USA / CUBA: Nearly five years after the arrival of the first detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Prison, the Human Rights Watch again calls for the United States to end its holding of the prisoners and either release them, or officially charge

Nearly five years after the arrival of the first detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Prison, the Human Rights Watch again calls for the United States to end its holding of the prisoners and either release them, or officially charge them. Thursday, January 11, 2007 will be the fifth anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo, and Human Rights Watch says that more than 400 people are still being held captive. In 2002, the first group of al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners arrived at the U.S. Navy base in south-eastern Cuba from Afghanistan for indefinite detention in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Human Rights Watch U.S. Program Advocacy Director, Jennifer Daskal said that her organization is not pleased to see the prison reach it's fifth birthday. "Well, it's a milestone, but an unfortunate milestone. We have 400 individuals who are still being held at Guantanamo Bay, without charge, and denied access to court to challenge the basis of their detention," said Daskal. The United States says that many of the detainees are considered dangerous and possibly suicidal followers of Osama bin Laden. According to Human Rights Watch, however, some of the detainees are people who have been turned over or given up to the U.S. and imprisoned without proper background research. Said Daskal, "The administration really created a huge problem for itself when from the get go it didn't hold what are called article five hearings, to do an accurate assessment of who these detainees were and to do an accurate sorting at the beginning. By bringing them to Guantanamo, they really created a hard situation that's hard for them to solve. It's Human Rights' position that these detainees at this point need to be either charged with a criminal crime, or released." There have been international protests to close the Guantanamo, and the prison has suffered from accusations of abuse, but the U.S. has maintained that it is in its right to hold the detainees indefinitely. Former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, while still in office, defended Guantanamo's existence. Soon after the arrival of the detainees in 2002, Rumsfeld said, "They will be handled in the right way. They will be handled not as prisoners of war, because they're not, but as unlawful combatants. As I understand it, technically, unlawful combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention. We have indicated that we do plan to, for the most part, treat them in a manner that is reasonably consistent with the Geneva Convention, to the extent they are appropriate." The arrival of the detainees on U.S.-controlled territory came four months after the September 11 attacks on the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people and propelled the country into a war on terrorism. The detainees were captured in a U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan which saw the country's hard-line Taliban rulers, said to have harboured bin Laden, swept from power.

ITN Source | January 10, 2007

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