A welcome gesture - Guests from Guantanamo

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Micheál Martin has sent a strong signal that he would favour the admission of detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

This would be a logical consequence of this country’s call for that concentration camp to be shut down. The camp and the treatment of the prisoners there have been an affront to any right-thinking sense of justice, as well as an insult to human dignity.

There are some 250 prisoners left in the camp, just a third of what it once held. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to close it, but the State Department has problems in getting countries to accept the prisoners, because many of them are not welcome in their own countries.