If the US and UK governments truly want to rebuke the role that kidnapping, torture and prolonged detention without trial played—and in some cases continues to play—in their declared "war against terrorism" than they must go beyond words and release the still disclosed internal reports that document such abuses.

 

That's the argument of Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, who spoke out on Monday against the secrecy and denial that persists within both governments.

Perpetrators and architects of such programs should be held accountable and face justice, he declared in both an official report and in a speech delivered Monday.

"Despite this clear repudiation of the unlawful actions carried out by the Bush-era CIA, many of the facts remain classified, and no public official has so far been brought to justice in the United States," Emmerson writes in the report written for the the U.N. Human Rights Council, which he will present Tuesday.