American abuses

SECRETARY OF State Condoleezza Rice should know better than to defend violations of basic human rights. It is wrong, as the United States has done, to kidnap people, throw them into secret prisons, maltreat them, and keep holding them or release them abruptly, all without regard for due process of law.

But it's all justified by the war on terror, she said as she left for Europe on Monday. ''The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice," she said. ''We have to adapt." No, the United States does not have to adapt if it involves human rights violations.

Illegal detentions are also bad politics. Upon her arrival in Germany, Rice had to deal with fallout from the detention of Khaled Masri, a German citizen whose appalling treatment was reported in The Washington Post Sunday. Macedonian officers took him off a bus and transferred him to CIA custody early last year. He was flown secretly to a prison in Afghanistan, where he languished for five months (he said he was beaten) because his name aroused suspicions.

Masri had no chance to question his arrest, fight his removal to a distant country, contest his imprisonment, or make his torture complaint. The Bush administration has given the CIA so much power to detain anybody on the barest suspicion that abuses are inevitable.

When US agents realized their mistake, the CIA director, George Tenet, conferred with Rice and other top officials. Masri was dumped back in Albania without an apology. He is suing Tenet in federal court. The administration should acknowledge its wrongdoing. To do otherwise invites future abuses.

Instead, the US ambassador privately told the German interior minister of the mistaken detention last year in an attempt to keep it quiet. Once the Post published its report, the German government had to react publicly. Rice indirectly acknowledged yesterday to the new chancellor, Angela Merkel, that the Post story was accurate.

Merkel and Rice should be talking about lawful ways to fight terrorists, not rights violations. The Masri case reduces support for the United States in Germany, which ought to be an important ally against terrorists.

Many Europeans are also offended by another Post report: that the United States has set up a secret prison on the continent for terror detainees. One illegal detention invites more and the creation of a system of secret prisons to confine them. If these prisons exist, they should be dismantled. The United States should not create its own gulag.

The United States, to be sure, is engaged in a long struggle. It needs to retain the support of nations that share the US commitment to human rights and to gain allies in nations where these rights are violated. ''A decent respect to the opinions of mankind" -- in the words of the Declaration of Independence -- requires the United States to end the abuses done in the name of the antiterror war.