Meanwhile 4,000 Miles Away in Guantanamo Bay, 660 Prisoners Have No Idea When They Will be Freed
By Andrew Buncombe for the Independnet Uk.

The Guantanamo Bay prison camp – established after the terror attacks of 11 September and the war in Afghanistan – was meant to be a temporary detention centre, somewhere to hold the “worst of the worst”.
Almost two years later, the camp has been transformed into a de facto permanent facility where 660 adults and three children are kept in a legal black hole, cut off from the outside world and with no idea whether they will ever be charged with a crime or released. Critics claim the prison, which operates with hardly any independent scrutiny, has become a live experiment in long-term interrogation where experts constantly seek to hone and improve their techniques.
“It’s like it has become a cold storage facility,” said Richard Bourke, a lawyer in Louisiana representing two Australian citizens who are among the prisoners. “You hear comments from the camp commander about how they are constantly improving their interrogation techniques. They are just experimenting in areas that interest them.”
Guantanamo Bay and the nine Britons held there have become the focus of increasing tension between Britain and the US and will be a subject of talks between George Bush and Tony Blair this week…
Few critics claim that prisoners at Camp Delta, as the incarceration unit is known, suffer physical torture, though in the first six months of its operation interrogators used techniques known as “stress and duress” to intimidate and soften up their subjects. Such techniques include sleep deprivation, exposing prisoners to hot or cold conditions and making them sit or stand in uncomfortable positions.
But lawyers and activists say the prisoners – to whom the Bush administration refuses to grant the protection of the Geneva Conventions – face a form of psychological torture by being refused information about their future or access to legal advice. There are regular reports of suicide attempts among the prisoners and recently Commander Louis Louk, the officer in charge of the prison’s hospital, revealed that one in five of the prisoners received medication for what he termed “clinical depression”.
Against this backdrop the Bush administration received unprecedented criticism last month from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only non-state organisation permitted to visit the camp, which said its refusal to inform prisoners about their future was causing an intolerable situation. “The main concern for us is that the US authorities have effectively placed them beyond the law,” said Amanda Williamson, an ICRC spokes-woman. “After more than 18 months of captivity, the internees have no idea about their fate, no means of recourse through any legal mechanism. They have been placed in a legal vacuum, a legal black hole. This, for the ICRC, is unacceptable.”…
Campaigners received a boost last week when the Supreme Court announced that it would examine whether Guantanamo Bay fell within the jurisdiction of the US courts. Lower courts had supported the claim of the Bush administration that Guantanamo Bay, technically leased from Cuba, was outside the jurisdiction and prisoners were not eligible for the protection of the US constitution. If the Supreme Court places Guantanamo Bay within US legal jurisdiction there is likely to be a flood of lawsuits demanding the US to charge the prisoners or release them. Ms Patten said: “The question is can the government carve out a place in the world beyond the law, beyond the reach of the courts that review the legality of such actions.”

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The scariest part (aside from the torture allegations, of course) is in the last paragraph:
“The U.S. government says they could be held until it declares an end to its “war on terrorism.”
We know that the “War On Terrorism” is poorly defined with a definition that keeps changing to suit the current objectives of the Shrub Administration. These people need to be charged or released, as we would expect Americans to be treated under the Geneva Convention.
Oh yeah. That means torture’s out too 🙂

Lawyer Says Guantanamo Detainees Tortured
By the Associated Press in the NY Times.
Here’s the whole article. It’s just a little thing.

