International Denounces

The nearly three hundred people crowded behind barricades in the sweltering sun were visibly moved by the accounts, occasionally erupting with chants of "Guantanamo Must Go" to statements from Imara of CCR that "torture is immoral and unpatriotic," and NYC Councilwoman Margarite Lopez’s warning that "History will not be neutral."

Among the protestors gathering signatures to demand that Congress close Guantanamo Detention Center was Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out activist Sally Davidson, who said she was there to "support the troops (in Iraq) and bring them home alive now."

Ms. Davidson noted the growing protest among military families and within the military itself to the continued occupation of Iraq.

Flyers and speakers exhorted demonstrators to mobilize for the mass protest against the US war in Iraq, which will be held in Washington, DC in September, and for the "massive day of resistance" all over the United States called for November 2.

UN Experts Denounced US Tortures in Guantanamo

United Nations, Jun 24 (Prensa Latina) Senior UN human rights experts have denounced the US government’s failure to allow them to visit detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo naval base, following serious allegations of cruel torture.

A statement issued in Geneva underlines that Washington has ignored their repeated requests, thus showing it is not willing to cooperate with the United Nations human rights office on this issue that has unleashed world denunciation.

After stressing that no nation is above international human rights law, the UN experts said they will jointly conduct an quest based on all credible sources regarding the situation of the detainees at the Pentagon’s prison camp in Guantanamo.

The statement was signed by Leandro Despouy, Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and lawyers; Paul Hunt, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and Mandred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Another signer of the UN statements is Leila Zerrougui, Chairwoman-Rapparteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, who represents all working groups of the Special Procedures of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

The experts stressed they have reports, from reliable sources, of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, arbitrary detention, violations of their right to health and due process rights.

Subir

Carter: Guantanamo Terror Prison, an Embarassment for US

Washington, Jun 8 (Prensa Latina) Calling it an embarrassment for the United States, former president James Carter called for the Bush administration to shut down the terror prison in the Guantanamo Naval Base.

"The US continues to suffer terrible embarrassment and a blow to our reputation ... because of reports concerning abuses of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo," Carter said Tuesday after a two-day human rights conference at his Atlanta center.

About 540 detainees are still being held at Guantanamo military compound that occupies a portion of territory in eastern Cuba in defiance to the will of the Cuban government and people.

Some have been there more than three years without being charged with a crime. Most were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 and were sent to Guantanamo Bay in hope of extracting useful intelligence about the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Carter urged the United States to make sure no detainees are held incommunicado and that all are told the charges against them.

The words in the headline don’t come from the mouth of an Islamic extremist or one of the United States’ traditional adversaries. They are the words of Irene Khan, Secretary General of the world’s most celebrated human rights organization, as she launched the human rights group’s 2005 report, which covered the global human rights situation during the previous year.

Khan’s astonishingly harsh assertion was part of a larger indictment of U.S. policy under the Bush administration contained in the annual report of Amnesty International (AI), the world’s most prestigious human rights organization. The Amnesty report, which covered 149 countries, decried the human rights situation in many countries but reserved its strongest criticism for the United States. In a section titled “’Terror’, ‘counter-terror’ and the rule of law,” the AI report states:

U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly asserted that the USA was founded upon and is dedicated to the cause of human dignity. It was a theme of his speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2004. Yet during his first term of office, the USA proved to be far from the global human rights champion it proclaimed itself to be.

In a statement evidently aimed at the Bush administration, AI’s Khan warned of “a dangerous new agenda” which couches human rights and torture in deceptive language:

Governments are betraying their promises on human rights. A new agenda is in the making with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitize torture.

The 2005 AI report took special notice of the Bush administration’s attempt to redefine torture, referring to “a series of government memorandums that emerged after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke – which suggested that the administration was discussing ways in which its agents could avoid the international ban on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment – indicated that the U.S. administration’s stated opposition to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment was paper-thin.”

Calling human rights “not only a promise unfulfilled but a promise betrayed,” the report goes on to say that “the ‘war on terror’ appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than in countering international ‘terrorism’.”

Had the performance of the U.S. media over the last few years not demonstrated the extent to which it has been cowed by the Bush administration and the right, one would have thought the AI report would be a big story. For more than two decades, the United States has positioned itself as the arbiter of the human rights records of every country on the planet. President Bush constantly lectures other nations and leaders about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. For an impartial, highly respected human rights organization, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, to voice such a tough and comprehensive critique of United States policies and actions is news –except in the Neverland that much of the U.S. media has become. Indeed, in its constant and misguided quest for a false “balance” between plain truth and the “truths” of power, much of the U.S. media reported the predictable and self-serving denials from officials almost as prominently as the charges contained in the AI report. Even the best media gave short shrift to the AI report; the New York Times, for example, carried a single story.

The U.S. media is often remarkably good in reporting about the trees – stories about specific abuses; where it tends to fall down is when it comes to “connecting the dots” to expose the existence of the forest, as the AI report does. Indeed, in the wake of the much-ignored AI report and without reference to it, the Los Angeles Times reported a story (Long and Unexplained Jailings Anger Iraqis, May 29) that suggests that the United States in 2005 continues the practices decried in the AI report:

A year after the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal erupted, Iraqi anger has flared anew over the growing numbers of detainees held without charge at the notorious detention center and another prison in the south.

In the battle against the insurgency, U.S. military sweeps net many guerrillas, but also thousands of people whose offenses are nonexistent, minor or impossible to prove. They are often held for months, only to be released without explanation.

The Bush administration seems to have learned nothing from its bitter experience in Iraq. In a desperate attempt to “break the back” of the insurgency – a goal which seems more elusive than ever but which the administration needs to achieve before it can declare victory and begin to pull out the troops – U.S. actions breed new insurgents and set the stage for more human rights abuses. Ultimately, the Bush administration’s betrayal of international law and human rights is also a betrayal of the interests of the United States and the American people.

Washington, May 27 (Prensa Latina) The US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has unveiled documents showing that detainees at Guantanamo naval base, Cuba, complained about the mistreatment of the Koran and that many said they were severely beaten, The Washington Post reported.

The documents specifically include an allegation from a prisoner that guards had "flushed a Koran down the toilet."

The newspaper says Pentagon officials said investigators have identified five incidents of "mishandling" the Koran by military guards and investigators. It was the first time Pentagon officials had acknowledged mistreatment of the Muslim holy book, though they insisted that the episodes were minor and occurred in the Guantanamo jail´s early days.

The Newsweek magazine was target of angry attacks by the administration of George W. Bush for bringing allegations about the abuse of the Koran.

Washington, May 27 (Prensa Latina) A columnist of the New York Times urged the US administration to shut down the Guantanamo naval base Washington occupies against the will of the Cuban people and government.

Thomas Friedman, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, called to dismantle the facility due to the international condemnation of the continuous denunciations of tortures in its prison.

Abuses at Guantanamo and other US Army prisons prove the Defense Department penitentiary system for its anti-terrorist crusade is out of control, the journalist denounced.

Friedman believes the jail enclave not only discredits Washington, but also allies such as Great Britain, Germany, Canada and Australia.

His report was released amid thorny domestic debates on the proposal to close 150 US military facilities.

It also follows reports by German newspapers on denunciations on the Koran and violations of the civil rights of detainees illegally held at the US-occupied Guantanamo Naval base in Cuba.

According to the Thuringer Allgmeine paper, the Newsweek was right when it reported on the Koran profanation at the military facility.

Harsh criticism of the Bush administration forced the Newsweek to remove what it published, but civil right advocates and Los Angeles Times have reported the same denunciations.

The daily said the Newsweek report on the throwing of Koran books to lavatories in the military base triggered protests in Pakistan, Iran and other Muslim countries.

The Thuringer Allgmeine said the White House termed the civil right organization´s accusations ridiculous, as they compared the base with a concentration camp.

It is a cynical reaction to the people jailed in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, denounced the newspaper.

Another German daily, Brauschweiger Zeitung, indicated that the West should not be surprised nor infuriated if demonstrators burned US flags in Iraq or Iran, because it is the US which is responsible for that.

The paper says the US is the most powerful military country of the world but its policy has left too much to be desired.

Presently, 500 people detained during the US invasion of Afghanistan and labelled as "enemy combatants" are held in the Cuban territory illegally occupied by the North American power.

