Group Bashes U.S. For Prisoner Abuse

Human Rights Watch Claims Abuse Is Deliberate; White House Denies Charges

(AP) 
The report said that Alberto Gonzales, while still the nominee to become attorney general, claimed in Senate testimony in January 2005 the power to use cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as long as the prisoner was a non-American held outside the United States.

"Other governments obviously subject detainees to such treatment or worse, but they do so clandestinely," the report said. "The Bush administration is the only government in the world known to claim this power openly, as a matter of official policy, and to pretend that it is lawful."

Last fall, Gonzales submitted documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee saying "it is the policy of the administration to abide by" the relevant portion of the torture treaty overseas, "even if such compliance is not legally required."

In December, Mr. Bush bowed to congressional and international pressure and signed legislation sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to forbid harsh treatment of detainees. He did so after initially threatening to veto such legislation, and after Vice President Dick Cheney unsuccessfully lobbied legislators to kill the measure or at least exempt the Central Intelligence Agency.

Roth said in an interview that he was concerned that, in a statement Mr. Bush issued when signing the bill, the president suggested he retains "commander in chief authority" to order abusive interrogations.

The report said that CIA Director Porter Goss last March justified an age-old torture technique called water-boarding, in which the victim believes he is about to drown. Last August, in Senate testimony, Timothy Flanigan, a former deputy White House counsel, would not rule out mock executions, the report said.

Evidence shows that abusive interrogation was a conscious policy choice by senior U.S. government officials and cannot be reduced to the misdeeds of a few low-ranking soldiers, the report said.

The report claimed abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at detention centers elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan and the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The report said Britain was threatening to send suspects to countries likely to torture them. Both the United States and Britain are claiming the practice, known as rendition, can be justified if the receiving country promises not to abuse the suspects.

Canada, meanwhile, was criticized as trying to dilute a newly drafted U.N. treaty to outlaw the practice of countries' detaining people secretly and without acknowledgment.

Many countries, including Uzbekistan, Russia and China, use the "war on terrorism" to attack political opponents as Islamic terrorists, the report said.