US releases 'torture' documents
The US has been criticised over conditions at Guantanamo Bay
The White House has released hundreds of pages of previously secret documents which it says shows permission was never given to torture prisoners.
Legal advisers to the president said that although aggressive interrogation techniques were approved at Guantanamo Bay, they stopped short of torture.
One document showed the permitted techniques included isolating prisoners and depriving them of light.
The documents shed little light on the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.
US President George W Bush said he had never ordered the torture of Iraqis or al-Qaeda suspects held by the US.
"We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture," Mr Bush told reporters.
The BBC's Rob Watson in Washington says the release of the documents reflect the deep concern at the White House over the damage done by the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The US has also been sharply criticised by human rights groups and the International Red Cross for the treatment of the al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The two inch (5cm) thick pile of documents includes material from the defence department, White House and justice department - many of them declassified secret documents.
They include discussions on how aggressively prisoners at the US military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay should be interrogated.
Methods approved
The documents showed that in December 2002, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved harsh interrogation techniques for Taleban and al-Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo, only to rescind many of those weeks later and approve less aggressive techniques in April 2003.
The methods he originally approved included forcing a prisoner to stand up for four hours, light deprivation, isolation from others for up to 30 days and interrogations lasting as long as 20 hours.
He also approved the forced shaving of facial hair, stripping prisoners naked and the use of dogs to induce fear - tactics of particular interest as they were used in Abu Ghraib.
According to the documents, the methods used actually fell far short of those initially approved.
The softer set of techniques that were approved in April 2003 permitted significantly increasing the fear level in a detainee, "sleep adjustment," "changing the diet of a detainee" with no intended deprivation of food or water, and isolation of prisoners.
According to defence department documents, Mr Rumsfeld refused a request to allow "water boarding", in which water and soaked towels are used to make the prisoner feel as it they are suffocating. <
Opposition claims
In releasing the documents the White House has been accused of trying to paper over the cracks rather than actually address the problem of prisoner abuse.
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont accused the Bush administration of releasing a "self-serving selection" of documents.
"The stonewalling in the prison abuse scandal has been building to a crisis point," he said.
Documents surfaced earlier this month, dating from March 2003, in which Bush administration lawyers said the president was not blocked from acts of torture by US or international law.
Anti-torture legislation is enshrined in US law, but the White House lawyers argued that they carried no weight for a wartime president as Mr Bush, as commander in chief, had "complete authority over the conduct of war".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3831399.stm
The US has been criticised over conditions at Guantanamo Bay
The White House has released hundreds of pages of previously secret documents which it says shows permission was never given to torture prisoners.
Legal advisers to the president said that although aggressive interrogation techniques were approved at Guantanamo Bay, they stopped short of torture.
One document showed the permitted techniques included isolating prisoners and depriving them of light.
The documents shed little light on the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.
US President George W Bush said he had never ordered the torture of Iraqis or al-Qaeda suspects held by the US.
"We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture," Mr Bush told reporters.
The BBC's Rob Watson in Washington says the release of the documents reflect the deep concern at the White House over the damage done by the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The US has also been sharply criticised by human rights groups and the International Red Cross for the treatment of the al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The two inch (5cm) thick pile of documents includes material from the defence department, White House and justice department - many of them declassified secret documents.
They include discussions on how aggressively prisoners at the US military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay should be interrogated.
Methods approved
The documents showed that in December 2002, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved harsh interrogation techniques for Taleban and al-Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo, only to rescind many of those weeks later and approve less aggressive techniques in April 2003.
The methods he originally approved included forcing a prisoner to stand up for four hours, light deprivation, isolation from others for up to 30 days and interrogations lasting as long as 20 hours.
He also approved the forced shaving of facial hair, stripping prisoners naked and the use of dogs to induce fear - tactics of particular interest as they were used in Abu Ghraib.
According to the documents, the methods used actually fell far short of those initially approved.
The softer set of techniques that were approved in April 2003 permitted significantly increasing the fear level in a detainee, "sleep adjustment," "changing the diet of a detainee" with no intended deprivation of food or water, and isolation of prisoners.
According to defence department documents, Mr Rumsfeld refused a request to allow "water boarding", in which water and soaked towels are used to make the prisoner feel as it they are suffocating. <
Opposition claims
In releasing the documents the White House has been accused of trying to paper over the cracks rather than actually address the problem of prisoner abuse.
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont accused the Bush administration of releasing a "self-serving selection" of documents.
"The stonewalling in the prison abuse scandal has been building to a crisis point," he said.
Documents surfaced earlier this month, dating from March 2003, in which Bush administration lawyers said the president was not blocked from acts of torture by US or international law.
Anti-torture legislation is enshrined in US law, but the White House lawyers argued that they carried no weight for a wartime president as Mr Bush, as commander in chief, had "complete authority over the conduct of war".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3831399.stm
