Rights group slams new Bush exec order

NEW YORK, July 23 (UPI) -- A U.S. human-rights group has slammed President Bush's new order on secret CIA detentions.

President George W. Bush's executive order on the Central Intelligence Agency's detention and interrogation program "is contrary to the Geneva Conventions," Human Rights Watch said in a statement Friday.

HRW said the new order, which was made Friday, "purports to determine that the CIA's detention and interrogation program 'fully complies' with U.S. obligations under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 as long as the CIA follows a series of requirements in carrying out the program."

"But enforced disappearance -- the hallmark of the CIA program, involving secret, incommunicado detention -- is itself inconsistent with the requirement under Common Article 3 that detainees be treated humanely," the group said.

"By international human rights and humanitarian law standards, the CIA program is illegal to its core," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counter-terrorism director at Human Rights Watch. "Although the new executive order bars torture and other abuse, the order still can't purport to legalize a program that violates basic rights."

Human Rights Watch also "expressed skepticism that the treatment requirements set out in the new order -- that detainees not be tortured or ill-treated, and be fed adequately, among others -- will be followed."

"It is well documented that holding detainees in prolonged incommunicado detention, without judicial or other independent oversight, is an invitation to torture and other abuse," the group said.

It said that the International Committee of the Red Cross had not been permitted to visit detainees in CIA custody.