U.N. rights envoys condemn Bush plan on interrogation
Thu Sep 21, 2006 12:52pm ET
GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations human rights investigators said on Thursday that legislation proposed by President Bush for tough interrogations of foreign terrorism suspects would breach the Geneva Conventions.
In a statement to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the five independent envoys also said Washington's admission of secret detention centers abroad pointed to "very serious human rights violations in relation to the hunt for alleged terrorists".
They again called for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of foreign terrorism suspects are being held, alleging continued violations of international law on torture and arbitrary detention.
Despite U.S. declarations of intent to shut Guantanamo, Washington had done nothing yet and was even planning to open a new cell bloc at the end of this month, they said.
"We call on the government to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center and, until that time, to refrain from any practice amounting to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," they said.
The statement was read out by Leila Zerrougui, the Algerian chairwoman of the U.N. working group on arbitrary detention.
She is one of the five investigators who have tried since June 2004 to visit Guantanamo detainees. Washington has said it would allow three of them to go for one day, but not to see prisoners privately, a key demand of the investigators.
In reply, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva Warren Tichenor reiterated Washington's desire to close Guantanamo but said that this could only be done when other countries agreed to take some of the prisoners being held there
He said he regretted the investigators' decision not to make the visit and accused them of basing their report on "second- and third-hand allegations."
"They prepared a report that asserts, without real evidentiary support, conclusions they had already clearly reached," Tichenor said.
"LEGALISE" RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
On Wednesday, a U.S. House of Representatives panel endorsed Bush's bill for tough interrogations and trials of foreign terrorism suspects. Despite criticism from rights activists, Washington says that such interrogation methods have helped obtain information that has prevented attacks.
But the five said that the bill, which has still to be approved by the full House and the Senate, amounted to an attempt to "legalize" rights violations that have been condemned in Guantanamo and elsewhere.
The proposed legislation was "in breach with United States' human rights obligation as identified in our report and with the requirement of article 3 of the Geneva Conventions," they said, referring to the 1949 pact which lays down basic guarantees of protection for detainees.
In particular, the plan defined "enemy combatant" very broadly and would allow the government to arrest and detain indefinitely people who were not involved in any armed conflict.
Rather than banning torture outright, the law contained a "flexible and vague" definition that could allow abuse depending on the circumstances, they added. |
