Britain leads call for Guantanamo closure

Revised rules for the treatment and military trials of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp are “too little and too late”, Britain’s attorney general said today, repeating his call to close the facility.

Lord Goldsmith said Guantanamo remains a symbol of injustice because prisoners held there cannot use US courts to protest their detention and may be convicted of crimes on the basis of coerced evidence and other means not typically allowed in civilian courts.

“There remain fundamental problems with this system of detention,” Lord Goldsmith told the American Bar Association at its meeting in Miami.

He first called for Guantanamo’s closure last year, before the US Supreme Court struck down the administration’s plan to use military commissions to try some detainees and Congress sent US President George Bush a new law intended to answer the court’s objections.

Goldsmith said the fight against terrorists must be won not only through force, but also through values and ideas.

“The presence of Guantanamo makes it so much more difficult to do this for all of us,” he said.