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Pentagon manual skirts Geneva norms

Julian Borger

Washington: The Pentagon is drafting a new rulebook for military interrogators which omits the Geneva Convention ban on ``humiliating and degrading treatment'', it was reported on Monday.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the army field manual on interrogation has not been finalised, and State Department lawyers are fighting to have the convention protections restored.

Pentagon officials said a final version should be published in the next few weeks.

A spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Ballesteros, said: ``The document you refer to remains in coordination and it would be premature to comment on it prior to its release. The Department of Defence remains committed to the humane treatment of all its detainees.''

Pentagon lawyers have spent more than a year trying to draw up the manual in the wake of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Hardliners in the military and in Dick Cheney's office want to give U.S. intelligence officials the freedom to question suspected terrorists, labelled ``unlawful combatants'', effectively. Others in the administration are concerned that if the constraints are deliberately loosened, the administration would be politically and legally liable for any abuse scandals.

Administration critics say a legal memorandum produced by the Justice Department in 2002, suggesting that the President was not constrained by the Geneva Convention, paved the way for the maltreatment of inmates in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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