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Judge's Anger at US Torture    [

    UN Report Calls for End to Guant a1namo Detentions
    By Warren Hoge
    The New York Times

    Thursday 16 February 2006

    United Nations - United Nations human rights investigators called on the United States today to shut down the Guant a1namo Bay camp and give detainees quick trials or release them, but the White House promptly dismissed the report.

    Arguing that many of the interrogation and detention practices constituted abuses amounting to torture, the report stated, "The United States government should close the Guant a1namo Bay detention facilities without further delay."

    Alert to the report's conclusions from news accounts circulating based on a draft and reacting quickly to its publication today, the White House suggested the investigators had based their conclusions on disinformation deliberately spread by terror groups.

    "I think some of this appears to be a rehash of some of the allegations that have been made by lawyers for some of the detainees," said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman.

    "We know that al-Qaeda detainees are trained in trying to disseminate false allegations."

    The report said the Defense Department should immediately revoke "all special interrogation techniques" it had authorized and that the United States needed to "refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, discrimination on the basis of religion and violations of the right to health and freedom of religion."

    Mr. McClellan asserted that the American military already treated detainees humanely. "These are dangerous terrorists that we are talking about who are there," he said. "Nothing had changed in terms of our views."

    In a response included in an appendix to the 54-page report, the United States noted that the investigators had turned down an invitation to visit Guant a1namo Bay, and it rejected the findings and faulted the investigators for using selective information to support their conclusions.

    The investigators declined to go to the camp after being told that they would be denied the opportunity to interview detainees.

    The report says that the use of excessive force during transportation, force-feeding through nasal tubes during hunger strikes and shackling, chaining and hooding of prisoners, placing them in solitary confinement, subjecting them naked to severe temperatures and threatening them with dogs amounted to torture.

    It also expresses "utmost concern" at "attempts by the United States administration to redefine 'torture' in the framework of the struggle against terrorism in order to allow certain interrogation techniques that would not be permitted under the internationally accepted definition of torture."

    The United States is holding some 500 detainees at the American naval base on the coast of Cuba and says they are people with direct ties to al Qaeda or the Taliban in Afghanistan.

    The report was based on the work of five United Nations rapporteurs, or experts, specialized in pursuing charges of arbitrary detention and torture and of alleged violations of freedom of religion, the right to health and the independence of judges and lawyers.

    They said they based their conclusions on interviews with former detainees in Britain, France and Spain, lawyers representing current inmates, news accounts, reports from non-governmental organizations and answers to a questionnaire submitted to the United States government.

    In rejecting many of the conclusions that have emerged this week in news reports on a draft, the United States has stressed that the United Nations investigators never went to Guant a1namo Bay.

    The investigators had been seeking permission to make the trip since 2002 and obtained permission this fall to go in December. But they turned down the invitation when the United States said they would not be permitted to talk to individual detainees.

    Such interviews were a "totally non-negotiable pre-condition" for conducting visits, the investigators said.

    The report said that the "executive branch of the United States government operates as judge, prosecutor and defense counsel of the Guant a1namo Bay detainees" and asserted that this constituted "serious violations of various guarantees of the right to a fair trial."

    The report said that persons who ordered or condoned abusive practices "up to the highest level of military and political command" should be brought to justice and that American personnel should be trained in international standards for treatment of detainees.

    It also questioned the medical ethics of doctors who might have participated in or observed abuses.

    In a letter dated Jan. 31 that was appended to the report, Kevin E. Moley, the American ambassador to the United Nations offices in Geneva, said the United States categorically objected to most of the report as "largely without merit and not based clearly on facts."

    "It selectively includes only those factual assertions needed to support those conclusions and ignores other facts that would undermine those conclusions," Mr. Moley said.

    The rapporteurs are independent investigators who report to the Geneva-based Human Rights Commission and have their expenses paid by the United Nations. The commission has come under intense criticism for permitting the membership of notorious rights violators like Sudan and Zimbabwe, and intense efforts are under way in New York to create a credible Human Rights Council to replace the commission by the time it holds its annual meeting next month.

