US criticized for rights violations

Press TV

The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council called on the White House to 'investigate allegations of torture in US detention centers abroad.'The US has faced much criticism at the UN top human rights assembly over allegations of torture and delays in the closure of Guantanamo Bay Detention Center.

The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council called on the White House to investigate allegations of torture in US detention centers abroad.

The ambassadors of 47 member-states urged the swift closure of US detention centers in Guantanamo in Cuba and Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.

European countries including Britain, as well as Australia, recommended a moratorium or abolition of the death penalty

France urged President Barack Obama to "honor his promise" in 2009 to close Guantanamo where a total of 172 of the 242 detainees, from when Obama took office in 2008, are kept. France insist on the need for help from Congress, the courts and US allies willing to host ex-detainees.

Cuban ambassador Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez called on the US to "halt war crimes and the killing of civilians." Venezuela's German Mundarain Hernandez recommended that Washington "put to trial those responsible for victims of torture."

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that former US president George W. Bush wrote in his new memoir that he personally gave the go-ahead for CIA officers to waterboard alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The 36-member US delegation tried to downplay the human rights violations committed by Washington, but recognized that the US record was "not perfect."

"While there were some politically-motivated conversations, overall the conversation was constructive dialogue on international human rights," delegation chief and assistant secretary at the US State Department, Esther Brimmer told reporters afterwards.

Although no action is taken in the four-yearly "Universal Periodic Review" it exposes governments to examination by their peers and the UN. The US had refused to join the UN council under the Bush administration.