US: The second-ranking general in the United States admitted to the Senate yesterday that interrogation techniques used in Iraq violated the Geneva Convention, but said he did not know who had approved them.
In another uncomfortable day for Pentagon chiefs, Gen Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed that the convention forbids ill-treatment of prisoners such as putting them in stressful positions, depriving them of sleep for up to 72 hours, threatening them with dogs or keeping them in isolation for more than 30 days.
In a dramatic exchange Democratic Senator Jack Reed asked Gen Pace if he would consider it a violation of the convention if he saw a video of a US Marine in enemy hands, bound, naked and in a stressful position with a hood on his head.
"I would describe it as a violation, sir," Gen Pace told the Armed Services Committee hearing.
On Wednesday the Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, defended the interrogation techniques used in Iraq, arguing that Pentagon lawyers had said they did not violate international rules.
In yet another disclosure of severe interrogation methods used by the US since 9/11, the New York Times reported yesterday on the coercion used by CIA officials against some 20 alleged members of al-Qaeda currently held in secret locations around the world.
It said that in the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be involved in planning the attacks on September 9th, 2001, CIA interrogators used a technique known as "water boarding," in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.
Such techniques were endorsed secretly by the Justice Department and the CIA, the Times reported. They may have led to a general climate of harsh interrogations and to the deaths of three detainees held by the CIA in Iraq and Afghanistan which are being investigated.
More details emerged yesterday about the lurid nature of the 1,600 photographs and the video clips from Abu Ghrail prison in Iraq that the Pentagon showed yesterday to Congress members in a classified room on Capitol Hill.
An unidentified politician told the New York Post that Private Lynndie England, seen in published images holding a leash attached to a naked Iraqi man, was videoed "having sex with numerous partners". Pentagon officials told NBC news that she engaged in graphic sex acts with other soldiers in front of Iraqi prisoners. "Almost everybody was naked all the time," another Congress member said.
Many legislators were disturbed by a video clip of a prisoner being repeatedly pulled by a rope against a door. Another showed a handcuffed prisoner beating his head against a wall in an apparent attempt to knock himself out to escape abuse, and one recorded a group of prisoners being forced to masturbate.
En route to Iraq yesterday Mr Rumsfeld told reporters that Pentagon lawyers oppose releasing the photos as the Geneva Convention forbade making public any degrading images of prisoners.