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U.N. Panel Cites Concerns With U.S. Security Practices

GENEVA — The United States needs to make numerous changes to bring its security policies and domestic law enforcement practices fully into line with an international treaty banning torture and cruel treatment, a United Nations panel said Friday.

Delivering its findings after two days of hearings in Geneva attended by government representatives this month, the panel monitoring compliance with the treaty cited serious concerns. Among those concerns included the rules of interrogation, a failure to fully investigate allegations of torture during the administration of President George W. Bush, police shootings of unarmed African-Americans and the use of solitary confinement in prisons.

“There are numerous areas where there are things that should be changed to be fully compliant” with the United Nations Convention Against Torture, a panel member, Alessio Bruni, told reporters in Geneva as the panel released a 16-page document of findings and recommendations.

The panel, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, welcomed President Obama’s moves to ban torture and apply the treaty abroad, but despite assurances given to the panel it found that interrogation techniques authorized by an Army field manual allowed sleep deprivation, a form of ill treatment.

Panel members also voiced dissatisfaction with the information American officials provided on secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency under Mr. Bush, echoing calls by other United Nations human rights investigators this week for the quick release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the use of torture by the C.I.A.

The panel expressed concern at the continuing failure to properly investigate torture in those facilities or punish those responsible, including “persons in positions of command and those who provided legal cover to torture.”

Committee members were particularly disturbed by reports of the “draconian system of secrecy” surrounding high-value detainees at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The prison reportedly hid detainees’ claims of torture from investigators, and the panel warned that indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charge or trial would be considered a breach of the anti-torture treaty.

Only 33 of the 148 detainees still held at Guantánamo Bay have been designated for prosecution either by courts or military commissions, the panel said. It noted that the commissions failed to meet international fair trial standards, and that most of the 79 Guantánamo detainees who are supposed to be transferred were cleared for release five years ago.

On the subject of domestic law enforcement, the panel declined to detail its reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Mo. But it expressed its “deep concern at the frequent and recurrent police shootings or fatal pursuits of unarmed black individuals” and the Chicago police force’s violent tactics and harassment of African-American and Latino youths.

The panel’s comments, along with the outpouring of protest this week, amounted to a “wake-up call for police who think they can act with impunity,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.

Conditions in maximum security jails and the facilities’ “particularly severe” solitary confinement policies were another area of concern for the panel. It cited deaths from extreme heat in poorly ventilated prison facilities in six states. It also pointed to solitary confinement regimes that kept prisoners in their cells 22 or 23 hours a day, in some cases for 30 years or more.

“This is not acceptable,” Mr. Bruni said.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Panel Criticizes U.S. Over Its Human Rights Record. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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