"Guantanamo Worries England's Archbishop," by David Stringer - AP (London), 5 March 2006
The Church of England's senior clergyman said in comments broadcast Sunday that he worried that the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has set a dangerous precedent in international law.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said in a televised interview that the detention camp in Cuba went against existing legal norms. He said Guanatanmo created a new category of custody, with prisoners held without proper legal assistance and without being found guilty of specific crimes.
"Any message given, that any state can just override some of the basic habeas corpus-type provisions, is going to be very welcome to tyrants elsewhere in the world, now and in the future," Williams told the British Broadcasting Corp. in the interview recorded Tuesday.
"What, in 10 years' time, are people going to be able to say about a system that tolerates this?" Williams asked....
Williams said he believed the base in eastern Cuba was an "extraordinary legal anomaly," seeming to echo British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has also called the base an "anomaly."
Williams said Guantanamo fails to fit within any national or international legal framework, setting a dangerous precedent. Blair has not expanded on what he means by calling the prison camp an anomaly.
Williams also said he believed some Muslims had shown a "hysterical overreaction" to the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
He said, however, he understood the sense of anger felt by many Muslims who believe their faith is "pushed to the edge of every discussion."
Williams was speaking during a visit to Khartoum, Sudan, where he is on a one-week World Food Program tour of the country.
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"America 'Has Failed to Learn from Abu Ghraib'" - the Times (London), 6 March 2006
America was today accused of failing to learn the lessons of Abu Ghraib by continuing to hold thousands of Iraqi detainees in conditions that breached their human rights.
Amnesty International, the London-based rights watchdog, criticised coalition forces and the Iraqi Government for holding security suspects for months without trial and allowing them to be routinely abused.
The group said around 14,000 people are currently imprisoned in American and British-run jails under rules that do not afford detainees access to the courts or, in some cases, to the details of the charges against them.
The result, said Amnesty, is "a system that is arbitary and a recipe for abuse". The human rights group said inadequate legal protections for prisoners in coalition-run facilities had spilled over into Iraqi jails, where detainees were frequently beaten with electric cables and tortured....
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"US Opposes UN Human Rights Council," by Edith M. Lederer - AP (United Nations), 3 March 2006
The United States has become increasingly isolated in its opposition to the proposed U.N. Human Rights Council, with close European allies and Japan joining other countries, human rights groups a dozen Nobel Peace Prize winners in backing the new body.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters Thursday he was "chagrined about the U.S. position" and didn't know how the issue would be resolved. But he expressed hope that the United States "will find some way of associating itself with the other member states."
"I don't think we should see it as isolating the U.S., or the U.S. versus the others," he said. "We are in this together."
The Human Rights Council would replace the discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission, which has been criticized for allowing some of the worst rights-offending countries to use their membership to protect one another from condemnation, or to criticize others. In recent years, commission members have included Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba.
U.N. General Assembly President Jan Eliasson spent the last five months overseeing often contentious negotiations before producing a compromise proposal last week. Annan warned that unraveling the proposal would mean the U.N. would be left with the discredited commission.
While no country got everything it wanted, many said the draft would strengthen the U.N.'s human rights efforts. Japan and the European Union signed on Wednesday night.
But the United States announced Monday that it would vote against the council unless the draft was renegotiated to correct what it views as serious deficiencies, especially the chance that human rights abusers could become members....
The United States had lobbied for a permanent Human Rights Council of 30 countries chosen primarily for their commitment to human rights by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly, to try to keep rights abusers off.
Under the compromise proposal, the 53-member Human Rights Commission would be replaced by a 47-member Human Rights Council elected by an absolute majority of the 191-member General Assembly.
Eliasson stressed the draft would require every council member to "uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights" and have their human rights record reviewed during their three-year term. Eventually, all 191 U.N. member states would face such scrutiny.
Bolton said the U.S. still wants members to be elected by a two-thirds vote and opposes a two-term limit for a country to serve on the council.
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"British Pol Criticizes US Over Gitmo" - AP (London), 3 March 2006
The newly elected leader of the Liberal Democrats, Britain's third-largest political party, began his first full day in the post Friday by criticizing the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
Menzies Campbell was elected leader by his party Thursday on a platform to tackle government secrecy and defend personal liberty.
"I am determined to continue to demand from (Prime Minister) Tony Blair clear answers to some serious questions: What steps has he taken to close down the camp, and what representations has he made to secure the release of detainees? Both Parliament and the public need to know," Campbell told The Associated Press.
All nine British citizens who were detained at Guantanamo were released in 2004 and 2005. Six British residents who hold other citizenship remain among some 490 prisoners captured in Afghanistan and suspected of membership in al-Qaida or the ousted Taliban. Only a handful have been charged since the camp opened in January 2001.
Blair recently called the camp an "anomaly" that should be closed, but also said critics should remember the circumstances under which it was opened — in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Campbell, 64, told the BBC that the prison was doing "enormous damage to the reputation of the U.S. and those who are associated with it, particularly throughout the Middle East."
"Yet again, this issue will be raised in capitals throughout the Middle East, and perhaps most importantly in the streets of these Arab capitals. It makes the task of the coalition forces in Iraq yet more difficult," Campbell said....
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