A top UN official has accused the
British and US governments of “torture” over their detention of whistleblowers
Chelsea Manning and
Julian Assange, who between them embarrassed the West over its military operations in Iraq.Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, said Ms Manning, who is being held in a jail in
Virginia after refusing to testify about Mr Assange, was being being subjected to an “open-ended, progressively severe measure of coercion fulfilling all the constitutive elements of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.