CAPITOL HILL The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee says if the Pentagon wants to "make Guantanamo a model," the C-I-A must stop moving militant suspects to third countries without court approval.
Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher says "no one is going to believe we've cleaned up Guantanamo" if suspects are simply kept away from that prison and taken to countries where torture is often condoned.
Tauscher is just back from a tour of Guantanamo. The California Democrat says she took pains to "get a feel" for what goes on at the facility beyond what the military wanted her to see. But she says lawmakers just got "the cook's tour."
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=3525651Tauscher satisfied with conditions at Guantanamo
But she fears U.S. is sending suspects to other countriesWashington -- East Bay Rep. Ellen Tauscher said Monday that she observed improved conditions for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba but fears the improvements have come because the United States is turning over new suspects to be interrogated by countries with records of torture.
"My belief is we are running a facility at Guantanamo that has no unlawful activities,'' the Walnut Creek Democrat said Monday after returning from a seven-hour visit Saturday to the prison at the U.S. Navy base. But she said that improvement over widely reported abuses at the prison probably has come about because questionable activities have been moved elsewhere.
"These things aren't happening at Guantanamo because it's gotten too hot for them,'' she said, referring to U.S. authorities responsible for interrogating recalcitrant al Qaeda terrorism suspects captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Civil rights advocates and others including FBI agents have reported incidents at the prison such as allegations of abusing the Quran, the Muslim holy book, making sexual advances to religious Muslim men and using menacing dogs.
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