2.14.2006
U.N. Draft Decries U.S. On Detainee Treatment (WashingtonPost.com)
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 14, 2006; Page A09
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 13 -- The Bush administration's treatment of prisoners at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, violates international law and in some cases constitutes a form of torture, according to a draft report by a group of U.N. human rights investigators.
Five U.N. human rights rapporteurs appealed to the administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and try detainees in the United States. "The U.S. government should either expeditiously bring all Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial . . . or release them without further delay," the draft report recommended.
The findings emerged from an 18-month investigation that included interviews with former U.S. prisoners in France, Spain and Britain and lawyers and relatives of detainees. The report concluded that some practices -- including the force-feeding of hunger strikers -- "must be assessed as amounting to torture."
President Bush voiced concern about the panel's findings -- which were first reported in the Los Angeles Times -- during a meeting Monday with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Annan responded that he had not seen the report and that the U.N. investigators who authored the report were independent from his office, according to a senior official who attended the meeting.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack challenged the veracity of the findings and pointed out that "no one who wrote this report actually went to Guantanamo." The U.N. investigators, known as special rapporteurs, declined in November to accept an offer from the United States to make a one-day visit to the facility on the grounds that they could not speak privately with the prisoners.
"They are taking assertions by individuals who have left Guantanamo, as well as their lawyers, as fact," McCormack told reporters. "And, as we have seen over the past year, there have been a number of baseless claims about what went on at Guantanamo."
(More ... U.N. Draft Decries U.S. On Detainee Treatment) ¶ 18:09
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 14, 2006; Page A09
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 13 -- The Bush administration's treatment of prisoners at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, violates international law and in some cases constitutes a form of torture, according to a draft report by a group of U.N. human rights investigators.
Five U.N. human rights rapporteurs appealed to the administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and try detainees in the United States. "The U.S. government should either expeditiously bring all Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial . . . or release them without further delay," the draft report recommended.
The findings emerged from an 18-month investigation that included interviews with former U.S. prisoners in France, Spain and Britain and lawyers and relatives of detainees. The report concluded that some practices -- including the force-feeding of hunger strikers -- "must be assessed as amounting to torture."
President Bush voiced concern about the panel's findings -- which were first reported in the Los Angeles Times -- during a meeting Monday with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Annan responded that he had not seen the report and that the U.N. investigators who authored the report were independent from his office, according to a senior official who attended the meeting.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack challenged the veracity of the findings and pointed out that "no one who wrote this report actually went to Guantanamo." The U.N. investigators, known as special rapporteurs, declined in November to accept an offer from the United States to make a one-day visit to the facility on the grounds that they could not speak privately with the prisoners.
"They are taking assertions by individuals who have left Guantanamo, as well as their lawyers, as fact," McCormack told reporters. "And, as we have seen over the past year, there have been a number of baseless claims about what went on at Guantanamo."
(More ... U.N. Draft Decries U.S. On Detainee Treatment) ¶ 18:09
