posted March 07, 2006 07:43 PM            

But Alain Grignard, deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit, said holding people for many years without telling them what would happen to them is in itself "mental torture".
"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," said Mr Grignard.

He served as expert on a visit to Guantanamo Bay last week by a group of politicians from the assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Mr Grignard's comments came less than a month after a UN report said Guantanamo prison detainees faced treatment amounting to torture.

Many of the 500 inmates in the prison at the US naval base in Cuba have been held for four years without trial. The prisoners were mainly detained in Afghanistan and are held as pat of President George W. Bush's "war on terror".

Mr Grignard told a news conference prisoners' right to practice their religion, food, clothes and medical care were better than in Belgian prisons.
"I know no Belgian prison where each inmate receives its Muslim kit," Mr Grignard said.

Mr Grignard said Guantanamo was not "idyllic", but he had noticed dramatic improvements each time he visited the facility over the past two years.

The head of the OSCE lawmakers in the delegation said she was happy with the medical facilities at the camp, adding she believed they had been improved recently.

Anne-Marie Lizin, chair of the Belgian Senate, told reporters at the same news conference she saw no point in calling for immediate closure of the detention camp.

"There needs to be a timetable for closure," said Ms Lizin, but asking for immediate closure would have been unrealistic.

UN investigators last month demanded that the US government close the prison without further delay, alleging a host of violations of human rights and torture.

They did not visit the site because they were not allowed to conduct interviews with prisoners.

Ms Lizin said the OSCE parliamentary delegation was also unable to talk to prisoners but had discussed the situation with the International Red Cross, which has access to them.

The OSCE plans to prepare a report by the end of May, touching on the delegation's concerns including the legal situation of detainees, Ms Lizin said.

The US is a member of the 55-country OSCE.

posted March 07, 2006 07:54 PM            

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico

67c21f9aaf09@news.ap.org
Fearing militants or even their own governments, some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay from China, Saudi Arabia and other nations do not want to go home, according to transcripts of hearings at the U.S. prison in Cuba.

Uzbekistan, Yemen, Algeria and Syria are also among the countries to which detainees do not want to return. The inmates have told military tribunals that they or their families could be tortured or killed if they are sent back.

President Bush has said the United States transfers detainees to other countries only when it receives assurances that they will not be tortured. Critics say such assurances are useless. The U.S. has released or transferred 267 prisoners and has announced plans to do the same with at least 123 more in the future.

Inmates have told military tribunals they worry about reprisals from militants who will suspect them of cooperating with U.S. authorities in its war on terror. Others say their own governments may target them for reasons that have nothing to do with why they were taken to Guantanamo Bay in the first place.

A man from Syria who was detained along with his father pleaded with the tribunal for help getting them political asylum _ in any country that will take them.

"You've been saying 'terrorists, terrorists.' If we return, whether we did something or not, there's no such things as human rights. We will be killed immediately," he said. "You know this very well."

It is impossible to know how many of the detainees, most held for years now without being charged, fear going home. The U.S. military does not comment on individual cases, and the detainees generally are not in a position to offer any evidence of persecution as they plead their cases before the tribunals.

A Saudi identified only as Yasim, who said he attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and was jailed in his country for selling drugs, told the tribunal that after being repeatedly interrogated at Guantanamo, he fears his fellow prisoners as well as others back in Saudi Arabia.

"I can't go back to my country. I have been threatened to be killed by many people," he said, according to the transcripts, which the Pentagon released Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.

A detainee from Uzbekistan told the tribunals in December 2004 that his father and uncles were jailed for their Muslim faith in his native country and said he fears the rest of his family would be tortured if he returned.

The prisoner shrugged off the threat to his own safety in Uzbekistan, where the government has clamped down on Islamic groups which are not sanctioned by the state.

"I'm not afraid to die. We all belong to Allah and we shall return to him," he said.

This Uzbek's fate is unknown, as is that of almost every other detainee whose names are no longer blacked out when they appear in the hearing transcripts. The Bush administration has not said who has been held in the prison it opened in January 2002, and does not announce when or where individual detainees are released.

What the Pentagon has said is that 187 prisoners have been released, and 80 others have been transferred to prisons in more than a dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Russia, Bahrain and Pakistan. An unknown number of these prisoners were later released, but many languish in other jails, again without charges, let alone trials.

"We have no authority to tell another government what they are going to do with a detainee," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico told the AP a year ago when asked about dozens of Pakistani prisoners transferred home for continued detention.

The personal threats that detainees may face after leaving Guantanamo Bay pose a human rights challenge to the United States, which has stopped bringing new prisoners to the camp and is under international pressure to close it altogether.

"This policy of handing over prisoners to countries that the U.S. challenges on their human rights abuses is a sham and it opens the United States to charges of hypocrisy around the world," said Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has sought passage of a bill that would ban the U.S. from sending prisoners to other countries to face torture.

In the case of one group of prisoners, Muslims from western China known as Uighurs, the U.S. has struggled to find a solution.

A military tribunal has determined that five are "no longer enemy combatants" and can be released from Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. agrees they could face persecution back in China but so far has not found a third country to take them.

For now, the Uighurs are being kept at Camp Iguana, a privileged section of the prison with televisions, stereos and a view of the Caribbean.

A Uighur told a military tribunal that he feared going back to China so much, he considered trying to convince the panel that he was guilty, according to a hearing transcript.

"If I am sent back to China, they will torture me really bad," said the man, whose name did not appear in the transcript. "They will use dogs. They will pull out my nails."

Two of the Uighurs are appealing a federal judge's rejection of their request to be released in the United States, where a family in the Washington suburbs has offered to take them in.

posted March 08, 2006 03:29 PM              

quote:

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But Alain Grignard, deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit, said holding people for many years without telling them what would happen to them is in itself "mental torture".
"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," said Mr Grignard.

---

Do you know if he got to meet and speak to any of the detainees jwhop?

posted March 08, 2006 03:40 PM            

Well gee whiz, I guess denying prisoners cigarettes, cocaine, hash or candy is "torture" if they're addicted.

Have you ever looked at the list of things the UN considers "torture"? It's absurd. I wonder why the UN, Human Rights Council and all the others aren't hot on the ass of Belgium...since we have it on good authority that Gitmo is better and prisoners are treated better at Gitmo than in Belgium prisons?

This from the article..to answer your question.

"Ms Lizin said the OSCE parliamentary delegation was also unable to talk to prisoners but had discussed the situation with the International Red Cross, which has access to them."

posted March 08, 2006 04:11 PM              

quote:

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Right, right. Holding prisoners for lengthy times is mental torture

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Without charge or the right to a fair trial yes it is. And if they hadn't met (or weren't permitted to meet/speak to) the prisoners, how can they make an informed decision regarding how the detainees are treated? If you can't assess someone's physical or mental state you can't assess their treatment. Having it 2nd hand is not good enough; and not permitting the UN to visit and speak to them is simply fuel to the fire that there's something to hide.

If there's nothing wrong with what the US government are doing at Guantanamo Bay, then why not allow the UN in to see for themselves? Or Amnesty International for example? And if there is overwhelming evidence against these detainees, why haven't they been charged/tried for the crimes yet?

quote:

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Have you ever looked at the list of things the UN considers "torture"? It's absurd.

---

Oh so it's absurd to prevent the physical or mental abuse of human beings is it? Let's see how absurd their considerations are shall we?

UN Convention Against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment

Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Oh and the argument that being 'at war' or protecting your country from the threat of terrorism is somehow a justification for sanctioning torture or abuse of detainess... well it's illegal according to the UN.

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 4

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.

2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

And yes, I wonder why the UN et al are not 'hot on the heels' of the Belgian prisons if they indeed receive worse treatment than those in Guantanamo Bay? Could it be perhaps that they charge prisoners and give them the basic human right of a fair trial?