THE United States is running an interrogation camp in Guantanamo like those established by the Nazis did during World War II, which the1949 Geneva Convention permanently prohibited after the war ended, according to Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in the United States.
In his book, Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, Ratner compares the detention and interrogation installations that the Bush administration is using on the illegal US military base in Guantanamo, to the special concentration camps conceived by Hitler’s German Armed Forces specifically for interrogating enemy combatants.
“They ran detention centers that were called interrogation camps, not prisoner of war camps,” explained Ratner. “The 1949 Geneva Conventions outlawed interrogation camps and required that such prisoners be treated as POWs. What we have in Guantánamo today is an illegal interrogation camp.”
The US administration refuses to call the Guantanamo prisoners “prisoners of war,” and refers to them as “enemy combatants.”
“There is no legal justification for what the United States is doing, no matter what you call the prisoners. The U.S. inquisitors are not just asking for name, rank, and serial number (as is required by the Convention): they are interrogating people morning, noon, and night. Whether you call it torture; cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; or stress and duress, it is a violation of international law,” affirms Ratner.
The CCR President describes how a lot of the people picked up by warlords of the Northern Alliance were kept in metal shipping containers, so tightly packed that they had to ball themselves up, and the heat was unbearable. The people inside were suffocating, so the Northern Alliance soldiers shot holes into the containers, killing some of the prisoners inside.
“Only a small number, 30 to 50 people in a container filled with 300 to 400 people survived” related Ratner.
He notes that 134 of the 147 prisoners later released from Guantánamo “were guilty of absolutely nothing.” Only 13 were sent to jail on their return to their country of origin. One prisoner released after a year claimed he was somewhere between 90 and 100 years old, according to Ratner. Old, frail and incontinent, he wept constantly, shackled to a walker.
“Guantánamo’s purpose is to break down the human personalities of the detainees in order to coerce from them whatever their captors want, to get them to confess to anything, to implicate anyone. Guantánamo is a prison where cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment – even torture – is practiced, and it is utterly illegal.”
However, the US authorities have admitted to using techniques that legally constitute cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, emphasized Ratner.
“Interrogation is why the U.S. administration is depriving all these people of any legal or human rights, why it shaves their heads and keeps them in cages, why they have no access to their families, why in many cases their families may not even know if they are dead or alive” writes Ratner.
“The Convention is crystal clear”
Under the United Nations Convention against Torture, an international treaty that the United States has also ratified, torture is an international crime.
That Convention “also establishes what is called universal jurisdiction for cases of torture,” Ratner explains.
“So, for example, if an American citizen engaged in torture anywhere in the world and was later found in France, let’s say, that person could be arrested in France and either tried for torture there or extradited to the place of the torture for trial. To the extent U.S. officials were or are involved in torture in Guantanamo or elsewhere, they should be careful about the countries in which they travel.”
Ratner also specified that torture committed by U.S. soldiers or private contractors acting under U.S. authority is a violation of federal law, punishable by the death penalty if the death of a prisoner results from the torture.
“Even if one argues that al Qaeda suspects are not governed by the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture and other human rights treaties ratified by the United States prohibit torture as well as other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.” insists the expert.
“The convention is crystal clear: under no circumstances can you torture people, whatever you call them, whether illegal combatants, enemy combatants, murderers, killers. You cannot torture anybody ever; it’s an absolute prohibition.”
According to Ratner, “Guantanamo has become a symbol of much that is wrong with our society.”
It is a “complex of brutal prisons where hundreds of men and boys from all over the world, many of whom we believe are neither guilty of any crime nor pose any danger to the security of the United States, are being held by the U.S. government under incredibly inhuman conditions and incessant interrogation.”
Even worse, indicated Ratner, they have “no idea when, if ever, they will see an end to their plight. These prisons are a symbol of the disdain with which the Bush administration has brushed aside longstanding precepts of international law and civilized conduct. It is indeed a national disgrace.”
Tortured by chains, electric shocks and sodomy
11 detainees in the Guantanamo Base reported that US soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan tortured them before sending them to the base. Their accounts included torture using chains, electric shocks and sodomy, according to notes taken by the US attorney Tom Wilner, which were divulged after remaining previously secret, according to an AP report.
Some of the men said that they confessed to having belonged to the Taliban’s religious militia or the Al-Qaeda network just to end their torture, noted the lawyer for 11 of the Kuwaitis detained in Guantanamo.

Montreal, Feb 9 (Prensa Latina) Young Canadian Omar Khadr was tortured at the US prison in Guantanamo Base, eastern Cuba, the lawyer of Khadr´s family, Dennis Edney denounced Thursday.

The prisoner, of Pakistani origin, is accused of having killed a US soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old. According to the lawyer, Khadr, now 18, was victim of mistreatment and human rights violations.

Edney said that his information is based on an interview of a US lawyer with Khadr, still jailed at the base, since Canadians have no access to the detention facility.

The US lawyer said US troops placed a hood over the prisoner"s head and set trained dogs on him.

Prisoners at Guantanamo base were used to test many of the tortures applied by the US troops in the Iraqi prison of Abu Graib, which brought about a huge international scandal.

Los Angeles, Feb 1 (Prensa Latina) The policy applied by the US in the naval base of Guantanamo (Cuba) against prisoners accused of terrorism generated a legal chaos, as told by an editorial in US newspaper La Opinion.
The practice to turn the Guantanamo base into a prison for possible terrorists makes judicial sentences more controversial and confusing, La Opinion said.
At the bottom of the problem is the arbitrariness with which the administration of US President George W. Bush handled the topic since the beginning of the war against terrorism.
La Opinion said this was a motive to keep prisoners out of any national or international legal protection, and that it was not surprising that each day, there are more judicial decisions condemning the work of the US federal government.
The US newspaper made reference to a decision by federal judge Joyce Hens Green, who determined prisoners in the base of Guantanamo have constitutional rights which should be respected.
As an example, La Opinion mentioned the case of an old lady in Switzerland, who was declared an "enemy fighter" because she wrote a check to an orphan home in Afghanistan that was linked to Al Qaeda, despite the old lady did not know anything about the links, and the decision of the US Supreme Court in June, when it stated that "enemy fighters" have no inferior rights to those of the US citizens, to question the evidence against them.
La Opinion said the US government, instead of following solid democratic regulations, adopted an irregular treatment with prisoners -including torture- and military penal processes, which resemble more a sham, than a fair trial.
La Opinion pointed out that what happens in the Guantanamo naval base is but a spot in the war against terrorism which should be corrected as soon as possible by US courts.

ELEVEN detainees on the base in Guantánamo have reported that US soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan tortured them prior to sending them to the Cuban base, using chains, electric shocks and sodomy, according to notes taken by a lawyer circulated on Monday, reports AP.
Some of the men said that they had confessed to having belonged to the Taliban or the Al Qaeda terrorist network solely for the purpose of ending the torture, stated Tom Wilner, lawyer to 11 Kuwaitis being held at Guantánamo.
For some time now, human rights defense groups and lawyers for the prisoners have condemned the fact that part of the information which led to the detentions in Guantánamo was obtained through abuse and torture. Many of the 545 prisoners have been in Guantánamo for over three years, the majority of them without being charged.
"At Guatanamo, the physical abuse, at least for the Kuwaitis, has stopped, but there has been a switch to mental torture," said Wilner during a telephone interview from Washington. He added that Charles Manson, who led a group of adolescents in an orgy of murders at the beginning of the 1970s, has better prison conditions than these men.
Amongst Wilner’s clients is a young man accused of being Osama bin Laden’s spiritual advisor and a low-ranking member of the Taliban regime. No charges have been brought against either of them.
According to Wilner’s notes, one of the detainees told him that the US soldiers had repeatedly insisted that they were members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. They continued to beat him until eventually he told them he was a member of the Taliban. The detainees said they did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals. Paraguayan Senator Domingo Laino told Prensa Latina that "many female Iraqi prisoners have been raped, and on being released, committed suicide or were killed by their families, because in Islam when a woman is raped it is considered to be dishonorable for her and her family." Lain is to launch his book Derechos Humanos Estados Unidos-Iraq (Human Rights United States – Iraq) in Havana.

Washington, Feb 13(Prensa Latina) A 49-year-old former Australian prisoner denounced he was tortured by US guards at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, The New York Times daily reported.

Mamdouh Habib said he was mistreated, beaten by US soldiers who tried to make him confess an alleged involvement in terrorist actions.
Describing his ordeal, Habib, who was later released as there was no evidence against him, said he was first arrested in Pakistan in late 2001 and sent for some time to a prison in Egypt. After that he was sent to Guantanamo where he was held for about 40 months.
He said he was kicked, humiliated and tortured with electric shocks at the Cuban territory illegally occupied by the US.
Habib was also forced to watch photos of his wife with overlapping images of Al Qaida´s leader Osama bin Laden and naked women.

Washington, Feb 8 (Prensa Latina) Human rights lawyer Tom Wilner has accused US troops of torturing several Kuwaiti prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base.
Wilner, who represents 11 Kuwaiti convicts at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, a Cuban territory illegally occupied by Washington, said detainees are tortured and abused by US forces, which beat them with chains, sodomize them and give them electrical shocks.
"These are classic stories of men who ended up in Guantanamo by mistake," charged the lawyer.
In a conference call from Washington on Monday the lawyer detailed the abuse, citing recently declassified notes from his meetings with the detainees.
Wilner also upheld that another five detainees have complained about the same treatment. They were stripped naked and kept without clothes for extended periods of time.
The worst of those abuse cases occurred at US detention facilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan before the Kuwaiti men were transferred to Guantanamo.
"In the original prisons in Pakistan and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo, the most disturbing thing to most of them was religious humiliation. They were mocked for being Muslims," the lawyer added.
The US has been facing mounting international criticism for torturing prisoners at its detention centers all over the world. FBI memos that were recently made public also accused Pentagon interrogators of using torture techniques.


