A senior Bush administration official has admitted that US agents at Guantanamo Bay tortured a Saudi man suspected of involvement in the September 11 attacks.

Susan Crawford, the Pentagon official in charge of military tribunals at the camp told the Washington Post newspaper that Mohammad al-Qahtani had been left in a "life-threatening condition" after being interrogated.

"We tortured Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case [for prosecution]," she told the paper.

Crawford reported that Qahtani was subject to sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold.

"The techniques they used were all authorised, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent," she added.

Crawford is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at GuantГЎnamo to admit publicly that a detainee was tortured.

"If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it," Crawford concluded.

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