LONDON – European governments gave a muted response to a U.S. report on Central Intelligence Agency torture, declining the opportunity to criticize the Obama administration amid concerns over current security threats.
While China accused the U.S. of hypocrisy, the European Union, Britain and Germany moderated their response to the findings of the report by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said the publication of the report would help restore trans-Atlantic relations.
“There’s a deep reluctance to open old wounds just as we face the challenge of Islamic State and parts of the Middle East go up in flames,” Shada Islam, director of policy at the Friends of Europe advisory group in Brussels, said in a phone interview. “Many European governments were complicit or at least turned a blind eye to what the CIA was doing.”
The report, which focused on the agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, revealed that U.S.-held terrorism suspects received more brutal treatment than previously known.
Publishing the study is “a positive step in confronting publicly and critically the CIA’s detention and interrogation program,” said European Union spokeswoman Catherine Ray. While it “raises important questions about the violation of human rights by the U.S. authorities and persons at the service of the agencies,” the 28-nation EU “recognize President Obama’s commitment to use his authority to ensure that these methods are never used again.”
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said that “after 9/11 there were things that happened that were wrong,” when he was asked about the report.
“Those of us who want to see a safer, more secure world, who want to see this extremism defeated, we won’t succeed if we lose our moral authority, if we lose the things that make our systems work and our countries successful,” Cameron said at a press conference in Turkey late Tuesday.
The German government welcomed the report and said in an e- mailed statement that “torture can never be justified.” President Barack Obama has clearly spoken out against torture and in favor of human rights, according to the statement.
“The upholding of legal and democratic values must be the foundation of our joint fight against terrorism,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government said. “Only in this way can we gain credibility for our actions in this fight.”
Friends of Europe’s Islam said another reason for the softer European response to the report is that leaders “have moved on” given that the George W. Bush administration, which undertook the measures, has been out of office since 2009. “Many European governments just wish the whole thing would go away,” she said.
China joined human rights advocates Wednesday in criticizing the U.S. over the report.
“China has consistently opposed torture,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a briefing in Beijing Wednesday in reference to the report. “We think the U.S. should reflect on that and correct related practices, to earnestly abide by and honor the regulations of international conventions.”
Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee Tuesday published a summary of their still-classified 6,000-page investigation into the interrogation of terrorism suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the panel’s chairman, said the treatment of detainees amounted to torture in some cases.
China led criticism of the report in Asia, where some U.S. embassies issued warnings of a possible backlash against American citizens. The U.S. has repeatedly criticized China for prosecuting rights activists and dissenters in the Communist country.
The Beijing-based Legal Evening News said the CIA report was so full of “hair-raising details” that even 6,000 pages could hardly do it justice. State-run Xinhua news organization compiled articles on the report under the title “How Long Can the U.S. Still Masquerade as Human Rights Defender?”
The report found that suspects were held for days at a time in the dark, handcuffed by the wrists to an overhead bar and subjected to waterboarding as part of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Such harsh measures after Sept. 11 were described by the U.S. government as necessary to defend the country, and by opponents as a betrayal of the American tradition of civic rights and freedoms.
The report’s publication could lead to “a flood of litigation,” said Manfred Nowak, a former UN special rapporteur who helped draft the 1984 UN Convention against Torture.
“It’s a big step forward but there’s still a long way to go,” Nowak said in a phone interview from Vienna. “For example, we have proof that the U.S. operated black sites in the European Union -- Poland, Lithuania and Romania -- that hasn’t been officially recognized.”
Malik Muhammad Rafique Rajwana, a member of the Pakistan Senate’s defense committee, said the torture was a severe crime that should be taken to the International Court of Justice.
“You can’t pick up people, do what you want, then after some time disclose it and go away just because you’re powerful,” he said by phone from Islamabad. “It’s a slap in the face of the civilized world.”
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s office and the Foreign Office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani called the CIA practices “unjustifiable and evil” and said that some Afghan citizens were among those tortured.
“No nation” will be able to have a prison on Afghan soil after the end of this year, when the combat role of U.S. and allied forces officially ends, Ghani said according to an e-mail Wednesday from his office.
There were no immediate signs of protests directed at any U.S. embassies or other government facilities overseas in connection with the report. Republicans in Congress who argued that the document shouldn’t be published had cited the risk of such attacks.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said during a visit to Iraq that he remains concerned about the potential fallout the report’s findings could have on U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East.
“I have ordered all our combatant commanders to be on high alert everywhere in the world,” Hagel said at a press conference in Baghdad Tuesday. He said there was no specific intelligence suggesting any imminent threat.
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