Section Start
International Denounces Even Colin Powell Says Close Guantanamo Prison New Report of Torture at US Guantanamo Base Terror Suspect Tortured by United States Illegal U.S. Military Trials Begin in Guantánamo Cuba Fingers Guantanamo at Event US Policy on Guantanamo Terms as Hypocrite Guantanamo Jail Symbolizes Injustice, says British Prosecutor US Army Sees No Abuse at Guantanamo Base US Pacifists Meet Cuban Leaders Ban Ki Moon Says Close US Guantanamo Jail Mother Cries for Son at US Guantanamo Jail US Peace Group, Cuba: End Iraq War US Peace Activists Protest at Guantánamo Pacifists Challenge US Base in Cuba Europe: Close the US Prison in Guantanamo George Bush Is the Terrorist, Says Former Guantanamo Prisoner Bush Policies Embarrass US Citizens Cindy Sheehan and Other Anti-war Activists in Cuba to Demand the Closing of Guantanamo Prison Cindy Sheehan in Havana with Other Anti-war Activists International Campaign to Close U.S. Prison at Guantánamo Chile Group Says Close Guantanamo Guantanamo: American Gulag Human Rights experts issue Joint Report on situation of detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Will the Guantanamo Prisoner Issue Reach Geneva ? US to Ignore Guantanamo Detainees Defense attorney denounces horrors at US Base The Guantanamo Snow Ball US Protestors Demand "Shut Down Guantanamo" UN Experts Denounced US Tortures in Guantanamo Carter: Guantanamo Terror Prison, an Embarassment for US “Guantánamo has become the gulag of our time” FBI Acknowledges Koran Mistreatment and Prisoner Abuse New York Time Journalist Calls to Shut Guantanamo Base A horrible interrogation camp like those used by the Nazis Canadian Tortured at Guantanamo Base Legal Policy against Prisoners in Guantanamo Base Regarded as Chaotic Prisoners sodomized and tortured with electric shocks US Torture in Guantanamo Denounced by Former Australian Prisoner US Tortures Kuwaitis at Guantanamo Naval Base Even Colin Powell Says Close Guantanamo Prison WASHINGTON, June 10, 2007.- The US detention center in Guantanamo, Cuba, should close immediately and the prisoners transferred to the United States for trial, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday, as reported by ANSA. The former senior Pentagon official also said that the jail, on the base located on illegally occupied Cuban territory, has become "an enormous problem" for the image of United States internationally. "If it was up to me, I would close Guantánamo not tomorrow but this afternoon," Powell told NBC. "Essentially, it has shaken the belief the world had in the American justice system by keeping a place like Guantánamo open and creating things like the military commissions. We don't need it and it is creating far more damage than any good we get from it," Powell concluded. (Cubaminrex-Granma) Subir New Report of Torture at US Guantanamo Base WASHINGTON , May 16, 2007.- A Pakistani prisoner at the US Guantanamo Naval Base, an offshore prison located on illegally occupied Cuban territory, said he was subjected to torture by the CIA and Pentagon. Majid Khan, 27, said he is still subjected to "physiological torture" at the detention camp where hundreds of prisoners from dozens of nations have been held for years without proper legal rights. As the basis for accusations against Khan, the US uses a transcription of a closed door hearing to establish the prisoner status as an "enemy combatant." The 39-page document, which in some parts was censored, contains a summary of the torture allegedly suffered by the prisoner, reported ANSA news agency. Khan, who grew up in Maryland , is the only US resident among the 15 "high value" detainees that the US government accuses of having ties with Al Qaeda. However, he denies any relationship with Osama bin Laden and maintained that the FBI also harassed his family in Pakistan with repeated interrogations. Khan has protested his situation on numerous occasions with hunger strikes and in recent weeks he tried to cut his veins with his teeth. (Cubaminrex- Granma) Subir Terror Suspect Tortured by United States WASHINGTON, March 31, 2007.- A Saudi man held in US custody for five years told a military hearing he was tortured into confessing a role in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri said he had faced years of torture after his arrest in 2002, a Pentagon transcript from the closed-door hearing said. Mr Nashiri said he made up stories to satisfy his captors, the transcript reads, but gave no details of torture. He was among 14 "high-value" detainees moved to Guantanamo in September. "One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way," Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri noted. The 14 men were previously held in secret CIA prisons but are now being detained in a maximum security wing in Guantanamo. The US has accused Mr Nashiri of being the leader of al-Qaeda's operations in the Gulf at the time of the attack in Yemen, which killed 17 US sailors and almost sunk the warship. He was tried in absentia in a Yemeni court in September 2004 and sentenced to death. Mr Nashiri's testimony was given at a military tribunal held at Guantanamo to determine his status as an "enemy combatant" on March 14, AFP news agency reports. "From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me," the transcript of his hearing read. According to his testimony he eventually "confessed" to playing a key role in the bombing of the USS Cole. "I just said those things to make the people happy," the transcript read. (Cubaminrex-RHC) Subir Illegal U.S. Military Trials Begin in Guantánamo CUBA, March 27, 2007.- Illegal U.S. military trials have begun in Guantánamo -- located in southeastern Cuba and occupied by the United States. A prisoner at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo, Australian David Hicks, has pleaded guilty at a military court to a charge of providing material support for terrorism. The 31-year-old Muslim convert was accused of attending al-Qaeda training camps and fighting with the Taleban. The plea means that Hicks, who has been at the camp for five years, will likely return home to serve his sentence. Hicks is the first detainee at the detention camp to face so-called terror charges under new U.S. rules. He was charged under the new Military Commissions Act, which human rights groups around the world condemn as illegal. According to the BBC, Hicks appeared at the hearing wearing khaki prison fatigues and with hair down to his chest -- grown, his lawyer said, to pull over his eyes at night to keep out the light and allow him to sleep. As the proceedings got under way, Hicks was formally charged and initially deferred entering a plea. But later on his lawyers told the judge he was pleading guilty. Other charges against him, including attempted murder, have been dropped. The BBC says that U.S. and Australian authorities have already agreed that Hicks will serve out his sentence in his native country. He faces a maximum sentence of life but after strong pressure from the Australian government, there is speculation that he will receive a shorter sentence. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told local media that he welcomed the conclusion to a legal process that he said took "far too long." Before the hearing, which was opened to members of the press, Hicks was allowed a two-hour reunion with his father and sister. He last saw his father, Terry Hicks, at a previous hearing in August 2004. David Hicks arrived in Guantánamo Bay in early 2002 after being captured in Afghanistan a month earlier. The former farm hand and kangaroo skinner was charged and started a trial process previously in August 2004. However, the U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled the system unconstitutional. The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush then put together a new military tribunal system that was pushed through the U.S. Congress. Hicks is the first person to be tried under the new procedures. Two others, Omar Khadr, a Canadian, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, from Yemen, have been indicted but have not yet been read sworn charges. The U.S. has said it plans to use the new system to prosecute about 80 of the remaining 385-or-so prisoners at the camp. The human rights organization Amnesty International has condemned the tribunals as "shabby show trials" and demanded that detainees be tried under the regular U.S. judicial system. David Hicks' lawyers and human rights monitors observing the hearings say the trials are rigged to ensure convictions and allow the information obtained through coercion and torture.(Cubaminrex-RHC) Subir Cuba Fingers Guantanamo at Event ECUADOR, March 9, 2007.- Cuban activists in Ecuador will be presenting experiences on rejection of the US military presence in the illegally occupied territory of Guantanamo, during the closing of the International Conference for the Elimination of Foreign Military Bases. Lourdes Cervantes, member of the Women for Peace Caravan and leader of the organization for solidarity with the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, will reiterate Cuba´s position of action against militarization and wars worldwide, during the closing of the meeting at Eloy Alfaro University, in Manta, Manabi province. Delegates at the conference, Manta´s residents, and members of popular and social movements will march in front of the Manta military base to rebuff the US military presence there. (Cubaminrex-PL) Subir US Policy on Guantanamo Terms as Hypocrite WASHINGTON, February 18, 2007.- US policy against prisoners at US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, in the southern east of Cuba, is the greatest of hypocrisies, as it reads an article published by California paper La Opinion Saturday. The article by Peter Singer, A US academician from Princeton University, describes tortures cases, and mistreatments that take place in the prison located at the territory illegally occupied by Washington in Cuba. According to Peter singer, these prisoners are unfairly treated and with no hope of having a fair trial, despite Washington declarations that there they count with an environment comparable to the one a luxury hotel, according to recent reports. Meantime this happens, "ideals professed by US will continue to look before the rest of the world as the greatest of the hypocrisies," he point out. When US President George W. Bush talks about "rights," at the same time his administration detains about 400 prisoners in the concentration camp located at Guantanamo. (Cubaminrex-PL) Subir Guantanamo Jail Symbolizes Injustice, says British Prosecutor MIAMI, February 13, 2007.- "Guantanamo Bay is unacceptable and should close; it is a symbol of injustice that the long tradition of American justice and liberty ought to see removed at the earliest moment," British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith told the American Bar Association on Monday. Guantanamo remains a symbol of injustice because prisoners held in the facility in Cuba cannot use United States courts to protest their detention and may be convicted of crimes on the basis of coerced evidence and other means not typically allowed in civilian courts, said Goldsmith. The attorney general joins the numerous calls from around the world to close down the prison located on illegally occupied Cuban territory where detainees are routinely tortured. "There remain fundamental problems with this system of detention," Goldsmith told the American Bar Association (ABA) at its meeting in Miami, reported AP. Goldsmith had called for the closing of Guantanamo last year as well before the Supreme Court rejected a US government plan to use Military Commissions to try the prisoners and Congress sent a law to President Bush in response to the court’s objections. "I am aware of the changes that have now been made, following the Military Commissions Act signed into law late last year. I welcome some of the changes made […] But I am aware of criticisms that remain: of a law which treats aliens in a different way from American citizens; that still allows coerced evidence to be used in certain cases; that excludes the application of habeas corpus," Goldsmith told the ABA. (Cubaminrex- Granma) Subir US Army Sees No Abuse at Guantanamo Base WASHINGTON, February 10, 2007.— The widely reported abuses against prisoners at the Guantanamo Naval Base never occurred says a US Army investigation released Wednesday that didn’t bother to interview the victims. The complaints of physical and psychological maltreatment of detainees at that Pentagon’s offshore prison camp, located on illegally occupied Cuban territory, were filed a year earlier in a sworn declaration by Marine Sgt. Heather Cerveny, reported Prensa Latina. Cerveny said that Guantanamo prison guards had bragged to her about beating detainees. However, Col. Richard Basset, the chief investigator, said there was insufficient proof to sustain Cerveny’s accusations and did not recommend any disciplinary action. Cerveny denounced that in conversations with soldiers at the base she learned about the physical and psychological abuse of the prisoners. She had visited the enclave as a member of the detainee’s legal defense team working for the Pentagon’s inspector general’s office. The Southern Command, based in Miami, argued that Cerveny’s investigation, which included interviews with suspects and medical personnel at the base, found no incriminating evidence. (Cubaminrex- Granma) Subir US Pacifists Meet Cuban Leaders CUBA, January 14, 2007.