U.N. Panel Wants Cuba Jail Closed

The U.N. Committee Against Torture called on the Bush administration Friday to close its prison for terrorism suspects here, condemning the secretive detention network as a violation of international law and a scar on the United States’ image as a defender of rights and freedom.

The appeal to close the prison could strengthen the hand of those within the U.S. government, including the president himself, who lately have been pushing to phase out the Guantanamo operations by releasing or transferring the estimated 460 prisoners to their home countries.

A Supreme Court ruling next month, on whether the Pentagon has the right to try terrorism suspects here, could shutter the much-maligned tribunal, the first military war-crimes prosecution effort since World War II.

The U.N. committee issued its 11-page declaration of concerns and censure after hearings this month in Geneva, including testimony by U.S. officials who insisted the United States upholds the Convention Against Torture to which it is a signatory. The committee is based in Geneva.

Though the report acknowledged “positive aspects” of recent U.S. action to renounce torture, it reminded Washington that its commitment to the convention “applies at all times, whether in peace, war or armed conflict, in any territory under its jurisdiction.”

Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld set up the prison camps and tribunal at the U.S. naval base in southern Cuba to try those suspected of aiding terrorism without having to adhere to the constitutional rights guaranteed people tried on U.S. soil.

They have refused to classify the detainees as prisoners of war and accord them the protections of the Geneva Convention, instead calling the detainees “enemy combatants.”

As worldwide condemnation has mounted, the State Department has become increasingly sensitive to allies’ contentions that the prison and tribunal are illegitimate.

The U.N. report states that the United States “should cease to detain any person at Guantanamo Bay and close this detention facility, permit access by the detainees to judicial process, or release them as soon as possible.”

The committee said it was also concerned about allegations that the United States “has established secret detention facilities which are not accessible to the International Committee of the Red Cross,” a reference to reports of secret CIA operations abroad.

U.S. interrogators have been accused of abuse at Guantanamo, as well as at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, including religious denigration by urinating on the Muslim holy book, sexual humiliation, and causing detainees to believe they are drowning in a technique known as “water-boarding.”

Washington has been chipping away slowly at the number of detainees by negotiating transfers to their home countries and reconsidering whether there are grounds to continue holding them.

Fifteen Saudis left early Thursday. A release to Pakistan is imminent, according to that country’s interior minister. Five Chinese Uighurs were sent to Albania earlier this month. This year’s annual Administrative Review Boards have deemed at least 120 other detainees eligible to leave.

Although Bush and others have expressed a desire to empty the controversial detention camps, work is proceeding on a $30-million medium-security prison for 100 captives at Guantanamo. It is to open in August.

The detention camp budget has grown to $64 million a year, according to the prison’s new commander, Navy Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr.

In an interview Thursday, Harris described the prisoners as “committed jihadists” who are all dangerous and should be kept here as long as it takes to win the global war on terrorism.

With or without Supreme Court support for the tribunal, Harris said, the detention operation is here “for the long haul” and his mission to keep America’s enemies locked up won’t change with the high court ruling.

“Detention is not punishment. Detention is keeping people off the battlefield,” Harris said.

Anguish among the detainees -- all but 10 still held without charges for as long as four years -- was apparent Thursday when four detainees attempted suicide and prisoners in the least restrictive facility attacked guards when the guards attempted to rescue a man who appeared to be trying to hang himself.

At a news conference Friday, Harris said the detainee at Camp 4 had been feigning a suicide attempt to lure guards into a dorm-like room where they were attacked with weapons fashioned from broken light fixtures, metal shards and fan blades. Six detainees sustained minor injuries but no U.S. soldiers were hurt, said Harris.

“We trained for the possibility that a suicide attempt may be used by the detainees to create an opportunity to conduct an assault, take a hostage or kill the guard. In fact, that was exactly what was going on last night,” Harris said, adding that the 10 men involved had smeared body fluids and soapy water on their floor.

Col. Mike Bumgarner, detention group commander, said prisoners had the upper hand in the hourlong clash until they were subdued with pepper spray and rubber projectiles.

During a tour of Camp 4 for journalists Wednesday, Bumgarner’s deputy, Lt. Col. Mike Nicolucci, had noted that detainees had access to more “comfort items” and more latitude to circulate in open courtyards because they would be loath to misbehave and risk being sent back to harsher conditions elsewhere.

The Thursday night incident was the first known disruption at Camp 4, which houses about 175 detainees. Those involved have been moved to maximum-security detention, said the prison spokesman, Cmdr. Robert Durand.

Officials were unable to ascribe a motive to the apparently coordinated disruptions or to say whether the departure of 15 Saudis earlier that day might have been a factor.

The Saudi foreign minister had announced that 16 were to be transferred. Speculation arose that the uprising was set off by a last-minute decision to leave one detainee behind.

Human rights advocates and civilian lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners point to the uncertainty of detention here as an agonizing element of what they see as mistreatment.

Most detainees have been here for more than four years without being told when or if they will get a day in court.

The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the U.N. committee recommendations, which have no legal power, and a staff attorney who has been monitoring the tribunal here said the report spotlighted U.S. violation of “bedrock principles against torture and abuse.”

“If America is to regain its status as a beacon of freedom around the world, the U.S. government must take immediate steps to end its policies of abuse and to hold officials and perpetrators accountable,” said the ACLU’s Jamil Dakwar.

The White House and State Department have lately seemed to take greater notice of the expanding condemnation of the Guantanamo process.

President Bush told Germany’s ARD television last week that he “would like to close the camp” and was looking to the Supreme Court ruling to decide whether war-crimes tribunals against the 10 charged suspects could continue.

The Pentagon too has said efforts are intensifying to downsize the population.

“The State Department has been involved in a series of discussions with a variety of nations to encourage them to take responsibility for their citizens held by the U.S., as we have no desire to be the world’s jailer,” said Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Harris confirmed that about 25% of the detainees are still actively interrogated. The tribunal’s chief prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, said last week that if the process goes forward, no more than 20% of the remaining detainees are ever likely to face charges.

But getting rid of the legal, security and public relations problems is proving difficult.

After the State Department transferred to Albania the five Muslim Uighurs, Beijing demanded they be returned to their homeland to face terrorism charges.

The Pentagon has repatriated all European citizens, bowing to allies’ concerns. Even Bush’s closest ally in the war on terrorism, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has called the prison here “an anomaly.”

The Pentagon on Monday released names, nationalities and ages of 759 prisoners who had been held at the Guantanamo camps, which opened in January 2002.

But suspicion persisted that it was not a full disclosure.

Asked if the list of 759 included every captive to have passed through Guantanamo, Department of Defense spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler qualified his response with “every individual who has been detained by DoD.”

The ACLU’s Dakwar said the verbal hairsplitting bolstered suspicions that other prisoners were being held off the books by other U.S. government agencies.

Leaked reports of secret CIA interrogation sites are supported by the absence from the detainee lists of top Al Qaeda figures known to have been arrested, such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, suspected masterminds of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.