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Row over 'torture' in U.S. camps

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON DEC. 29. Civil liberties groups have accused America of human rights violations following an alarming report in Washington Post that the Al-Qaeda suspects held at overseas U.S. detention centres such as the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan are subjected to physical and psychological `coercion' amounting to torture.

The disclosure, based on interviews with present and former CIA officials, has prompted calls for an inquiry to determine whether there has been a violation of the Geneva convention on the treatment of detainees. There is particular concern over the llegation that often the detainees are handed over to foreign intelligence agencies who have a record of routinely torturing prisoners.

The newspaper quotes one official as saying that this was done as the American public wanted results. ``If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you aren't probably doing your job,'' he is reported to have told the Post.

The Human Rights Watch demanded "a clear statement'' from the U.S. government saying that turning over prisoners to other agencies, which are known to use brutal methods, amounted to "torture by proxy''. The U.S. administration, it said, must clarify that it was abiding by the Geneva convention.

The Washington Post investigation has been widely reported here with some reports focusing on the fact that detainees held at Diego Garcia, which is a British dependency, are also being abused.

Observers said this was likely to cause embarrassment to the British Government which has been justly proud of its own human rights record.

``If they know about this, and torture and mistreatment are taking place in Diego Garcia, British officials could also be viewed as taking part in torture,'' a senior official of Human Rights Watch told The Guardian.

The Washington Post allegations, claimed to be the first detailed account of the treatment of detainees in U.S.-run camps mainly in Afghanistan and Diego Garcia, point to a systematic use of what is described as "stress and duress'' technique to extract information.

``Some of these stress and duress techniques come close to practices denounced by the U.S. State Department in its surveys of human rights violations. Washington has upbraided Israel, Turkey and Jordan, among others, for using sleep deprivation, defined by the United Nations as a torture,'' The Independent said giving details of the Post story.

There was no official comment, but the disclosures were likely to put pressure on the British Government to take a more critical look at the way the war on terror is being conducted.

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