- US peace activists met with Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto and Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon, both members of the Communist Party's Political Bureau, the national TV network reported. During the last day in the nation, the anti-war delegation talked Saturday with the Culture minister on the rally held in the nearby area of the US Naval Base in Guantanamo, a portion of Cuban territory illegally occupied against the will of the Cubans. They also referred to the British document "Camino a Guantanamo" (Road to Guantanamo), which tell the horrors of that jail and whose screening will take place at Havana's Infanta movies. In the building of the Peoples Power National Assembly (Parliament), the group was welcomed by Alarcon, to whom they expressed gratitude to the Cuban people and government for their one-week stay in the island. The activists denounced the end of tortures and demanded the closure of that prison in the naval base in Guantanamo, which the George W. Bush government has become hell. Alarcon and the anti-war group exchanged on the naval base, the US seizure of that Cuban territory over a century ago and demonstrations taking place in that northern nation. (Cubaminrex-PL). Subir Ban Ki Moon Says Close US Guantanamo Jail UNITED NATIONS, January 12, 2007.- (Prensa Latina) The UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has called for the closure of the US prison at Cuba´s Guantanamo Bay. In a press conference after his speech on the fifth anniversary of the opening of the US detention camp, Ban said that like his predecessor Kofi Annan, he believes that the prison should be closed. The secretary general is scheduled to meet with the US President George Bush in Washington next week to discuss closure of the Guantanamo detention center. The United Nations and chiefly experts from the Human Rights Council have insisted on the need to close the Guantanamo prison, where nearly 400 people suspected of being terrorists are still detained without trial. (Cubaminrex-PL) Subir Mother Cries for Son at US Guantanamo Jail CUBA, January 12, 2007.- Zhora Zewawi, mother of a prisoner at the illegal US jail in Guantanamo, denounced that prisoners at that facility are being violated of the most elemental human rights. In an interview for Granma daily, Zhora pointed out she has practically no contact with her son Omar Deghayes, from whom she has only received a short letter with corrections, as a sign of censure. In his letters, Omar is allowed to write only greeting phrases, and cannot refer to the situation in the center, she said. "He is not allowed to move, comb his hair, or change clothes, which are rags," Zhora told the daily with tears on her face. As part of torture, he has been put in a room with very low temperatures for hours, until he can no longer withstand it and has to scream with cold, the mother indicated. The pacifist demanded justice for Omar and his fellow inmates and urged mothers of the world to call for closure of the prison. (Cubaminrex-PL) Subir US Peace Group, Cuba: End Iraq War CUBA, January 12, 2007.- US peace activists demanded the end of war in Iraq and the shutdown of the jail located in the illegal US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Civil fighters, former prisoners and relatives marched on Thursday outside the illegal enclave located in the eastern Cuban zone. Led by Cindy Sheehan, mother of a US soldier who was killed in Iraq, the group staged a vigil to protest that country s jail in Guantanamo and demand the end of the military occupation in Iraq. About 400 alleged Al Qaeda terrorist members have been imprisoned in the US naval base of Guantanamo since January 11, 2002, without trial. With placards and phrases, the anti-war activists rallied near the base, used in the so-called anti-terrorist crusade by George W. Bush s administration. A religious service took place in a place known as "La Glorieta" where attendees demanded justice for the 400 detainees of that penal center. Those pacifists, who traveled to Guantanamo, 910 km east of Havana, denounced warmongering and disrespect of international law (Cubaminrex-PL) Subir US Peace Activists Protest at Guantánamo CUBA, January 11, 2007.- The US peace group led by Cindy Sheehan is due to stage a vigil at that country‘s naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba on Thursday, to protest the US jail in that territory. About 400 alleged Al Qaeda terrorist members are still imprisoned in that military enclave, portion of Cuban territory illegally occupied against the will of the Cubans, since January 11, 2002, without trial. "Today’ s vigil and religious service coincide with the International Day for the shutdown of that prison," said Medea Benjamin, member of the pacifist delegation. The activist traveled along with Cindy Sheehan, named the "Peace Mother" after her campaign to demand the end of war in Iraq, where her son, US soldier Casey Sheehan, was killed. Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink and Women for Peace, noted that President Bush s desire to send 20,000 soldiers more to Iraq is another example of his wrong policy, full of revenge and disrespect of international law. Those pacifists, who traveled to Guantanamo, 910 km east of Havana, to demand the closing of that detention center, denounced warmongering and disrespect of international law. (Cubaminrex-PL) Subir Pacifists Challenge US Base in Cuba GUANTANAMO, January 11, 2007.- "We are pained at the stain of Guantanamo because of the illegal Naval Base maintained by the United States," affirmed Medea Benjamin, one of the pacifists visiting the city. "Coming to Guantanamo and having a close look at the jail set up by Washington in the military complex is one of our dreams," explained the anti-war leader at the International Conference Against Torture and War being held in this part of the Island. She condemned the hostile policy of President George W. Bush, the blockade imposed by Washington against Cuba and the laws that prevent normal relations between both peoples. Benjamin, the cofounder of CODEPINK presented the members of the delegation that includes Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and former colonel Ann Wright who resigned in protest of her country s invasion of Iraq. On Thursday the US pacifists will march to the military installation and hold a vigil and fast as an expression of repudiation of the torture center there, in existence since 2002. The US claims inmates have links with the Al-Qaeda network or Taliban terrorists. A similar crusade was held in 2005 when another group of US citizens, mostly religious people, made a pilgrimage to the proximities of the US installation. (Cubaminrex-PL) Subir Europe: Close the US Prison in Guantanamo Strasburg, January 9, 2007.- The European Council has called for the closing of the prison at the illegally occupied US Naval Base of Guantánamo, calling it a violation of human rights and a shame for the US. Just days before the fifth anniversary on January 11, of the opening of that detention center, the general secretary of the European Council, Ferry Davis, demanded that the prison be immediately closed and the prisoners either released or placed on trial. Davis affirmed the war against terrorism cannot be won with secret prisons, torture or inhumane conditions, clearly alluding to treatment of prisoners in the Guantanamo prison. Since the prison was opened, over 775 people, mainly captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan, have remained incarcerated there without due process. Experts say that 95% of the prisoners in Guantanamo were sold to US authorities. (Cubaminrex-RHC) Subir George Bush Is the Terrorist, Says Former Guantanamo Prisoner Asif Iqbal, a young British man of Pakistani origin, former prisoner at Camp Delta in Guantanamo, speaks with Granma. CUBA, January 9, 2007.- November 2001 will remain in the mind of Asif Iqbal as the beginning of the worst nightmare of his life. For two and a half years, he stopped being the young man who had left on a trip to Pakistan along with two friends, Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, to visit their parents, because they were going to get married. Suddenly, all three were captured by the US occupying forces in Afghanist, labelled "enemy combatants" and transferred to Guantanamo as presumed terrorists. "I was arrested in the middle of the street without any warrant whatsoever simply because I am a Muslim. I was sent to a prison in the province of Khandahar where there were 2,500 other prisoners. I was among some 40 prisoners who were latter picked up by the Americans because I spoke English," Asif Iqbal told Granma. Asif Iqbal is in Cuba as part of an international anti-war delegation that on January 11 —the fifth anniversary of the first group of prisoners taken to Guantanamo— will demand the closure of the detention center at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo, located at the illegal base on Cuban territory What happened in Guantanamo? In January of 2002 I was transferred to Guantanamo. I stayed at Camp Delta that was called a different name at that time. I was treated like an animal. They tortured me savagely. I was confined under the most inhuman conditions that could be imagined. How did you get released? They never pressed charges against me. What do you think about the occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq and US policies in the name of the War on Terrorism? The only thing I can tell you is that the United States spends all its time looking for terrorists where there are none. For them we are all terrorists, but the only terrorist that I know is called George Bush. What does it mean to you to return to Guantanamo after what you have gone through? I want to expose to the world that there are still many people who have not been released from this place, and are being held without any charges or sentences against them, nor rights to defend themselves. This has to be denounced. I spent two years and a half there and never met any of the terrorists Bush talks about. I know that the majority of the people being held there are innocent. Is it a crime being Pakistani, Iraqi of Afghani….? By Deisy Francis Mexidor (Cubaminrex-Granma) Subir Bush Policies Embarrass US Citizens Affirms peace activist Cindy Sheehan in Cuba CUBA, January 8, 2007.- The atrocities committed by the Bush administration "are an embarrassment to many US citizens," said US "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan in Cuba on Sunday. Embraced in the antiwar cause since she lost her 24-year-old son in Iraq, Sheehan spoke about the war against terrorism begun by her country and pointed out that more than 600,000 Iraqis and 3,000 US soldiers (in Iraq) have died as a result. In an interview with Prensa Latina, Sheehan regretted that in the name of fighting terrorism the Bush administration tortures its prisoners at the Guantanamo Base, located on a territory occupied by the United States against the will of the Cuban people. Sheehan spoke about how the death of her son changed her life, unable to hide her look of pain. She also spoke about her three other children saying that they support what she is doing. Sheehan arrived to Cuba on Saturday along with four other women from the civic organization Code Pink: Women for Peace, which is calling for an end to the war in Iraq. The group of pacifists will be joined by other US citizens and plan to march to the fence of the US military base in Guantanamo in eastern Cuba on Thursday, January 11 to demand the prison camp, established five years earlier, be shut down. Sheehan said that their trip will coincide with the fifth anniversary of the prison’s opening in protest of the inhumane treatment given the prisoners, "who are jailed without a fair legal process." The "peace mom," who has considered the struggle of the detainees her own, attended a church service on Sunday at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in the Havana municipality of Marianao and visited social projects in the densely populated Pogolotti neighborhood. "We are here representing the US peace community, which struggles for understanding and peace for all peoples," Sheehan told the congregation. "We may not speak the same language but our hearts speak the same one, the language of love, and on behalf of this love we are going to Guantanamo." She also spoke about the warmth of the Cuban people and their hospitality and said she was happy to be in this Caribbean country "that dreamed of a better world." Sheehan said she wants people in her country to come to Cuba and added that when she goes home she is going to work actively to try to end the US blockade of Cuba. Sheehan is also the co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, created in 2005 by relatives of soldiers who died in Iraq and oppose the war. With her humanitarian activism, which included a prolonged protest in front of the Bush ranch in Texas, Sheehan has become acquainted with the cause of Venezuela, Iran, North Korea and other countries that Washington unilaterally categorizes as part of an axis of evil. "US citizens need to learn the other side of the story; we are here to learn the Cuban side of the story," concluded Cindy Sheehan. By Ulises Canales . (Cubaminrex- Granma) Subir Cindy Sheehan and Other Anti-war Activists in Cuba to Demand the Closing of Guantanamo Prison Cindy Sheehan and other prominent US anti-war activists are already in Cuba. Accompanied by an international delegation, they will head for the illegally-occupied naval base in Guantanamo CUBA, January, 8, 2007.