Guantanamo Bay - Diabolical camp must be shut down

MOUNTING global clamour for the US terrorist prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to be shut down over blatant human rights abuse there must not go unheeded by America.

If US President George W Bush wished to create a recruiting sergeant for Islamic extremism, he could not find a better vehicle than the scandalous situation in which 500 men are being detained without trial at the prison which opened four years ago.

Guantanamo is now America’s concentration camp. The force-feeding of detainees on hunger strike, along with other abuses, described as torture by the UN, are absolutely degrading.

Together with the latest batch of horrific pictures of torture at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, the iconic scenes of prisoners, hooded and bound, in orange uniforms at Guantanamo will further inflame anger throughout the Islamic world.

There is an irresistible human rights case for the detainees to be either charged or released. What is going on there in the name of the American people is unacceptable by any civilised standard.

Calls for an end to the outrage have come from such highly respected figures as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the former Irish President and UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, and Britain’s Northern Ireland Minister Peter Hain.

To quote Mrs Robinson, America’s operation of the prison is “a litmus test of whether we have an effective, international system of human rights law”.

In its scathing report on the prison, the UN urged the American Government to desist from any practice amounting to “torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.

It is regrettable that the US would not permit UN investigators to privately interview detainees. As a result, they had to rely on the word of former prisoners, dozens of whom have been released since it was set up during the Afghanistan war, plus media reports, lawyers, public documents and Government responses to a questionnaire.

In such circumstances, it is disingenuous of the White House to dismiss the UN findings as “largely without merit”. They would say that, wouldn’t they?

Effectively, by refusing to end the flagrant transgression of international rules of behaviour, the US military and the hawkish Bush regime are giving two fingers to the rest of the world.

In a watershed development, Northern Secretary Peter Hain, a man who resisted the apartheid regime of South Africa, became the first British government minister to call for closure of the camp.

Turning up the heat on the US, Mr Hain implied that British Prime Minister Tony Blair shares his view that the camp should be closed.

Coupled with the controversy over clandestine flights of suspects for torture, the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo has eroded any shred of moral authority the US may claim for its so-called war on terror.

Perhaps the most revealing comment on America’s departure from international norms was made by a British judge who observed the US idea of torture “doesn’t appear to coincide with that of most civilised countries”.

Compounding its failure to win the peace in Iraq, the Bush regime seems oblivious to the fact that America’s reputation is being damaged not just in the eyes of moderate Muslims but throughout the civilised world.

Unless all prisoners incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay are charged they should be released without further delay. There can be no justification for detention without trial. This diabolical camp must be shut down.