US secretly holding terror suspects - Red Cross

The International Red Cross fears US officials are holding terror suspects secretly in locations across the world without saying where they are.

“We have access to people detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, but in our understanding there are people that are detained outside these places for which we haven’t received notification or access,” said Antonella Notari, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Under the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare the United States is obliged to give the neutral, ICRC access to prisoners of war and other detainees to check on their conditions and allow them to send messages to their families.

The United States says it is co-operating with the agency, and has allowed ICRC delegates access to thousands of prisoners, including former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

But Notari said some suspects reported as arrested by the FBI on its website, or identified in media reports, are unaccounted for.

“Some of these people who have been reported to be arrested never showed up in any of the places of detention run by the US where we visit,” Notari said in Geneva.

She said she had read media reports that some people were being held at Diego Garcia, a British-held island in the Indian Ocean that is used as a strategic military base by the United States, but the ICRC has not been notified of any prisoners there.