Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on the request of George J. Tenet, the director of CIA, ordered military officials in Iraq last November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a high-level detention centre there but not list him on the prison’s rolls, senior Pentagon and intelligence officials said on Wednesday.This prisoner and other ‘‘ghost detainees’’ were hidden largely to prevent the ICRC from monitoring their treatment and conditions, and to avoid disclosing their location to an enemy.Maj Gen Antonio M. Taguba, the Army officer who in February investigated abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, criticised the practice of allowing ghost detainees there and at other detention centres in Iraq as ‘‘deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law’’. This prisoner, who has not been named, is believed to be the first to have been kept off the books on orders of Rumsfeld and Tenet. He was held at Camp Cropper on the outskirts of Baghdad, officials said. Seven months later, however, the detainee — a reputed senior officer of Ansar Al-Islam, a group the US has linked to Al Qaeda— is still languishing at the prison but has only been questioned once more. —(NYT)
