Obama administration ‘gross violator of international laws’: Rodney Martin

The administration of US President Barack Obama is a “gross violator of international laws” and a state sponsor of terrorism that is operated by a “diabolical and evil” political class, an American activist in California says.

Rodney Martin, a former US Congressional staffer, said Amnesty International’s latest condemnation of the Obama administration over a CIA program that detained and tortured prisoners is “on the mark.”

The international human rights group criticized the White House on Tuesday for granting immunity to people involved in the CIA torture program that began after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Amnesty accused the Obama administration of continuing on a course that began by its predecessors in the Bush administration and doing nothing to end the “de facto amnesty” for the perpetrators who mistreated prisoners.

In December, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a drastically redacted summary of its voluminous report on the CIA’s torture program during the George W. Bush administration.

“Where Bush was a war criminal, Obama expanded to be a gross violator of international law and a state sponsor of terrorism,” Martin told Press TV on Wednesday.

“Now we have the Obama administration expanding all of those programs that were started under the Bush administration and it won’t end because we have a much more diabolical and evil political and corporatist class that has developed under the Obama administration,” he said.

The London-based Amnesty said the US Justice Department must “reopen and expand its investigation” into the CIA’s secret rendition, detention and interrogation program.

It also said US authorities must bring to justice in fair trials all the persons suspected of being involved in the commission of crimes under international law, regardless of their level of office or former level of office, the group said.