The U.S. military has tortured terrorist suspects held without charge at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, an Australian lawyer representing some of the suspects claimed Wednesday.
U.S.-based Richard Bourke, who has been working for almost two years on behalf of dozens of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, said American military officials were using old-fashioned torture techniques to force confessions out of prisoners.
The methods “clearly” fell under the definition of torture under international conventions, he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio in an interview from the United States.
“They are engaging in good old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages,” he said.
About 660 prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere are being held at Guantanamo without charges or access to lawyers — some since January 2002. The U.S. government rarely comments on activities at the prison which has been dubbed Camp X-ray because of the strict security.
Earlier this year, U.S. officials denied using torture and said detainees are interrogated humanely, allowed to practice their religion and given good medical care.
Families are denied access and can only communicate with detainees through heavily censored mail. Human rights groups and the media have been given only limited and strictly controlled access.
Bourke told ABC radio that his claims are based on reports leaked by U.S. military personnel and from descriptions by some detainees that have been released.
“One of the detainees had described being taken out and tied to a post and having rubber bullets fired at them. They were being made to kneel cruciform in the sun until they collapsed,” he said.
Media reports that many detainees have attempted suicide and are suffering mental health problems backed up claims of harsh treatment, he said.
Bourke said governments around the world must stand up to the U.S. government and demand that the United Nations investigate the reports of torture.
Almost all the detainees, from more than 40 countries, are said to be members of al-Qaida terrorist network or the ousted Afghan Taliban regime. They are to be tried by secret military tribunals. The U.S. government says they could be held until it declares an end to its “war on terrorism.”

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Emotional appeal from detainee’s father
In the BBC.

The father of one of the British detainees in Guantanamo Bay has made an emotional appeal for the release of his son…
He said his son should be punished if found guilty, but said he could not understand “under what law, under what human rights he has been kept there”.
He said: “I just want my son back. I do not say set him free, what I say is let him come back to this country he belongs to, where he was born, where he was brought up…
“If he isn’t found guilty he shouldn’t be there for a second. Why is this not happening what is wrong with our laws?”
Moazzam Begg, from Sparkbrook in Birmingham, was held by US forces in Pakistan in February 2002. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay a year later.
The conference backed a call to the government to deliver “due process and justice” for those held at Guantanamo Bay.

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Guantanamo detentions blasted
In the BBC.

A senior Red Cross official has launched a rare attack on the US detention of al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
Christophe Girod told the New York Times it was unacceptable that the 600 detainees should be held for open-ended terms without proper legal process.
His criticism came as a group of American former judges, diplomats and military officers called on the US Supreme Court to examine the legality of holding the foreign nationals for almost two years, without trial, charge or access to lawyers.
Mr Girod said the International Committee of the Red Cross was making the unusually blunt public statement because of a lack of action after previous private contacts with American officials.
“One cannot keep these detainees in this pattern, this situation, indefinitely,” he said during a visit to the US naval base where the Taleban and al-Qaeda suspects are being held…
Mr Girod is leading a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has just completed an inspection tour of the detention camp in Cuba.
Although he did not criticise any physical conditions at the camp, he said that it was intolerable that the complex was used as “an investigation centre, not a detention centre”.
“The open-endedness of the situation and its impact on the mental health of the population has become a major problem,” he told the New York Times.
Christine Huskey, an American lawyer representing 28 Kuwaiti inmates, told the BBC she had had “absolutely” no access to them.
“I represent a ghost,” she told the World Today programme.
In the past 18 months, 21 detainees have made 32 suicide attempts, and many more are being treated for depression, the New York Times says…
On Sunday a group including former American judges and military officials filed legal papers urging the US Supreme Court to intervene.
Don Guter, the US navy’s judge advocate general until last year, said it was not acceptable simply to hold suspected al-Qaeda or Taleban members until the US war on terror was over.
The argument filed to the Supreme Court by Mr Guter and others said: “The lives of American military forces may well be endangered by the United States’ failure to grant foreign prisoners in its custody the same rights that the United States insists be accorded to American prisoners held by foreigners.”
That view was backed by ex-prisoners-of-war, some of whom told the Supreme Court they owed their lives to the fact that their captors abided by the Geneva conventions.
On Wednesday an Australian lawyer representing some of the suspects said they were being submitted to torture.
US officials have denied torturing detainees, saying they are allowed to practise their religion and given good medical care.

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