Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 04 November 2005 1548 hrs
White House pressured over allegations of torture, secret prisons
WASHINGTON : Mounting criticism of US maltreatment of hundreds of "war on terror" detainees, and new evidence that the CIA runs secret prisons around the world, have put the White House on the defensive over an alleged policy of permitting torture.
On Thursday the two houses of Congress began discussions to finalize a bill that would ban any torture by US forces. President George W. Bush has threatened to veto it, even as he has denied sanctioning torture.
The same day, a former top state department official told a radio program that the office of Vice President Dick Cheney was behind directives which encouraged US forces's torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That followed a Washington Post report a day earlier that the CIA has operated a network of secret prisons in eight countries where about 30 people were being held and interrogated.
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