WASHINGTON, March 2, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – In the first legal action against a senior US official on the abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, two US human rights groups filed a lawsuit against US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for his “direct responsibility” in the illegal torture and prisoners' abuses.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First took their legal move Tuesday, March 1, to the federal district court of Illinois, Rumsfeld's hometown, accusing the US Defense Secretary of being behind the torture of detainees in the US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

“Secretary Rumsfeld bears direct and ultimate responsibility for this descent into horror by personally authorizing unlawful interrogation techniques and by abdicating his legal duty to stop torture,” said ACLU official Lucas Guttentag, the lead counsel to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed by the two groups on behalf of eight detainees, four Iraqis and four Afghans, who were subjected to torture, beatings, cutting with knives, assault, sexual humiliation, mock executions and other illegal treatment.

“None of the men were ever charged with a crime. All have been released,” the two groups said in a statement, carried by AFP.

The lawsuit against Rumsfeld centers on an order he gave December 2, 2002 in which he authorized new interrogation techniques against detainees in the “war on terror” being held at the notorious Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The said interrogation techniques included “stress positions, hooding, 20-hour interrogations, removal of clothing, exploiting phobias, prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation”.

“Secretary Rumsfeld knew full well that his orders were causing torture and he knew that torture was occurring on a widespread basis and he did not stop it,” Guttentag said.

Similar lawsuits were filed by the ACLU against three other senior officials; Col. Thomas Pappas, Gen. Janis Karpinski and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

UN human rights officials have repeatedly raised concerns about detainees held in the US military base in Guantanamo Bay as well as abuse in the US-run Abu Ghraib Jail in Baghdad after the occupation of the oil-rich Arab country.

The eight plaintiffs demand the federal court to declare Rumsfeld's actions unconstitutional and a violation of US and international law.

They also seek monetary damages for the injuries they sustained by their US jailers.

Arkan Mohammed Ali, an Iraqi detainee who was held by the US forces for a year from June 2003 to 2004, said that US soldiers twice beat him unconscious, used a knife to repeatedly stab and slice his forearm, burned and shocked him with a metal device, locked him naked for several days in a small wooden box, urinated on him and made death threats against him, according to Reuters.

Mehboob Ahmad, a 35-year-old Afghan citizen, who was also held for five months in 2003, said he was probed anally, hung upside down from the ceiling by a chain and hung by his arms for extended periods.

The Human Rights Watch said in a recent report that the abuse of Afghan detainees by the US forces was “systematic” and not limited to a few cases.

The New York Times also carried a testimony of a former Afghan police colonel who accused the American troops of torturing and sexually abusing him while in several US-run detention centers across Afghanistan.

The US Defense Department (Pentagon), for its part, was quick to deny that Rumsfeld has approved a policy of abuses against detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, AFP said.

“We vigorously dispute any assertion or implication that the Department of Defense approved of, sanctioned, or condoned as a matter of policy detainee abuse,” the Pentagon said.

“No policies or procedures approved by the Secretary of Defense were intended as, or could conceivably have been interpreted as, a policy of abuse, or as condoning abuse,” it added.