Evidence suggests that abuses of detainees by US soldiers and interrogators did not stop at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, or even in Iraq, and that the Geneva Conventions protecting prisoners of war (POW) from beatings and humiliation were being routinely flouted, the Newsweek magazine reported Sunday.

Reports in the magazine's May 17 issue that will be put on newsstand for sale on Monday said that in US military prisons suchthose in Guantanamo, Cuba, and Abu Ghraib, Iraq, almost anything can happen because almost no one is held accountable.

In Afghanistan, the abuse of prisoners seems to have led to at least three deaths at US interrogation facilities, but 18 months after the first deaths, a military investigation is still incomplete and no broad inquiry has been launched into conditions at Baghram, the report said, quoting a military spokesman in Kabul,the Afghan capital.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his top brass sought to minimize the damage and to pre-empt further fallout from what Rumsfeld called "disgusting" new photos and videos from Abu Ghraib,by apologizing at Congress hearings on Friday for what they repeatedly called "the actions of a few" rogue military police personnel and the military-intelligence personnel, the reports said.

There is also evidence of a possible Pentagon cover-up, according to the reports.

Rumsfeld insisted last week that the US military has observed the Geneva Conventions regarding POWs and civilians in Iraq, but in his public statements, he has also declared that Geneva Conventions rules do not necessarily mean that all detainees - especially so-called unlawful combatants - will get all the rightsand privileges normally accorded prisoners of war.

In recent months, some senior members of Congress have been given highly classified briefings, indicating that US interrogators were not necessarily "going to stick with the GenevaConvention," the reports said.

More stressful techniques were going to be used, apparently including some measure of physical discomfort, according to the reports.

Many critics say the Bush administration routinely uses the global war on terrorism as a blanket justification for all sorts of human-rights violations, the reports said.

Nigel Rodley, who was the UN special rapporteur on torture and has written an authoritative book, dismisses Rumsfeld's claims that the Geneva Conventions have been observed.

Even some interrogation practices the Pentagon acknowledges using are "clearly violations both of international human-rights law and international humanitarian law as codified in the Geneva Conventions," Rodley was quoted as saying.

Source: Xinhua