The US is holding thousands of suspects in its "war on terrorism" at more than two dozen detention centers, half of which operate in secret, a human rights group said on Thursday.
The New York-based Human Rights First said in a report that the secrecy surrounding the centers makes "inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely, but inevitable."
The centers are in Iraq, Cuba, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan and on two US ships and are failing to meet obligations under US and international law on the treatment of prisoners, said the report, Ending Secret Detention, which was released in Washington.
It was released on the same day that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that the US military secretly held a prisoner in Iraq, failed to register the detainee with the International Committee of the Red Cross and refused to cite the reason for the secrecy, saying it was classified. However, he denied it was done to prevent international monitors from gaining access to the suspected terrorist.
The report's release also followed the publication of photos of the abuse and humiliation of Iraqi detainees at the hands of US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad and reports of abuse at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"The abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib cannot be addressed in isolation," said Deborah Pearlstein, director of Human Rights First's US Law and Security Program. "The United States government is holding prisoners in a secret system of off-shore prisons beyond the reach of adequate supervision, accountability or law."
Among the detention camps that the US government refuses to disclose but have been reported to Human Rights First by "multiple sources" are a center in Kohat, Pakistan, near the Afghan border; al-Jafr Prison, a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogation facility in Jordan; and a facility on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.
The ships USS Bataan and USS Peleliu were also suspected detention sites, said the report by the rights group, which was previously called the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
Most of the detention centers listed in the report were in Iraq, and all had been disclosed by Washington, including Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport, Camp Bucca near Basra and nine centers run by military divisions or brigades. There is also a camp to detain members of the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq, which is trying to overthrow Iran's government.
The report said suspected sites were also in Afghanistan, including CIA interrogation facilities in Kabul and at Bagram Air Force Base.
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