Human rights group: U.S. used prison ships

LONDON, June 2 (UPI) -- Human rights activists say the United States has established a system of "floating prisons" on military ships to secretly hold terrorism suspects.

The human rights group Reprieve also says there have been 200 new cases of "extraordinary rendition," or the abduction of terror suspects to secret prisons, since 2006 when President George Bush said the practice had ended, the British newspaper The Guardian reported Monday.

The United States has used as many as 17 ships to house terror suspects away from the view of the rest of the world, where they are interrogated and often then taken to other undisclosed locations, Reprieve charges in a report set to published this year, the newspaper said.

The human rights group reportedly gathered its information from statements made by the U.S. military, the Council of Europe, other European parliamentary bodies and prison testimonies.

Reprieve contends men thought to be with the FBI or CIA last year conducted a "systematic" rendition program against alleged al-Qaida operatives, assisted by Kenyan, Somali and Ethiopian forces, that involved the USS Ashland, which was stationed off Somalia at the time.