US to release secret orders on interrogating prisoners

THE Pentagon will release secret orders from US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on interrogating terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay following intense criticism of US treatment of prisoners.

The officials said some details of guidelines issued by Mr Rumsfeld earlier this year would be made public quickly in order to show that some 600 Taliban and al-Qaida suspects held at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay were not being tortured.

Treatment of the Guantanamo detainees, including interrogation methods, has come under scrutiny after a major scandal over abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

The Red Cross and international human rights groups have sharply criticised the treatment of detainees in Cuba, most of them from the war in Afghanistan. Many have been held for more than two years without charges brought against them.

At the White House, officials also planned to release a set of documents to show the deliberation process that was used by US President George W Bush in setting a broad policy toward ensuring prisoners were treated humanely.

The idea, one senior official said, was to show the "great lengths" the administration went to in order to ensure prisoners were treated properly.

Pentagon officials have said US forces are permitted in some cases to use interrogation techniques in Guantanamo that differ from long-standing US Army standards, but are not inhuman under the Geneva conventions.

The planned release of interrogation techniques was opposed by some defence officials because it would give information to potential captives in the US-declared war on terrorism sparked by the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, according to Pentagon sources.

"You have to strike a balance here," one defence official said.

Earlier this month classified memos surfaced in which administration lawyers argued that Mr Bush was not restricted by international and US laws on torture, contending some "cruel, inhuman or degrading" acts may not rise to the level of torture.

The US is not "engaging in torture as a matter of policy", Mr Rumsfeld insisted at a Pentagon briefing last week, saying he was unaware of any senior official who had deviated from the principle that prisoners be treated humanely. He faulted media coverage of the issue.

The human rights group Amnesty International called this month for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate "the torture and ill-treatment of prisoners" in US custody, saying existing probes had been "critically compromised".