The administration of President George W Bush is undermining Washington's claim to be a global exemplar in human rights in eight ways, the US section of Amnesty International (AIUSA) said in Washington.

By establishing military tribunals that do not conform to due process or the Geneva Conventions, by exempting itself from other human rights treaties, and by indefinitely detaining foreigners without charges or access to counsel, among other failings, Washington was setting a very poor example, AIUSA said.

By failing to uphold human rights as a crucial element of defending national security, Washington is providing ammunition to its enemies and detractors, according to AIUSA director William Schulz, who released the annual report of the London-based international group in Washington on Tuesday.

"The fact is that human rights are the foundation of national security, both domestically and around the world," said Schulz. "For every time human rights are violated, by the United States or one of its allies, that violation hands our adversaries...evidence of our hypocrisy and a propaganda victory for their extremism."

"These lapses undermine our government's global leadership on human rights and make it far harder for us to speak forcefully against similar failing by our allies in the war on terrorism," he said.

AIUSA's broadside is the latest in a series of complaints it and other human rights groups, notably Human Rights Watch and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, have lodged against the administration's domestic efforts to wage the war on terrorism, as well as more general concerns about Washington's human rights record.

Detention of foreigners

On the domestic front, it named the creation of the military tribunals and the administration's refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war, the prolonged detention of foreigners, the liberal use of the death penalty (the United States ranks fourth in the world behind China, Iran and Saudi Arabia in the number of people it executes each year) and the mistreatment of asylum-seekers as ways in which Washington fails to honour fundamental human rights.

In particular, the failure of the order establishing military tribunals — which are presumably to be used against al-Qaeda operatives or others involved with planning or carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States — to provide for an appeals process that would be independent of the executive branch "erodes our ability to criticise other countries for violations of due process and endangers US citizens and troops overseas", said AIUSA.

"How can the US criticise Saudi Arabia for its secretive and unfair trails when our government plans to establish its own parallel system of justice using military tribunals?" asked Shulz.

Similarly, the administration's selective adherence and, in some cases, its refusal to recognise international treaties not only "signals that the US believes states can pick and choose which treaties and principles to uphold", but also "undermines global consensus on human rights", said AIUSA.

It pointed to Washington's refusal to grant prisoners captured in Afghanistan an independent hearing on whether or not they should receive prisoner-of-war protections under the Geneva Conventions as one example that weakens the strength of the Conventions in the rest of the world, including Chechnya where Washington has long complained that Russian troops have violated the Geneva Conventions.

Similarly, the administration's decision to renounce the US signing of the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court (ICC) sets a dangerous precedent for other nations that have signed but not yet ratified treaties to back out of them altogether.

The detention of hundreds of foreigners — the vast majority of them from the Middle East or South Asia with Muslim names — after the Sept 11 attacks also makes it much more difficult for Washington to complain about the mistreatment of ethnic minorities in other countries, according to AIUSA.

Hypocritical

In addition, the imprisonment of non-criminal asylum-seekers, an increasingly common practice under the Bush administration, makes US protests against similar abuses in other countries appear hypocritical, it said.

"By suggesting, in word and deed, as Attorney-General (John) Ashcroft, for one, has done repeatedly, that national security may require compromises on human rights here at home, our government has diminished its moral authority to criticise blatant human rights transgressions by allies — allies who otherwise might well be responsive to US pressure to improve their rights records."

The same considerations should apply to Washington's continued use of the death penalty, despite growing evidence over the past several years that juries have made serious mistakes in convicting people who have since been exonerated by DNA evidence. Sixty-six individuals were executed in the United States last year.

Shultz also cited Washington's failure to prosecute or extradite known torturers whom the government knows are living in the United States, such as Emmanuel Constant, the head of a paramilitary group in Haiti that terrorised supporters of the ousted democratic government during military rule from 1991 to 1994. Such conduct bolsters Japan's decision, for example, to ignore requests by Peru to extradite ex-president Alberto Fujimori who has been indicted on charges of crimes against humanity for abuses committed under him during the 1990s.

Finally, Washington continues to export to abusive countries items that have been used for torture and other human rights violations, according to AIUSA.