Eccentric Star: A Public Diplomacy Weblog

US Officials Say Guantanamo Suicides an Act of War (Updated 6/12: US Tones Down Statements)

For all the talk about State Department rapid media response centers, it's obvious that a top public diplomacy official was woefully unprepared to respond to news that three Guantanamo inmates had killed themselves. Credibility and compassion are essential components of effective public communication in a crisis. Colleen Gaffey's remarks show neither.

"Guantanamo Suicides a 'PR Move'" - BBC News, 11 June 2006

A top US official has described the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a "good PR move to draw attention".

Colleen Graffy told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and "a tactic to further the jihadi cause", but taking their own lives was unnecessary.

But lawyers say the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair.

A military investigation into the deaths is under way, amid growing calls for the centre to be moved or closed.

Speaking to the BBC's Newshour programme, Ms Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, said the three men did not value their lives nor the lives of those around them.

Detainees had access to lawyers, received mail and had the ability to write to families, so had other means of making protests, she said, and it was hard to see why the men had not protested about their situation....

Ken Roth, head of Human Rights Watch in New York, told the BBC the men had probably been driven by despair.

"These people are despairing because they are being held lawlessly," he said.

"There's no end in sight. They're not being brought before any independent judges. They're not being charged and convicted for any crime."

But earlier, the camp commander, Rear Adm Harris said he did not believe the men had killed themselves out of despair.

"They are smart. They are creative, they are committed," he said.

"They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."...

Gaffey and Harris might have a point -- assuming the men who killed themselves actually were committed jihadists and not just luckless guys who wound up in Guantanamo by being in the wrong place at the wrong time; assuming they actually did not make any prior efforts to communicate their despair (see the following item for information to the contrary); and assuming that Gaffey and Harris actually can read the minds of the dead. But even if all of that is true, I imagine that what comes through to anyone who heard Gaffey's interview or who read this report is not the message that Guantanamo internees are dangerous people, but rather that American officials are staggeringly self-justifying, stubborn, and callous.

For other reactions to the Guantanamo deaths, see:

"Guantanamo Deaths 'Sad Incident'" - BBC News, 11 June 2006

Downing Street says the deaths of three inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba is a "sad incident".

Three men - two Saudis and a Yemeni - are thought to have hanged themselves with bed sheets on Saturday.

A spokesman said the US Army had promised to make an investigation, and that people should wait before making any further comment.

Briton Moazzam Begg, 37, who was held at the camp for two years, said the three suicides were "just awful".

Prime Minister Tony Blair, a staunch ally of the US in their "war on terror", has described the camp in the Guantanamo Bay naval base as "an anomaly that has to end".

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, has also described the camp as "unacceptable" and a "symbol of injustice."...

All three men had previously taken part in some of the mass on-and-off hunger strikes undertaken by detainees since last August, and all three had been force-fed by camp authorities.

They had left suicide notes, but no details have been made available....

Mr Begg, who was released from the camp in 2005, told news agency AP: "We all expected something like this but were not prepared. It's just awful. I hope the Bush administration will finally see this is wrong."...

"Camp Suicides 'Hard to Believe'" - BBC News, 11 June 2006

The sister of a UK inmate of Guantanamo Bay has said she is "suspicious" about the suicides of three detainees at the US base in Cuba.

Amani Deghayes and her family have campaigned for the release of her brother Omar, 37, from Brighton, since his detention in 2002.

Ms Deghayes, from Kilburn, north London, said she did not know what to think about the suicides.

"I find it quite hard to believe they managed to kill themselves," she said.

Her suspicions have been raised, she explained, because inmates are allowed to have so few items in their cells.

"It is really shocking. There is a lot of abuse in the camp. My brother lost an eye because of it," she said....

"If they did kill themselves, then it is understandable," said Ms Deghayes.

"It (Guantanamo) is such a closed institution and they are in such a horrible situation."

Mr Deghayes was arrested in Pakistan and accused of committing terrorist acts against the US, but his lawyers claim it was a case of mistaken identity.

Libyan-born Mr Deghayes, fled his homeland with the family in 1986 and was given asylum.

Last month the High Court in London ruled the Foreign Office had no obligation to put pressure on the US to release him, and two other British residents, because they did not have UK citizenship.

