CIA nominee 'will forbid rendition'

Leon Panetta, the nominee to head the US's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has
said he will not permit the rendition of detainees to foreign countries for the purpose of torture.

Panetta, nominated by Barack Obama, the US president as director of the agency, told a senate hearing on Thursday that such practices were forbidden by an executive order signed by Obama last month.

Panetta said Obama banned "that kind of extraordinary rendition - when we send someone for the purpose of torture or actions by another country that violate our human values".

"I do not believe we ought to use renditions for the purpose of sending people to 'black sites' [secret prisons in other countries] and not providing the kind of oversight I believe is necessary," he said.

'Appropriate' renditions 

However Panetta said some kinds of renditions of prisoners were "appropriate" and that the US retained the right to temporarily hold and debrief "high value" terror suspects seized overseas.

"I think renditions where we return individuals to another country where they prosecute them under their laws, I think that is an appropriate use of rendition," Panetta said.

Obama signed an executive order on 22 January ordering the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison camp and of CIA secret prisons, or "black sites" abroad, although the time frame for the closures remains unclear.