ANKARA
The fight against extremism can only be successful if governments and their intelligence agencies conducted themselves with high “moral authority,” the British prime minister said Tuesday.
David Cameron made the remarks in response to a question at a press conference in Ankara about the U.S. Senate’s report about CIA’s alleged use of torture.
A scathing U.S. Senate report issued Tuesday said that the American spy agency’s use of torture following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was more brutal and extensive than initially thought.
Addressing a joint press conference in Ankara with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu, Cameron said “Let us be clear – torture is wrong, torture is always wrong."
"For those of us who want to see a safer, a more secure world, who wanted 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," he said.
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s 500-page document is an unclassified executive summary of a 6,700-page full report that remains classified.
It is the result of a more than five-year investigation into the CIA’s interrogation practices.
“Now obviously after 9/11, there were things that happened that were wrong and we should be clear about the fact that they were wrong," Cameron said.
“In Britain, we have had the Gibson Inquiry and that inquiry has now produced a series of questions that the Intelligence and Security Committee will look at, but I am satisfied that our system is dealing with all of these issues."
The U.K. government’s Gibson Inquiry, also known as the Detainee Inquiry, looked at whether Britain was implicated in the improper treatment of detainees, held by other countries, which may have occurred in the aftermath of 9/11.
Cameron said he had personally issued guidance to all British agents about how to behave.
"I as Prime Minister have issued guidance to all our agents and others working around the world about how they have to handle themselves around the world, about how they have to handle these issues in future," the British premier said.
"So, I am confident these issues have been dealt with from the British perspective and I think I can reassure the British public about that, but overall we should be clear – torture is wrong."
The U.S. Senate Committee Chair Diane Feinstein said in the report that the CIA alongside two contractors “decided to initiate a program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques in violation of the U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values.”
The investigation examined Central Intelligence Agency’s practices from late 2001 to early 2009.
It claimed that lawmakers and the White House were misled by the agency about the effectiveness of the techniques.
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