csua.org/u/eyz -> www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo13feb13,0,3215042.story?coll=la-home-nation
Large Text Size Large Text Size Change text size Report: US Is Abusing Captives A UN inquiry says the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay at times amounts to torture and violates international law. By Maggie Farley, Times Staff Writer NEW YORK -- A draft United Nations report on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay concludes that the US treatment of them violates their rights to physical and mental health and, in some cases, constitutes torture. It also urges the United States to close the military prison in Cuba and bring the captives to trial on US territory, charging that Washington's justification for the continued detention is a distortion of international law.
The report, compiled by five UN envoys who interviewed former prisoners, detainees' lawyers and families, and US officials, is the product of an 18-month investigation ordered by the UN Commission on Human Rights. The team did not have access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Nonetheless, its findings -- notably a conclusion that the violent force-feeding of hunger strikers, incidents of excessive violence used in transporting prisoners and combinations of interrogation techniques "must be assessed as amounting to torture" -- are likely to stoke US and international criticism of the prison. Nearly 500 people captured abroad since 2002 in Afghanistan and elsewhere and described by the US as "enemy combatants" are being held at Guantanamo Bay. "We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government," said Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture and one of the envoys. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture." The draft report, reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, has not been officially released. UN officials are in the process of incorporating comments and clarifications from the US government. In November, the Bush administration offered the UN team the same tour of the prison given to journalists and members of Congress, but refused the envoys access to prisoners. Nowak said he did not expect major changes to the report's conclusions and recommendations as a result of the US government's response, though there would be amendments on minor issues. JD Gordon, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said the Defense Department did not comment about UN matters. But human rights and legal advocates hope the UN's conclusions will add weight to similar findings by rights groups and the European Parliament. "I think the effect of this will be to revive concern about the government's mistreatment of detainees, and to get people to take another look at the legal basis," said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. "There are lots of lingering questions about how do you justify holding these people." The report focuses on the US government's legal basis for the detentions as described in its formal response to the UN inquiry: "The law of war allows the United States -- and any other country engaged in combat -- to hold enemy combatants without charges or access to counsel for the duration of hostilities. Detention is not an act of punishment, but of security and military necessity. It serves the purpose of preventing combatants from continuing to take up arms against the United States." But the UN team concluded that there had been insufficient due process to determine whether the more than 750 people who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002 were "enemy combatants," and determined that the primary purpose of their confinement was for interrogation, not to prevent them from taking up arms. The US has released or transferred more than 260 detainees from Guantanamo Bay. It also rejected the premise that "the war on terrorism" exempted the US from international conventions on torture and civil and political rights. The report said some of the treatment of detainees met the definition of torture under the UN Convention Against Torture: The acts were committed by government officials, with a clear purpose, inflicting severe pain or suffering against victims in a position of powerlessness. The findings also concluded that the simultaneous use of several interrogation techniques -- prolonged solitary confinement, exposure to extreme temperatures, noise and light; forced shaving and other techniques that exploit religious beliefs or cause intimidation and humiliation -- constituted inhumane treatment and, in some cases, reached the threshold of torture. Nowak said that the UN team was "particularly concerned" about the force-feeding of hunger strikers through nasal tubes that detainees said were brutally inserted and removed, causing intense pain, bleeding and vomiting. International Red Cross guidelines state: "Doctors should never be party to actual coercive feeding. Such actions can be considered a form of torture and under no circumstances should doctors participate in them on the pretext of saving the hunger striker's life."
|
http://csua.com/feed/