Bush, Pentagon respond to torture report
The White House does not condone torture, U.S. President George Bush's spokeswoman said in response to a military official's claim a prisoner was tortured.
Let me just make sure it's clear and I'll say it on the record one more time, that it has never been the policy of this president or this administration to torture,
Dana Perino said during a news briefing Wednesday.
She was responding to a Washington Post interview with Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of military commission, in which she said Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee Mohammed al-Qahtani's interrogation met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case.
Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters Wednesday the aggressive questioning techniques
used on Qahtani were permissible at the time but are no longer allowed in the updated Army field manual,
Whitman told reporters today.
Whitman said Crawford's decision not to forward Qahtani's case doesn't mean the case ultimately won't go forward.
The spokesman said the Pentagon has taken great effort to ensure it conducts interrogations and detainee operations legally.
We have conducted more than a dozen investigations and reviews of our detention operations, including specifically the interrogation of al-Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker
of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said. The investigations concluded the interrogation methods used at (Guantanamo Bay), including the special interrogation techniques used with Qahtani in 2002, were legal.
He stressed the department doesn't tolerate detainee abuse, saying, We investigate all credible allegations of abuse.
UPI
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