US Acknowledges Torture at Guantánamo and Elsewhere

A day after a UN human rights team accused the United States of stalling on three years worth of requests to visit detainees at Guantánamo Bay and announced it would investigate without US help...

GENEVA (AFX) - Washington has, for the first time, acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantánamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.

The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on condition of anonymity.

'They are no longer trying to duck this and have respected their obligation to inform the UN,' the Committee member said.

'They they will have to explain themselves (to the Committee). Nothing should be kept in the dark,' he said.

UN sources said this is the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.

Unfortunately, the hearings are scheduled for May 2006. The document won't officially be made public until then. We're betting on a leak.

Of course, the report was anonymously sourced, so it's probably all a lie, right? Because in an interview with Wolf Blitzer yesterday, Vice President Cheney asserted that "They're very well treated down there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want." Somebody should ask him where he's getting his information. From Curveball, perhaps?

(Via Raw Story.)