CIA secretly moved prisoners out of Iraq

People walk among mock coffins in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington Saturday during a tribute to the more than 1,100 US soldiers killed in Iraq. Some 1,100 flag-draped symbolic coffins were displayed along the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument in an event organised by the Iraq War Memorial Coalition. PHOTO: AFP

The CIA has invoked a confidential memo written by the Justice Department to justify secretly transferring as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months, the Post said.

The daily said it had obtained a copy of the confidential memo, written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, dated March 19, 2004 and stamped "draft."

The memo covers both Iraqi citizens and foreigners in Iraq, according to the Post.

It permits the CIA to take Iraqis out of the country to be interrogated for a "brief but not indefinite period," and allows permanent removal of persons deemed to be "illegal aliens" under "local immigration law," the daily said.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention protects civilians during wartime and occupation, prohibiting "individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory... regardless of their motive."

In a footnote to the memo its author wrote that a violation of this provision constitutes a "grave breach" of the accord and a "war crime" under US federal law, the Post said.

"For these reasons, we recommend that any contemplated relocations of 'protected persons' from Iraq to facilitate interrogation be carefully evaluated for compliance with Article 49 on a case by case basis," the footnote says.

In a controversial move, the administration transferred many al-Qaeda fighters captured in Afghanistan to a US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying these "enemy combatants" were not protected under the Geneva Conventions.

But the US government had said that former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and military, insurgents and other civilians in Iraq, were to be protected by the Geneva Conventions, the Post pointed out.

The CIA has not disclosed the identities or locations of prisoners captured in Iraq, the Post said.