WASHINGTON: Amnesty International has issued a 62-page memorandum that it sent to the US government, listing its complaints over the treatment of detainees held in both Cuba and Afghanistan, and condemning the US approach to the issue.

“The USA’s ‘pick and choose’ approach to the Geneva Conventions is unacceptable, as is it fails to respect fundamental international human rights standards,” Amnesty said.

The organization renewed its request for access to the prisoners held at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, nearly three months after it made its previous request, to which it has received no reply.

Amnesty said the US was denying, or threatening to deny, internationally recognized rights of prisoners by:

* Holding them in conditions that may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment;

* Refusing them access to counsel, despite ongoing interrogations that may lead to prosecutions;

* Refusing them access to the courts to challenge the lawfulness of their detention;

* Refusing to disclose full information about the circumstances of many of the arrests, including the country in which they were made;

* Undermining human rights of people arrested outside Afghanistan, particularly six Algerians seized in Bosnia in apparent violation of Bosnian and international law;

* Undermining the presumption of innocence through comments on the guilt of the detainees;

* Threatening to apply an unfair justice system, involving military commissions with the power to hand out death penalties without appeal and without clear independence from the government;

* Raising the prospect of indefinite detention without charge and continued detention after acquittal by military commission;

* Failing to show that it had adequately investigated allegations of human rights violations against Afghan villagers who were detained by US soldiers in Afghanistan.

About 300 prisoners - nearly all of them captured in Afghanistan - are held at Camp X-Ray, with unknown numbers still in Afghanistan. More than a thousand have been held in post-Sept 11 sweeps in the US itself.

“The US government must ensure that all its actions in relation to those in its custody in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay comply with international law and standards,” Amnesty said.

“This is crucial if justice is to be done and seen to be done, and if respect for the rule of law and human rights is not to be undermined.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.