US: Presidential Order Affirms CIA Secret Detentions (HRW)

[Eugene]

Source: Human Rights Watch

US: Presidential Order Affirms CIA Secret Detentions

Allows Detention in Violation of Geneva Conventions

(New York, July 20, 2007) – President George W. Bush’s
new executive order on the Central Intelligence Agency’s
detention and interrogation program is contrary to the
Geneva Conventions, Human Rights Watch said today.

The new order, issued today, purports to determine that
the CIA’s detention and interrogation program “fully
complies” with US obligations under Common Article 3 of
the Geneva Conventions of 1949 as long as the CIA
follows a series of requirements in carrying out the
program.

But enforced disappearance – the hallmark of the CIA
program, involving secret, incommunicado detention – is
itself inconsistent with the requirement under Common
Article 3 that detainees be treated humanely. A number
of CIA prisoners were held for three or more years in
secret detention facilities, known as “black sites,”
before being transferred to military custody at
Guantanamo Bay in September 2006. Others who were
believed to have been held in CIA detention remain
“disappeared.”

“By international human rights and humanitarian law
standards, the CIA program is illegal to its core,” said
Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director
at Human Rights Watch. “Although the new executive
order bars torture and other abuse, the order still
can’t purport to legalize a program that violates
basic rights.”

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Read more: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/07/20/usdom16444.htm