Global terror A human rights group accused the Bush administration on Wednesday of failing to take responsibility for the nearly 100 detainees who have died in US custody, including eight who were tortured to death, since August 2002.
In Command?s Responsibility, a report on the ?war on terror? released on Wednesday, Human Rights First said 100 detainees had died in US custody, including 34 deaths that the Pentagon had classified as suspected, or confirmed, murders.
The group said the facts surrounding another 11 of the nearly 100 deaths ?suggest death as a result of physical abuse or harsh conditions of detention?. The report criticises the administration, saying ?only 12 detainee deaths have result-ed in punishment of any kind for any US official?.
Bryan Whitman, deputy Pentagon spokesman, on Wednesday described the claims that the Pentagon had not held people accountable as ?hogwash?.
The report says that only half of the eight cases where detainees were allegedly tortured to death had resulted in punishment, with the steepest sentence being five months.
It also accuses the administration over the role of the Central Intelligence Agency, saying none of its agents had faced criminal charges despite being implicated in detainee deaths.
?The failure to deal adequately with these cases has opened a serious accountability gap for the US military and intelligence community, and has produced a credibility gap for the US ? between policies the leadership says it respects on paper, and behaviour it actually allows in practice,? the report said.
Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Bush administration has suffered a barrage of criticism over its detention policies, including the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and more recently allegations that the CIA has been keeping higher profile detainees in secret prisons around the world. Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, last week endorsed calls in an independent UN report to quickly bring detainees at Guantanamo to trial, or close the facility.
?One such incident would be an isolated transgression; two would be a serious problem; a dozen of them is policy,? John Hutson, former Navy judge advocate general and now dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center, wrote in the report.
?The law of military justice has long recognised that military leaders are held responsible for the conduct of their troops. Yet this report also documents that no civilian official or officer above the rank of major responsible for interrogation and detention practices has been charged in connection with the torture or abuse-related death of a detainee in US custody.?
A Pentagon report into US detention policies concluded that senior Pentagon officials were partly responsible for confusing detention and interrogation policies, but it stopped short of calling for any resignations. Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, last year said the White House had rejected his two offers to resign.
