Washington must cease any torture and close its secret prisons. The United States was recalled to the order Friday by the Committee of UNO against torture. In his annual report, the U.N. Committee specifies as well as America must “take energetic measures for éradiquer any form of torture”, by their forces of safety in Afghanistan and Iraq and close their secret centers of detention of suspects of terrorism. The United States “must cease holding people in secret sites of detention, that it is on their territory, territories under their jurisdiction or sites under their control de facto”, still specifies the Committee in recommendations sent in Washington.

Composed of ten independent experts, the Committee studied the respect by the United States of the Convention of UNO against the torture which goes back to 1984, like it regularly does it with all the States signatories. “The State left must recognize that to hold people in secret installations constitute, in oneself, an act of torture or a treatment or a punishment cruel, inhuman or degrading according to its exact nature, its objective or its severity”, still said the text in its conclusions.

The report/ratio of the Committee is the first to aim at the United States since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the release of the “war against the terrorism” which in particular saw the opening of the prison of Guantanamo to Cuba, where hundreds of suspects are held apart from any legal framework. The United States is also suspected “of delocalizing” torture while transferring from the suspects of terrorism in other countries in order to question them.

The Committee also condemned certain techniques of interrogations which the Americans do not regard torture, as that of the “submarine”, which consists in plunging a suspect in a bath-tub, or the recourse to dogs or to very tight shackles. The U.N. experts, whose conclusions are not constraining, give to the American government one year to take measures and to inform some. In February, a report/ratio of experts of UNO had already concluded that “the general conditions from detention (in Guantanamo) equivalent with an inhuman treatment”.