UN Calls for Guantanamo Closure
America's stance on torture and prisoner handling has come under more intense scrutiny these past twenty-four hours. Yesterday, disturbing previously unpublished images and footage taken in 2003 from Abu Ghraib were released. Today, the UN has called for Guantanamo Bay's closure.
From the BBC:
UN human rights investigators have called for the immediate closure of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
A UN report on conditions in the Cuba camp says the US should try all inmates or free them "without further delay".
Some aspects of the treatment of the 500-strong camp population amount to torture, the UN team alleges.
The US has rejected most of the allegations as "largely without merit", saying the five investigators never actually visited Guantanamo Bay.
One of the five investigators responsible for the report, UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak, said the detention of inmates for years without charge amounted to arbitrary detention.
"Those persons either have to be released immediately or they should be brought to a proper and competent court and tried for the offences they are charged with," he told the BBC.
Finally! Finally people are concerned about holding prisoners without charging or trying them. The denial of due process has occurred far too often and has elicited far too few objections. This has happened not only in Gitmo, but also within our borders. It's about time someone spoke up about it. I expect an argument that the prisoners at Gitmo are foreigners not subject to the rights of our Constitution or are suspected terrorists that have waived their rights in committing atrocities. In the former case, please look up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the later case, that's not how Constitutional rights work.
I guess that this puts a kink in Bush's assertions that we do not engage in torture. One of our premier terrorist detention centers is shut down for human rights violations, for goodness sakes.
From the BBC:
UN human rights investigators have called for the immediate closure of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
A UN report on conditions in the Cuba camp says the US should try all inmates or free them "without further delay".
Some aspects of the treatment of the 500-strong camp population amount to torture, the UN team alleges.
The US has rejected most of the allegations as "largely without merit", saying the five investigators never actually visited Guantanamo Bay.
One of the five investigators responsible for the report, UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak, said the detention of inmates for years without charge amounted to arbitrary detention.
"Those persons either have to be released immediately or they should be brought to a proper and competent court and tried for the offences they are charged with," he told the BBC.
Finally! Finally people are concerned about holding prisoners without charging or trying them. The denial of due process has occurred far too often and has elicited far too few objections. This has happened not only in Gitmo, but also within our borders. It's about time someone spoke up about it. I expect an argument that the prisoners at Gitmo are foreigners not subject to the rights of our Constitution or are suspected terrorists that have waived their rights in committing atrocities. In the former case, please look up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the later case, that's not how Constitutional rights work.
I guess that this puts a kink in Bush's assertions that we do not engage in torture. One of our premier terrorist detention centers is shut down for human rights violations, for goodness sakes.