GENEVA - A United Nations human rights panel has issued a damning report that blames the United States and seven other nations for the C.I.A.’s “torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of a Saudi prisoner who now awaits a death penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also named as responsible the United Arab Emirates, where the prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was captured in 2002, and Afghanistan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Thailand, where he was held as part of a rendition and interrogation program run by the George W. Bush administration.
The working group, which has no enforcement authority, adopted the 18-page report on Nov. 15 but did not release it until this weekend. The group called for the immediate release of and compensation for Mr. Nashiri, who is accused of orchestrating the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole off Yemen nearly 23 years ago.
It said the Guantánamo war crimes court, which was devised to prosecute only non-U.S. citizens, deprives Mr. Nashiri of “the fair trial guarantees that would ordinarily apply within the judicial system of the United States.”