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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 .

 

 

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