Ms Deghayes said as far as she knows her brother is in a different area of the camp to the highest security section where the inmates died.

"But the news I have of him is at least a year old - I have absolutely no idea where he is now," she said.

"Briton Held at Guantanamo Says Suicides 'Inevitable'" - Reuters (London), 11 June 2006, as carried by the Financial Times (London) website

LONDON, June 11 (Reuters) - A British man held for two and a half years at the U.S.'s Guantanamo prison camp said on Sunday he was shocked that three inmates had hanged themselves but said treatment of prisoners there made suicide attempts "inevitable".

Shafiq Rasul, who was held at the Guantanamo camp in Cuba after being arrested in Afghanistan, said that while he was there, inmates who were subjected to constant beatings and interrogations had attempted to take their own lives.

"I was shocked, but at the same time it is inevitable that something like that would happen," he told Sky Television.

"There were numerous suicide attempts while I was there as well -- it happened right in front of me."...

Added 12 June:

"US Steps Back from Guantanamo Suicide Comments," by Peter Graff - Reuters (London), 12 June 2006.

LONDON (Reuters) - A senior U.S. official rowed back on Monday from remarks by colleagues that Guantanamo Bay prisoners' suicides were an act of war and a "good PR move," after the comments were condemned abroad.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson, speaking to BBC radio, distanced himself from the statements.

"I wouldn't characterize it as a good PR move. What I would say is that we are always concerned when someone takes his own life. Because as Americans, we value life, even the lives of violent terrorists who are captured waging war against our country," he said.  [Note: The US Embassy in London has an audiofile of an 'interview' with Stimson on this topic posted to its website - the 'interviewer' sounds like some hapless JO reading off a script. This is a nice use of technology to get a message out to a certain public, and I don't doubt Stimson says the same things in the exchange that he would say to a real journalist; but the pseudo interview format does not inspire respect.]

The camp commander, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, had described the three suicides as an act of war. Colleen Graffy, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the BBC on Sunday the deaths were "a good PR move."

In an editorial headlined "Bad Language," the right-leaning Times, normally a defender of Britain's alliance with the United States, said such rhetoric "plays once again into the hands of America's enemies."

The left-leaning Guardian described Admiral Harris's remarks as "cold and odious." "The demented logic of Dr Strangelove hung like a ghost" over the U.S. response to the suicides, it said....

"Bad Language" - lead editorial, the Times (London), 12 June 2006

In its four and a half years of operation, the US camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has provoked a great deal of strong language on both sides, much of it wholly inappropriate. In describing the suicides of three inmates on Saturday as “an act of warfare waged against us”, the camp commander, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, was repeating the kind of unwise rhetoric that President Bush has recently said he so regretted using in connection with Iraq. It is simply foolish to make such insensitive comments. They may be understood in the US, but they will be deliberately misinterpreted by a world eager to believe the worst of America. Yet, in rushing to brand the men “heroes”, human rights groups have also made a grave error of judgment, wilfully distorting the truth for their own purposes....

It is too easily forgotten that Guantanamo Bay was an extraordinary response to extraordinary circumstances. It is an anomaly that is not representative of American justice, much as America’s detractors would like it to seem otherwise. Yet its existence outside legal norms has done enormous damage to America’s image....

The Pentagon must move swiftly to repatriate those inmates whose intelligence value, and risk, is negligible. It is less clear what to do with the really hard cases. But whatever is done with them, it needs to be decided promptly. Rear Admiral Harris is correct that the War on Terror is being fought on many levels. And in the propaganda war, Guantanamo is being used against the US.

"A Tunnel without End," by Zachary Katznelson - op-ed, the Guardian (UK), 12 June 2006. Katznelson is identified as senior counsel at Reprieve, a non-governmental organization representing 36 Guantanamo Bay detainees.

On Friday night, three prisoners in Guantánamo Bay committed suicide. Two Saudis and one Yemeni hanged themselves. In a desperate attempt at spin, the US claims this was an act of war or a public relations exercise. The truth is quite different. Islam says it goes against God to kill yourself. So what would drive a man to take his own life, despite his religious beliefs? The answer shames the US and its allies, Britain prominently included....

