WASHINGTON, Jan 14: The Bush administration committed gross human rights violations in the fight against terrorism and allowed its allies to commit similar violations as well, says a US report released on Wednesday.

The report by a leading US rights group called Human Rights Watch urged President-elect Barack Obama to put human rights at the centre of US foreign, domestic and security policy to undo “the enormous damage” of the Bush era.

“It’s not only wrong but ineffectual to commit abuses in the name of fighting terrorism or to excuse abuses by repressive governments because they are thought to be allies in countering terror,” said the group’s executive director Kenneth Roth.

In its 564-page report, Human Rights Watch said the Bush administration largely withdrew from the defence of human rights after deciding to combat terrorism “without regard to such basic rights as not to be subjected to torture, enforced disappearance or detention without trial.”

Mr Roth suggested that “as a vital first step, Barack Obama and his team should radically rethink how they fight terrorism”.

He accused the Bush administration of “arrogantly” abandoning effective diplomatic efforts to reverse abuses.

Suggestions for Obama: Among the steps that President Obama should take would be to:

• Close the CIA’s secret detention centres permanently. Bush suggested he had emptied them only temporarily.

• Apply to the CIA the US military’s new rules prohibiting coercive interrogation. Congress had tried to legislate that step, but Bush vetoed the bill, and Congress lacked the votes to override the veto.

• Close the Guantanamo detention centre without effectively moving it onshore by permitting detention without trial in the United States. Repatriate or prosecute all detainees, and ensure that prosecutions are conducted in regular courts, not the substandard military commissions. Abandon the theory that terrorist suspects arrested anywhere in the world, even far from any recognisable battlefield, can be detained as enemy combatants without regard to the protections of human rights law.

• Launch a non-partisan, professionally staffed investigative commission, with subpoena power, to examine who authorised these serious abuses, how they should be held accountable, and what steps should be taken to ensure that this ugly episode in US history never recurs.

The Obama administration should also signal that, from now on, the US government will submit to the requirements of international human rights law and reengage with international institutions for the enforcement of that law. President Obama should:

• Offer the United States as a candidate for the UN Human Rights Council with the purpose of making it an effective institution for promoting human rights.

• Signal an intention to reengage constructively with the International Criminal Court by re-signing the ICC treaty, repealing the American Service- Members’ Protection Act, which cuts aid to governments that will not foreswear ever surrendering a US citizen for trial and authorizes invading The Hague to liberate any imprisoned American. Support the ICC politically and practically.

• Ratify other key human rights treaties, such as the new convention against enforced disappearances, the long-ignored treaties on women’s and children’s rights, the treaty on economic, social, and cultural rights, the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, setting forth standards for the conduct of warfare, and the more recent, life-saving treaties banning cluster munitions and antipersonnel landmines.

Finally, President Obama should reassess US bilateral relations with certain governments whose significance as strategic or counterterrorism allies led the Bush administration to overlook their abuses.

The United States should use its substantial economic leverage to push for an end to abuses by close allies.