By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. Committee against Torture urged the United States on Friday to fully investigate and prosecute police brutality and shootings of unarmed black youth and ensure that taser weapons are used only in life-threatening situations.

The panel's first review of the U.S. record on preventing torture since 2006 came in the wake of racially-tinged unrest in cities across the United States this week sparked by a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury's decision not to charge a white police officer for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager.

The committee decried "excruciating pain and prolonged suffering" endured by prisoners during "botched executions" as well as frequent rapes of inmates, shackling of pregnant women in some prisons, and extensive use of solitary confinement.

The review cited deep concern about "numerous reports" of police brutality and excessive use of force against people from minority groups, immigrants and homosexuals as well as racial profiling and militarization of policing work.

It referred to the "frequent and recurrent police shootings or fatal purusits of unarmed black individuals."

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Protesters march to LAPD headquarters during the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality in …

The U.S. delegation told the 10 independent experts on the panel that 20 investigations had been opened since 2009 into systematic police abuses and that more than 330 police officers had been prosecuted for brutality.

The U.N. panel said there was insufficient information available on the result of those investigations.

It spoke of "numerous and consistent" reports that U.S. police have used tasers against unarmed people resisting arrest and condemned two recent cases of death in Florida and Illinois.

Tasers should be used only in extreme cases to prevent loss of life or serious injury, the committee said.

It criticized what it called a continued U.S. failure to fully investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment of terrorism suspects held in U.S. custody abroad, "evidenced by the limited number of criminal prosecutions and convictions".

Some 148 inmates are held at the U.S. Guantanamo base in Cuba amid reports, the committee's report said, of "a draconian system of secrecy surrounding high-value detainees that keeps their torture claims out of the public domain".

Nine inmates have died, including seven by suicide, since 2006, the report added.

It called for declassifying evidence of torture and detainee abuse committed during former President George W. Bush's administration, and for prosecuting those responsible.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Pope Francis addresses to media at the presidential palace in Ankara November 28, 2014. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

By Philip Pullella and Tulay Karadeniz

ANKARA (Reuters) - Pope Francis called for an end to all forms of fundamentalism on Friday and said fighting hunger and poverty, rather than military intervention alone, were key to stopping Islamist militants carrying out "grave persecutions" in Syria and Iraq.

Speaking at the start of a three-day trip to Turkey, Francis said "terrorist violence" showed no sign of abating in Turkey's southern neighbors, where Islamist insurgents had declared a caliphate and persecuted Shi'ite Muslims, Christians and others who do not share their ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam.

"It is licit, while always respecting international law, to stop an unjust aggressor," the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics said in reference to the Islamic State militants after a meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

"What is required is a concerted commitment on the part of all ... (to) enable resources to be directed, not to weaponry, but to the other noble battles worthy of man: the fight against hunger and sickness," he said.

Before the meeting with Erdogan, Francis visited the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the modern secular Turkish state in 1923.

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Pope Francis and Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan shake hands after addressing to media at the …

Francis faces a delicate mission in Turkey, a majority Muslim but constitutionally secular state, in strengthening ties with religious leaders while condemning violence against Christians and other minorities in the Middle East.

Francis called for interreligious dialogue "so that there will be an end of all forms of fundamentalism and terrorism which gravely demean the dignity of every man and woman and exploit religion."

Turkey has been a reluctant member of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, refusing a frontline military role but backing the Syrian opposition and calling for President Bashar al-Assad to be toppled.

It is sheltering nearly 2 million refugees from Syria, thousands of Christians among them. Turkey has seen its own Christian population dwindle over the past century, with decades of violence and economic and political pressure forcing most Christians to leave after World War One and the emergence of the post-Ottoman Turkish state.

Turkey's Christian population has dwindled over the past century and minority groups fear Erdogan's roots in Islamist politics mean it is moving in an ever less tolerant direction.

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Pope Francis prepares to shake hands with Mehmet Gormez, head of Turkey's Religious Affairs Dire …

"It is essential that all citizens - Muslim, Jewish and Christian - both in the provision and practice of the law, enjoy the same rights and respect the same duties," Francis said.

CHRISTIAN MIDDLE EAST EXODUS

Francis will travel to Istanbul on Saturday and meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual head of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, as part of an effort to forge closer ties between the ancient western and eastern wings of Christianity.

Bartholomew's seat remains in Istanbul, a vestige of the Byzantine Empire, even as his flock in Turkey has dwindled to less than 3,000 among a population of 75 million Muslims.

Syria's total Christian minority made up around 10 percent of the population of 22 million before its civil war began in 2011, while Iraq's Christian population has fallen by nearly 70 percent since the start of its 2003 war.

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Pope Francis, accompanied by Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan, reviews a guard of honour during …

The Turkey trip is the third by Francis to a mainly Muslim nation, after Jordan and Albania. Anagnostopoulos said Francis may pray inside Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, one of Christendom's greatest cathedrals for 900 years, one of Islam's greatest mosques for another 500, and now officially a museum.

Such a move could upset some Muslims in Turkey, who would like to see it revived as a mosque.

There was controversy over the venue for his meeting with Erdogan. Francis, renowned for his humble lifestyle, was the first guest in the president's lavish new 1,000-room palace.

Francis renounced the spacious papal apartments in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace and lives instead in a much more modest guest house in the Vatican.

(Additional reporting by Jonny Hogg in Ankara, Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Washington (AFP) - The Missouri police officer who killed an unarmed black teen sparking months of protests in the city of Ferguson will never return to policing, his lawyer said.

Darren Wilson is currently in discussions with the Ferguson, Missouri police department on the terms and conditions of his departure, attorney Neil Bruntrager said this week.

"There's no way in the world he can go back to being a police officer," the lawyer said.

"It's not a question of if, it's a question of when," Bruntrager said of Wilson's departure.

Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in August claiming he acted in self-defense.

The shooting set off days of racially-charged protests that erupted again this week after a grand jury on Monday announced that Wilson would not be charged over the fatal shooting.

Bruntrager told CNN that Wilson, who has said his conscience is clear, could simply not go back to work given the outrage over the case.

"The first day he would be back on the street something terrible would happen to him or to someone that would be working with him," he told CNN.

"The last thing he wants is to put other police officers at risk," the attorney added.

Pregnant St. Louis woman loses left eye after police officer shoots non-lethal round at car