Manfred Nowak

Manfred Nowak at Schloß Leopoldskron after Salzburg Seminar Session #443

Manfred Nowak (b. Bad Aussee, 26 June 1950) is an Austrian human rights lawyer.

Nowak is a Professor at the University of Vienna, where he is Professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights.

Nowak was one of the judges of the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina between March 1996 and December 2003. He was also the vice president of the Chamber between December 1997 and December 1998.

Nowak is currently the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, and was one of the five authors of a United Nations report on the detention of captives at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2005 Nowak visited China, claiming that torture remained "widespread" there. He also complained of Chinese officials interfering with his work.

In September 2006 he alleged that torture may be more of a problem in Iraq since the Iraq War than under Saddam Hussein's regime. Much of the torture, he argued, is carried out by security forces, militias and insurgents.

In January of 2009, Nowak appeared on Germany's ZDF television saying he believed the United States has a clear obligation to bring proceedings against President George W. Bush and former secretary of state Donald Rumsfeld. "We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld," Nowak said, referring to detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detenion camp in Cuba.

See also

• Enhanced interrogation techniques
• Extraordinary rendition
• War on Terror
• Movement to impeach George W. Bush

External links

• The Road to Condemning Guantanamo (Post-World War II Revisionism and the European Zeal to Shut Down Guantanamo) by John Rosenthal (Claremont Institute),
• http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-terrorism/nowak_4249.jsp