UN Demands Access
To Guantanamo Detainees
By Jonathan Fowler
The Independent - UK
6-26-4
Thirty-one United Nations human rights experts yesterday urged the US
and other governments holding terror suspects to give monitors access
to their detention facilities.
Four experts should be allowed to visit jails including those in Iraq,
Afghanistan and the US base in Guantanamo Bay, they said. The terms of
visits by UN monitors normally include unlimited access without prior
notice and confidential interviews with detainees.
The experts would report to the 53-nation UN Human Rights Commission.
They have not presented formal requests to the states, but will ask
the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, to do so. A direct request in
March to the US to visit Guantanamo Bay has been ignored.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which serves as a
watchdog to ensure adherence to the Geneva Conventions on the conduct
of warfare, is the only independent body so far given access to US
facilities.
The 31 experts said they condemned terrorism, but wanted to ensure
human rights standards were upheld by states fighting for them,
particularly following charges of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
The abuse is the subject of investigations by US authorities.
Human rights campaigners welcomed the experts' call. "If the Bush
administration is serious about its rejection of torture, it needs to
let the UN inspectors in," Reed Brody, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch
in New York, said.
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=535309
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick with possibilities:truth isin't"
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