A blistering United Nations report alleging prisoner mistreatment at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay practically shouts for the administration to re-examine its policies on terror-war captives.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan quickly dismissed the report as a rehash of earlier allegations by some detainees’ lawyers.
The military, he said, treats all prisoners humanely, but others don’t agree. The U.N. report alleges that the 500-plus Guantanamo captives have been denied their basic legal rights to challenge their imprisonment and should either be charged and tried for criminal offenses or set free.
The report also alleges that isolating detainees, shackling them or putting on hoods and blindfolds, using dogs, stripping them, and subjecting the prisoners to extremes of temperature are violations of international law prohibiting torture. Additionally, the U.N. experts oppose the forced feeding of hunger strikers and contend that detainees’ religious rights have been violated.
Not surprisingly, the U.N. human rights rapporteurs said that just because the detainees weren’t held on U.S. soil didn’t absolve the United States of its obligation to obey international law and treaties, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The U.N. report concluded that Gitmo should be shut down, a matter that has previously been raised by several U.S. allies as well as senators John McCain and Mel Martinez, both Republicans.
The White House rejected the recommendation again Thursday – even as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said Gitmo should be shut “as soon as possible.”
Earlier this month, we questioned the wisdom of holding prisoners at Gitmo under fuzzy rules and without charge for indeterminate periods and called for a full exploration of the alternatives. The report and the latest Abu Ghraib photos make such a review all the more pressing.
