Pentagon OK'd Harsh Prison Techniques at Guantanamo

The techniques were approved in April 2003 and require approval from senior Pentagon officials and in some cases Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the paper reported on its Web site, citing unnamed defense officials.

It cited a document outlining 20 procedures that require interrogators to justify the harshest questioning techniques as a "military necessity," quoting an official said to possess the document. Some techniques require "appropriate medical monitoring," the report said.

Similar methods have been approved for use on detainees in Iraq with links to terror or insurgent groups, though it was not clear whether they were approved for use at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the Post said.

A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment on the report, referring questions to U.S. Southern Command in Miami.

Army Col. David McWilliams, a spokesman for Southern Command, confirmed that the U.S. military approved a sliding scale of interrogation techniques in the spring 2003, but denied that the list includes forcing detainees to strip.

"Not only is there no protocol that calls for disrobing a detainee, it was never considered," McWilliams told Reuters. "We do not do it."

He said approved standards are for "making sure that we could work with more difficult detainees, but do it in accordance with the standards of accepted international law and international techniques for interrogation."

McWilliams declined to comment on other interrogation techniques.

The Post story said prisoners could be made to stand for hours and questioning a prisoner without clothes was permitted if he was alone in his cell.

Pictures of grinning American soldiers abusing naked Iraqis at Abu Ghraib -- the largest prison in Iraq and notorious for torture under President Saddam Hussein
-- have caused an international outcry.

The United States holds about 600 foreign nationals at the Guantanamo Bay prison, captured in what President Bush calls the global war on terrorism.

This week the U.S. military punished two Army Reserve soldiers who assaulted prisoners while working as guards at Guantanamo, defense officials said.

The United States began detaining terrorism suspects -- most caught in Afghanistan-- at the remote Guantanamo base in January 2002. About 150 prisoners have been transferred to their home countries either for outright release or for continued detention by those governments, the Pentagon has said.

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