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WASHINGTON - The Bush administration was criticised for its treatment of detainees in the war on terrorism, with a military officer saying US policies enabled it to "detain anyone it pleases" and lawmakers calling for an end to secret CIA prisons.
Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, an Army reservist and lawyer who served on one of the tribunals for prisoners at Guantanamo, told the House Armed Services Committee the existing system of hearing prisoner appeals simply "rubber stamped detentions".
He denounced the Guantanamo tribunals as "nothing more than an effort by the (US) executive to ... detain anyone it pleases in the war against terror".
Abraham, who has years of experience as a military intelligence officer, worked for several months in 2004 and 2005 in the Pentagon unit that reviewed cases of Guantanamo captives.
Recalling a policeman's line from the movie "Casablanca" - "round up the usual suspects" - Abraham told lawmakers: "Today, they would be at Guantanamo."
Last month, Abraham filed a court affidavit with his criticisms of the process. Shortly afterward, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear appeals by Guantanamo prisoners after previously having turned them down.
On Thursday, Abraham testified in favour of Missouri Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton's proposal to restore the prisoners' right of habeas corpus. That time-honoured principle of Anglo-American justice prevents the government from locking people up without a court review.
Congress last year revoked this right for foreign terrorism suspects that the government calls "enemy combatants", such as the roughly 360 suspected al Qaeda and Taleban captives held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.
Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and other Democrats now want to restore the habeas corpus right. A similar proposal has already passed a Senate committee. There are other proposals in Congress to close down Guantanamo and the House may vote on one next week.
The Bush administration has said revoking habeas corpus was necessary to prevent the detainees from attacking Americans if freed - and that the alternative military tribunal system at Guantanamo is sufficient to protect prisoner rights.
Justice and Defence Department lawyers echoed these arguments on Thursday at the hearing before Skelton's committee, telling lawmakers that the rules were different at Guantanamo because the stakes were different.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also examined on Thursday the Bush administration's treatment of prisoners, with members of the panel worrying about the effect of secret CIA prisons, renditions and interrogations at a time when Washington is seeking greater international cooperation on Iraq and Afghanistan.
The panel's Democratic chairman, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, introduced legislation that would prohibit secret CIA prisons and subject the practice of rendition, in which the CIA sends detainees to a third country, to federal judicial review.
"It says that somebody other than the president, whose record after six years has not been particularly admirable in terms of the rule of law, that somebody gets to see what it is the president wants to do," said Biden, who is also a Democratic candidate for president.
The committee's senior Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, did not immediately support the measure but said he favored lawmaker scrutiny of rendition, which often results in the detainees being sent to a third country in the Middle East, where critics say they can be tortured.
"I think there's merit in the suggestion that this committee, or others, might take up half a dozen rendition cases and explore exactly what has occurred," Lugar said.
The handling of detainees in the US military lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at secret CIA prisons has fueled allegations that the United States has engaged in torture and willfully violated international law.
- REUTERS
