WASHINGTON — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said yesterday that before the United States hands over terror suspects to foreign governments, it receives assurances that they won't be tortured. But he acknowledged that once a transfer occurs, the United States has little control.

The Bush administration's program to send foreigners to other countries, known as "extraordinary rendition," has been denounced by human-rights advocates. They say it amounts to outsourcing torture to elicit information that could not be obtained legally in America.

Gonzales defended the program and reiterated that the Bush administration does not condone torture.

"Our policy is not to render people to countries where we believe or we know that they're going to be tortured," he said.

The attorney general said the State Department and the CIA obtain assurances that people will be treated humanely. In the case of countries with a history of abusing prisoners, the United States "would, I would think in most cases, look for additional assurances that that conduct won't be repeated."

It's not known how many suspects have been sent to other countries. But at least three people have asserted publicly that the United States shipped them to foreign prisons, where they were mistreated and eventually released without being charged with a crime.

One case involved an Egyptian-born Australian who contends he was tortured in an Egyptian prison.

A Canadian citizen who was born in Syria says he was abused in Syrian custody. The State Department, in its annual human-rights report, last week accused Egypt and Syria of torturing prisoners.

The third prisoner, a German man born in Lebanon, alleges he was beaten in an Afghan prison.

Gonzales declined to discuss specific cases, but conceded that once a detainee is in custody elsewhere, "We can't fully control what that country might do. We obviously expect a country to whom we have rendered a detainee to comply with their representations to us.

"If you're asking me, 'Does a country always comply?' I don't have an answer to that."