    But recommendations for change have spared the rapporteurs, and the United States has cited them in the past as reliable monitors of rights violations. In this case, Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said Monday that based on what he could tell from leaks of drafts of the report, the rapporteurs had produced a "baseless assertion."

    "The United States has tried to work with these individuals, these rapporteurs who have gone around the world and done some good work in other places, but in this case, I'm sorry to say it's just not the case," Mr. McCormack said.

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    Judge's Anger at US Torture
    By Richard Norton-Taylor and Suzanne Goldenberg
    The Guardian UK

    Friday 17 February 2006

Stinging comments come as America dismisses UN report on Guant a1namo

    A high court judge yesterday delivered a stinging attack on America, saying its idea of what constituted torture was out of step with that of "most civilized nations".

    The criticism, directed at the Bush administration's approach to human rights, was made by Mr. Justice Collins during a hearing over the refusal by ministers to request the release of three British residents held at Guant a1namo Bay.

    The judge said: "America's idea of what is torture is not the same as ours and does not appear to coincide with that of most civilized nations." He made his comments, he said, after learning of the UN report that said Guant a1namo should be shut down without delay because torture was still being carried out there.

    The report, by five inspectors for the UN human rights commissioner, refers to shackling, hooding and forcing detainees to wear earphones and goggles. In particular, it refers to interrogation techniques and excessive violence used to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike. Based on interviews with detainees' lawyers, former inmates and written exchanges with US officials, it calls on the US to put the 490 inmates on trial or release them.

    Last night, the secretary general, Kofi Annan, said: "Sooner or later there will be a need to close the Guant a1namo [camp]." He added that though he did not agree with everything in the report, he opposed holding people "in perpetuity".

    The UN inspectors refused a US offer to tour Guant a1namo after they were barred from visiting the prisoners. The 40-page document is the UN's first to address Guant a1namo. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, dismissed its findings as a "rehash of old allegations" and "a discredit to the organization". "The detainees are being treated humanely," he said. "Remember these are terrorists."

    But in one of the strongest remarks yet by a British cabinet minister, Peter Hain said last night that the government believed the camp should be shut. Asked on the BBC's Question Time program whether Tony Blair supported that view he said "I think so, yes".

    The Bush administration has defined torture in narrow terms, referring to intense physical injury and organ failure. Controversy about the definition goes to the heart of allegations that the US has secretly used Britain to transport detainees to interrogation centers in countries where torture occurs, in the practice known as "extraordinary rendition".

    Ministers have relied on US assurances that senior British lawyers have repeatedly questioned. In a law lords judgment last year, Lord Bingham referred to US techniques, including sensory deprivation and inducing a perception of suffocation, which, he said, would be defined as torture in British law.

    Mr. Justice Collins said three British residents in Guant a1namo could now seek a court order requiring the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, to petition for their release. The case, brought by Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna, and Omar Deghayes, and relatives living in Britain, could be heard as early as next week.

    Responding to the judge's remarks about the US definition of torture, Rabinder Singh QC, counsel for the three detainees and their families, said Britain and the European court of human rights would "undoubtedly condemn" many of the practices at Guant a1namo. Mr. Rawi is an Iraqi who has lived in the UK since 1985. His business partner, Mr. Banna, is a Jordanian refugee, and Mr. Deghayes is a Libyan refugee. All three were taken to Guant a1namo via Afghanistan.

    Mr. Rawi and Mr. Banna were seized by CIA agents in Gambia in 2002. Chris Mullin, a former Foreign Office minister for Africa, says British agents helped the Americans seize the two men. They are alleged to have had contacts with al-Qaida because of a connection with the radical cleric Abu Qatada.

    Mr. Deghayes was detained in Pakistan. His name was said to be on the FBI's "most wanted" list yet the photograph in his file was of a different person, the court heard. Mr. Deghayes was almost blind in one eye through the use of pepper spray and gouging during his detention, yet is still being constantly subjected to bright light.