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US to hand over detainees despite torture concerns Despite accusing countries such as Jordan and Egypt on Wednesday of torturing detainees, the United States said it will keep sending suspected militants to foreign prisons if governments pledge not to abuse them. Human rights groups said the policy was illegal because the United States could have little faith in the governments' promises and knew there was a high risk of torture, especially after detailing widespread prisoner abuse in an annual report. They also said U.S. credibility in criticizing human rights abuses was damaged because the report highlighted incommunicado detentions abroad without acknowledging Washington also uses the illegal practice in its war on terror. In Jordan, detainees were beaten, deprived of sleep and left hanging in the air, and, in Egypt, there were many credible allegations of security forces abusing prisoners last year, the State Department said in a worldwide evaluation of rights abuses. But Washington, which sometimes captures terrorism suspects abroad and sends them to prisons in their native countries, only does so after winning assurances they will not be abused, the report's main author, Assistant Secretary of State Barry Lowenkron, said. "We do not send detainees to countries if we believe that they will be subjected to torture," he said. "If we get the guarantees that they will not be mistreated, they go home." WHO TO BELIEVE? But Tom Malinowski of the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the U.S. practice, which involves nabbing suspects in kidnap-style operations and sending them to prisons mainly in the Middle East, was disingenuous. "Not only should the Bush administration not believe these assurances, I don't think for one moment it really does believe them," he said. His group and the London-based Amnesty International said there were examples -- including the high-profile case of Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar allegedly tortured in Syria -- of nations breaking their pledges to the United States. "The Bush administration's practice of transferring detainees in the 'war on terror' to countries cited by the State Department for their appalling human rights records actually turns the report into a manual for the outsourcing of torture," Amnesty said in a statement. The annual report typically draws charges of hypocrisy. Since President George W. Bush launched a war on terror after the September 11 attacks, those complaints have grown louder due to graphically documented U.S. abuse of detainees abroad, allegations it runs secret jails and a perception that Washington uses legal loopholes to allow torture. Administration officials say U.S. credibility in promoting human rights has not been hurt because the United States does not condone torture and investigates allegations of abuse. Rights groups officials said one of the starkest inconsistencies was the U.S. criticism of the "disappearance" of detainees in some of the countries with the world's worst human rights records such as China and Burma. Since September 11, the United States has announced the capture of several suspected senior al Qaeda members but their fate remains unknown. And European officials are investigating media allegations the CIA keeps some detainees in secret prisons. "Effectively they are disappearing because they are being deliberately hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross," Eric Olson of Amnesty International said, referring to the group empowered to monitor prisoners of war. ---------------------------------------------------
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