The United States’ foremost civil liberties group criticized President Barack Obama’s refusal to prosecute alleged war crimes perpetrated under the Bush administration on the same day that he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

Representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in a conference call with reporters, expressed frustration that the president has not fulfilled his pledge of accountability by allowing previous abuses of detainees to go unpunished.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said, “I think that there is an obvious tension between what the president is saying about the commitment we’ve got to human rights and the work we’re doing inside the US. We’re frustrated by the gap in the Obama administration’s rhetoric on accountability and reality. Thus far, not only are we not seeing the accountability…we see the Obama administration actively obstructing accountability on every front.”

Government officials who authorized torture techniques breached international law, the ACLU officials said. Under the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture, all signatories are obligated to prosecute instances of torture.

(article and photo source: The Huffington Post)