International   

U.N. report asks the U.S. to close Guantanamo jail

Concern over secret prisons

GENEVA: The United States should close its prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and avoid using secret detention facilities in its war on terror, a U.N. panel report released on Friday said.

In a report on U.S. adherence to the world body's anti-torture treaty, the U.N. Committee Against Torture said detenus should not be returned to any state where they could face a ``real risk'' of being tortured.

``The state party should cease to detain any person at Guantanamo Bay and close the detention facility,'' said the panel of 10 independent experts.

The committee said it was concerned that detenus were being held for protracted periods with insufficient legal safeguards and without judicial assessment of the justification for their detention.

The administration of President George W. Bush has been widely criticised for the open-ended detention of people captured in the war on terrorism at the camp that holds about 490 ``enemy combatants.''

But U.S. State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger III, who led the U.S. delegation at the U.N. panel hearing earlier this month, said that the panel appeared not to have read a lot of the information Washington had supplied, or had ignored it.

``There are a number of both factual inaccuracies and legal misstatements about the law applicable to the United States,'' Mr. Bellinger said.

The committee was also concerned about allegations that the United States has established secret prisons, where the International Red Cross does not have access to the detenus.

Inquiry sought

The report did not specifically say that such prisons existed, but stated the United States ``should ensure that no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its de facto effective control.''

Washington should also ``investigate and disclose the existence of any such facilities and the authority under which they have been established and the manner in which detainees are treated.''

The report also said the United States must eradicate all forms of torture committed by military or civilian personnel in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places of detention under its control and investigate allegations thoroughly, prosecuting any staff found guilty. — AP

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Labour to join Qarase Cabinet
U.N. report asks the U.S. to close Guantanamo jail
E.U. to freeze LTTE assets
Three Gorges crosses a milestone
Separatists may win vote
28 fishermen die in storm
Film on Beslan crisis
Russian scholar gets Padma Bhushan

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu