UNHRC calls for immediate closure of Guantanamo

The U.S. treatment of detainees at GUANTANAMO BAY violates international law and amounts to torture, a UN report said, calling for the immediate closure of the U.S. detention facility and the prosecution of officials “up to the highest levels” who are involved in prisoner abuses, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The UN Human Rights Commission report, due to be released this week, demands the U.S. to put GUANTANAMO detainees on trial or release them, questioning Washington’s right to classify foreign detainees as “enemy combatants” and arguing that the “WAR ON TERROR” isn’t a justification for holding them indefinitely without charge.

Human rights groups and several EU states have said that "enemy combatants" is a term not recognized by international law, and that prisoners should be granted the rights of prisoners of wars.

The authors of the UN report also urge the U.S. to stop all "practices amounting to torture", including the force-feeding of prisoners who are on a hunger strike. They argue that force-feeding is akin to torture, demanding that "the authorities in GUANTANAMO BAY do not force-feed any detainee who is capable of forming a rational judgment and is aware of the consequences of refusing food."

The report also calls on the BUSH Administration to ensure that abuse allegations are investigated by U.S. criminal courts, and that "all perpetrators up to the highest level of military and political command are brought to justice".

The authors don't specify who they mean by "political command", but logically it means this would include PRESIDENT GEROGE W. BUSH.

The report is the final of the commission's working group on arbitrary detention, which will be submitted at its Geneva headquarters in the next few days. It is expected to hurt the already damaged relations between Washington and the United States. Some correspondents say that the report would likely lead to demands from Congress for a freeze on Washington's annual donations.

Yesterday U.S. officials denounced the UN’s findings as "a hatchet job".

“These people are supposed to be undertaking a serious investigation of the facts relating to GUANTANAMO… Instead, they deliver a report with a bunch of old allegations from lawyers representing released detainees,” a senior official said.

Last November, a group of UN human rights experts rejected an invitation by the U.S. to visit GUANTANAMO because Washington refused to allow them free access to prisoners there.

The BUSH Administration challenges whether it’s the responsibility of the UN Human Rights Commission to investigate GUANTANAMO.

The U.S. State Department says that Washington provides regular access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and this was enough. But the UN experts insist that the ICRC's monitoring is very different, as it reports to the detaining authorities, while the UN experts investigate allegations of human rights violations and report publicly to the UN General Assembly and the world body's top watchdog, the Human Rights Commission.

The United States is holding more than 500 foreign suspects at GUANTANAMO. Only four have been charged.

Human rights activists have sharply criticized the U.S. for conditions at GUANTANAMO. They say that policy decisions made at top levels of the U.S. government have led to widespread prisoner abuse by American soldiers.