DATE: 2/8/07
Source: Jamey Keaten, The Associated Press
SYNOPSIS: Nearly 60 countries signed a treaty that bans governments from holding people in secret detention, the United States and some key European allies were not among them. President Bush acknowledged in September (2006) that terrorism suspects have been held in CIA run prisons overseas, but did not specify where. The convention defines forced disappearances as the arrest, detention, kidnapping or “any other form of deprivation of freedom” by state agents or affiliates, followed by denials or cover-ups about the detention and location of the person gone missing.