Guantanamo meets Geneva Convention standards, Pentagon study finds

"We strongly disagree with the government's basic conclusion that the conditions at Guantanamo comport with international standards for humane treatment," said Pardiss Kebriaei, a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents detainees. "That assessment is difficult to digest when our clients in Camps 5 and 6 are physically and psychologically breaking down because their conditions and isolation have become so unbearable."

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday appointed a senior Justice Department official, Matthew Olsen, to head an interagency task force looking into how to deal with the more than 200 Guantanamo detainees after the prison closes.

Meanwhile, the administration said Friday it was not ready to extend legal rights to the prisoners held at the U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan. An administration lawyer told a judge reviewing the issue that the government, for now, "adheres to the previously articulated position" of the Bush administration.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners held at Guantanamo had the right to challenge the case against them in a federal court. The justices said these prisoners had been held for years in a prison that is, for all practical purposes, part of U.S. territory.

It was not clear, however, whether this ruling was limited to Guantanamo detainees or could be extended to other long-term prisoners in the war against terrorism.

Lawyers who represent several men held at the Bagram prison said their clients were entitled to legal rights as well.

Bush administration lawyers disagreed. They said that the U.S. did not exercise sovereign control in Afghanistan, and that the prisoners were held in a "theater of war."

When the new administration took power, U.S. District Judge John Bates gave officials a month to decide whether they wanted to change policy.

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josh.meyer@latimes.com

David Savage in our Washington bureau contributed to this report.