Red Cross given access to secret U.S. detainees: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. military has begun to share with the International Committee of the Red Cross the identities of militants held in secret camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, The New York Times reported on on Saturday.

Citing three unidentified military officials, the Times said the policy would give the Red Cross access to dozens of suspected terrorists and foreign fighters captured in Iraq and Afghanistan detained in Special Operations camps overseas.

The new policy took effect this month with no public announcement.

The Obama administration has been reviewing U.S. interrogation and detention practices. The Pentagon had previously maintained that providing information about these Special Operations detainees could jeopardize counterterrorism missions.

The Red Cross has been allowed access to most U.S. military prisons and battlefield detention sites in Iraq and Afghanistan excluding these Special Operations locations.

A Department of Defense spokesman, Bryan Whitman, on Saturday declined to comment on the Special Operations camps.

"There are no hidden or unaccounted for detainees held by the department," Whitman told Reuters. "We make every effort to register detainees with the ICRC as soon as practicable after capture ... and that normally occurs within a two-week time."

A Red Cross spokesman declined to comment, citing its standing policy of not disclosing confidential discussions about detention issues.

In another development, the Central Intelligence Agency on Monday will release a sharply critical 2004 report by the CIA's inspector general on the agency's interrogation program.

The report provides new details about abuses that took place in the agency's secret prisons. CIA officers conducted mock executions and threatened at least one prisoner with a gun and a power drill, in violation of a federal statute against threatening detainees with imminent death, the Times reported.

The U.S. military maintains Special Operations camps, called temporary screening sites, in Balad, Iraq, and Bagram, Afghanistan. As many as 30 to 40 foreign prisoners have been held at the Iraq site at a time, the Times said citing military officials.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud in New York and John Poirier in Washington; Editing by Alan Elsner)