UN expert urges U.S. not to reinstate waterboarding

The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, on Monday appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump not to reconsider the acceptability of waterboarding and other methods of torture used as interrogation techniques.

In a statement published on Monday, the UN expert stressed that without any doubt, waterboarding amounts to torture.

"Any tolerance, complacence or acquiescence with such practice, however exceptional and well-argued, will inevitably lead down a slippery slope towards complete arbitrariness and brute force," he cautioned.

"I urgently appeal to President Trump to carefully consider not only U.S. legal obligations, doctrine and tradition, but also the consolidated legal and moral views of the entire international community before allowing the re-introduction of methods or interrogation that are more closely associated with barbarism than with civilization," he added.

The UN special rapporteur noted that the United States has always publicly affirmed its belief in the rule of law and respect for truth, and called on the United States to live up to the standards the nation has set both for itself and others.

"If the new administration were to revive the use of torture, however, the consequences around the world would be catastrophic," he warned.

Trump said earlier last week that he is ok with torturing terrorists in order to "fight fire with fire."

"When ISIS is doing things that nobody has ever heard of since medieval times, would I feel strongly about waterboarding? As far as I am concerned, we have to fight fire with fire," Trump said during an interview with U.S. TV network ABC.

Trump said he has recently met the senior intelligence officials who told him that torture "absolutely" works, but according to Melzer, contrary to popular belief, torture simply does not work.

"Torture is known to consistently produce false confessions and unreliable or misleading information," he said, "Faced with the imminent threat of excruciating pain or anguish, victims simply will say anything --regardless of whether it is true -- to make the pain stop and try to stay alive."

The expert recalled the 2014 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Report, which concluded that the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, was "not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees", a conclusion echoed by countless law enforcement agencies and scientific studies worldwide.

"Even if torture did work, that does not make it legally or morally acceptable," he added. "Let us be clear: if you are looking for military advantage in war, you can argue that chemical weapons 'work', or terrorism 'works' as well." Endit