Washington, December 02: Amnesty International has called on African nations to place the former US President George W. Bush under arrest during his tour of the continent this week.
“All countries to which George W. Bush travels have an obligation to bring him to justice for his role in torture,” Matt Pollard, an Amnesty official and senior legal adviser, said in a statement on Thursday, AFP reported.
The human rights group said, “There is enough evidence in the public domain” to justify Ethiopia, Tanzania or Zambia’s potential detention of Bush for human rights violations.
Bush has gone on the three-nation tour extending from Thursday to Monday to promote AIDS and cancer awareness.
As the president of the United States from 2001 to 2009, Bush sanctioned the use of water boarding and other extreme interrogation techniques, which human rights groups denounce as torture.
“International law requires that there be no safe haven for those responsible for torture; Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia must seize this opportunity to fulfill their obligations and end the impunity George W. Bush has so far enjoyed,” the Amnesty official emphasized.
Amnesty’s case against Bush is based on public records, released US documents, the former president’s own memoir, and a Red Cross report.
The rights group cites numerous instances of torture of detainee by the US military personnel at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba as well as prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Also triggering furious reactions from international human rights groups has been the former president’s engineering of the US deadly wars on Iraq and Afghanistan together with his Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
——Agencies