WASHINGTON, 18 June 2004 — At the request of CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered the military to secretly hold a suspected terrorist in Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said.
The suspected terrorist has been held since October without being given an identification number and without the International Committee of the Red Cross being notified, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Both conditions violate the Geneva Accords on treatment of prisoners of war.
Rumsfeld ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have the prisoner secretly detained on the day last October, when Tenet made the request, Whitman said.
“The director of central intelligence requested he not be assigned an internment serial number while the CIA worked to determine his precise disposition,” Whitman said.
The Bush administration has argued that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to suspected terrorists who do not follow the conventions themselves. But Rumsfeld and other administration officials have said the Geneva Conventions applied to all US military activities in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
The prisoner will be given a number and the Red Cross will be formally notified soon, Whitman said.
“The ICRC should have been notified about the detainee earlier,” Whitman said. “We should have taken steps, and we have taken the necessary steps to rectify the situation.”
The Iraqi prisoner is so far the only individual Defense Department officials have acknowledged shielding from the Red Cross. Before Wednesday’s admission, Pentagon spokesmen would not confirm or deny if anyone was being held in secret.
“We’ve not talked about the location of specific detainees other than Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba simply because it gets into the classified realm,” Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers said in an e-mail response to questions from the Associated Press on Wednesday, before the Iraq admission.
President Bush and members of his administration have said repeatedly that all detainees are treated humanely. Pentagon officials have argued that announcing the numbers or locations of all detainees would indicate the scope of US anti-terrorism efforts to terrorist groups and give them ideas of sites to attack.
The secret prisoner in Iraq is believed to be a high-ranking member of Ansar Al-Islam, a radical group which had been based in northern Iraq before the US invasion last year. US officials believe the man was involved in attacks on coalition troops, Whitman said.
Four-Star General Named to Take Over Abu Ghraib Probe
A four-star general has been appointed to oversee an investigation into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, replacing Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who recused himself, the US Army has announced.
Gen. Paul Kern, who heads the army’s materiel command, will assume responsibility for the probe into “alleged misconduct of certain personnel assigned or attached to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade,” the army said in a statement released late Wednesday.
Sanchez had ordered the investigation into the conduct of military intelligence interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison after a review by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba concluded that they influenced military guards to “set conditions for interrogations.”
