WASHINGTON - The U.S. military has been improperly holding a suspected Iraqi terrorist in a prison near Baghdad for more than seven months without informing the Red Cross, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

Defense officials confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered military officials to hold the suspected member of the Ansar al-Islam guerrilla group last November at the request of then-CIA Director George Tenet without telling the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told Reuters the United States was now moving to end the shadowy status of the man, who was not identified, and allow access to him by the ICRC.

Both assigning a prisoner number and notifying the Red Cross are required under the Geneva Conventions and other international humanitarian laws.

"I will acknowledge that the ICRC should have been notified about this prisoner earlier," Whitman said. "He will be assigned an identification number and, if appropriate, moved into the general prison population."

The report came as the United States continued to conduct a major investigation into the abuse, including sexual humiliation, of prisoners by the U.S. military in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

'HIGH-VALUE' DETAINEE

Whitman confirmed a report in Thursday's New York Times that Tenet -- who recently resigned as CIA chief -- had asked Rumsfeld to make the move last year after the "high-value" detainee, believed to have been actively involved in planning attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq, was captured.

"The director of central intelligence (Tenet) wanted him held without notification while the CIA worked to determine his value," Whitman said.

The man has been held at Camp Cropper, a high-security facility near Baghdad Airport, and has apparently been lost in the system in recent months, according to other U.S. officials, who asked not to be identified. Whitman said the military's Central Command had recently sought clarification from the Pentagon on the status of the detainee.

Washington has linked Ansar al-Islam to al Qaeda and blames the group for some attacks in Iraq.

"He has been treated humanely," Whitman told Reuters.

Although the United States says that all prisoners in Iraq are treated humanely and strictly under rules of war established by the Red Cross, the Times said the prisoner and other so-called "ghost detainees" were hidden largely to prevent the ICRC from monitoring their treatment and conditions.

In March, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the U.S. Army officer who investigated abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, criticized the practice of allowing ghost detainees as "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law."

Whitman said it was appropriate to hold detainees for brief periods without notification if they were viewed as an "active threat" in wartime. But he acknowledged that the man was held too long under those conditions in this case.

"Once he was placed in military custody, people lost track of him," a senior intelligence official told The New York Times.

© Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd

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