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Guantanamo Detention Camp Continues "To Be Necessary"

Gulf Times
August 31, 2006

THE US military's Guantanamo Bay detention camp continues to exist because it remains necessary, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said yesterday.

Replying to a question at a press roundtable held at US Ambassador Chase Untermeyer's residence, the visiting official explained the need of the US for the much maligned military prison.

"We are engaged in a war on terror, there are people who are captured on the battlefield and we have to do something with them," he said.

In certain cases, the "enemy combatants" are returned to their home countries, and in some cases an evaluation is made whether or not they continue to remain dangerous, or have intelligence information.

"If the answers to these questions are no, then in some cases we release them or return them to their home countries," the top official said while maintaining that the "US has no interest in being the world's jailers."

Gonzales said that as soon as Guantanamo is no longer necessary, it will be shut down.

Answering another question, he said that there is a misperception about conditions at Guantanamo and the treatment of enemy combatants there.

"The notion that the US does not meet legal obligations with regard to the detainment camp is a misperception," he said.

Referring to the situation in Iraq, Gonzales, who was in Baghdad on Tuesday, observed that people in the region have unrealistic expectations of a new democracy.

"What the Iraqi people are trying to do is very, very difficult, and I think it is going to take some time," he said.

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