Until May, the US refused to even tell us who was in Guantánamo. But before it finally released the names of everyone there, the Bush administration secured passage of a law barring lawsuits by the prisoners held in Guantánamo. That means that at last we know the prisoners' identities, but can do nothing legally to help them. The men who committed suicide found themselves in just this legal black hole. They had no legal recourse, just the prospect of a life in prison, in isolation, with no family, no friends, nothing. They took their lives.

So what now? President Bush stated this week that he wants to close Guantánamo, that he wants to give the men trials. Well, let's have them - immediately. The US has had over four years to gather evidence against the men. Surely that is enough time to prove guilt. And now it is time to show the world the evidence. As Harriet Harman, the British constitutional affairs minister, said yesterday, Guantánamo must be opened up to review or shut down. Will Britain do what is necessary to make this a reality? Because this is about even more than the fate of 460 people, it is about whether the US and its allies will lead the world by democratic example, or whether they will continue to give lip service to human rights and open societies, while denigrating those cherished notions with their actions....

The June 12 State Department noon press briefing led off with reporters' questions about Graffy's comments. I've excerpted only a small part of the transcript here.

Daily Press Briefing with Sean McCormack, Spokesman - US Department of State (Washington, DC), 12 June 2006

...QUESTION: Could you talk about the response by the official in Public Diplomacy calling the suicides at Guantanamo a -- basically a PR gamut?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I would say -- I would say, George, that we would have -- we have serious concern anytime anybody takes their own life. The -- what happened over the weekend at Guantanamo is being fully investigated by the Department of Defense. You've seen numerous statements about the incident from the Department of Defense. And we, ourselves, have reached out to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the people in question were nationals of those countries. We've also done an extensive amount of outreach around the world to explain at least the facts as we know them right now. I don't want to go too much farther down the line, George, because there is going to be an ongoing investigation into the matter.

QUESTION: Do you agree with the --

MR. MCCORMACK: I would not characterize it as a PR stunt.

QUESTION: Would you agree with the statement, though, by I think it's Admiral Harris that it's asymmetrical warfare?

MR. MCCORMACK: I'm not going to -- I'm not going to try to discern what the motives of these individuals were. He's made that statement. I understand that there were some materials left behind. I don't have access to those, so I'm not going to try to -- I'm not going to try to discern what the motives might have been.

QUESTION: And are you concerned that statements such as these, that it's a good PR move, will be taken badly in the Arab world in particular and that you will be seen as sort of uncaring, unfeeling and not looking at the full context of Guantanamo?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, like I -- as I said, I certainly wouldn't characterize it that way. President Bush has said that he was -- that he had serious concern about what had happened, and I think that officials from the Department of Defense, and I just have as well, expressed serious concern anyone takes their own life.

So in terms of the situation surrounding this incident, that's going to be fully investigated.

QUESTION: And then finally, is the uses of quick reaction force in terms of getting the message out to the Arab world in full gear within the State Department, this media reactions -- I'm sorry, I forget what the name is.

MR. MCCORMACK: Oh, the Rapid Reaction Unit?

QUESTION: The Rapid Reaction Unit.

MR. MCCORMACK: What the Rapid Reaction is -- it serves primarily a monitoring function. And it will call out to posts to find out -- to get some greater context of the story -- various stories that appear in foreign media, but this was really the regional bureaus that were involved in contacting countries around the world either here in Washington or out at capitals....

Also see:

"US Seeks to Deal with Guantanamo Suicides Fallout," by Sue Pleming - Reuters (Washington, DC), 12 June 2006.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Already struggling to improve its image abroad, the United States went into damage control mode on Monday after a senior State Department official called three suicides in Guantanamo Bay a "great PR move."  [Sic - BBC News reported Graffy as having said "a good PR move."]

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack distanced the department from the remark made on Sunday by deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy Colleen Graffy....

Professor Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution, said whatever damage control State Department tried to do would not overcome negative views, particularly in the Arab world.

There was so much mistrust that some Arab media were questioning whether the deaths were suicides at all. "At this point, public diplomacy simply cannot overcome the prevailing perceptions in the region toward the U.S.," Telhami said.

Graffy's comment irked State Department image crafters who fear it could further erode America's image among allies already critical of U.S. human rights practices after the        Abu Ghraib prison scandal when U.S. personnel abused inmates.

Graffy is a deputy of special envoy Karen Hughes, a close confidant of        President George W. Bush, who heads a campaign to improve the U.S. image abroad, especially in Islamic countries. Her comment was seen as a setback in those efforts.

