US blocks ICRC access to secret prisons

The United States has again refused the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to terrorism suspects held in secret detention centers, the humanitarian agency said on May 12. The statement was issued after talks in Washington between ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger and senior officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. "Mr. Kellenberger deplored the fact that the US authorities had not moved closer to granting the ICRC access to persons held in undisclosed locations," the Geneva-based agency said. Kellenberger said: "No matter how legitimate the grounds for detention, there exists no right to conceal a person's whereabouts or to deny that he or she is being detained." The former senior Swiss diplomat said that the ICRC would continue to seek access to such people as a matter of priority. The main objective of his annual visit was for the ICRC to be granted access to "all persons held by the US in the context of the fight against terrorism, an issue he first raised with the US government over two years ago," the agency said. Antonella Notari, chief ICRC spokeswoman, noted that Kellenberger had first raised the issue with former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rice, then National Security Adviser, in January 2004. "We have just received a negative response again," Notari said. The agency said it recognized that there were legitimate grounds for holding foreign terrorism suspects who posed a threat to the United States, she said. "Having said that, it is absolutely vital for such people to be held in a clear legal framework and that they are granted all basic judicial safeguards," Notari added. "Obviously this includes those people held in secret places of detention." The ICRC is the only independent body the United States allows to visit terror suspects detained in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but it has long been demanding access to prisoners held in "undisclosed locations." The State Department has said previously that the US government provides access to the vast majority of prisoners under its control even though it doesn't regard al-Qaida members as covered by the Geneva Conventions. Spokesman Adam Ereli acknowledged last December that "there are some" prisoners to whom the United States refuses to grant access. The Geneva Conventions indicate that the ICRC should be allowed to visit prisoners of war. The United States describes most of the prisoners that it holds as enemy combatants rather than prisoners of war, but it still has granted the ICRC access to those they are holding in known prisons. However, the ICRC noted that after Guan-tánamo and other facilities began to be used in 2002, some of the suspects arrested in different countries never showed up in the prisons they were visiting. The agency began demanding access to them as well. A Washington Post report last year, which said that the CIA had run secret prisons in Europe and flown suspects to states where they would have been tortured, unleashed a spate of investigations. But none so far have produced solid proof. Both UN human rights experts and European legislators have been trying to uncover the covert activities. The United Nations torture investigator, Manfred Nowak, told a European Union parliamentary committee probing the allegations there was evidence of secret detention centers outside the United States, but no definite proof they had existed in Europe. John Bellinger, the State Department's legal adviser, reiterated last week Washington's position that it does not outsource torture or transfer people it suspects of being involved in terrorism to places where it can expect them to be tortured.