UK told US won't shut Guantanamo

The Attorney General Lord Goldsmith's speech calling for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay camp is a significant shift by the British government, America's close ally in the "war on terror" declared by President Bush after the attacks of 11 September 2001.

Up until now, the nearest the government had come to criticise the camp was to call it "an anomaly".

There appears to have been a division of opinion within the government, which the Attorney General as the senior legal adviser has now won.

Recently the then Defence Secretary John Reid gave a speech at the same venue, the Royal United Services Institute, where Lord Goldsmith spoke, hinting that the way to end the "anomaly" was to change international law by allowing the detention without trial of terrorist suspects.

If this were accepted, he suggested, there would be no "anomaly".

Dr Reid has now left the defence ministry to become Home Secretary, where there are also issues of how liberty can be curtailed in the interests of public safety.

But that talk of international detention without trial has been ended and that is the significance of Lord Goldsmith's speech.

It is the basis of his objection to the camp.

'Strong stand'

The issue for Lord Goldsmith has been that of fair trial.

He always opposed the military tribunals proposed by the United States and has now come out openly against the camp as whole because of this principle.

He said: "There are certain principles on which there can be no compromise. Fair trial is one of those - which is the reason we in the UK were unable to accept that the US military tribunals proposed for those detained at Guantanamo Bay offered sufficient guarantees of a fair trial in accordance with international standards."

More
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4760155.stm

Britain's attorney-general has said that it is time for the United States to close its Guantanamo Bay prison camp because it undermines America's tradition as a beacon of freedom and justice.

Lord Peter Goldsmith said in a speech in London on Wednesday that "the existence of Guantanamo Bay remains unacceptable", adding that "it is time, in my view, that it should close".

Goldsmith, the highest British official to make an unambiguous call for the prison's closure, said shutting it down would help the US burnish its global image.

"Not only would it, in my personal opinion, be right to close Guantanamo as a matter of principle, I believe it would also help to remove what has become a symbol to many - right or wrong - of injustice," he said.

"The historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol," he told a conference on terrorism at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank.

Goldsmith, responsible for advising the government on legal matters, was involved in negotiations with the US government over Britons held in the Guantanamo camp in Cuba which is run by the US Navy.

Not enough

Kate Allen, who heads the British branch of the London-based human rights group Amnesty International, welcomed Goldsmith's call but said more needed to be done.

More
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9D09D7D7-08ED-43F5-BF3B-9283467DA3AF.htm