US 'setting bad example for human rights'

THE US's activities at Guantanamo Bay could encourage countries around the world to abuse human rights, Amnesty International claimed yesterday.

US President George W Bush's policy of imprisoning people without trial at the Camp Delta base in Cuba and at other military prisons in Afghanistan was setting a bad example, the charity warned. The human rights group said the US had created "unchallengeable executive power" for itself in the so-called war on terror.

Detainees at Guantanamo, including nine Britons, were being subjected to a "parallel justice system" and there had been reports of mistreatment, it added.

The 43-page report, entitled "The Threat Of A Bad Example: Undermining International Standards As 'War On Terror' Continues", was based partly on interviews with men released from Guantanamo Bay, Amnesty said.

The study also criticised "illegal and secretive" transfers from US custody to detention in countries like Jordan, Syria and Egypt. It increased fears that suspects in US custody were "at a heightened risk of torture", the report said.

An Amnesty International spokesman said: "The USA is on a slippery slope to promoting a world in which arbitrary unchallengeable detention becomes acceptable.

"All too often where the US leads others follow. Increasingly, by using the language of 'war', governments have disregarded human rights obligations.

"By using the term 'terror' they have endeavoured to avoid international human rights law.

"And by using the phrase 'war on terror' they have challenged the very framework of human rights and international humanitarian law."

He added: "The US has variously used hooding, blindfolding, handcuffing and shackling of detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.

"The stark fact is that detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram and elsewhere are at the mercy of the US government."

The charity said detainees at the US air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, had been subjected to forced stripping, blindfolding with blacked-out goggles, hooding, 24-hour lighting, sleep deprivation, inadequate exercise provision and "prolonged restraint in painful positions".

Former Bagram detainee Sayed Abassin, a 28-year-old Afghan taxi driver, told Amnesty that he was "roughly handled, blindfolded, had his ears covered and a black bag placed over his head and taped around his neck" during his transfer to a US base at Kandahar in Afghanistan.

Plans to try detainees in front of military commissions at Camp Delta were criticised by the charity.