US defends foreign detentions

[struggle4progress]

Fri Nov 4, 2005 1:22 AM GMT
By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has sought to justify the detention of thousands of foreign terror suspects in a report to a U.N. panel as questions mount over possible secret CIA prisons for al Qaeda captives.

In a report sent late last month to the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva, the State Department gave its rationale for the holding "enemy combatants" in Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The report did not cover detainees held elsewhere.

"There is no question that under the law of armed conflict, the United States has the authority to detain persons who have engaged in unlawful belligerence until the cessation of hostilities," said the October 21 report, which was recently published on the State Department's Web site (http://www.state.gov). <snip>

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