BEIJING, June 6 -- The chief of Amnesty International USA alleged Sunday that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is part of an "archipelago" of U.S. prisons worldwide, "many of them secret," where detainees are mistreated and even killed.

    A weeks-long dispute has raged since England-based Amnesty International's report, released on May 25, cited "growing evidence of U.S. war crimes" and labeled the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as "the gulag of our times."

    "The U.S. is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons, into which people are being literally disappeared, held in indefinite, incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system or to their families," William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty's Washington-based branch, told "Fox News Sunday."

    "And in some cases, at least, we know they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed."

    Schulz recently dubbed U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld an "apparent high-level architect of torture" in asserting he approved interrogation methods that violated international law.

    "It would be fascinating to find out. I have no idea," Schulz said.

    "The United States should be the one that should investigate those who are alleged at least to be architects of torture, not just the foot solders who may have inflicted the torture directly, but those who authorized it or encouraged it or provided rationales for it," he said.

    Human Rights Watch said U.S. interrogators had inflicted religious humiliation on Muslim detainees, a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

    The U.S. military on Friday released details about five cases in which the Koran was kicked, stepped on and soaked in water. 

    A Newsweek story in its issue dated May 9 reported that American military investigators had found evidence that interrogators at the Guantanamo prison facility had flushed a Koran down a toilet to get inmates there to talk.

    The article, which was retracted by the magazine one week later, sparked violent protests in Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, Pakistan and other Muslim countries.

    About 520 prisoners, most of whom were captured during the US-led war in Afghanistan, are still being held at Guantanamo Bay, and some of them have been detained there for more than three years without charges and access to lawyers. Enditem

    (Agencies)