State Department's image gurus also viewed a remark by Guantanamo prison commander, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, describing the suicides as acts of "asymmetrical warfare," as a blunder.

Several State Department officials, all of whom declined to be named because the issue was so sensitive, said Graffy had chosen her words poorly and noted that Harris's comments were not repeated by other Bush administration officials....

"US Disavows Guantanamo Suicide Comment," by David Gollust - VOA (Washington, DC), 12 June 2006

The State Department has delivered an indirect rebuke to one of its own officials, with a spokesman disavowing her depiction of the Guantanamo deaths as a public relations stunt, and stressing that the United States has serious concern about suicides at the facility....

At a news briefing State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said the Bush administration's view is that the deaths were not a public relations stunt, while a senior official who spoke to reporters said Graffy's choice of words was rather unfortunate....

McCormack said the United States is discussing the return of the remains of those who took their own lives with the governments of Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

In the meantime, he said the bodies are being treated with respect according to religious customs, and that the United States is conducting outreach in the Islamic world to explain its handling of the matter.

A senior official said he did not think Graffy would face disciplinary action, but said there was an expectation that all officials would treat the issue with greater sensitivity.

In that regard, he said there had been no repeat of another controversial comment, by the commander of the Guantanamo site, Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris, that the suicides had been what he called, an act of "asymmetrical warfare" against the United States.

Added 15 June 2006:

"The 'Suiciders' Have Suicided!" by Kamran Shafi (opinion column) - the Daily Times (Pakistan), 15 June 2006

...Colleen P Graffy, a member of the Bar in London, once an important member of Republicans Abroad, and a committed “Bushy”; and now deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, characterised the suicide of three prisoners at the infamous American black-hole of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in these words: “It was a good PR (public relations) move designed to attract attention."...

A question: Does the United States government take especial care to appoint insensitive dunderheads to its high offices? Readers will recall another champion in the shape and form of Lieutenant General William G “Jerry” Boykin, deputy assistant secretary of defence for intelligence (I ask you!) who famously said, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol” when speaking about a Somali (Muslim) warlord. No action was taken against the man other than a reprimand and a posting to his most sensitive and important present office. I suppose keeping in mind his complete objectivity and fairness!

Neither was Graffy the only one to make an odious statement to explain away the suicides of three obviously desperate and broken men who saw only a dark tunnel ahead of them: no light, no hope of succour, nothing to look forward to other than the daily abuse of themselves, and their religion. Rear Admiral Harry B Harris Jr commander of the Joint Task Force, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba i.e., the Guantanamo Bay prison governor, said he did not believe the men had killed themselves out of despair. “They are smart. They are creative, they are committed,” he said. “I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”...

We are also told by that same gent that the “remains” of the, to use a Bushism, “suiciders” (the poor sods who killed themselves) are being treated with the utmost respect. Really, admiral? You mean their “remains” are not being peed upon? Vicious guard dogs are not being set upon their “remains”? Your women soldiers/airwomen/sailors are not sitting in the “suicider’s” remains’ laps in undies and bras and smearing menstrual blood on them as a last goodbye? Nor being photographed, thumbs-up, posing with the “remains”, wide grins on their faces?...

Guantanamo Has Permanently Changed US Image, Scholar Says

This op-ed from today's Baltimore Post gives an enlightening history of Cuban and regional contexts for Guantanamo as well as a pungent, dead-on assessment of what the camp, as a symbol of America's conduct in the war on terror, means for this country's international prestige and security.

"The Dark Stain of Guantanamo," by Julia E. Sweig (op ed) - the Baltimore Sun, 8 June 2006. Sweig is a senior fellow and director of Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Guantanamo is not a spa, but neither is it an inhumane torture camp. It is a prison, and as prisons go, it is well-run and humane. Before you join the 'close it down' chorus, look past the spin to the facts." So Colleen P. Graffy, America's deputy assistant secretary for public diplomacy, tried to contain the global backlash over U.S. practices at Guantanamo and other prison camps.

In the days after the Cold War and before 9/11, only Haitian or Cuban migrants picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard and plunked down at Guantanamo talked much about conditions at the U.S. base in Cuba. They focused more on why they left home and their anxiety about where they'd go next - almost always the United States, they hoped - and voiced an occasional complaint about bad food and hot sun. The rest of the world saw the base as an American concern, and not a particularly important one.

