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| April 22, 2009Â | News covering the UN and the world |
The UN and various human-rights organizations have indicated they will investigate the policy of controversial interrogation tactics and torture, approved by George W. Bush administration officials and executed by CIA agents, if the Barack Obama administration refuses to pursue them. Consensus exists among various human-rights lawyers that interrogation techniques approved by Bush administration officials amount to a violation of international law, and recent memos declaring approval for the techniques eases the way for those investigations. Many of the interrogation techniques, adopted from a handbook designed for military training, were torture methods used by the Communists during the Korean War -- methods whose history, legality and efficacy were neither revealed nor researched by any U.S. government officials when those techniques were approved. The Washington Post (4/22) , The New York Times (4/21)