- Five Americans actively opposed to the US war in Iraq arrived in Cuba on Saturday as the first contingent of a group of 12 international figures who on Thursday will go up to the entrance of the illegally occupied American naval base in Guantanamo. They will be demanding the closing of the detention facility, which has been used to house and torture those who Bush calls “enemy combatants.” The five Americans are: Cindy Sheehan, well-known as the “Peace Mom” since she decided to fight against the war following the death of her son in Iraq; Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the organization CODEPINK Women for Peace, the group that organized this anti-war action; former US Army colonel and diplomat Ann Wright, who resigned from her job in March 2003 in protest for the invasion of Iraq; Adele Welty, the mother of a fireman killed during the events of September 11, 2001; and Tiffany Burns, an activist with the organization Gold Star Families for Peace. In statements to the press upon their arrival, Medea Benjamin explained some of the activities that will be carried out in Cuba, emphasizing those that will take place in front of the American military prison. “This coming January 11 will mark the fifth year since the arrival of the first prisoners. Some 400 people are still locked up in that place and it is known that they have been subjected to all types of abuse there,” she said. Benjamin explained they are part of an international group that is requesting that the prison be closed. She said they expect to arrive in Guantanamo on the 10th and hold a press conference in which “lawyers who have taken the cases to the US Supreme Court will participate.” The US activist noted that, in addition to the legal experts, the delegation will be made up of film directors, a former prisoner held for four years in Guantanamo and subjected to torture, the mother and brother of an imprisoned youth who has lost an eye during his internment in the Camp Delta detention center. She thanked the Cuban Government for allowing the group to come to the island to carry out the protest action, and expressed gratitude to Havana’s Martin Luther King Center, the Cuban Institute of Friendship (ICAP) and “all the friends who have helped us make this trip.” Former US Army colonel Ann Wright commented that on January 11 there will be events around the entire world “to denounce what has been done in that prison. We are here to demonstrate that it has to close. It is necessary to seek justice, but not in that military prison.” Wright said as an employee of the US Army for 29 years, and as a retired diplomat, she thinks that the Guantanamo prison provides a horrible image for the United States. She stressed that in order to have the prison closed, true jurists needed to be involved in the process. Cindy Sheehan was categorical in responding to the question as to whether she feared reprisals by the Bush administration, which prohibits travel by to Cuba by American citizens. She responded “Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not afraid of anything.” “What is more important is the inhumanity that my government is perpetrating at Guantanamo, and if I were afraid I’d do absolutely nothing,” said Sheehan, adding that she is worried about the people being kept in Guantanamo, who are treated inhumanely. She said she was concerned that acts of retaliation could be carried out against US soldiers due to such treatment; my son, she said, died precisely for that reason. “I’m worried for the Iraqi people, who are dying daily because of my country. That is why I think that it is now the time for people to stand up and take on the cause of ending the war.” Medea Benjamin concluded that they have hope for change through Congress, and that they have gone all the way to Capitol hill to tell them that “we don't want an escalation of troops in Iraq, as President Bush is requesting. On the contrary, the vast majority of the American people are asking that the troops return home.” “When we return to the United States will be lobbying so that they (the legislators) also reject the new proposal that denies the right of people detained in Guantanamo to have a fair trial. We will return to request that they reject the Military Commissions Act.” Adele Welty pointed out that she was a part of the delegation because her son died on September 11. “He was a fireman and lost his life in the line of duty at the World Trade Center. He risked his life because he respected life and human dignity; however, in my son’s name and in those of each who died on September 11, there are tremendous acts of inhumanity being carried out in Guantanamo, in Iraq and in Afghanistan. I do not want such inhumanity or war to be the legacy that my son leaves.” By: Juana Carrasco Martin. (Cubaminrex-Juventud Rebelde) Subir Cindy Sheehan in Havana with Other Anti-war Activists CUBA, January 6, 2007.- A group of defenders of peace, including Cindy Sheehan, mother of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, arrived in Cuba on Saturday as part of a campaign to demand the immediate closing of Guantánamo prison. Sheehan is accompanied by a former prisoner of that facility -- illegally located in Cuban territory -- as well as attorneys and relatives of some detainees. The group will call for increased international actions against the U.S.-run prison and against torture. The delegation will protest the existence of the prison and will give a conference on the abuses committed there on the International Day for the Closing of Guantánamo, slated for Thursday, January 11th. Asif Igbal, released without charges after years of abuse, and Zohra Zewawi, whose son was jailed, tortured and mutilated in Guantánamo, are also in Cuba on the delegation. The group will be in Cuba until next Saturday, January 13th. Their program includes a visit to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center, the Latin American School of Medicine, the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and other places of interest. They will travel to the eastern province of Guantánamo on Thursday to express their rejection of torture and will participate in a press conference to be held in Havana, the Cuban capital. (Cubaminrex-RHC) Subir International Campaign to Close U.S. Prison at Guantánamo LONDON, December 21, 2006.- An international campaign calling on the U.S. to close its infamous prison at Guantánamo is underway. According to reports from the British capital, protests across the world have begun with the aim of shutting down the U.S.-run detention center at Guantánamo -- located in eastern Cuba and illegally occupied by the United States. Human rights activists and others concerned with the abuse and tortue of prisoners under U.S. control have planned a series of events and protests to call attention to the situation at the U.S. naval base prison. Among the groups representing some of the detainees at the prison is the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, the CCR. Amnesty International, based in London, has also called on numerous occasions for the closing of Guantánamo. In January 2002, U.S. authorities transferred the first so-called "war on terror" detainees -- hooded and shackled -- to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Organizers say that despite a major international outcry and the condemnation of many experts and intellectuals, hundreds of people from more than 30 countries continue to be held there. The majority of those detainees have been held without charge for nearly five years. And they have little or no hope of obtaining a fair trial. Although U.S. authorities have repeatedly called the prisoners "terrorists" and "killers," some have been released without being charged with any crime. Investigators and detainees have reported abuse and torture, with prisoners suffering inhumane conditions. Human rights groups are encouraging activists around the world to organize activities to protest the upcoming fifth anniversary of the detention center -- and calling for its immediate closure. (Cubaminrex-RHC) Subir Chile Group Says Close Guantanamo CHILE , December 20, 2006.- About 420 people from 35 countries are imprisoned in the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay , Cuba , without being declared guilty of any crime at all, Chilean International Amnesty (IA) denounced Wednesday. Detainees, IA added, do not have access to any independent court, many of them have no lawyer nor family visits, and near 200 of them have gone on hunger strike in protest of bad conditions. When convening the seminar "Terrorism: Humanitarian Challenge," the organization described US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as "an outrage for human rights and a symbol of injustice" of Washingtons so called war against terrorism. Chilean IA demanded that the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay , Cuba , immediate close and urged the US to take all detainees to a court of justice, or on the contrary immediately release them. Since September 11, 2001 the United States and its allies have "kidnapped people and imprisoned them in secret, moved them from one country to another and subjected them to torture and mistreatment in detainee camps, like Guantanamo or other secret places," IA expressed. (Cubaminrex-PL) Subir Guantanamo: American Gulag By Thomas Wilner Taken from Radio Habana Cuba March 13, 2006 The American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay is on the southeast corner of Cuba, a sliver of land the United States has occupied since 1903. Long ago, it was irrigated from lakes on the other side of the island, but Cuban President Fidel Castro cut off the water supply years ago. So today, Guantanamo produces its own water from a 30-year-old desalination plant. The water has a distinct yellow tint. All Americans drink bottled water imported by the planeload. Until recently, prisoners drank the yellow water. The prison overlooks the sea, but the ocean cannot be seen by prisoners. Guard towers and stadium lights loom along the perimeter. On my last visit, we were escorted by young, solemn military guards whose nameplates on their shirts were taped over so that prisoners could not identify them. Very few outsiders are allowed to see the prisoners. The government has orchestrated some carefully controlled tours for the media and members of Congress, but has repeatedly refused to allow these visitors, representatives of the United Nations, human rights groups or nonmilitary doctors and psychiatrists to meet or speak with prisoners. So far, the only outsiders who have done so are representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross — who are prohibited by their own rules from disclosing what they find — and lawyers for the prisoners. I am one of those lawyers. I represent six Kuwaiti prisoners, each of whom has now spent nearly four years at Guantanamo. It took me 2 1/2 years to gain access to my clients, but now I have visited the prison camp 11 times in the last 14 months. What I have witnessed is a cruel and eerie netherworld of concrete and barbed wire that has become a daily nightmare for the nearly 500 people swept up after 9/11 who have been imprisoned without charges or trial for more than four years. It is truly our American gulag. On my most recent trip three weeks ago, after signing a log sheet and submitting our bags to a search, my colleagues and I were taken through two tall, steel-mesh gates into the interior of the prison camp. We interviewed our clients in Camp Echo, one of several camps where prisoners are interrogated. We entered a room about 13 feet square and divided in half by a wall of thick steel mesh. On one side was a table where the prisoner would sit for our interviews, his feet shackled to a steel eyelet cemented to the floor. On the other side were a shower and a cell just like the ones in which prisoners are ordinarily confined. In their cells, prisoners sleep on a metal shelf against the wall, which is flanked by a toilet and sink. They are allowed a thin foam mattress and a gray cotton blanket. The Pentagon's files on the six Kuwaiti prisoners we represent reveal that none was captured on a battlefield or accused of engaging in hostilities against the U.S. The prisoners claim that they were taken into custody by Pakistani and Afghan warlords and turned over to the U.S. for bounties ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 — a claim confirmed by American news reports. We have obtained copies of bounty leaflets distributed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. forces promising rewards — "enough to feed your family for life" — for any "Arab terrorist" handed over. The files include only the flimsiest accusations or hearsay that would never stand up in court. The file on one prisoner indicated that he had been seen talking to two suspected Al Qaeda members on the same day — at places thousands of miles apart. The primary "evidence" against another was that he was captured wearing a particular Casio watch, "which many terrorists wear." Oddly, the same watch was being worn by the U.S. military chaplain, a Muslim, at Guantanamo. When I first met my clients, they had not seen or spoken with their families for more than three years, and they had been questioned hundreds of times. Several were suspicious of us; they told me that they had been interrogated by people who claimed to be their lawyers but who turned out not to be. So we had DVDs made, on which members of their families told them who we were and that we could be trusted. Several cried on seeing their families for the first time in years. One had become a father since he was detained and had never before seen his child. One noticed his father was not on the DVD, and we had to tell him that his father had died. Most prisoners are kept apart, although some can communicate through the steel mesh or concrete walls that separate their cells. They exercise alone, some only at night. They had not seen sunlight for months — an especially cruel tactic in a tropical climate. One prisoner told me, "I have spent almost every moment of the last three years, and eaten every meal, here in this small cell which is my bathroom." Other than the Koran, prisoners had nothing to read. As a result of our protests, some have been given books. Every prisoner I've interviewed claims to have been badly beaten and subjected to treatment that only could be called torture, by Americans, from the first day of U.S. captivity in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They said they were hung by their wrists and beaten, hung by their ankles and beaten, stripped naked and paraded before female guards, and given electric shocks. At least three claimed to have been beaten again upon arrival in Guantanamo. One of my clients, Fayiz Al Kandari, now 27, said his ribs were broken during an interrogation in Pakistan. I felt the indentation in his ribs. "Beat me all you want, just give me a hearing," he said he told his interrogators. Another prisoner, Fawzi Al Odah, 25, is a teacher who left Kuwait City in 2001 to work in Afghan, then Pakistani, schools. After 9/11, he and four other Kuwaitis were invited to dinner by a Pakistani