- WASHINGTON -- The Guantanamo
Bay prison camp - established after the terror attacks of 11 September
and the war in Afghanistan - was meant to be a temporary detention centre,
somewhere to hold the "worst of the worst".
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- Almost two years later, the camp has been transformed
into a de facto permanent facility where 660 adults and three children
are kept in a legal black hole, cut off from the outside world and with
no idea whether they will ever be charged with a crime or released. Critics
claim the prison, which operates with hardly any independent scrutiny,
has become a live experiment in long-term interrogation where experts constantly
seek to hone and improve their techniques.
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- "It's like it has become a cold storage facility,"
said Richard Bourke, a lawyer in Louisiana representing two Australian
citizens who are among the prisoners. "You hear comments from the
camp commander about how they are constantly improving their interrogation
techniques. They are just experimenting in areas that interest them."
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- Guantanamo Bay and the nine Britons held there have become
the focus of increasing tension between Britain and the US and will be
a subject of talks between George Bush and Tony Blair this week.
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- It was announced in the summer that two of the Britons,
Moazzam Begg, 35, and Feroz Abbasi, 23, were among six prisoners selected
to be tried by military tribunals, a process outside the normal judicial
process and without the protection usually offered to defendants. In this
process Mr Bush would act in effect as the ultimate arbiter on what would
happen to the prisoners if convicted.
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- Belatedly and with little apparent enthusiasm, the British
Government has sought to obtain some safeguards for Mr Abbasi and Mr Begg.
Until it was announced that they were to be placed before a tribunal, Britain
did very little to help the nine, a position that was in stark contrast
to the governments of other prisoners at Guantanamo, such as Sweden.
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- Although the prosecution has been officially put on hold,
the prisoners' lawyers remain extremely worried. Louise Christian, a solicitor
representing the family of Mr Abbasi, said last night: "I am very
concerned that he has made some sort of confession. The military tribunal
process is technically on hold - just this morning I received another letter
from the [UK] Attorney General that repeated the US denial that there has
been some sort of a deal. But I am concerned that a confession has obtained
under conditions that amount to coercion. They have been interrogated for
nearly two years without a lawyer being present."
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- Few critics claim that prisoners at Camp Delta, as the
incarceration unit is known, suffer physical torture, though in the first
six months of its operation interrogators used techniques known as "stress
and duress" to intimidate and soften up their subjects. Such techniques
include sleep deprivation, exposing prisoners to hot or cold conditions
and making them sit or stand in uncomfortable positions.
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- But lawyers and activists say the prisoners - to whom
the Bush administration refuses to grant the protection of the Geneva Conventions
- face a form of psychological torture by being refused information about
their future or access to legal advice. There are regular reports of suicide
attempts among the prisoners and recently Commander Louis Louk, the officer
in charge of the prison's hospital, revealed that one in five of the prisoners
received medication for what he termed "clinical depression".
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- Against this backdrop the Bush administration received
unprecedented criticism last month from the International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC), the only non-state organisation permitted to visit
the camp, which said its refusal to inform prisoners about their future
was causing an intolerable situation. "The main concern for us is
that the US authorities have effectively placed them beyond the law,"
said Amanda Williamson, an ICRC spokes-woman. "After more than 18
months of captivity, the internees have no idea about their fate, no means
of recourse through any legal mechanism. They have been placed in a legal
vacuum, a legal black hole. This, for the ICRC, is unacceptable."
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- Despite such criticism, the attitude of the US appears
clear. While it has not yet charged a single prisoner held at Guantanamo
Bay, there are no plans to release the majority of them soon. Although
a handful of the oldest and most sick have been repatriated the US authorities
are putting up long-term buildings at the base and replacing the razor
wire and fencing with solid walls.
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- Campaigners say that rather than building permanent prison
facilities, the US should grant the prisoners legal access and allow them
"due process". Wendy Patten, US advocacy director of Human Rights
Watch, said it was essential that the US observed the Geneva Conventions,
which would give the prisoners free and unfettered access to lawyers.
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- "Here are a set of rules that governments abide
by during times of war," she said. "The signal that the US sends
out by refusing to observe them is that it is all right to pick and choose
from the rules of war."
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- Campaigners received a boost last week when the Supreme
Court announced that it would examine whether Guantanamo Bay fell within
the jurisdiction of the US courts. Lower courts had supported the claim
of the Bush administration that Guantanamo Bay, technically leased from
Cuba, was outside the jurisdiction and prisoners were not eligible for
the protection of the US constitution. If the Supreme Court places Guantanamo
Bay within US legal jurisdiction there is likely to be a flood of lawsuits
demanding the US to charge the prisoners or release them. Ms Patten said:
"The question is can the government carve out a place in the world
beyond the law, beyond the reach of the courts that review the legality
of such actions."
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=465110
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