Buck stops with me, says grovelling Rumsfeld

Beleaguered US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today extended “my deepest apologies” to Iraqi prisoners abused by military personnel and told Congress he accepts full responsibility for the shocking events.

“These events occurred on my watch. As Secretary of Defence, I am accountable for them. I take full responsibility,” Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Rumsfeld took the witness chair after a week of controversy over the photographs of US captors abusing their prisoners, often forcing them to assume sexually humiliating poses.

Several Democratic lawmakers have demanded his resignation.

Senator John Warner said the committee needed to know “who knew what when, what they did about it, and why were members of Congress not properly and adequately informed.”

Rumsfeld, aged 71, had scarcely uttered his opening apology when protesters interrupted him.

“Fire Rumsfeld,” some yelled before they were hustled from the Washington room.

Rumsfeld sat calmly in his seat while the room was quieted.

Moments earlier, he added his personal apology to the one that President Bush made on Thursday.

“I feel terrible about what happened to these Iraqi detainees. They are human beings. They were in US custody,” he said.

“To those Iraqis who were mistreated by the US armed forces, I offer my deepest apologies.”

Rumsfeld also referred to videos of the abuse, a reference to findings in a military report that there were “numerous photos and videos of actual detainee abuse taken by detention facility personnel”.

Though a number of photographs have been leaked to the media, no videotapes have been made public.

Fresh disclosures surfaced as Rumsfeld went before the committee, the first of two such appearances during the day.

In Geneva, the International Red Cross said it had warned US and British officials of abuse of prisoners in Iraq more than a year ago.

“We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system,” said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Kraehenbuehl said the abuse went beyond detainees held at the Abu Ghraib prison in the Baghdad area.

In another episode, nine men were arrested in British-controlled Basra and beaten severely, leading to one death, said a Red Cross report.

Kraehenbuehl said there were “indeed also problems” with prisoners held by the British.

However he refused to go into detail because the Red Cross report to British authorities has not been made public.