The U.N. Committee against
Torture urged the United States on Friday to fully investigate and prosecute
police brutality and shootings of unarmed black youth and ensure that taser
weapons are used only in life-threatening situations.
The panel's first review of the
U.S. record on preventing torture since 2006 came in the wake of
racially-tinged unrest in cities across the United States this week sparked by
a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury's decision not to charge a white police officer
for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager.
The committee decried
"excruciating pain and prolonged suffering" endured by prisoners
during "botched executions" as well as frequent rapes of inmates,
shackling of pregnant women in some prisons, and extensive use of solitary
confinement.
The review cited deep concern
about "numerous reports" of police brutality and excessive use of
force against people from minority groups, immigrants and homosexuals as well
as racial profiling and militarization of policing work.
It referred to the
"frequent and recurrent police shootings or fatal purusits of unarmed
blackindividuals."
The U.S. delegation told the 10
independent experts on the panel that 20 investigations had been opened since
2009 into systematic police abuses and that more than 330 police officers had
been prosecuted for brutality.
The U.N. panel said there was
insufficient information available on the result of those investigations.
It spoke of "numerous and
consistent" reports that U.S. police have used tasers against unarmed
people resisting arrest and condemned two recent cases of death in Florida and
Illinois.
Tasers should be used only in
extreme cases to prevent loss of life or serious injury, the committee said.
It criticized what it called a
continued U.S. failure to fully investigate allegations of torture and
ill-treatment of terrorism suspects held in U.S. custody abroad,
"evidenced by the limited number of criminal prosecutions and
convictions".
Some 148 inmates are held at
the U.S. Guantanamo base in Cuba amid reports, the committee's report said, of
"a draconian system of secrecy surrounding high-value detainees that keeps
their torture claims out of the public domain".
Nine inmates have died,
including seven by suicide, since 2006, the report added.
It called for declassifying
evidence of torture and detainee abuse committed during former PresidentGeorge
W. Bush's administration, and for prosecuting those responsible.
