Pentagon bans torture of detainees

WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials released a new directive Tuesday on Defense Department intelligence interrogations, mandating that all questioning of detainees in U.S. military custody include "humane" treatment and banning "acts of physical or mental torture."

The eight-page document for the first time pulls together a number of departmental policies on interrogations and the prevention of detainee mistreatment, exemplified by the Abu Ghraib prison abuse in late 2003. The directive largely sets out how policies will be developed, emphasizes proper treatment and lays out requirements for reporting violations.

The directive is the first step in the Defense Department's effort to clarify the rules for U.S. detention operations, which have come under intense scrutiny in the past two years amid allegations of abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

It comes as Congress is considering legislation by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of prisoners and as Democrats in the House and Senate push for the creation of a commission to investigate the treatment of foreign prisoners.

The White House has fought any language that it believes could impair the executive branch's ability to wage war and that might appear to limit the flexibility of U.S. government agencies in the fight against terrorism.

The Pentagon directive does not offer specific interrogation guidelines; those are expected to appear in a revised edition of the Army Field Manual and in future classified training documents. It does, however, ban the use of military working dogs "as part of an interrogation approach" and says that dogs cannot be used "to harass, intimidate, threaten, or coerce a detainee for interrogation purposes."

The directive also says any nonmilitary U.S. government agencies — such as the CIA — foreign-government representatives and other interrogators must agree to abide by Defense Department policies before gaining access to a detainee.