 THE United States must shut down its detention centre at Guantanamo Bay "without further delay", a UN human rights report published today said, urging Washington to try or release more than 500 terrorism suspects held at its naval base on Cuba. In their report, five so-called independent experts who act as monitors for the UN Human Rights Commission said: "The United States Government should close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay."
The 54-page report also said that the United States "should either expeditiously bring all Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial," because this was a requirement under international human rights accord, "or release them without further delay."
"Consideration should also be given to trying suspected terrorists before a competent international tribunal," it added.
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The document, a draft version of which was leaked earlier this week, charged that US treatment of detainees violated their rights to physical and mental health and in some cases amounted to torture.
Washington rejected the draft version as making a "baseless assertion", saying its authors had never visited the prison which houses mainly detainees captured in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
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In the final version of the report released in Geneva, the UN also charged Washington with violating international human rights treaties to get around their ban on torture. "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 are of utmost concern," it said. "The confusion with regard to authorised and unauthorised interrogation techniques over the last years is particularly alarming." |