The confidential US Justice Department memos criticized by Democrats as laying the legal foundation for Iraqi prisoner abuses were aimed mainly at showing that international treaties banning torture do not apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, Bush administration officials say.
The department's lawyers concluded that Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters are not protected by the Geneva Conventions because they do not satisfy four main conditions of the treaty itself.
Those include requirements to obey laws of war, wear insignia recognizable from a distance and operate under the command of a responsible individual.
Iraqi prisoners are protected under the treaty partly because Iraq is a participating nation in the Geneva Conventions and the US is an occupying power, a Justice Department official wrote Senator Patrick Leahy.
William Moschella, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, said in a letter released Wednesday that despite this important difference, US President George W. Bush early in the Afghanistan conflict issued orders that al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners be treated humanely and consistently with Geneva Conventions principles.
racketeering lawsuit
The letter was the administration's latest and most detailed attempt to address increasing criticism from Democratic Congress members and human rights activists about what they consider a concerted effort to circumvent US and international laws against torture during the fight against terrorism.
Human rights lawyers took the unusual step of filing a racketeering lawsuit Wednesday against US civilian contractors who worked at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
The suit alleges contractors conspired to execute, rape and torture prisoners during interrogations to boost profits from military payments.
Some of the new abuse allegations were among the cruelest described within the Iraqi prisons.
One person, identified in court documents as a prisoner named Rasheed, told lawyers his tongue was shocked and his toenails pulled out. A second person, identified as a prisoner named Ahmed, said he was forced to watch while his 63-year-old father was tortured to death.
The suit seeks payments for the alleged victims and a ban on future government contracts for Titan Corp of San Diego and CACI International of Arlington, Virginia, whose employees worked as government interrogators and translators.
Titan spokesman Wil Williams called the lawsuit "frivolous" and said, "Titan never had control over prisoners or how they were treated."
CACI called the lawsuit "irresponsible and outrageous" and said the lawyers' allegations were "false and malicious."
lit cigarettes
Named as defendants are Adel Nakhla, a former Titan employee, and two CACI employees, Steven Stefanowicz and John Israel. All three were implicated in abuses in the investigative report by Major-general Antonio Taguba.
In another development, a California National Guardsman said three fellow soldiers brazenly abused detainees during interrogation sessions in an Iraqi police station, threatening them with guns, sticking lit cigarettes in their ears and choking them until they collapsed.
Sergeant Greg Ford said he repeatedly had to revive prisoners who had passed out, and once saw a soldier stand on the back of a handcuffed detainee's neck and pull his arms until they popped out of their sockets.
"I had to intervene because they couldn't keep their hands off of them," said Ford, part of a four-member team from the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion that questioned detainees last year in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Ford's commanding officers deny any abuse occurred, and say investigations within their battalion and by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division determined they had done nothing wrong.
The three accused soldiers were not available for comment, a California National Guard spokesman said.
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