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U.S. Sticks to Refusal to Apply Main Rights Treaty to Detainees Held Outside Country
Alexander G. Higgins
Associated Press
July 19, 2006
GENEVA (AP) - The United States on Tuesday stuck to its refusal to apply the main international human rights treaty to detainees held outside the U.S., causing concern among U.N. experts that it might encourage other countries to be selective in the rights they respect.
"I don't think this is a very positive message to the other state parties," said Christine Chanet, who chaired two days of hearings by the U.N. Human Rights Committee on U.S. compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. "We expect after all that they apply the treaty in as wide a manner as possible."
U.S. officials maintain that the United States government has always regarded the treaty as only applying to protection of human rights within the United States.
"The diverging positions have not made things easy," said Chanet, a French jurist.
But she said that at least the U.S. delegation had been willing to discuss how it treats detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere outside the United States, maintaining that it assured them of basic rights.
Torture is banned everywhere in U.S. detention facilities because it is a violation of both the law of armed conflict and U.S. domestic law, U.S. State Department official Matthew Waxman said.
"It is important to understand that the attacks of al-Qaida confronted not only the United States but the entire world with a new kind of threat, a threat that did not fit neatly into existing legal categories. This continuing threat poses difficult dilemmas for us all," he said.
"The United States is engaged in a real, not rhetorical, conflict with al-Qaida," said Waxman, who headed the U.S. delegation of about 25 people.
U.S. personnel are being held accountable for any abuses -- among them a general and lieutenant colonel who were relieved of their duties after the disclosure of American abuses in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, said Sandra Hodgkinson, another U.S. State Department official.
"Accountability is ongoing," Hodgkinson told the panel, adding that there have been more than 100 court-martials and an 86 percent conviction rate.
"No humans are beyond reproach. But what sets the United States apart from other nations is how we deal with transgressions," she said.
In May, the top U.N. anti-torture panel -- a separate body from this committee -- recommended the closure of Guantanamo and criticized alleged U.S. use of secret prisons and suspected delivery of prisoners to foreign countries for questioning.
Much of that criticism was repeated in the latest hearings, which also covered a wide range of domestic concerns, including women's rights, the lack of Washington, D.C., representation in Congress and the sentencing of juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
As one of the 156 countries that have signed the treaty, the United States was taking its turn before the committee of 18 independent experts. Criticism by the panel brings no penalties beyond international scrutiny. The committee is expected to issue conclusions before it wraps up its session July 28.
The hearings drew wide interest among U.S. human rights organizations, which formed a coalition of 142 groups to submit questions to the panel. About 65 people from rights organizations watched the proceedings.
Alison Parker, of Human Rights Watch, said the committee's questioning had been thorough, with repeated demands that Washington report the next time on how U.S. states -- not just the federal government -- are meeting the United States' obligations under the treaty.
Robert Freer of Amnesty International said he was concerned about U.S. refusal to apply the treaty abroad.
"When a government as powerful as the U.S. takes a particularly selective view of international treaty law, what's to stop other countries from taking such an approach as well," Freer told The Associated Press. "It's a bad example to set."
Jamil Dakwar, staff attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union, supported the committee's view that the treaty applies to the activity of U.S. officials, whether at home or abroad.
The United States is "trying to be above international law, not only in the war on terror but in other areas, the death penalty, treatment of people incarcerated within the United States," Dakwar said.
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