In Washington two senators said yesterday they were troubled by a report that US intelligence officials secretly transferred as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months, possibly violating international treaties.
In an interview on ABC's This Week, Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has campaigned for President Bush in the race for the White House, warned against violating international treaties that aim to ensure humane treatment of prisoners and civilians during war.
"These conventions and these rules are in place for a reason, because you get on a slippery slope and you don't know where to get off," said Mr McCain, who was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. "The thing that separates us from the enemy is our respect for human rights."
Mr McCain said the report in yesterday's edition of the Washington Post about the CIA invoking a confidential memo written by the Justice Department to secretly transfer detainees out of Iraq was "another argument" for revamping the intelligence agency.
Congress is considering legislation that would overhaul US intelligence and create a powerful national intelligence director post.
The CIA has come under sharp criticism for intelligence failures before the September 11th, 2001 attacks and for its reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction ahead of the US invasion.
"I think we need new leadership at the Justice Department too," said Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat.
Attorney General John Ashcroft heads the department.
The Post cited a March 19th, 2004, memo in which the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said the CIA can take Iraqis out of the country for a "brief but not indefinite period" and can permanently remove those determined to be illegal aliens.
Some specialists in international law say the opinion amounts to a reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit forcible transfers of civilians during wartime, the Post said.
The CIA and Justice Department declined to comment on the article, but a White House official disputed the notion that the Justice Department's interpretation of the Geneva Conventions was unusual.
The memo noted that violation of that portion of the treaty could constitute a war crime and that officials should proceed carefully, the Post said.
The US government transferred al-Qaeda fighters out of Afghanistan during the war there after it ruled that they were not protected by the treaty.
Former members of the Iraqi military and Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, by contrast, are considered to be protected by the treaty, the Post asserted.