The US Senate voted on Tuesday to ban the use of torture, a landmark vote intended to bar any further use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on detainees and put into law an executive order President Barack Obama signed in 2009.
The Senate voted 78-21 for the amendment to the National Defense Authorization bill offered by Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat Dianne Feinstein.
Some 32 Republicans joined every member of the Democratic caucus to back the legislation. All 21 no-votes were from Republicans, World Bulletin reported.
“This amendment provides greater assurances that never again will the US follow that dark path of sacrificing our values for our short-term security needs,” said McCain, who was tortured in the 1960s as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Feinstein led a years-long Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of the CIA’s use of waterboarding, rectal feeding and other brutal techniques on foreign terrorism suspects in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The amendment restricts interrogation techniques for all US entities to what is included in the US Army Field Manual and requires access for the International Community of the Red Cross to detainees in US government custody.
