|
Rumsfeld defends secret detentions Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8953608.htm?1chttp://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8953608.htm?1c
Posted on Fri, Jun. 18, 2004
Rumsfeld defends secret detentions
CRITICS SAY U.S. BROKE LAW BY NOT REGISTERING THEM
By Elise Ackerman
Mercury News
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted Thursday that he ordered the secret detention of at least two prisoners captured in Iraq so they could be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, a move that some legal experts say may have violated the Geneva Conventions.
The Geneva Conventions, which outline proper treatment of prisoners of war, forbid holding prisoners incommunicado and require that their identities be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Rumsfeld said CIA Director George Tenet asked him to hold a member of the Islamist militant group Ansar al-Islam without notifying the Red Cross.
``We were asked not to immediately register the individual and we did that,'' Rumsfeld said. He refused to explain why the prisoner, who remains in military detention in Iraq, wasn't identified to anyone for more than seven months.
He said he remembered one other similar detention and that officials were investigating to determine whether there were more.
``It is clearly conduct in violation of international law,'' said Deborah Pearlstein, the director of the U.S. Law and Security Program of Human Rights First, a New York-based advocacy group formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
Shortly before Rumsfeld's news conference, Human Rights First released a report criticizing the Bush administration for holding an unknown number of people in secret detention facilities around the world, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan and the British possession of Diego Garcia, and on U.S. warships at sea.
Pentagon press officer Bryan Whitman said the department ``did not talk about specific detention facilities and who is being held at which one of them.''
A report written by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba denounced the Pentagon's practice of holding ``ghost detainees.''
Rumsfeld insisted that the prisoner he had accepted from Tenet was not a ``ghost detainee'' and that the prisoner ``has been treated humanely.''
According to news reports, the prisoner was taken into custody by Kurdish fighters last summer and turned over to the CIA for questioning outside of Iraq. Tenet made his request to Rumsfeld, in writing, in October, after CIA lawyers advised that the prisoner be returned to Iraq.
Rumsfeld denied news accounts that the prisoner had gotten ``lost in the system'' after he was detained at Camp Cropper, at the Baghdad airport. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the CIA sought to question the prisoner in January but that military prison officials couldn't find him.
A Pentagon official said the prisoner, whose name has not been released, is being issued an internment serial number to identify him as a security detainee. Though security detainees aren't considered to be prisoners of war, they are covered by the Geneva Conventions.
While the Geneva Conventions provide exceptions for people detained in occupied territory as spies or saboteurs, it's unclear whether that provision applies in the case of the alleged al Ansar leader.
Whitman, the Pentagon press officer, said the prisoner ``was believed to be organizing attacks against the coalition.''
Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch argued, however, that the exception to the conventions is supposed to apply ``only as a temporary and exceptional measure.''
``This wasn't temporary,'' he said.
A Human Rights Watch report released last week identified 13 ``ghost detainees'' taken into U.S. custody since Sept. 11, 2001.
Rumsfeld said he thought international law provided some wiggle room. ``I think it's broadly understood that people don't have to be registered in the first 15 minutes,'' he said. ``What the appropriate time is, I don't know. It may be a lot less than seven months.''
|
|
