UN: UN human rights investigators yesterday demanded access to prisoners held by US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay to check that international standards were being upheld.
In a rare joint statement, they unequivocally condemned terrorism in all forms, but reiterated "concerns about certain measures taken in the name of the fight against terrorism".
The US military, facing a backlash across the Arab world for its abuse of Iraqi prisoners, last month launched an investigation into its treatment of detainees in Afghanistan - the first stop in President Bush's war on terror.
The UN statement said a panel of UN rapporteurs spanning areas such as torture and arbitrary detention should visit inmates held for suspected terrorism offences in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere.
"This is a collective step in the hope that it will have more effect," Mr Theo van Boven, UN special rapporteur on torture, told a news conference after chairing closed-door talks with 30 rights investigators.
The plea follows a scandal last month sparked by photographs taken in the US-run Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, showing prisoners, some in hoods, being sexually humiliated by soldiers and intimidated with dogs.
On the subject of Abu Ghraib, Mr Van Boven said: "The whole picture being drawn up is a matter of great concern." He said a 1987 Convention against Torture - ratified by the US - was clear. "The prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment is an absolute one. It may not be derogated from in any circumstances." Mr Bush said this week that he had never ordered and would never order detainees to be tortured.
Britain's top legal officer criticised as "unacceptable" yesterday proposed US military trials of Guantanamo Bay detainees in a speech reviving a rare rift between the closest allies in the global anti-terror war.
Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith's comments, released ahead of delivery in a speech in Paris, were one of the bluntest statements yet of London's disquiet over the US handling of terror suspects.
"While we must be flexible and be prepared to countenance some limitation of fundamental rights if properly justified and proportionate, there are certain principles on which there can be no compromise," he was to say.
"Fair trial is one of those - which is the reason we in the UK have been unable to accept that the US military tribunals . . . offer sufficient guarantees of a fair trial in accordance with international standards."