US Faces UN Questioning On Torture

Questions To Focus On Secret CIA Prisons, War On Terror

(CBS/AP)  The U.N. Committee Against Torture, the global body's watchdog for a 22-year-old treaty forbidding prisoner abuse, will quiz U.S. officials on a series of issues ranging from Washington's interpretation of the absolute ban on torture to its interrogation methods in prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

The United States, like the 140 other nations that have signed the Convention Against Torture, must submit reports to the committee to show it is applying the rules.

"U.S. officials from four Executive Branch agencies are in the hot seat," said CBS foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk.

"Both the issue of torture of detainees in U.S. custody and reports of secret prisons have created an atmosphere of distrust of the United States by both allies and adversaries and the testimony of key U.S. officials will be scrutinized," she said.

The U.S. mission to the U.N.'s European headquarters in Geneva said it has sent a written reply to the committee's questions, but that it would refrain from commenting ahead of its sessions with the committee on Friday and Monday. Its 25-member team for the hearings will be headed by State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger III, and includes officials from the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments.

"Obviously this is a difficult time for the United States with numerous allegations that have been made, but we don't shrink away from answering the questions," Bellinger told reporters in Brussels on Thursday, where he was meeting European Union and NATO officials. "We've taken the process very seriously."

In its 87-page report filed in January — some four years behind schedule — Washington insisted it is "unequivocally opposed" to torture and that its commitment to the ban "remains unchanged" since the U.S. Senate ratified the convention in October 1994.

But the Geneva-based committee, a panel of 10 independent experts who meet twice a year, said the United States' legal interpretation of torture in Department of Justice memorandums in 2002 and 2004 "seems to be much more restrictive than previous United Nations standards."