Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the detention of a suspected Iraqi insurgent leader be concealed from the Red Cross, the Pentagon confirmed tonight.
George Tenet, the CIA Director, asked the US defence secretary in writing in late October that the man be held by the military in a way that he “not be assigned for the purpose of access to the International Committee of the Red Cross,” Larry DiRita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said.
Mr Rumsfeld approved the request and issued the order the same day.
“He was asked to do that. He did,” Mr DiRita said.
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The Pentagon had earlier admitted that it had held a man in secret, contravening the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war. The identity of who gave the order however emerged tonight.
The US military has held him since October without assigning him a prisoner number or notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross, a US Defence Department spokesman said last night.
Both assigning a prisoner number and notifying the Red Cross are required under the Geneva Conventions, which the Bush Administration acknowledges apply to the conflict in Iraq.
The prisoner will be given a number and the Red Cross will be formally notified soon, a Pentagon spokesman said.
“The ICRC should have been notified about the detainee earlier,” he said. “We should have taken steps, and we have taken the necessary steps to rectify the situation.”
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The US said that the man was suspected of being a military planner for the militant group Ansar al Islam, based in the Kurdish-controlled north of Iraq.
An investigation by Major General Antonio Taguba had noted in March the practice of keeping certain “ghost detainees” off the rolls at Abu Ghraib prison, denouncing them as “deceptive, contrary to army doctrine and in violation of international law.”
Mr DiRita said that the Geneva Conventions allowed prisoners to be held secretly for reasons of “military necessity” for a period of time.
He acknowledged, however, that “nobody believes those provisions allow you to do this for seven months.”
Mr DiRita disputed that the military lost track of the prisoner after taking custody of him, but admitted that neither the CIA nor the Defence Department took further action despite periodic questions from those holding him about his status.
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“The question is did the CIA then come back to us and say we want this guy back? The answer is no,” said Mr DiRita.
“Did the CIA then determine further disposition and tell us, ‘Keep him, or we’ll take him.’ The answer is no,” he said.
“Did people lose track of him? The answer is also no. Because the people who had custody of him by all indications two or three times came back up the chain of command and said, ‘We still have this guy, will somebody tell us’” what to do with him.
The prisoner, who has not been identified, was held at Camp Cropper, a detention facility for high value prisoners near the Baghdad International Airport.
“The people who were holding him basically did all they should have done,” Mr DiRita said.
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“What didn’t happen was that at a higher level between this department and the CIA further disposition of his case was never made until finally it got to the attention of intelligence professionals in both departments,” he said.