U.N. Rights Panel Slams U.S.

(CBS/AP)  The U.S. should immediately shut down any secret detention facilities and grant prompt access to the Red Cross to any person detained in connection with an armed conflict, a U.N. rights panel said in a report released Friday.

"The committee is concerned by credible and uncontested information that the state party has seen fit to engage in the practice of detaining people secretly and in secret places for months and years on end," according to the 12-page U.N. Human Rights Committee report.

The committee, which held a two-day hearing last week on U.S. compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, said that such practices also violated the rights of detainees' families.

The United States "should only detain persons in places in which they can enjoy the full protection of the law," the report said. "It should also grant prompt access by the International Committee of the Red Cross to any person detained in connection with an armed conflict."

But the United States responded that the covenant only applies in the national territory of signatories and does not apply to the U.S. military or its installations abroad, which are governed by other domestic and international laws.

"Despite this clear limitation of its mandate, the committee has made at least six separate recommendations that concern U.S. activities outside the territorial United States," U.S. State Department legal counsel John B. Bellinger III said in a statement.

The panel also apparently failed to take into account much of the information the United States had provided, the statement said.

"We find these conclusions outside the scope of the committee's mandate an unfortunate diversion of the committee's attention," Bellinger said.

The U.N. panel also issued several recommendations on domestic U.S. policies, saying:

The U.S. should adopt a moratorium on death sentences, noting that capital punishment appears to be disproportionately imposed on minority groups and poor people.

The U.S. should increase its efforts to ensure the rights of poor people and blacks are respected in relief and reconstruction efforts, citing a concern that both were "disadvantaged" after Hurricane Katrina.

The U.S. should give residents of Washington, D.C., the same voting rights as other Americans. The District of Columbia has a nonvoting delegate to Congress but no representation in the Senate.

The panel said it was also concerned that the United States, for a period of time, authorized the possible use of interrogation techniques including prolonged stress positions and isolation, sensory deprivation, hooding, exposure to cold or heat and sleep and dietary adjustments.

Those who used or approved such techniques, which have now been withdrawn, should be punished, the committee said.

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