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UN report calls for closure of Guantánamo
A UN inquiry into conditions at Guantánamo Bay has called on Washington to shut down the prison, and says treatment of detainees in some cases amounts to torture, UN officials said yesterday.
The report also disputes the Bush administration's legal arguments for the prison, which was sited at the navy base in Cuba with the purpose of remaining outside the purview of the US courts, and says there has been insufficient legal process to decide whether detainees continued to pose a threat to the US.
The report, prepared by five envoys from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and due for release tomorrow, is bound to deepen international criticism of the detention centre. Drafts of the report were leaked to the Los Angeles Times and the Telegraph newspapers, but UN envoys refused to comment yesterday.
During an 18-month investigation, the envoys interviewed freed prisoners, lawyers and doctors to collect information on the detainees, who have been held for the last four years without access to US judicial oversight. The envoys did not have access to the 500 prisoners who are still being held at the detention centre.
"We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government," Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture and one of the envoys, told the LA Times. "There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture."
The report lists techniques in use at Guantánamo that are banned under the UN's convention against torture, including prolonged periods of isolation, exposure to extremes of heat and cold, and humiliation, including forced shaving.
The UN report also focuses on a relatively new area of concern in Guantánamo - the resort to violent force-feeding to end a hunger strike by inmates. Guards at Guantánamo began force-feeding the protesters last August, strapping them on stretchers and inserting large tubes into their nasal passages, according to a lawyer for Kuwaiti detainees who has had contact with the UN envoys.
More
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1709256,00.html
The report, prepared by five envoys from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and due for release tomorrow, is bound to deepen international criticism of the detention centre. Drafts of the report were leaked to the Los Angeles Times and the Telegraph newspapers, but UN envoys refused to comment yesterday.
During an 18-month investigation, the envoys interviewed freed prisoners, lawyers and doctors to collect information on the detainees, who have been held for the last four years without access to US judicial oversight. The envoys did not have access to the 500 prisoners who are still being held at the detention centre.
"We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government," Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture and one of the envoys, told the LA Times. "There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture."
The report lists techniques in use at Guantánamo that are banned under the UN's convention against torture, including prolonged periods of isolation, exposure to extremes of heat and cold, and humiliation, including forced shaving.
The UN report also focuses on a relatively new area of concern in Guantánamo - the resort to violent force-feeding to end a hunger strike by inmates. Guards at Guantánamo began force-feeding the protesters last August, strapping them on stretchers and inserting large tubes into their nasal passages, according to a lawyer for Kuwaiti detainees who has had contact with the UN envoys.
More
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1709256,00.html
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The document, seen by the Los Angeles Times, suggests that investigators will recommend the prison camp is shut down.
It also questions the legal status of the camp and the classification of detainees as enemy combatants.
The US State Department has criticised the draft report as "hearsay".
'Force-fed'
The Los Angeles Times published the draft report in its paper on Monday and spoke to one of the authors, the UN special raporteur on torture, Manfred Novak.
"We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government. There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture," Mr Nowak told the LA Times.
More
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4710966.stm
The images of UK soldiers in Iraq were carried by a British paper
One was from Basra, where the two-year-old video of British soldiers brutally beating young Iraqi stone-throwers has surfaced in the pages of a British tabloid newspaper.
British soldiers have mostly behaved well in Iraq, but not always.
Long after they have withdrawn they will be remembered there and throughout the Islamic world for the occasional moments of brutality, not for the rest of their behaviour.
It is a different world nowadays. It is harder to hide things permanently. And a quick, angry reaction which might have been common enough in the past no longer looks good when people find out about it.
Those who are under attack often feel justified in hitting back in whatever way comes to hand. And you only have to look at online discussions of the beatings in Basra to see that the soldiers who carried them out have their supporters.
Guantanamo unrest
The other uncomfortable details which have emerged in the past few days relate to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, where 517 men are being held without trial.
After the appalling attacks of 11 September 2001, most Americans supported the idea of locking up men who had fought for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Maybe the majority of those who went on hunger strike were telling the truth when they said they had no links to terrorist organisations
President George W Bush himself has assured them that the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay are "the worst of the worst".
During the past few weeks there has been a widespread hunger strike among the prisoners there.
It was effectively ended last week when the prison authorities took tough action to deal with the hunger strikers.
It seems as though they were worried about the effect on international opinion if one or more of the prisoners were to die.
The hunger strikers were strapped into "restraint chairs" and forcibly fed. The Pentagon says the tactics used were humane and compassionate.
According to American lawyers representing some of the prisoners, one of the methods was for riot control soldiers to hold the prisoners down while long plastic tubes were inserted into their nasal passages and down into their stomachs.
A Washington lawyer who visited Guantanamo last week called it "a disgrace".
Confused truth
But why did the prisoners decide to go on hunger strike in the first place?
Because they claimed that they had no link to al-Qaeda or other extreme Islamist groups, and were demanding to be released.
More
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4708946.stm