The Pentagon, under pressure over treatment of detainees held by the US military, explicitly bars torture and prohibits the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners in a new interrogation policy directive made public today.
The policy document, signed without public announcement last week by acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, pulled together and codified numerous policies and instructions on interrogation that already existed in various forms but not in a single document, defense officials said.
The Pentagon directive states: "Acts of physical or mental torture are prohibited" but does not define torture.
Its release comes as Congress considers legislation, already approved by the Senate, that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of detainees held by any US government department.
Last year's revelations of the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail by US forces drew international condemnation.
Human rights activists contend that policy decisions made at senior levels of the US government have led to widespread detainee abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon has maintained that its policies do not allow detainee abuse. The US military currently holds about 500 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, another 500 at facilities in Afghanistan and 13,500 more in Iraq, officials said.
There is a debate within the Bush administration on the question of whether another unfinished Pentagon directive should embrace the Geneva Conventions' prohibition on cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees. The United States has decided that hundreds of prisoners, including those at Guantanamo, are not entitled to Geneva Convention rights.
The directive was released days after a report in the Washington Postsaying the CIA has run secret prisons for suspects in the US war on terrorism in foreign countries, including in Europe.