The United Nations' top rights official has accused US President Donald Trump of breaking taboos by suggesting bringing back torture, and warned world powers against undermining civil liberties in their fight against Islamist militants.
Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein also lambasted British Prime Minister Theresa May for threatening to change human rights laws if they got in the way of security operations, saying her words would give heart to authoritarian governments.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told an audience in London on Monday that the struggle against terrorism was "being exploited by governments" and risked undermining international rights treaties.
"And this contagion is spreading, fast," Zeid said, citing suppression of dissent in Egypt, Bahrain and Turkey "under the banner of fighting terrorism".
Trump said in January that he thought waterboarding - an interrogation technique banned by President Barack Obama that simulates drowning - worked as an intelligence-gathering tool.
Zeid said he was worried by Trump's "persistent flirtation" with a return to torture. There was little immediate danger of the United States using torture in interrogations, but that could change if there was an attack on US soil, he said.
"Mindful of how the American public has, over the last 10 years, become far more accepting of torture, the balance could be tipped in favour of its practice."
After attacks on London and Manchester, May told The Sun that if human rights laws "get in the way" of measures to tackle Islamist militancy, "we will change those laws to make sure we can do them".
Zeid said her remarks no doubt reflected real anger but also seemed "intended to strike a chord with a certain sector of the electorate, and it is this expectation that truly worries me".
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