U.N. report alleges torture of Guantanamo detainees
Maggie Farley Los Angeles Times Feb. 13, 2006 12:00 AM
NEW YORK - A draft U.N. report on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay concludes that the U.S. treatment of them violates their right to physical and mental health, and, in some cases, constitutes torture.
It also urges the United States to close the military prison in Cuba and bring the captives to trial on U.S. territory, charging that Washington's justification for the continued detention is a distortion of international law.
The report, compiled by five special envoys to the United Nations who interviewed U.S. officials, former prisoners, and detainees' lawyers and families, is the product of a year-and-a-half-long investigation ordered by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The team did not have access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Its findings - notably, a conclusion that the violent force-feeding of hunger strikers, incidents of excessive violence used in transporting prisoners and combinations of interrogation techniques "must be assessed as amounting to torture" - are likely to stoke criticism of the detention facility.
More than 500 people captured abroad since 2002 as "enemy combatants" are detained at Guantanamo.
"We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the U.S. government," said Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, one of the envoys. "There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture."
The draft report, reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, has not been officially released, as comments and clarifications from the U.S. government are being incorporated.
In November, the Bush administration offered the U.N. team the same tour of the detention facility given to journalists and members of Congress, but it refused to allow the envoys access to prisoners. Because of that, the U.N. group declined the visit.
The International Red Cross is the only party allowed by the U.S. government to have access to prisoners and monitor their health, but the organization is forbidden from publishing its findings.
Nowak said he did not expect major changes to the report's conclusions and recommendations as a result of the U.S. government's response.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department would not comment on U.N. matters.
The report is not legally binding, but human rights and legal advocates said they hoped it would add weight to similar findings by rights-monitoring groups.
"I think the effect of this will be to revive concern about the government's mistreatment of detainees, and to get people to take another look at the legal basis," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "There are lots of lingering questions about how do you justify holding these people."
The report focuses on the U.S. government's legal basis for detention of prisoners as described in a formal response to the U.N. inquiry: "The law of war allows the United States - and any other country engaged in combat - to hold enemy combatants without charges or access to counsel for the duration of hostilities. Detention is not an act of punishment, but of security and military necessity. It serves the purpose of preventing combatants from continuing to take up arms against the United States," it said.
But the U.N. team concluded there had been insufficient due process to determine whether the more than 750 people detained at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002 were "enemy combatants," and determined that the main purpose of their confinement was interrogation, not to prevent them from taking up arms. The United States has released or transferred more than 260 Guantanamo Bay.