Bush ‘could face investigation over waterboard comments’

In his memoirs George W Bush said the use of waterboarding – a controversial interrogation technique which simulates the sensation of drowning – was used to obtain information from terrorist suspects that prevented attacks on London and saved British lives.

It would severely test the Foreign Office if he were to come and see his friend Mr Blair. Geoffrey Robertson QC

He said the use of the technique helped to break up plots to attack Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf.

In an interview with the Times newspaper, the 43rd US president confirmed he authorised the use of waterboarding to extract information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda mastermind behind the 11 September New York attack, telling the paper: “Damn right!”

Mr Bush said: “Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives.”

Geoffrey Robertson QC, a human rights lawyer, told Channel 4 News that the UK government would face pressure to investigate the claims if the former US president ever visited the UK.

The British government has long rejected the use of waterboarding, which it regards as torture. In a speech last month, the Chief of MI6 Sir John Sawers insisted that his service had “nothing whatsoever” to do with torture which he described as “illegal and abhorrent”.

“Ignorance of the law is no defence,” Geoffrey Robertson QC told Channel 4 News.

“Technically in the countries that have ratified the torture convention, which places an obligation on them in relation to people suspected of ordering torture…he may face problems.

“The torture convention certainly encourages investigations and [Mr Bush’s] book rather amounts to a confession that he ordered waterboarding.

“Under the diplomatic privileges act he could come [to the UK] as an ambassador perhaps and obtain immunity, but that it is a matter that would severely test the Foreign Office were he to come and see his friend Mr Blair.”

He added: “In any event he’s obviously made the calculation that there are counties where proceedings might be instituted against him – those being countries he has no desire to visit.”

Bush breaks silence 
Americans often muse about how George W Bush was the candidate you'd like to have a few beers with. The boozy hard living drinker who found God. The folksy Texan who got his words jumbled up. The regular guy who was oh-so-different from his patrician opponents, Al Gore and John Kerry.

But in the course of his presidency that narrative was displaced by another - of a gung-ho neocon, who dragged America into two disastrous wars, mounted a full fronted assault on civil liberties and international law, and left the US economy and the global financial system in tatters as he was helicoptered off the White House lawn.

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