tribal leader and then sold by him into captivity, according to their accounts, later confirmed by Newsweek and ABC News. On Aug. 8, 2005, Fawzi, in desperation, went on a hunger strike to assert his innocence and to protest being imprisoned for four years without charges. He said he wanted to defend himself against any accusations, or die. He told me that he had heard U.S. congressmen had returned from tours of Guantanamo saying that it was a Caribbean resort with great food. "If I eat, I condone these lies," Fawzi said. At the end of August, after Fawzi fainted in his cell, guards began to force-feed him through tubes pushed up his nose into his stomach. At first, the tubes were inserted for each feeding and then removed afterward. Fawzi told me that this was very painful. When he tried to pull out the tubes, he was strapped onto a stretcher with his head held by many guards, which was even more painful. By mid-September, the force-feeding had been made more humane. Feeding tubes were left in and the formula pumped in. Still, when I saw Fawzi, a tube was protruding from his nose. Drops of blood dripped as we talked. He dabbed at it with a napkin. We asked for Fawzi's medical records so we could monitor his weight and his health. Denied. The only way we could learn how Fawzi was doing was to visit him each month, which we did. When we visited him in November, his weight had dropped from 140 pounds to 98 pounds. Specialists in enteral feeding advised us that the continued drop in his weight and other signs indicated that the feeding was being conducted incompetently. We asked that Fawzi be transferred to a hospital. Again, the government refused. When we saw Fawzi in December, his weight had stabilized at about 110 pounds. The formulas had been changed, and he was being force-fed by medical personnel rather than by guards. When I met with Fawzi three weeks ago, the tubes were out of his nose. I told him I was thankful that after five months he had ended his hunger strike. He looked at me sadly and said, "They tortured us to make us stop." At first, he said, they punished him by taking away his "comfort items" one by one: his blanket, his towel, his long pants, his shoes. They then put him in isolation. When this failed to persuade him to end the hunger strike, he said, an officer came to him Jan 9 to announce that any detainee who refused to eat would be forced onto "the chair." The officer warned that recalcitrant prisoners would be strapped into a steel device that pulled their heads back, and that the tubes would be forced in and wrenched out for each feeding. "We're going to break this hunger strike," the officer told him. Fawzi said he heard the prisoner next door screaming and warning him to give up the strike. He decided that he wasn't "on strike to be tortured." He said those who continued on the hunger strike not only were strapped in "the chair" but were left there for hours; he believes that guards fed them not only nutrients but also diuretics and laxatives to force them to defecate and urinate on themselves in the chair. After less than two weeks of this treatment, the strike was over. Of the more than 80 strikers at the end of December, Fawzi said only three or four were holding out. As a result of the strike, however, prisoners are now getting a meager ration of bottled water. Fawzi said eating was the only aspect of life at Guantanamo he could control; forcing him to end the hunger strike stripped him of his last means of protesting his unjust imprisonment. Now, he said, he feels "hopeless." The government continues to deny that there is any injustice at Guantanamo. But I know the truth. Thomas Wilner is a partner at Shearman & Sterling, which has been representing Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantanamo since early 2002. Subir Human Rights experts issue Joint Report on situation of detainees in Guantanamo Bay.* United Nations Press Release 16 February 2006 The following statement was issued today by the Chairman Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Leila Zerrougui; Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Leandro Despouy; the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak; the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Asma Jahangir, and the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Paul Hunt: Five independent investigators of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights are calling on the United States to close immediately the detention centre in Guantánamo Bay and bring all detainees before an independent and competent tribunal or release them. The call comes in a report published today following an 18-month joint study by the experts into the situation of detainees at that United States Naval Base. The report's findings are based on information from the United States Government, interviews conducted by the experts with former Guantánamo Bay detainees currently residing or detained in France, Spain and the United Kingdom and responses from lawyers acting on behalf of some current detainees. It also relies on information available in the public domain, including reports prepared by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), information contained in declassified official United States documents and media reports. The experts expressed regret that the Government did not allow them the opportunity to have free access to detainees in Guantanamo Bay and carry out private interviews, as provided by the terms of reference accepted by all countries they visit. The five experts – specializing in issues related to arbitrary detention, freedom of religion, the right to health, torture and the independence of judges and lawyers – conclude that the persons held at Guantánamo Bay are entitled to challenge the legality of their detention before a judicial body and to obtain release if detention is found to lack a proper legal basis. The continuing detention of all persons held at Guantánamo Bay amounts to arbitrary detention, they state, adding that – where criminal proceedings are initiated against a detainee – the executive branch of the United States Government operates as judge, prosecutor and defence counsel in violation of various guarantees of the right to a fair trial According to the experts, attempts by the United States Administration to redefine "torture" in the framework of the struggle against terrorism in order to allow certain interrogation techniques that would not be permitted under the internationally accepted definition of torture are of utmost concern. The confusion with regard to authorized and unauthorized interrogation techniques over the last years is particularly alarming. The interrogation techniques authorized by the Department of Defense, particularly if used simultaneously, amount to degrading treatment. If in individual cases, which were described in interviews, the victim experienced severe pain or suffering, these acts amounted to torture as defined in article 1 of the Convention against Torture. Furthermore, the general conditions of detention, in particular the uncertainty about the length of detention and prolonged solitary confinement, amount to inhuman treatment and to a violation of the right to health as well as a violation of the right of detainees to be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person. They add that force-feeding of competent detainees violates the right to health as well as the ethical duties of any health professionals who may be involved. Among their recommendations, the experts say terrorism suspects should be detained in accordance with criminal procedure that respects the safeguards enshrined in relevant international law. Accordingly, the United States Government should either expeditiously bring all Guantánamo Bay detainees to trial or release them without further delay. They also call on the Government to close down the Guantánamo Bay detention centre and to refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, discrimination on the basis of religion, and violations of the rights to health and freedom of religion. The investigators also request full and unrestricted access to the Guantánamo Bay facilities, including private interviews with detainees. Consideration should also be given to trying suspected terrorists before a competent international tribunal. Chronology leading up to report: The five mandate holders have been following the situation of detainees held at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay since January 2002. In June 2004, the Annual Meeting of special rapporteurs/representatives, experts and chairpersons of working groups of the special procedures and the advisory services programme of the Commission on Human Rights, decided that they should continue this task as a group because the situation concerns each of their mandates. In studying the situation, they have continuously sought the cooperation of the United States authorities. They sent a number of letters requesting the United States Government to allow them to visit Guantánamo Bay in order to gather first hand information from the prisoners themselves. By letter dated 28 October 2005, the Government of the United States of America extended an invitation for a one-day visit to three of the five mandate holders, inviting them "to visit the Department of Defense's detention facilities [of Guantánamo Bay]". The invitation stipulated that "the visit will not include private interviews or visits with detainees". In their response to the Government dated 31 October 2005, the mandate holders accepted the invitation, including the short duration of the visit and the fact that only three of them were permitted access, and informed the US Government that the visit was to be carried out on 6 December 2005. However, they did not accept the exclusion of private interviews with detainees, as that would contravene the terms of reference for fact-findings missions by special procedures and undermine the purpose of an objective and fair assessment of the situation of detainees held in Guantánamo Bay. In the absence of assurances from the Government that it would comply with the terms of reference, the mandate holders decided on 18 November 2005 to cancel the visit. Subir Will the Guantanamo Prisoner Issue Reach Geneva ? By Angel Rodriguez Alvarez Taken from AIN January 23, 2006 The illegally occupied US naval base in Guantanamo , Cuba continues to make headlines. The latest news is not related to provocations by US marines against Cuban soldiers guarding the artificial border. This time the issue is linked to the base's prison, where some 500 prisoners from various nations are being held indefinitely after being captured in Afghanistan . Classified by the US authorities has "enemy combatants," the prisoners remain in that enclave in a virtual legal limbo, without their being charged or provided legal representation. Of the 750 prisoners transferred to Guantanamo since 2002, about 180 have been released; another 76 were transferred into custody in their countries of origin. Worsening the situation of the 500 men still confined, are the long and systematic interrogations they are submitted to, as well as physical and psychological mistreatment and degrading practices aimed at breaking the moral and resistance of the group. Testimonies given by some of those who were released, and the high number of suicides -over 30 have been reported along with dozens of failed attempts-, allows one to sense how this terrifying panorama differs little from dungeons in the Middle Ages. Just as barbaric is the uncertainty of " US justice" being served. According to statements by Major Jane Boomer, the spokesperson for the Military Commissions Office, the men "are not detained in order to be tried; they are there to stop them from using weapons on the battlefield." No less revealing are comments by Lt. Colonel Jeremy M. Martin, who said that he does not agree that the Guantanamo prisoners are being held indefinitely in legal limbo. "We will not hold them one day after they stop being a threat to US national security or to that of our allies," pointed out Martin, leaving a clear message on the legitimacy of "retention" of individuals by US forces in Iraq. This affirmation makes it certain that the men's detention will be as long as the time needed for the Iraqi resistance to cause enough casualties among the occupation troops -like in Vietnam- for the US to abort its interventionist mission. With such gloomy a perspectives it is not difficult to understand that for the kidnapped prisoners in Guantanamo , the only means they have of pressuring the prison personnel and calling the attention to their plight is by going on hunger strikes. But the US forces have taken advantage to the situation by intensifying their use of cruelty against the prisoners. Over the 50 hunger strikers, 30 of them are being force-fed through tubes running down their noses; these are inserted without anaesthesia and are used repeatedly without being disinfecting. Perhaps for these 500 victims of " US justice," they have found light at the end of the tunnel through the scandal over secret prisons in Europe being leaked. We might suppose that a basic sense of European dignity will now allow the issue of Guantanamo to be included on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva . Subir US to Ignore Guantanamo Detainees Washington , Jan 4 /2005 (Prensa Latina) The US Justice Department has urged Federal judges to ignore cases involving detainees held at the naval base in Guantanamo , Cuba . The New York Times reported that the list includes more than 160 cases and at least 300 detainees whose current status is in question. The measure is considered an administration move to quickly take advantage of an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Law Bush signed Friday. The amendment would eliminate habeas corpus hearings for the detainees from Federal Court; the only tool the Supreme Court gave those prisoners in 2004 to question their confinement. The clause gave the detainees the right to request habeas corpus from any Federal Court to demand