USA: Guantánamo detentions enter fourth year as torture allegations mount

[Judi Lynn]

AI Index: AMR 51/003/2005 (Public)
News Service No: 003
7 January 2005

Embargo Date: 7 January 2005 00:01 GMT


USA: Guantánamo detentions enter fourth year as torture allegations mount

The international community must redouble its efforts to persuade the USA to end the human rights scandal at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, Amnesty International said today on the eve of the third anniversary of detentions at the US naval base in Cuba.

"Over the past three years, Guantánamo has become an icon of lawlessness", Amnesty International said. "In its more than 1,000 days of executive detentions, it has become a symbol of a government’s attempt to put itself above the law. The example it sets is dangerous to us all."

Full judicial review of detention, and access to lawyers and independent human rights monitors, are basic safeguards against torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, and "disappearance". Evidence that Guantánamo detainees have been tortured and ill-treated continues to mount, with FBI agents now added to the list of those making such allegations. Yesterday, the military announced that it will carry out an internal investigation into these latest allegations.

"Another internal review is not enough," Amnesty International said. "A comprehensive independent commission of inquiry into all aspects of the USA’s ‘war on terror’ detention and interrogation policies and practices is long overdue. No agency should be exempt from scrutiny and no individual exempt from prosecution if the evidence supports it."
(snip)

President Bush has made it a mantra of his time in office that the USA is committed to the rule of law and the "non-negotiable demands of human dignity." The USA’s own National Security Strategy and National Strategy for Combating Terrorism stress that respect for such standards must be central to the pursuit of security. The administration’s policy in Guantánamo is now the most notorious symbol of its failure to live up to its promises.
(snip/...)

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510032005

[NYC]

1. 4 years without a trial.

I fear those people will never get out.