UN report accuses US of torturing terror detainees

TREATMENT of detainees at Guantanamo Bay violates international law and in some cases constitutes torture, according to details of a draft United Nations report revealed yesterday.

The Los Angeles Times said the study, which will be published this week, urges the United States to close the detention centre in Cuba and try the captives on American territory.

Five UN envoys interviewed former prisoners, detainees’ lawyers and families and US officials in an 18-month investigation ordered by the UN Commission on Human Rights.

They concluded that detainees’ rights to physical and mental health were being breached, the newspaper reported.

Violent force-feeding of hunger strikers, incidents of excessive violence used in transporting prisoners and combinations of interrogation techniques “must be assessed as amounting to torture”, the report was said to find.

Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture, told the paper: “We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government ... But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture”.

The US is holding 500 people described as “enemy combatants” at the camp.

The report apparently concludes that some of the treatment of detainees meets the UN’s definition of torture, because the acts were committed by government officials with a clear purpose, inflicting severe pain or suffering against powerless victims.

It also found the simultaneous use of several interrogation techniques - prolonged solitary confinement, exposure to extreme temperatures, noise and light; forced shaving and other techniques that exploit religious beliefs or cause intimidation and humiliation - was inhumane.

The study apparently rejects the premise that “the war on terrorism” exempted the US from international conventions on torture and civil and political rights.

The report is not legally binding.