UN human rights experts warned on Wednesday that "widespread and systematic" secret detention of terror suspects could pave the way for charges of crimes against humanity.

In their first in-depth global study on the practice, the two independent UN experts on counter-terrorism and torture, and UN panels overseeing arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances, said it had spread to almost all regions of the world and was continuing.

The 222 page report listed 66 states that have been involved in secret detentions, mainly over the past nine years.
 

Although it looked back several decades, most of those countries were tied to secret detention or extraordinary rendition of suspects since the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, the UN said.
 

In spite of international norms protecting individual rights, "secret detention continues to be used in the name of countering terrorism around the world," the report added.
 

"If resorted to in a widespread and systematic manner, secret detention might reach the threshold of a crime against humanity," the authors cautioned in their executive summary.

War on terror
The "global war on terror", which was launched by ex-president George W. Bush's administration after the 11 September attacks, had "reinvigorated" the use of secret detentions in an organised manner, according to the study.
 

The experts said that campaign marked "the progressive and determined elaboration of a comprehensive and coordinated system of secret detention of persons suspected of terrorism, involving not only the United States of America authorities, but also other states in almost all regions of the world."
 

Human rights campaigners and humanitarian agencies believe dozens of suspects were detained in secret interrogation centres or prisons in recent years, while other countries cracked down on political opponents or restless ethnic groups.
 

Extraordinary rendition involved abducting suspects without legal proceedings, and taking them to foreign countries or secret CIA prisons.
 

The Bush administration claimed it never took a prisoner to a foreign country without first being assured that no torture would be used.
 

Source: AFP