US ‘must end secret detentions’

The US should close any secret “war on terror” detention facilities abroad and the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba, a United Nations report has said.

The UN Committee against Torture urged the US to ensure no one was detained in any secret facility.

The report followed the first US appearance before the committee since the 11 September 2001 attacks.

During the hearing in early May, the US neither confirmed or denied the existence of secret prisons.

The US has been holding hundreds of terror suspects arrested since 11 September at facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba. There are also reports of CIA-run secret facilities in other countries.

The committee told the US to provide more information on secret detention facilities.

“The state party should investigate and disclose the existence of any such facilities and the authority under which they have been established and the manner in which detainees are treated,” the 11-page report said.

It also called on the US to end detentions at the Guantanamo Bay camp and close it.

Detaining people in such conditions was a violation of the UN Convention against Torture, it said.

Abuse of detainees

The committee also urged the US to act against ill-treatment of detainees, calling for “immediate measures to eradicate all forms of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by its military or civilian personnel, in any territory under its jurisdiction”.

It called for an end to interrogation techniques it said constituted torture, such as the use of dogs to scare detainees.

The recommendations are not binding but the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes says the committee’s conclusions will not make comfortable reading for the US, with the assertion that secret camps do constitute torture.

The US has maintained that it is engaged in a long term war on terror and that some aspects of the convention on torture may not apply.

But the UN committee rejected this, our correspondent says, saying the total ban on torture applies in time of peace, war or armed conflict and anyone violating the convention should be prosecuted.

Human rights groups welcomed the report.

“We hope that the United States will take heed of this report and really begin to rethink and change its policies on a number of practices, including secret prisons, lack of accountability for abuse, and transfer of prisoners to places where they may be tortured,” Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch told Reuters news agency.

BBC