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent opposition politician under Hosni Mubarak, and Nobel peace-prize winner, tweeted:

Heinous acts of torture & rendition: shock to the world & blow to US values. Nothing short of full accountability will do. — Mohamed ElBaradei (@ElBaradei) December 9, 2014

Malaysia

A Malaysian politician has urged his government to explain the full role it played in the CIA’s torture of terror suspects, writes Kate Hodal. “Both the US and Malaysia owe the public, as well as the world at large, an explanation over this sordid and sorry affair”, said PKR youth leader Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad. He added:



[The report] highlights the role that our country and other allies in the ‘global war on terror’ played in the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’, that is to say, the covert capture and transfer of such suspects to various clandestine detention facilities set up for such purposes.

“While stopping terror plots is paramount, Malaysia should not have compromised its moral integrity in this way,” he added. “Indeed, the efficacy and quality of intelligence that the practice of extraordinary rendition has produced has repeatedly been questioned.

The incumbent government, led by PM Najib Razak, has not commented on the Senate’s report.

Russia

Reaction in Russia’s state media has been strangely muted, at least so far, writes Shaun Walker. Usually, Moscow enjoys the opportunity to engage in some schadenfreude over such issues, most recently during the unrest in Ferguson. CIA abuses are also a pet topic of the English-language Kremlin television station Russia Today.

A parody Vladimir Putin account on Twitter wrote: “Russia Today to run coverage of CIA torture & also KGB torture in Chechnya. Ok, only half of that is true.”

Though Russia Today and Russia’s domestic Channel One have indeed run stories, the Senate report has not dominated coverage so far. Nor has it been used to draw any conclusions about US hypocrisy.



There has also been little response from Russian officials so far, although Konstantin Dolgov, the foreign ministry’s human rights ombudsman, released a series of tweets slamming the US response to CIA torture:



The Senate’s report proves that there was systematic use of torture in CIA prisons in violation of the international obligations of the US. Everyone has known this for a long time. But the Obama administration, having formally banned torture, hasn’t lifted a finger to punish those guilty for these egregious human rights abuses. This has created a further stain on the already stained US reputation in human rights. Let’s see what the administration’s reaction to the report is.”

France



Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right Front National said she “did not condemn” the CIA servicemen alleged to have carried out torture.

“On subjects like this it’s quite easy to go on television to say ‘Oh, la la! That’s wrong’,” she told BFMTV.



“I believe that those people who are dealing with terrorists, and trying to get information out of them that helps save civilian lives, are responsible people.”

Pressed as to whether she believed it was permissible to torture suspects she said: “In some cases. Let me say when you have a bomb going tick, tock, tick that’s going to explode in an hour or two and 200-300 civilian victims will be caught up in it, then it can be useful to make someone speak ... however one can.”

Afterwards Le Pen said she’d been misrepresented and denied defending the use of torture. She tweeted that “faced with terrorism” the authorities should use “legal means ... obviously not torture”.



French international radio station RFI described publication of the CIA report as a “complicated exercise in democracy”.



Additional reporting by Kim Willsher

