Human Rights Watch Says Guantanamo Undermines US on Rights Issues

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.redbolivia.com/noticias/News%20in%20English/43916.html

<snip>But Roth said the problem of hypocrisy emerges on other rights issues, with the United States holding terror suspects without trial at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and perhaps elsewhere, and tolerating coercive interrogation techniques.

"It is very difficult for the U.S. government today to condemn a government for the use of torture, when the CIA itself has tortured people using techniques such as water-boarding in the secret CIA detention facilities," Roth said. "Similarly it is hard for the U.S. government to protest against the detention of somebody without trial, when it has hundreds of people held for up to five years in Guantanamo with a trial only a distant hope."

Roth criticized Bush administration plans to try terror suspects through military commissions, a concept he said fell well short of accepted judicial standards and which he predicted would eventually be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

He said at least some of the U.S. detainees have probably committed serious crimes and deserve to be brought to trial. But he said they should be trials in which the defendant is allowed to challenge all the evidence and testimony against him, and in which hearsay evidence is invalid.

As to the Guantanamo facility, which has housed terrorism suspects since early 2002, Roth said that should be shut down outright.

[PDJane]

1. I agree. eom

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Many of us have been saying that for years. nt