Pentagon moves to bar CIA 'ghost' detainees

WASHINGTON - The CIA will no longer be allowed to hold unregistered "ghost" detainees at US military prisons such as Iraq's Abu Ghraib, the Pentagon's top intelligence official said today.

Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defence for intelligence, assured the US Senate that new interim rules on military interrogations eliminate the CIA's practice at Abu Ghraib of hiding detainees and subjecting them to separate interrogation methods that critics say were harsher than those employed by the military.

Army investigators who first disclosed that the CIA concealed dozens of unregistered detainees at Abu Ghraib blamed the spy agency's practices for a loss of accountability, abuse and a poisoned atmosphere at the infamous facility.

One CIA detainee, Manadel al-Jamadi, died at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 4, 2003, while handcuffed in a prison shower room.

At a hearing before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Republican senator John McCain of Arizona asked Cambone if the CIA could still hold ghost detainees under its own rules and practices at military prisons.

"I don't believe so. No," replied the Pentagon official, who said newly issued interim interrogation rules now require a single standard to be applied at military facilities.

"It makes plain that the rules that are applied by that command, apply at that command in those places where that command is responsible for the individual and the facilities, " Cambone said. "What you are suggesting is not to happen. "

"So that assumes there will be no more so-called ghost prisoners in our military prisons?" pressed McCain.

"Sir, to the extent that we can assure you that. I'm here to do that for you," Cambone answered.

Cambone said the just published interim guidelines were different from a forthcoming army interrogation manual, which the New York Times said on Thursday would bar harsh techniques disclosed in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

The CIA, which had no immediate comment on the committee's proceedings, also came under fire over the pace of its own internal investigation of detainee abuse allegations.

Military abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the deaths of at least two dozen detainees, has been subject to about a dozen official inquiries, officials say.

But cases involving CIA detainees have been examined only by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general.

Since the prison abuse scandal broke in the US media last year, the inspector general has transferred two cases to the Justice Department. In one, a CIA contractor faces criminal trial in North Carolina for the death of an Afghan detainee.

But the CIA inspector general has not reported to Congress on its activities, including probes of about half a dozen abuse allegations that remain under review.

"It seems to me we ought to find out what happened there ... sufficient time has elapsed for an investigation to be conducted and concluded," McCain said.

- REUTERS