WASHINGTON, July 11: The Bush administration on Tuesday announced a major reversal of its policy towards terror suspects when it announced that all detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in US military custody everywhere are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.

The administration had previously insisted that terror suspects were not prisoners of war and therefore not entitled to the rights granted to PoWs under the Geneva Conventions.

The government had coined a new term — enemy combatants — to keep these prisoners out of the purview of the Geneva Conventions, enabling authorities in Guantanamo and other US prisons to hold the detainees without trial for more than four years.

Some prisoners were never charged formally.

The reversal of the administration’s policy followed a US Supreme Court ruling last month, blocking military tribunals set up in Guantanamo from trying the prisoners.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the policy, outlined in a new Defence Department memo, reflects the recent 5-3 Supreme Court decision blocking military tribunals set up by President Bush.

That decision struck down the tribunals because they did not obey international law and had not been authorised by Congress.

The policy, described in a memo by Deputy Defence Secretary Gordon England, came as the Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on Tuesday on the politically charged issue of how detainees should be treated.

“We’re not going to give the Department of Defence a blank check,” Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee chairman, told the hearing.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee’s top Democrat, said ‘kangaroo court procedures’ must be changed and any military commissions “should not be set up as a sham. They should be consistent with a high standard of American justice, worth protecting”.

Guantanamo has been a flashpoint for both US and international debate over the treatment of detainees without trial and over allegations of torture, denied by US officials.

Even US allies in the war on terrorism have criticised the facility and process.

Mr Snow said efforts to spell out more clearly the rights of detainees does not change the president’s determination to work with Congress to enable the administration to proceed with the military tribunals, or commissions.

The goal is ‘to find a way to properly do this in a way consistent with national security’, Mr Snow said.