government explanation for their prolonged detention. Prisoners' attorneys voiced their opposition to the Justice Department request since the amendment should apply to new cases not old ones. The Times believes the issue must be settled either in the Appellate Court or the Supreme Court. The prison population in Guantanamo ranges from 550 to 750 people, including several minors, who are suffering inhumane treatment as part of the war on terror promoted by Washington . Reporters Judi K-Turkel and Franklynn Peterson wrote for Wisconsin 's Madison Capital Times that the prisoners are held in conditions you would describe as cruel if done to a dog or a cat. Subir Defense attorney denounces horrors at US Base Havana, Nov 22/2005 (AIN) The systematic torture committed against prisoners at the US Naval Base on illegally occupied Cuban territory at Guantanamo was denounced by the US lawyer representing 12Kuwaiti prisoners. I don't know if Bush really knows what happens with the Pentagon's detainees, stated Thomas B. Wilner. The president says there is no torture, but there is no doubt that the US is holding prisoners who suffer from uncontrolled abuses, he added. "Everyone of my clients has been severely beaten, dogs have been used to terrify them and they have been forced to remain in torturously cramped positions," said the attorney. One client, Saad al-Azmi, has also suffered sexual harassment, assured the lawyer in an interview published by Juventud Rebelde newspaper. Wilner said that some of his clients "confessed" being members of the Taliban army or the terrorist organization Al Qaeda to stop being tortured. Bush must know that the detainees were taken to Guantanamo to evade the law, underscored the attorney, adding that even the FBI admits prisoners are being tortured. Talking on behalf of the US lawyers representing the detainees at Guantanamo, Wilner pointed out that Bush could be sanctioned for having permitted the use of torture in violation of US and international law. Wilner maintains that the way Bush has managed foreign and domestic affairs clearly shows his intellectual short-sightedness and his incapacity to deal with complex issues. The president simply cannot understand the historical significance of his decisions, he added. Subir
US Protestors Demand "Shut Down Guantanamo" New York, NY, 5 Jul (Prensa Latina) Hundreds of New Yorkers rallied near Herald Square to commemorate US Independence Day by hearing testimonies of US military torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba and demand its closure. That was just one of many similar demonstrations held across the United States this Fourth of July. Personalities such as Gloria Steinem and playwright Eve Ensler, along with representatives from Code Pink, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Not In Our Name, and other activist anti-war organizations, read the statements and led the crowd in demanding that Guantanamo be shut down.
The nearly three hundred people crowded behind barricades in the sweltering sun were visibly moved by the accounts, occasionally erupting with chants of "Guantanamo Must Go" to statements from Imara of CCR that "torture is immoral and unpatriotic," and NYC Councilwoman Margarite Lopez’s warning that "History will not be neutral." Among the protestors gathering signatures to demand that Congress close Guantanamo Detention Center was Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out activist Sally Davidson, who said she was there to "support the troops (in Iraq) and bring them home alive now." Ms. Davidson noted the growing protest among military families and within the military itself to the continued occupation of Iraq. Flyers and speakers exhorted demonstrators to mobilize for the mass protest against the US war in Iraq, which will be held in Washington, DC in September, and for the "massive day of resistance" all over the United States called for November 2. Subir UN Experts Denounced US Tortures in Guantanamo United Nations, Jun 24 (Prensa Latina) Senior UN human rights experts have denounced the US government’s failure to allow them to visit detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo naval base, following serious allegations of cruel torture. A statement issued in Geneva underlines that Washington has ignored their repeated requests, thus showing it is not willing to cooperate with the United Nations human rights office on this issue that has unleashed world denunciation. After stressing that no nation is above international human rights law, the UN experts said they will jointly conduct an quest based on all credible sources regarding the situation of the detainees at the Pentagon’s prison camp in Guantanamo. The statement was signed by Leandro Despouy, Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and lawyers; Paul Hunt, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and Mandred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Another signer of the UN statements is Leila Zerrougui, Chairwoman-Rapparteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, who represents all working groups of the Special Procedures of the UN Commission on Human Rights. The experts stressed they have reports, from reliable sources, of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, arbitrary detention, violations of their right to health and due process rights. Subir Carter: Guantanamo Terror Prison, an Embarassment for US Washington, Jun 8 (Prensa Latina) Calling it an embarrassment for the United States, former president James Carter called for the Bush administration to shut down the terror prison in the Guantanamo Naval Base. "The US continues to suffer terrible embarrassment and a blow to our reputation ... because of reports concerning abuses of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo," Carter said Tuesday after a two-day human rights conference at his Atlanta center. About 540 detainees are still being held at Guantanamo military compound that occupies a portion of territory in eastern Cuba in defiance to the will of the Cuban government and people. Some have been there more than three years without being charged with a crime. Most were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 and were sent to Guantanamo Bay in hope of extracting useful intelligence about the al-Qaida terrorist network. Carter urged the United States to make sure no detainees are held incommunicado and that all are told the charges against them. Subir “Guantánamo has become the gulag of our time” By Max J. Castro Taken from Progreso Weekly Jun 2, 2005 The words in the headline don’t come from the mouth of an Islamic extremist or one of the United States’ traditional adversaries. They are the words of Irene Khan, Secretary General of the world’s most celebrated human rights organization, as she launched the human rights group’s 2005 report, which covered the global human rights situation during the previous year. Khan’s astonishingly harsh assertion was part of a larger indictment of U.S. policy under the Bush administration contained in the annual report of Amnesty International (AI), the world’s most prestigious human rights organization. The Amnesty report, which covered 149 countries, decried the human rights situation in many countries but reserved its strongest criticism for the United States. In a section titled “’Terror’, ‘counter-terror’ and the rule of law,” the AI report states: U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly asserted that the USA was founded upon and is dedicated to the cause of human dignity. It was a theme of his speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2004. Yet during his first term of office, the USA proved to be far from the global human rights champion it proclaimed itself to be. In a statement evidently aimed at the Bush administration, AI’s Khan warned of “a dangerous new agenda” which couches human rights and torture in deceptive language: Governments are betraying their promises on human rights. A new agenda is in the making with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitize torture. The 2005 AI report took special notice of the Bush administration’s attempt to redefine torture, referring to “a series of government memorandums that emerged after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke – which suggested that the administration was discussing ways in which its agents could avoid the international ban on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment – indicated that the U.S. administration’s stated opposition to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment was paper-thin.” Calling human rights “not only a promise unfulfilled but a promise betrayed,” the report goes on to say that “the ‘war on terror’ appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than in countering international ‘terrorism’.” Had the performance of the U.S. media over the last few years not demonstrated the extent to which it has been cowed by the Bush administration and the right, one would have thought the AI report would be a big story. For more than two decades, the United States has positioned itself as the arbiter of the human rights records of every country on the planet. President Bush constantly lectures other nations and leaders about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. For an impartial, highly respected human rights organization, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, to voice such a tough and comprehensive critique of United States policies and actions is news –except in the Neverland that much of the U.S. media has become. Indeed, in its constant and misguided quest for a false “balance” between plain truth and the “truths” of power, much of the U.S. media reported the predictable and self-serving denials from officials almost as prominently as the charges contained in the AI report. Even the best media gave short shrift to the AI report; the New York Times, for example, carried a single story. The U.S. media is often remarkably good in reporting about the trees – stories about specific abuses; where it tends to fall down is when it comes to “connecting the dots” to expose the existence of the forest, as the AI report does. Indeed, in the wake of the much-ignored AI report and without reference to it, the Los Angeles Times reported a story (Long and Unexplained Jailings Anger Iraqis, May 29) that suggests that the United States in 2005 continues the practices decried in the AI report: A year after the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal erupted, Iraqi anger has flared anew over the growing numbers of detainees held without charge at the notorious detention center and another prison in the south. In the battle against the insurgency, U.S. military sweeps net many guerrillas, but also thousands of people whose offenses are nonexistent, minor or impossible to prove. They are often held for months, only to be released without explanation. The Bush administration seems to have learned nothing from its bitter experience in Iraq. In a desperate attempt to “break the back” of the insurgency – a goal which seems more elusive than ever but which the administration needs to achieve before it can declare victory and begin to pull out the troops – U.S. actions breed new insurgents and set the stage for more human rights abuses. Ultimately, the Bush administration’s betrayal of international law and human rights is also a betrayal of the interests of the United States and the American people. Subir FBI Acknowledges Koran Mistreatment and Prisoner Abuse Washington, May 27 (Prensa Latina) The US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has unveiled documents showing that detainees at Guantanamo naval base, Cuba, complained about the mistreatment of the Koran and that many said they were severely beaten, The Washington Post reported. The documents specifically include an allegation from a prisoner that guards had "flushed a Koran down the toilet." The newspaper says Pentagon officials said investigators have identified five incidents of "mishandling" the Koran by military guards and investigators. It was the first time Pentagon officials had acknowledged mistreatment of the Muslim holy book, though they insisted that the episodes were minor and occurred in the Guantanamo jail´s early days. The Newsweek magazine was target of angry attacks by the administration of George W. Bush for bringing allegations about the abuse of the Koran. Subir New York Time Journalist Calls to Shut Guantanamo Base Washington, May 27 (Prensa Latina) A columnist of the New York Times urged the US administration to shut down the Guantanamo naval base Washington occupies against the will of the Cuban people and government. Thomas Friedman, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, called to dismantle the facility due to the international condemnation of the continuous denunciations of tortures in its prison. Abuses at Guantanamo and other US Army prisons prove the Defense Department penitentiary system for its anti-terrorist crusade is out of control, the journalist denounced. Friedman believes the jail enclave not only discredits Washington, but also allies such as Great Britain, Germany, Canada and Australia. His report was released amid thorny domestic debates on the proposal to close 150 US military facilities. It also follows reports by German newspapers on denunciations on the Koran and violations of the civil rights of detainees illegally held at the US-occupied Guantanamo Naval base in Cuba. According to the Thuringer Allgmeine paper, the Newsweek was right when it reported on the Koran profanation at the military facility. Harsh criticism of the Bush administration forced the Newsweek to remove what it published, but civil right advocates and Los Angeles Times have reported the same denunciations. The daily said the Newsweek report on the throwing of Koran books to lavatories in the military base triggered protests in Pakistan, Iran and other Muslim countries. The Thuringer Allgmeine said the White House termed the civil right organization´s accusations ridiculous, as they compared the