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U.S. Should Immediately Close Any Secret Detention Facilities, U.N. Panel Says
Alexander G. Higgins
Associated Press
July 29, 2006
GENEVA (AP) - A U.N. rights panel Friday demanded the immediate closure of any secret U.S. detention facilities and criticized Washington on a range of other issues, calling for a moratorium on capital punishment and improved treatment of poor and black citizens following Hurricane Katrina.
Officials in Washington said the U.N. Human Rights Committee was out of bounds in examining U.S. practices outside the United States, but said they would consider its recommendations.
"The committee is concerned by credible and uncontested information that the state party has seen fit to engage in the practice of detaining people secretly and in secret places for months and years on end," according to the 12-page report by the committee, which held a two-day hearing last week on U.S. compliance to a major human rights treaty.
"Our initial reaction is disappointment," said State Department official Matthew Waxman, who led a U.S. delegation to the hearing. He said the panel appeared to ignore much of the American testimony.
The 18 independent experts on the committee, which examines on a rotating basis the record of all 156 signatories to the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, said U.S. practices violate the rights of detainees and their families.
The United States "should only detain persons in places in which they can enjoy the full protection of the law," the report said. "It should also grant prompt access by the International Committee of the Red Cross to any person detained in connection with an armed conflict."
In a conference call from Washington, U.S. officials refused to confirm or deny reports that there have been secret detention centers in Europe and elsewhere.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is supposed to have access to all prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. It says it knows of people detained by the United States whom they have not found in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sandra Hodgkinson, another State Department official, said the Red Cross "does have access to various battlefield locations, not just in GuantanamoBay, to meet with prisoners and detainees.
"We take very seriously their role in applicable locations and we will continue to do that," Hodgkinson said.
Waxman denied allegations that the United States mishandles terror suspects. "Any idea that any United States or other detention operations or other activities in the war on terrorism are beyond the law is simply false."
The United States maintains the treaty applies only to its national territory and not the U.S. military or its installations abroad, which are governed by other domestic and international laws.
"Despite this clear limitation of its mandate, the committee has made at least six separate recommendations that concern U.S. activities outside the territorial United States," U.S. State Department legal counsel John B. Bellinger III said.
On U.S. domestic issues, the committee said:
--The United States should adopt a moratorium on executions on grounds that capital punishment appears to be disproportionately imposed on minority groups and poor people.
--"In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it (the United States) should increase its efforts to ensure that the rights of poor people and in particular African-Americans are fully taken into consideration in the reconstruction plans with regard to access to housing, education and health care."
-- The United States should give residents of Washington, D.C. the same voting rights as other Americans, allowing them to elect representatives with full voting powers to the Senate and House of Representatives.
"We're really encouraged and satisfied by the committee's bold recommendations," said Jamil Dakwar of the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're hoping that this will resonate in Washington."
Criticism by the panel brings no penalty beyond international scrutiny.
The experts, many of them law professors or jurists in their home countries, are not paid for their committee service but their expenses are covered for meetings in Geneva and New York. The U.S. member of the panel, Ruth Wedgwood, by tradition does not participate in the review of her own country. The panel also includes members from Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa.
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