Washington ? The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee challenged Congress Wednesday to help define legal rights of terrorism detainees at Guantanamo Bay, bemoaning a “crazy quilt” system.

“It may be that it’s too hot to handle for Congress, may be that it’s too complex to handle for Congress, or it may be that Congress wants to sit back as we customarily do,” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said as his panel took testimony on practices and policies at the U.S. military camp at an American Navy base in Cuba.

“But at any rate, Congress hasn’t acted,” Specter said.

The hearing came against a backdrop of reports of U.S. abuse of terror-war prisoners at the camp.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the committee, called the prison “an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals and remains a festering threat to our security.”

Military officers and Justice Department officials defended the treatment of suspects.

“We’re holding them humanely,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, a legal adviser to the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions.

Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, in Sheffield, England for a meeting of G8 interior ministers, said Wednesday the Bush administration has discussed whether it should stop holding terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

“That’s a question that is evaluated, I would say, quite often,” Gonzales told reporters.