We’re still waiting for a U.S. reply

The Red Cross proves Scott McClellan, Bush’s spokesman, a liar. Again.

Here’s a quote from the article itself:

The U.S. government hasn’t officially responded to the Red Cross demand to be notified about all detainees, including those at undisclosed locations.

“We’re still waiting for a U.S. reply,” Notari said. That request was made Red Cross President Jakob Kellenberger in January.

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This is Scott McClellan a few hours later, responding to questions about the article:

Q They haven’t brought this up to you yet, that you know of?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I’m looking further into this, but, again, I just want to remind you that we do work closely with the Red Cross on all detainee issues and that they do bring up issues from time to time and we always work to respond directly to the Red Cross.

Detailed version after link

White House: Looking Into Red Cross Fears Over Detainees

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
July 13, 2004 3:43 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP)–The White House said Tuesday that it’s looking into concerns raised by the Red Cross that it suspects that the U.S. is holding terror suspects secretly in locations around the world despite granting the organization access to thousands of detainees in Iraq and elsewhere.

Terror suspects reported by the FBI as captured have never turned up in detention centers, and the U.S. has failed to reply to demands to provide a list of everyone it’s holding, said Antonella Notari, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said he was “looking further into” the Red Cross’ concerns and added: “We do work closely with the Red Cross on all detainee issues.”

He didn’t concede that such a problem exists.

“These people are, as far as we can tell, detained in locations that are undisclosed not only to us but also to the rest of the world,” Notari told The Associated Press.

Under the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare the U.S. is obliged to give the neutral, Swiss-run ICRC access to prisoners of war and other detainees to check on their conditions and allow them to send messages to their families.

The U.S. says it’s cooperating with the agency, and has allowed ICRC delegates access to thousands of prisoners in Afghanistan, the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq, where Red Cross delegates have visited former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

It’s unclear whether terror suspects would be covered by the Geneva Conventions, but Notari said that “for humanitarian reasons” the ICRC should be told about all detainees.

ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger made the request in January on a visit to Washington during which he met with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

“So far we haven’t had a satisfactory reply,” Notari said.

She said the FBI has posted details of arrested suspects on its Web site, and other arrests have been reported by the media, but some of those people have never showed up in prisons visited by the ICRC.

Notari said she had read media reports that some people are being held at Diego Garcia, a U.K.-held island in the Indian Ocean that is used as a strategic military base by the U.S., but the ICRC hasn’t been notified of any prisoners there.

In his report into allegations of abuse at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found that military police there had “routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention.”

On at least one occasion they moved these “ghost detainees” around the prison to hide them from a visiting ICRC delegation, he added. He described the actions as “deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law.”

ICRC delegates visited nearly 500,000 detainees in around 80 countries last year, including almost 11,000 in Iraq.

In an interview in Tuesday’s edition of the German business daily Handelsblatt, Kellenberger defended the ICRC’s policy of refusing to comment publicly on the conditions that it finds in places of detention, preferring to negotiate directly with the authorities.

The agency faced criticism for not speaking out about the abuse at Abu Ghraib until it was revealed in the media.

“Certain people had the impression that our repeated, confidential approaches to the U.S. authorities were falling flat,” Kellenberger said.

“But impressions can be wrong. When we visited Abu Ghraib in January 2004, we found improvements compared with October 2003, and when we visited in March it was better than in January.”

The ICRC has, however, spoken out on its concerns over the continued detention without trial of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba.

“I made it clear in January that we were not happy with the improvements,” Kellenberger said.

“The most recent visit has just finished. We must now study the findings.”