US admits holding 'Ghost Detainees' - bans Red Cross

db: The Nazis allowed the Red Cross to act on behalf of the millions of prisoners in the Stalags and Oflags - they refused, however, to allow any intervention on the part of the Red Cross in the concentration camps.

alertnet:U.S. confirms ICRC not visiting all its detainees

The State Department's top lawyer on Thursday acknowledged the International Committee of the Red Cross does not have access to all detainees held by U.S. forces, but refused to discuss alleged secret detention centres. John Bellinger, the State Department's legal adviser, also said some allegations about covert CIA prisons in Eastern Europe were "so overblown as to be ludicrous".

He was speaking to reporters in Geneva as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Brussels on the last leg of a European tour, told European allies that U.S. treatment of detainees was within international law.

Human rights groups accuse the CIA of running secret prisons in eastern Europe and covertly transporting detainees in its war against terrorism. They say incommunicado detention often leads to torture.

The ICRC has been pressing the Bush administration for two years for information about and access to what the agency calls "an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held in undisclosed locations".

Bellinger said that the ICRC had access to "absolutely everybody" at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some 500 foreign terror suspects are held.

But asked whether the ICRC had access to all detainees held elsewhere in a similar situation by U.S. forces, he replied: "No", declining to give details.Read more

The United States' "Disappeared"
The CIA’s Long-Term "Ghost Detainees"