NEW YORK - May 18 - Beyond repudiating the sex abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, presidential action is needed to end government-authorized mistreatment of detainees, Human Rights Watch said today. In June 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush affirmed that the United States would respect international prohibitions on torture and degrading treatment, but the policy has not been implemented.

Human Rights Watch said in a letter to President Bush that U.S. interrogators' deliberate ratcheting up of pain, suffering and humiliation violated not only the Geneva Conventions but also the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment.

"The sexual humiliation and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison is just a symptom of a larger problem," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "The Bush administration as a matter of policy has approved a wide range of coercive interrogation techniques that are illegal."

Human Rights Watch said that in particular, the Bush Administration's approval of a matrix of coercive interrogation techniques violates prohibitions of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. These techniques include stripping detainees naked during interrogation, subjecting them to extremes of heat, cold, noise, and light, hooding them, depriving them of sleep, and keeping them in painful positions. In more extreme cases, torture seems to have been authorized - techniques such as submerging the victim in water until he believes he will drown, or leading a detainee to believe that he will be summarily executed.

President Bush seemed to have disavowed such practices in his June 26 policy statement. "Obviously, President Bush's pledge was not implemented," said Roth. "The president urgently needs to show that his rejection of coercive interrogation practices was more than just empty words."

To read the Human Rights Watch letter, please see: http://hrw.org//english/docs/2004/05/17/usint8591.htm

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