Rights group alleges prisoner abuse

The organization said it based its conclusion on interviews with military personnel and sworn statements in declassified documents.

A Pentagon spokesman, Commander Greg Hicks, said he was not aware of the report, but noted that the military is reviewing its procedures regarding detainees following a Supreme Court ruling that the Geneva Conventions should apply in the conflict with Al Qaeda. The Bush administration had previously held that certain enemies, including terrorists, were ``enemy combatants" and not protected by those rules.

The conventions prohibit ``outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

Human Rights Watch focused much of its report on a detention facility called Camp Nama at Baghdad International Airport.

One soldier, whose name was withheld from the report, described a suspected insurgent being stripped naked, thrown in the mud, sprayed with water, and exposed to frigid temperatures to soften him up for interrogators.

Commanders, the soldier said, seemed confident that their treatment of prisoners was legal.

He described computerized authorization forms that had to be filled out before subjecting detainees to strobe lights, loud music, extreme heat or cold, or intimidation by barking dogs.

The allegations of abuse at the camp were first reported in March by The New York Times.

In a separate development, the Taliban's former envoy to Pakistan said in an interview yesterday that he has written a book because he has a ``dangerous" story to tell about mistreatment, terror, and confinement in the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Abdul Salam Zaeef's book, ``A Picture of Guantanamo," went on sale last week in Afghanistan.

``My book includes everything I endured during my detention, what I saw, what I heard, and how I was treated during my three years and 10 months there," Zaeef said. ``I want the world to know the truth."