While other newspapers talk about the CIA's new website, one paper from Azerbaijan actually wants to talk about real news

CIA prisons on agenda for UN

GENEVA — The United States comes under official U.N. grilling for the first time Friday over its compliance with the global ban on torture, with questions focusing on allegations of secret CIA prisons and flights transferring terror suspects for possible torture in other countries.

The U.N. Committee Aganist Torture, the global body’s watchdog for a 22-year-old treaty forbidding prisoner abuse, will quiz U.S. officials on a series of issues ranging from Washington’s interpretation of the absolute ban on torture to its interrogation methods in prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

The United States, like the 140 other signatory nations to the Convention Against Torture, must submit reports to the committee to show it is applying the rules. The U.S. mission to the U.N.’s European headquarters in Geneva said it has sent a written reply to the committee’s questions, but that it would refrain from commenting ahead of its sessions with the committee on Friday and Monday.

In its 87-page report filed in January — some four years behind schedule — Washington insisted it is “unequivocally opposed” to torture and that its commitment to the ban “remains unchanged” since the U.S. Senate ratified the convention in October 1994.

But the Geneva-based committee, a panel of 10 independent experts who meet twice a year, said the United States’ legal interpretation of torture in Department of Justice memorandums in 2002 and 2004 “seems to be much more restrictive than previous United Nations standards.”

The committee is demanding the United States explain why it established secret prisons, what rules and methods of interrogation it employs, and whether the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush assumes responsibility for alleged acts of torture committed by American agents outside U.S. territory.

Criticism by the U.N. panel brings no penalties beyond international scrutiny. The committee is expected to issue conclusions when it wraps up its session May 19. Washington neither confirms nor denies allegations of secret prisons on grounds that it refuses to comment on intelligence matters.

But the committee cautioned that enforced disappearances of suspects “can be considered a form of torture.”

Original article posted here.