U.S. attacked by opponents at U.N. human rights body

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States was attacked for its human rights record on Friday as opponents including Cuba and Iran slammed its failure to close Guantanamo Bay and its decision to maintain military trials for terror suspects.

The Obama administration, which two years ago joined the U.N. Human Rights Council shunned by the Bush White House, was in the dock at the Geneva forum, whose 47 member completed an examination of the U.S. record begun last November.

Iran's delegation took the floor a day after the United States and other countries presented a draft resolution denouncing Tehran's record and calling for the re-establishment of a U.N. investigator on Iran for the first time in a decade. The text will be voted on next week and is expected to be adopted.

"The U.S. must close its secret prisons and Guantanamo Bay prison, stop human rights violations by its military forces abroad, bring to justice those responsible for war crimes and massacres against civilians as well as acts of torture carried out in U.S.-controlled prisons," Iran's envoy Seyed Mohammad Reza Sajjadi said.

Russia urged Washington to consider imposing a moratorium on the death penalty, while China called for it to investigate fully U.S. killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. delegation was scathing in its defense.

"Today's session culminates a process that the United States has approached with great seriousness of purpose from the moment we joined the Council in 2009," Harold Hongju Koh, legal adviser at the U.S. State Department, told the forum.

"We seek to focus on substance, matters that have their basis in universal human rights. We do not allow political provocations of some to undermine the credibility of the process as a whole," added Koh, who led the U.S. delegation.

The U.S. delegation was responding formally on Friday to the 228 recommendations made by other states, rejecting many, but saying it had made great strides in civil rights and criminal justice. It said it would not tolerate torture of detainees in its custody.

The U.S. administration had carefully evaluated recommendations and was obliged to followed democratic processes to address underlying issues, according to Koh. "We urge all states who are here, including some of those who have criticized us, to hold yourselves to the same standard," he said.

There are still 172 detainees at Guantanamo. About three dozen were set for prosecution in either U.S. criminal courts or military commissions. There were 242 detainees when Obama took office, promising to close it down. Many have been held there for more than nine years.

But Obama's promise has foundered on political opposition. Earlier this month he lifted a two-year freeze on new military trials at Guantanamo Bay earlier this month, drawing criticism from human rights groups.

"The message from the international community is clear, impunity for torture and abuse, indefinite detention and unfair military trials at Guantanamo are unacceptable," Jamil Dakwar of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told Reuters.

"The Obama administration should heed calls and ensure that the Department of Justice criminal investigation includes all senior civilian and military government officials who authorized and facilitated torture and abuse including former President Bush," he said.

(Editing by Andrew Callus)