"U.S. Abandoned Human Rights"

Carter: US Has Abandoned 'Basic Principles Of Human Rights'

Associated Press
Thursday October 11, 2007
Guardian

Former US president Jimmy Carter last night told CNN the US tortured prisoners in violation of international law, following an assertion last week from George Bush that the US "does not torture".

The 2002 winner of the Nobel peace prize accused Mr Bush of making up his own definition of torture and the hawkish vice president, Dick Cheney, of being a "militant".

"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights," Mr Carter told CNN.

"We've said that the Geneva conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantánamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime."

The New York Times last reported on secret US justice department memorandums supporting the use of "harsh interrogation techniques".

Mr Carter said the interrogation methods cited, including "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures," constitute torture:

"if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honoured - certainly in the last 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated.

"But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we don't violate them, and you can make your own definition of torture and say we don't violate them," Carter said.

Mr Bush's reponse to the New York Times' report was to proclaim: "This government does not torture people."

In a separate interview with the BBC, Mr Carter criticised Mr Dick Cheney as "a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military."