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Last Updated: Feb 18th, 2008 - 14:39:01 |
GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators rejected an invitation to visit the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, saying on Friday Washington would not let them interview the more than 500 people held there.
The envoys, who report on torture, arbitrary detention and other abuses for the United Nations, had warned that they would not go unless Washington let them speak to detained terrorism suspects as well as U.S. prison staff and officials.
This was normal practice on all such visits, they said. But Washington replied that only the International Committee of the Red Cross was permitted to speak directly to detainees.
"We deeply regret that the United States government did not accept the standard terms of reference for a credible, objective and fair assessment of the situation of the detainees," the five U.N. investigators said in a statement.
"Under the circumstances, we will not be travelling to Guantanamo Bay naval station," they added.
Washington defends its treatment of prisoners and denies that torture has occurred at the Guantanamo facility, which opened in January 2002, just months after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Most of the detainees were seized in Afghanistan.
Human rights activists have criticised jail conditions and the indefinite detention without trial of detainees at the naval base in Cuba. Only nine have been charged so far with any crime.
Of the five envoys, Washington invited only three -- Austria's Manfred Nowak, special investigator on torture; Pakistan's Asma Jahangir, who focuses on religious freedom; and Algeria's Leila Zerrougui, who looks into arbitrary detention.
It did not accept Argentina's Leandro Despouy, special investigator on the independence of judges and lawyers, and New Zealand's Paul Hunt, special rapporteur on mental and physical health, who were included in the envoys' request.
But the others said they would still accept the invitation, extended in October nearly four years after first attempts to visit were made, providing Washington agreed to the interviews.
CONTINUE TO HOPE
But Washington stood by its refusal.
"The ICRC has been doing it for a great many years ... so we're not inclined to add (to) the number of people that would be given that extensive access," U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said earlier this month.
Speaking in London on Friday, Novak said the envoys had not given up all hope of going to Guantanamo at some stage.
"We continue to hope that the authorities will grant us access ... on reasonable terms," he told journalists while attending an Amnesty International conference on Guantanamo and other camps for U.S.-held prisoners.
But having access to detainees was "the minimum standard of objective fact-finding."
The Geneva director of the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch said the envoys had no alternative but to turn down the U.S. offer.
"It was impossible. They (Washington) were saying that you can go but you cannot do your job," Loubna Freih told Reuters.
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