U.N Officials Request Access to Guantanamo Bay (moved from ATSNN)

U.N human rights investigators have cited "persistent and credible" reports of torture as the reason to request access to the U.S detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The United States has failed to respond to such requests since early 2002 and leads most human rights lawyers to believe that the United States has something to hide.



Whats there to hide from world wide scrutiny? Does the dentention facility have skeletons in its closet that just cannot be shared with the U.N?

Will the old jem of "national security" be raised to deny this request? Im sure countries such as Burma are waiting with baited breath at how the USA will respond to this. Afterall, they will all cite the exact same reasons for the denial of access to their detention camps.

Guantanamo should be closed, even Goebbels got a trial.

Now the UN wants to get involved with the US in the war on terrorism?

Maybe the UN just wants to take some heat off their own issues....like Oil for Food?

Exactly DTOM!

Why don't they go fix Darfur or inspect Chinese prisons where people are really being killed and tortured instead of this political stunt?

I think this quote says quite a lot:

"At a certain point, you have to take well-founded allegations as proven in the absence of a clear explanation by the government," Nowak said.

However, he added: "We are not making a judgment if torture or treatment under degrading conditions has taken place."

And this is probably explanation enough.

The United States has criticized the commission because its members include countries with tyrannical governments and poor human rights records, but the experts operate autonomously, often reproaching their own countries and others in the commission.

The International Red Cross has inspected the facility and they are hardly pro-America. Being judged by tyrants would probably be very ill advised.

U.S. officials so far have allowed only the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit detainees at Guantanamo, which started being used as a detention center for terror suspects allegedly linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

The ICRC keeps its findings confidential, reporting them solely to the detaining power, although some of the reports have been leaked by what the ICRC terms third parties.

Yahoo




[edit on 2005/6/25 by GradyPhilpott]