U.N. rights body tells US to shut "secret" jails

Reuters | July 28 2006

The U.N. Human Rights Committee on Friday told Washington it should immediately shut all "secret detention" facilities and give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to anybody held in armed conflict.

In findings on U.S. observance of the U.N.'s main political rights' convention, the committee said it had "credible and uncontested" information that the United States had detained people "secretly and in secret places for months and years."

"The state party should immediately abolish all secret detention and secret detention facilities," it said, echoing a similar demand in May by the United Nations' Committee on Torture.

The committee said it could not accept Washington's argument that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States has signed, does not apply to anyone held outside U.S. territory.

The covenant spells out basic individual rights, including equality before the law, protection against torture and inhumane treatment and arbitrary arrest.

"The state party (the United States) should review its approach and interpret the covenant in good faith," said the committee, which was subjecting Washington to its first review since 1995.

The U.S. report to the committee, submitted in October, was seven years late.

The U.N. body also expressed concern at the past use of interrogation techniques like prolonged stress positions and isolation, hooding, sleep or food deprivation, that may be a form of torture and welcomed assurances they were no more used.

But it said that it was concerned that the United States did not appear to regard these techniques as being violations of the rules against torture and inhumane and degrading treatment.

The 9-page findings also hit out at reports of police brutality and the apparent discrimination against African-Americans in operations to help victims of the Katrina hurricane in New Orleans last year.

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