WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush on Tuesday slammed as "absurd" an Amnesty International report`s allegation that his administration had set up an international "gulag" outside legal control.
"It is an absurd report. It just is," Bush told a news conference, asked about the report by the London-based human rights watchdog which referred to "a new (US) gulag of prisons around the world beyond the reach of the law and decency."
Bush stressed that "the United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world. When there`s accusations made about certain actions by our people, they`re fully investigated in a transparent way."
"It`s just an absurd allegation. In terms of, you know, the detainees, we`ve had thousands of people detained. We`ve investigated every single complaint against the detainees," Bush said.
The US president added: "It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of and the allegations by people that were held in detention, people who hate America, people that have been trained in some instances to disassemble, that means not tell the truth."
05/31/2005 15:34 GMT