Rumsfeld: Torture claims false

2005-06-26 20:20

Washington - US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday rejected allegations of widespread prisoner abuse at US-run overseas detention facilities.

"The idea that there's any policy of abuse or policy of torture is false - flat false," he told the Fox News Sunday television program.

"People have been instructed to treat people humanely," Rumsfeld said.

The defence secretary pointed out that in instances where they have been prisoner abuse has been substantiated "people have been punished and convicted in a court martial."

Rumsfeld rejected calls from some US lawmakers, civil libertarians and others that terror suspects be prosecuted in the general civilian criminal justice system.

"I'm not a lawyer, but the president and the attorney general decided after 9/11 that putting terrorists into the ... criminal justice system as though they were car thieves or bank robbers or something like that .... wasn't the way to do it," Rumsfeld said.

The US detention facility in Guantanamo has become the focus of passionate debate in recent weeks, following allegations that US forces abused those held in an overzealous effort to prevent potential attacks against the United States like those of September 11, 2001.

Some US lawmakers want the site closed, and others have called for an independent commission to investigate abuses, which US President George W Bush has rejected.

The United States currently holds about 520 suspected al-Qaeda members at Guantanamo from about 40 different countries. Of those, 12 have been handed over to military commissions for investigation of possible war crimes, and four have been charged.

- SAPA