A senior US military officer at Guantanamo Bay told a detainee that he did not care about international law and that the Geneva conventions did not apply to proceedings at the military prison, according to thousands of Pentagon documents released over the weekend by the US Government after a court action.

The outburst by the air force colonel came during a hearing to determine the status of Feroz Abbasi, a Briton held for more than two years without charge or trial, and who was released last year.

The officer was presiding over a tribunal convened to decide whether detainees were enemy combatants, as alleged by the Bush administration. Critics dismissed the hearings, called combatant status review tribunals, as kangaroo courts.

During the hearing Abbasi, originally from London, said he should be accorded prisoner of war status, and demanded his rights under international law and the Geneva conventions.

The tribunal president, not named in the documents, says: "Once again, international law does not matter here. Geneva conventions do not matter here. What matters here ... (is) your actions while your were in Afghanistan."

The clash continues, with Abbasi trying to raise the issue of his rights under international law.

He and the tribunal president are recorded speaking over each other, until the latter says: "Mr Abbasi, your conduct is unacceptable ... I don't care about international law. I don't want to hear the words international law again. We are not concerned with international law. I am going to give you one last opportunity..."

Abbasi was later removed and his case considered behind closed doors.

The US Government claims the Muslim faith of detainees has been respected at all times, but Abbasi claimed in written evidence that a guard tried to feed him pork.

He also claimed two guards had sex in front of him, that a male guard groped the breasts of a female colleague in front of him, and that he was tricked into praying towards United States rather than towards Mecca.

He also says he was drugged with a mind-altering chemical. The US military says it captured him on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and also claims he was recruited to fight for al-Qaida after attending the Finsbury Park mosque in north London where Abu Hamza preached.

Hamza is serving a seven-year sentence in Britain after being convicted of inciting murder and religious hatred.

The released documents are transcripts of tribunals and reviews conducted at Guantanamo, Cuba.

In the tribunals the detainees were presumed from the outset to be enemy combatants by the US military officers hearing their cases, had limited rights to call witnesses, had no lawyer, and were tried on the basis of hearsay evidence.

The documents show detainees for the most part denying they were terrorists and claiming they were wrongly held without charge or trial; they also provide more names and detail regarding the total of detainees held by the United States.

One man was found with a gun in Afghanistan, while others range from peasant farmers to wealthy businessmen. Bisher al-Rawi, a British resident originally from Iraq, was held for association with the preacher Abu Qatada, accused of providing inspiration to those responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

He claimed to have being passing information to MI5, but was told by the tribunal president that the British Government neither confirmed nor denied his story.

Source: China Daily