More than 100 US soldiers and intelligence officers have been disciplined for abusing detainees, US officials said on Monday before an international panel investigating the country's treatment of prisoners in its fight against terrorism. The number is nearly twice that cited by human-rights groups.
In the second and final day of questioning by the UN Committee Against Torture, members of a US delegation responded to queries on topics including the definition of torture and policies on transferring prisoners to countries with poor human-rights records.
The delegates said the US was acting to ensure that it adhered to its treaty obligations to prevent the torture of prisoners. It is one of 141 signers of the Convention Against Torture, a 1987 treaty. Problems of abuse found in prisons like Abu Ghraib in Iraq were isolated missteps, they said.
"We recognize much of the world does hold the United States to a high standard," said the State Department's legal adviser, John Bellinger, who led the delegation.
"Without question our record has improved," he said.
Nora Sveaass, a panel member from Norway, said the US had given "very reassuring answers" on efforts to bring those responsible for torture to justice.
Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said 103 US service members and intelligence officers had been court-martialed since 2001, leading to 19 convictions with jail terms of a year or more.
That figure contrasted with numbers quoted by the panel last week and provided by Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit organization based in the US. The group identified 54 courts-martial, 10 of which resulted in jail terms of a year or more.
But rights groups said the numbers cited by US officials were still low. Last week the panel cited data from rights groups saying that more than 600 service members or intelligence officers had been involved in suspected acts of torture.
In the two days of questioning, the panel pushed the delegation to define the scope of torture. On Monday, Fernando Marino Menendez, a panel member from Spain, asked whether torture could be defined to include the forced disappearance of terrorism suspects and the establishment of secret prisons.
"I don't think one can say per se that it is," Bellinger replied.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing