Red Cross: Iraq jail still worries us

The Red Cross today said further improvements were needed at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to bring it in line with international law on the treatment of inmates.

Conditions have improved since the Red Cross's highly critical February report detailed a catalogue of " unacceptable" practices. But delegates who visited in March demanded further measures to meet the Geneva Conventions, said director of operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl.

The confidential February report to US and UK authorities summed up information communicated to the coalition over the course of last year following jail visits between March and November.

Leaked this month amid growing anger about photographs of US troops abusing and humiliating Iraqi captives, it described naked prisoners being kept in empty cells and male inmates being forced to parade around in female underwear.

In an interview to be broadcast today on BBC1's Panorama, Mr Kraehenbuehl revealed that the practices detailed in the report had not been entirely stamped out by the time of the March visit to Abu Ghraib.

He said: "We felt that some of the findings and recommendations that we submitted have been taken seriously, that on some issues corrective measures were taken but they remained areas of concern for which we did request further measures to be taken and would continue to look at and follow up visits regularly."

Mr Kraehenbuehl added: "We had identified a series of elements and patterns in terms of treatment and conditions that appeared to us contrary to some of the provisions contained in the Geneva Conventions and some of the aspects that we documented appeared to us to be tantamount to torture, certainly elements of inhuman and degrading treatment."

Today in Baghdad the first American soldier to be court-martialled over abuse at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Javal Davis, deferred entering a plea when he made his first appearance at a pre-trial hearing.

The Red Cross also had concerns over US treatment of inmates at Guantanamo Bay's Camp Delta, where around 600 suspects have been detained without charge for up to two years, as well as in the Bagram base near Afghan capital Kabul, where an unknown number of prisoners are being held.