base with a concentration camp. It is a cynical reaction to the people jailed in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, denounced the newspaper. Another German daily, Brauschweiger Zeitung, indicated that the West should not be surprised nor infuriated if demonstrators burned US flags in Iraq or Iran, because it is the US which is responsible for that. The paper says the US is the most powerful military country of the world but its policy has left too much to be desired. Presently, 500 people detained during the US invasion of Afghanistan and labelled as "enemy combatants" are held in the Cuban territory illegally occupied by the North American power. Subir A horrible interrogation camp like those used by the Nazis Guantanamo, according to a US experts By jean-Guy Allard Taken from Granma International 02.10.05 THE United States is running an interrogation camp in Guantanamo like those established by the Nazis did during World War II, which the1949 Geneva Convention permanently prohibited after the war ended, according to Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in the United States. In his book, Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, Ratner compares the detention and interrogation installations that the Bush administration is using on the illegal US military base in Guantanamo, to the special concentration camps conceived by Hitler’s German Armed Forces specifically for interrogating enemy combatants. “They ran detention centers that were called interrogation camps, not prisoner of war camps,” explained Ratner. “The 1949 Geneva Conventions outlawed interrogation camps and required that such prisoners be treated as POWs. What we have in Guantánamo today is an illegal interrogation camp.” The US administration refuses to call the Guantanamo prisoners “prisoners of war,” and refers to them as “enemy combatants.” “There is no legal justification for what the United States is doing, no matter what you call the prisoners. The U.S. inquisitors are not just asking for name, rank, and serial number (as is required by the Convention): they are interrogating people morning, noon, and night. Whether you call it torture; cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; or stress and duress, it is a violation of international law,” affirms Ratner. The CCR President describes how a lot of the people picked up by warlords of the Northern Alliance were kept in metal shipping containers, so tightly packed that they had to ball themselves up, and the heat was unbearable. The people inside were suffocating, so the Northern Alliance soldiers shot holes into the containers, killing some of the prisoners inside. “Only a small number, 30 to 50 people in a container filled with 300 to 400 people survived” related Ratner. He notes that 134 of the 147 prisoners later released from Guantánamo “were guilty of absolutely nothing.” Only 13 were sent to jail on their return to their country of origin. One prisoner released after a year claimed he was somewhere between 90 and 100 years old, according to Ratner. Old, frail and incontinent, he wept constantly, shackled to a walker. “Guantánamo’s purpose is to break down the human personalities of the detainees in order to coerce from them whatever their captors want, to get them to confess to anything, to implicate anyone. Guantánamo is a prison where cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment – even torture – is practiced, and it is utterly illegal.” However, the US authorities have admitted to using techniques that legally constitute cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, emphasized Ratner. “Interrogation is why the U.S. administration is depriving all these people of any legal or human rights, why it shaves their heads and keeps them in cages, why they have no access to their families, why in many cases their families may not even know if they are dead or alive” writes Ratner. “The Convention is crystal clear” Under the United Nations Convention against Torture, an international treaty that the United States has also ratified, torture is an international crime. That Convention “also establishes what is called universal jurisdiction for cases of torture,” Ratner explains. “So, for example, if an American citizen engaged in torture anywhere in the world and was later found in France, let’s say, that person could be arrested in France and either tried for torture there or extradited to the place of the torture for trial. To the extent U.S. officials were or are involved in torture in Guantanamo or elsewhere, they should be careful about the countries in which they travel.” Ratner also specified that torture committed by U.S. soldiers or private contractors acting under U.S. authority is a violation of federal law, punishable by the death penalty if the death of a prisoner results from the torture. “Even if one argues that al Qaeda suspects are not governed by the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture and other human rights treaties ratified by the United States prohibit torture as well as other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.” insists the expert. “The convention is crystal clear: under no circumstances can you torture people, whatever you call them, whether illegal combatants, enemy combatants, murderers, killers. You cannot torture anybody ever; it’s an absolute prohibition.” According to Ratner, “Guantanamo has become a symbol of much that is wrong with our society.” It is a “complex of brutal prisons where hundreds of men and boys from all over the world, many of whom we believe are neither guilty of any crime nor pose any danger to the security of the United States, are being held by the U.S. government under incredibly inhuman conditions and incessant interrogation.” Even worse, indicated Ratner, they have “no idea when, if ever, they will see an end to their plight. These prisons are a symbol of the disdain with which the Bush administration has brushed aside longstanding precepts of international law and civilized conduct. It is indeed a national disgrace.” Tortured by chains, electric shocks and sodomy 11 detainees in the Guantanamo Base reported that US soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan tortured them before sending them to the base. Their accounts included torture using chains, electric shocks and sodomy, according to notes taken by the US attorney Tom Wilner, which were divulged after remaining previously secret, according to an AP report. Some of the men said that they confessed to having belonged to the Taliban’s religious militia or the Al-Qaeda network just to end their torture, noted the lawyer for 11 of the Kuwaitis detained in Guantanamo. Subir Canadian Tortured at Guantanamo Base Montreal, Feb 9 (Prensa Latina) Young Canadian Omar Khadr was tortured at the US prison in Guantanamo Base, eastern Cuba, the lawyer of Khadr´s family, Dennis Edney denounced Thursday. The prisoner, of Pakistani origin, is accused of having killed a US soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old. According to the lawyer, Khadr, now 18, was victim of mistreatment and human rights violations. Edney said that his information is based on an interview of a US lawyer with Khadr, still jailed at the base, since Canadians have no access to the detention facility. The US lawyer said US troops placed a hood over the prisoner"s head and set trained dogs on him. Prisoners at Guantanamo base were used to test many of the tortures applied by the US troops in the Iraqi prison of Abu Graib, which brought about a huge international scandal. Subir Legal Policy against Prisoners in Guantanamo Base Regarded as Chaotic Los Angeles, Feb 1 (Prensa Latina) The policy applied by the US in the naval base of Guantanamo (Cuba) against prisoners accused of terrorism generated a legal chaos, as told by an editorial in US newspaper La Opinion. The practice to turn the Guantanamo base into a prison for possible terrorists makes judicial sentences more controversial and confusing, La Opinion said. At the bottom of the problem is the arbitrariness with which the administration of US President George W. Bush handled the topic since the beginning of the war against terrorism. La Opinion said this was a motive to keep prisoners out of any national or international legal protection, and that it was not surprising that each day, there are more judicial decisions condemning the work of the US federal government. The US newspaper made reference to a decision by federal judge Joyce Hens Green, who determined prisoners in the base of Guantanamo have constitutional rights which should be respected. As an example, La Opinion mentioned the case of an old lady in Switzerland, who was declared an "enemy fighter" because she wrote a check to an orphan home in Afghanistan that was linked to Al Qaeda, despite the old lady did not know anything about the links, and the decision of the US Supreme Court in June, when it stated that "enemy fighters" have no inferior rights to those of the US citizens, to question the evidence against them. La Opinion said the US government, instead of following solid democratic regulations, adopted an irregular treatment with prisoners -including torture- and military penal processes, which resemble more a sham, than a fair trial. La Opinion pointed out that what happens in the Guantanamo naval base is but a spot in the war against terrorism which should be corrected as soon as possible by US courts. Subir Prisoners sodomized and tortured with electric shocks Taken from Gnnaam International February 8, 2005 ELEVEN detainees on the base in Guantánamo have reported that US soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan tortured them prior to sending them to the Cuban base, using chains, electric shocks and sodomy, according to notes taken by a lawyer circulated on Monday, reports AP. Some of the men said that they had confessed to having belonged to the Taliban or the Al Qaeda terrorist network solely for the purpose of ending the torture, stated Tom Wilner, lawyer to 11 Kuwaitis being held at Guantánamo. For some time now, human rights defense groups and lawyers for the prisoners have condemned the fact that part of the information which led to the detentions in Guantánamo was obtained through abuse and torture. Many of the 545 prisoners have been in Guantánamo for over three years, the majority of them without being charged. "At Guatanamo, the physical abuse, at least for the Kuwaitis, has stopped, but there has been a switch to mental torture," said Wilner during a telephone interview from Washington. He added that Charles Manson, who led a group of adolescents in an orgy of murders at the beginning of the 1970s, has better prison conditions than these men. Amongst Wilner’s clients is a young man accused of being Osama bin Laden’s spiritual advisor and a low-ranking member of the Taliban regime. No charges have been brought against either of them. According to Wilner’s notes, one of the detainees told him that the US soldiers had repeatedly insisted that they were members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. They continued to beat him until eventually he told them he was a member of the Taliban. The detainees said they did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals. Paraguayan Senator Domingo Laino told Prensa Latina that "many female Iraqi prisoners have been raped, and on being released, committed suicide or were killed by their families, because in Islam when a woman is raped it is considered to be dishonorable for her and her family." Lain is to launch his book Derechos Humanos Estados Unidos-Iraq (Human Rights United States – Iraq) in Havana. Subir US Torture in Guantanamo Denounced by Former Australian Prisoner Washington, Feb 13(Prensa Latina) A 49-year-old former Australian prisoner denounced he was tortured by US guards at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, The New York Times daily reported. Mamdouh Habib said he was mistreated, beaten by US soldiers who tried to make him confess an alleged involvement in terrorist actions. Describing his ordeal, Habib, who was later released as there was no evidence against him, said he was first arrested in Pakistan in late 2001 and sent for some time to a prison in Egypt. After that he was sent to Guantanamo where he was held for about 40 months. He said he was kicked, humiliated and tortured with electric shocks at the Cuban territory illegally occupied by the US. Habib was also forced to watch photos of his wife with overlapping images of Al Qaida´s leader Osama bin Laden and naked women. Subir US Tortures Kuwaitis at Guantanamo Naval Base Washington, Feb 8 (Prensa Latina) Human rights lawyer Tom Wilner has accused US troops of torturing several Kuwaiti prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base. Wilner, who represents 11 Kuwaiti convicts at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, a Cuban territory illegally occupied by Washington, said detainees are tortured and abused by US forces, which beat them with chains, sodomize them and give them electrical shocks. "These are classic stories of men who ended up in Guantanamo by mistake," charged the lawyer. In a conference call from Washington on Monday the lawyer detailed the abuse, citing recently declassified notes from his meetings with the detainees. Wilner also upheld that another five detainees have complained about the same treatment. They were stripped naked and kept without clothes for extended periods of time. The worst of those abuse cases occurred at US detention facilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan before the Kuwaiti men were transferred to Guantanamo. "In the original prisons in Pakistan and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo, the most disturbing thing to most of them was religious humiliation. They were mocked for being Muslims," the lawyer added. The US has been facing mounting international criticism for torturing prisoners at its detention centers all over the world. FBI memos that were recently made public also accused Pentagon interrogators of using torture techniques. Subir