WASHINGTON -- February 28 -- Amnesty International warned today that, while the Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are consistent and comprehensive, the Bush Administration's practice of "rendering" detainees to countries that the report cites as having abysmal human rights records, runs the risk of turning the report into a guide to overseas torture subcontractors.

Although President Bush, in his inauguration address, stated that "all who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors," Amnesty International's analysis reveals that the U.S. may be continuing to subcontract detention and interrogation to those very same oppressors. The organization called on Secretary of State Rice to state unequivocally that no agent of the United States government has the authority to participate in delivering detainees to countries where torture is practiced and that any such participation will be investigated and prosecuted.

"Just as many corporations monitor wage rates worldwide to shift their operations to the lowest-cost producers, the Bush Administration has demonstrated a keen appreciation for the torture skills available for hire in certain nations. The State Department's carefully compiled record of countries' abuses may perversely have been transformed into a Yellow Pages for the outsourcing of torture," said Dr. William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). "The government's integrity is damaged if with one hand it collates a detailed index of human rights abuses and with the other mines that data as it plots arrests, detentions and interrogations. This administration is apparently dealing from both sides of the deck, condemning countries for their use of torture while simultaneously delivering detainees into their prison cells."

The U.S. is believed to have returned, "rendered" or disappeared detainees in the "war on terror" to countries that the report cites for ill-treatment of detainees, including Maher Arar, a Canadian/Syrian national, who was transferred from U.S. custody to Syria via Jordan in October 2002. He was allegedly subjected to severe torture in Syria and held for months in cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions. Yemeni national Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed was reportedly handed over to US custody by Pakistan agents on 26 October 2001 and flown out of Karachi International Airport in secret aboard a U.S. Gulfstream jet. He was reportedly taken to Jordan. His current whereabouts are unknown and Amnesty International has never received a response to its requests to the U.S. authorities for information on the case. Further detainees are believed to be held in "secret prisons" by the US or with its connivance within the borders of other states. And in Saudi Arabia, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation are reported to have either interrogated or been present at the interrogation of U.S. citizen Ahmed Abu 'Ali, arrested in June 2003 at US request. He has subsequently alleged he was tortured during his detention.

Amnesty International also reiterated that in contrast to the country reports, the Administration's policies on human rights are inconsistent and inattentive with an increasingly myopic policy focus on some states to the almost total exclusion of others.

"U.S. pressure can be highly effective in winning progress both in individual human rights cases and in ending oppressive polices, but there is a lack of interest in applying that pressure to foreign governments who fall outside the scope of the current Administration's priorities," said Alexandra Arriaga, director of government relations for AIUSA. "Equally, criticism of the catalogue of abuses committed by U.S. allies will be muted after today's release of the report, with human rights concerns sacrificed for political expediency."

Further reported cases of the U.S. sending prisoners to countries with poor records on torture are contained in the report "Human Dignity Denied" at: http://www.amnestyusa.org/waronterror

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