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UN Experts To Renew Call For US To Close Guantanamo

Dow Jones International News
September 21, 2006 

GENEVA (AP)--United Nations rights experts plan to renew calls for the U.S. to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects in an address to the global body's top human rights watchdog Thursday.
 
The experts will present to the 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council their report on Guantanamo, a summary of which was released in February demanding the United States close the detention facility and saying it was effectively a torture camp where prisoners had no access to justice.
 
The U.S. has rejected the allegation, and said the military treated all detainees humanely.
 
The experts report to the council, but have great latitude in deciding what to investigate and their views don't necessarily represent the United Nations' views. They are unpaid for their work, but are compensated for their expenses.
 
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he didn't necessarily agree with some of the opinions in the 54-page report, which accused the United States of practices that "amount to torture" and demanded detainees be allowed a fair trial or be freed.
 
Nevertheless, Annan said Washington should close the camp as soon as is possible.
 
The panel had sought access to Guantanamo Bay since 2002, but refused a U.S. offer for three experts to visit the camp in November after being told they couldn't interview detainees. They launched their investigation anyhow after saying they had reliable accounts that suspected terror detainees being held there have been tortured.
 
Many of the allegations in the report had been made before. However, this was the first U.N.-sanctioned inquiry into U.S. practices at Guantanamo. It was authorized by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which was replaced by the council in June.
 
The commission came to be discredited in recent years because it included as members countries with poor human rights records, such as Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba, who have tried to shield each other from censure. But investigators often criticized their native countries and other members of the commission.
 
There are about 450 detainees at Guantanamo, which was opened in January 2002.

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