'Amerikanen vermoordden tientallen gevangenen'
LONDEN (ANP) - Bijna honderd mensen die in Amerikaanse gevangenschap zaten in Irak en Afghanistan hebben daarbij het leven gelaten. Bij minstens 34 gevallen was er sprake van moord of doodslag, maakte de Amerikaanse mensenrechtenorganisatie Human Rights First dinsdag bekend.
De organisatie liet dit weten aan de vooravond van de publicatie van een rapport met die strekking. In de rapportage wordt gesproken van 34 gevallen van ,,opzettelijk of roekeloos gedrag'' die de dood van een gedetineerde tot gevolg had. Tussen de acht en twaalf mensen zouden zijn doodgemarteld. Human Rights First rept verder van elf verdachte sterfgevallen, bleek dinsdagavond in het BBC-programma Newsnight.
Een persoon zou zijn gedwongen van een brug over de Tigris te springen, een ander werd in een slaapzak gepropt en stikte. Voor de studie heeft de organisatie gebruik gemaakt van onderzoeksrapporten van het leger en Amerikaanse overheidsdocumenten. ,,We zijn overtuigd van het waarheidsgehalte en de betrouwbaarheid van de feiten'', aldus de opsteller van het rapport Deborah Pearlstein.
Imperatrice
22-02-06, 17:55
Tell us something new :moe:
Investigators for U.N. Urge U.S. to Close Guantánamo
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 16 — Human rights investigators working for the United Nations called on the United States on Thursday to shut down the Guantánamo Bay camp and either try its detainees quickly or free them.
Arguing that many of the interrogation and detention practices used in Guantánamo amounted to torture, the investigators' report said those who ordered or condoned abusive practices should be brought to justice "up to the highest level of military and political command."
The 54-page report, based largely on interviews with former detainees and publicized information, including news accounts, is not legally binding. But it urged that Guantánamo be closed, "without further delay," and called for American personnel to be trained in international standards for the treatment of detainees.
The White House promptly dismissed the report, suggesting that the investigators had based their conclusions on false information spread by terror suspects.
"I think what we are seeing is a rehash of allegations that have been made by lawyers representing some of the detainees," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Thursday.
"We know that Al Qaeda detainees are trained in trying to disseminate false allegations."
The report, released Thursday after a draft circulated this week, said the United States should immediately revoke all "special interrogation techniques" authorized by the Defense Department. It called upon the United States "to refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, discrimination on the basis of religion and violations of the right to health and freedom of religion."
Mr. McClellan asserted that the American military already treated detainees humanely. "These are dangerous terrorists that we are talking about who are there," he said. "Nothing has changed in terms of our views."
The report was requested by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva and compiled by five independent scientists, lawyers and academics in the last 18 months. As such, it does not prompt any official United Nations action, and Secretary General Kofi Annan, who has no direct authority over the commission, distanced himself from its specific recommendations.
"I cannot say that I necessarily agree with everything in the report," he said Thursday. "But the basic point that one cannot detain individuals in perpetuity and that charges have to be brought against them and their being given a chance to explain themselves and be prosecuted, charged or released, I think is something that is common under any legal system."
Mr. Annan added that "sooner or later there will be a need to close Guantánamo, and I think it will be up to the government to decide hopefully to do it as soon as possible."
In a response included in an appendix to the report, the United States rejected the findings, noting that the investigators had turned down an invitation to visit Guantánamo Bay and accusing them of using information selectively to support their conclusions.
Among the practices the report said amounted to torture were the use of excessive force during transportation, force-feeding detainees through nasal tubes during hunger strikes, shackling, chaining and hooding prisoners, placing them in solitary confinement, subjecting them to severe temperatures while naked and threatening them with dogs.
It also expressed "utmost concern" about "attempts by the United States administration to redefine 'torture' in the framework of the struggle against terrorism in order to allow certain interrogation techniques that would not be permitted under the internationally accepted definition of torture."
The United States is holding about 500 detainees at its Guantánamo Bay naval base on the coast of Cuba, and some have been there since the camp was opened in early 2002. Some of the detainees' lawyers, however, have cited Pentagon documents as showing that only 45 percent of the prisoners have committed a hostile act against the United States or its allies, and that only 8 percent have been classified as Qaeda fighters.
The report for the Human Rights Commission was based on the work of the five United Nations rapporteurs, or investigators, who look into accusations of arbitrary detention, torture and other abuses.
They said they based their conclusions on interviews with former detainees now in Britain, France and Spain, lawyers representing current inmates, news accounts, reports from nongovernmental organizations and answers to a questionnaire submitted to the United States government.
The investigators had been seeking permission to go to Guantánamo Bay since June 2004, and obtained it this fall to go in December. But they turned down the invitation when the United States said they would not be permitted to talk to individual detainees. Such interviews were a "totally nonnegotiable precondition" for the trip, the investigators said.
The report said that the "executive branch of the United States government operates as judge, prosecutor and defense counsel of the Guantánamo Bay detainees," and asserted that this constituted "serious violations of various guarantees of the right to a fair trial."
In a Jan. 31 letter appended to the report, Kevin E. Moley, the American ambassador to the United Nations offices in Geneva, said the United States objected to most of the report as "largely without merit and not based clearly on facts."
He said "it selectively includes only those factual assertions needed to support those conclusions and ignores other facts that would undermine those conclusions."
The investigators report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva but are not employees of it and have only their expenses paid by the United Nations.
The commission itself has come under intense criticism for admitting notorious rights violators like Sudan and Zimbabwe, and intense efforts are under way in New York to replace it with a more credible entity before its annual meeting in March.
But recommendations for change have not included the investigators, and the United States has cited them in the past as reliable monitors of rights violations.
On Monday, after a draft of the investigators' report began to circulate, Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said, "The United States has tried to work with these individuals, these rapporteurs who have gone around the world and done some good work in other places, but in this case, I'm sorry to say it's just not the case."
The prisoners held at Guantánamo have been classified as enemy combatants and have not been brought before American courts. As a result, many remain in a state of legal uncertainty, and to protest their indefinite confinement some have tried suicide and engaged in hunger strikes.