The Tribune : We have secret prisons outside USA: Bush

We have secret prisons outside USA: Bush

Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington | September 8, 2006

PRESIDENT George W. Bush on Wednesday for the first time acknowledged the presence of a controversial CIA programme under which terrorist suspects have been kept at secret foreign locations outside the U.S.

Speaking at the White House, Mr. Bush said 14 high-profile suspects had been transferred from these facilities to the U.S. military detention centre in Guantanamo Bay,Cuba.

He maintained, however, that these people were not tortured at the secret prisons. “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world... The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it — and I will not authorize it,” Mr. Bush said.

But, he admitted, “alternative” interrogation methods are used to get information from the terror suspects.These procedures “were tough, and they were safe and lawful and necessary.”

Mr. Bush said in some cases “it has been necessary to move . . . individuals to an environment where they can be held secretly, questioned by experts and when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts.”

He said these secret prisons were located outside the United States but did not elaborate.

“In this new war, the most important source of information on where the terrorists are hiding and what they are planning is the terrorists themselves,” Mr. Bush said. “To win the war on terror, we must be able to detain, question and, when appropriate,prosecute terrorists captured here in America and on the battlefields around the world.”

Human Rights Watch said Mr. Bush's defence of abusing detainees betrayed basic American and global standards. “President Bush's speech was a full-throated defense of the CIA's detention program and of the 'alternative procedures' – read torture –that the CIA has used to extract information from detainees,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

“Although the president adamantly denied that the U.S. government uses torture, the United States has used practices such as waterboarding that can only be called torture.” Waterboarding is a technique that simulates drowning.

The Washington Post first reported in November that the CIA was holding terror suspects in secret prisons overseas. At the time the White House refused to confirm the report.

The 14 detainees whom Mr. Bush has ordered transferred include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. Mr. Bush said he wants to try these men before U.S. military panels under proposed new rules he has sent to Congress.

The 86-page draft on the new military courts that Mr. Bush sent to Congress on Wednesday would allow defendants to be prosecuted with evidence they are not permitted to see, as well as evidence obtained through coercive interrogations that fall short of torture.

Meanwhile, the Defence Department, responding to pressure from Congress and the Supreme Court, ruled out the military's use in future of interrogation tactics including the use of temperature extremes and waterboarding.