Former U.S. President George W. Bush has been forced to cancel a planned trip to Switzerland after human rights attorneys threatened to take legal action against him for sanctioning the use of torture. The trip to Geneva was supposed to be Bush’s first to Europe since leaving office. He was scheduled to speak next Saturday at a dinner in honor of United Israel Appeal. The Center for Constitutional Rights said they had planned to bring a complaint against Bush under the Convention Against Torture on behalf of two men who were tortured by U.S. interrogators and held at the military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In addition, Amnesty International said it had sent a detailed analysis to Swiss prosecutors, claiming there was sufficient information to open a criminal investigation against Bush.

Matthew Pollard, attorney with Amnesty International: “Well, what we’re specifically bringing to the attention of the Swiss authorities are statements that Mr. Bush himself made in early November 2010, both on broadcast television in the United States and also in print in his memoirs that were published also at the end of2010, in which he, without any apology, admits that he authorized specifically the waterboarding of several identified individuals in particular cases.”