US President George W. Bush on Friday forbid the CIA to torture suspected terrorists in its once-secret detention and interrogation program but was criticised for his vague, "trust us" approach.
Human rights groups said the executive order left out critical details, such as controversial tactics that administration officials often describe as "enhanced interrogation techniques."
The order says that the CIA program, whose existence was confirmed in September 2006, must abide by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions on wartime detainees and directs the CIA director to enforce that standard. It lists no specific practices that are affected, or punishments for violations, and does not describe in any further detail a secret CIA prison network that has drawn outrage from US allies in Europe.
Bush spokesman Tony Snow said the order barred "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" and "acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation, and cruel and inhuman treatment."
"It also prohibits 'willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts beyond the bounds of human decency.'
"And the order forbids acts intended to denigrate detainees' religion, religious practices or religious objects," Snow said. However, Human Rights Watch slammed the order as "contrary to the Geneva Conventions" because it essentially affirmed CIA secret detentions, a program which is "illegal to its core," according to a statement.
"The key aspect of this is all the parts that aren't said," added Jennifer Daskal, HRW senior counter-terrorism counsel, who charged that the order allowed "a system of incommunicado detention to continue, with the blessing of the president."
CIA director Michael Hayden told employees in a statement that the order was necessary in order to make sure that the detention and interrogation problem followed recent US Supreme Court rulings.