UN seeks access to inmates of US as Iraq fig leaf issued

By: Nabil Raza

GENEVA, Switzerland: The UN human rights investigators on Friday have called for access to detainees held by US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay to check that international standards are upheld.

In a rare joint statement, the investigators said that key UN special rapporteurs on torture, the independence of judges and lawyers, the right to physical and mental health as well as independent UN experts on arbitrary detention should undertake a joint mission as soon as possible.

The call, made after UN rights investigators held closed-door talks in Geneva on Wednesday on the effects of counter-terrorism measures on human rights worldwide, follows an international outcry over mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in US custody at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, sparked by photographs depicting US soldiers hooding prisoners and using dogs to intimidate them.

The investigators would seek to “ascertain, each within the confines of their mandate, that international human rights standards are properly upheld with regard to these (detained) persons,” the statement said.

It did not say whether US authorities had already been contacted about the proposed visits.

In another development, the US has made public hundreds of pages of official documents to show that it never sanctioned prisoner abuse and torture. The Bush administration Thursday night released the documents - from the White House, the defense department and the justice department - detailing internal debates, discussions and decisions related to the issue of torture in the war on terror.

The administration said it released this material to refute allegations that it authorized the use of torture to extract information from prisoners taken in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Meanwhile, protests began on Friday in different parts of Turkey against next week's NATO summit in Istanbul, which will be attended by US President George W. Bush and the leaders of 45 other nations.

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