There's a new storyline emanating from Gitmo. Since 2005, the United States has released a slow stream, 290 of at least 759 detainees, imprisoned since their capture in Afghanistan or Pakistan after the 2001 attacks. And they've lived to tell the tale.

The British play Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, written by released detainee Moazzam Begg and Guardian journalist Victoria Brittain, has made its rounds beyond London, around the world, and to theaters in New York and Washington. The authors recently signed with an American publisher to release Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim's Journey to Guantanamo and Back.

The French house Denoel will publish and has sold rights to Germany and Italy for Nizar Sassi's Prisonnier 325, Delta Camp. It is described by the publisher as a "mind-blowing journey" to the "most secret prison in the world" of a bored twenty-something son of Tunisian parents, rattling around in a Paris suburb. He unwittingly is lured to an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, purportedly just to blow off steam by playing with guns, not a terrorist bone in his body. The movie rights can't be far behind.

And it isn't only the real detainees whose memoirs will tie the words torture and America in the global lexicon. Americans have come to accept their bad rep. Has anyone protested that the hit U.S. television drama Lost depicts Sayid, an Iraqi, as emotionally destroyed because he was ordered by Americans to use torture during the Persian Gulf war?

The torture, abuse, unlawful detention and wholly un-American practices now associated with Guantanamo, Iraq and the war on terror will continue to seep into popular culture.

Even if the released detainees never return to the battlefield, the memoirs of these Guantanamo alumni will deepen a visceral reflex, once confined to places such as Cuba but now gone global, to revile the United States.

Even before the 1959 revolution, Guantanamo was a symbol for Cubans of American imperialism, although it was slowly losing its pungency for Latin Americans and even within Cuba. After the Cold War, Pentagon planners debated whether to mothball the base or otherwise reduce U.S. responsibilities there. America had returned Subic Bay to Philippine sovereignty in 1992. Why, many argued, not Guantanamo?

Such a concession to a communist government was plainly unthinkable. But by the end of the decade, the base had become entirely humanitarian, housing refugees.

Officers from the United States and Cuba met monthly to monitor safety and security procedures at the gate separating the U.S. base from Cuban territory. Both countries routinely cited this cooperation as evidence of possibilities should the United States and Cuba broaden cooperation to other mutual security interests. The base became an opportunity for the two countries to forge a more pragmatic relationship.

When the United States began using Guantanamo in 2002 to interrogate and jail suspected terrorists, the Cuban government showed a wary respect to the Bush administration. In a remarkable display of realpolitik, Defense Minister Raul Castro, after a visit to the Cuban side of the base, offered that his government would return to U.S. custody any detainee caught attempting to escape to Cuban jurisdiction.

But Guantanamo is now permanently a symbol of malignant U.S. power, not only in Latin America but well beyond America's historic sphere.

In a chapter of history pregnant with irony and meaning that even the most anti-American of observers could not have hoped to invent, a strategically useless military base on a strategically insignificant island in a region of the world that only a few years ago was poised to embrace U.S. leadership and values has become - for Latin Americans, the international community and, increasingly, U.S. citizens - a Jungian archetype of what's gone wrong with America.

It is now impossible to imagine that the base might again revert to being an innocuous and largely forgotten territorial anomaly. America will have to leave if we want the world to forget what was done in the name of our national security there.

That is the tragedy of the misbegotten war on terror: It has been conducted in such a manifestly un-American way that we must make a territorial concession if we are to encourage the world's support for us again. How can that be a model of national security?

Bush Tells German Audience, "I Would Very Much Like to End Guantanamo" (Added 5/11: US Rejects Goldsmith's Call)

"Bush Says He'd Like to Close Guantanamo" - AP (Washington), 7 May 2006

WASHINGTON - President Bush says he would like to close the detention center in Guantanamo in Cuba, but is waiting for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on whether inmates can face military tribunals.

"Obviously, the Guantanamo issue is a sensitive issue for people," Bush told ARD German television. "I very much would like to end Guantanamo; I very much would like to get people to a court.

"And we're waiting for our Supreme Court to give us a decision as to whether the people need to have a fair trial in a civilian court or in a military court," he said in a transcript released Sunday....

The Supreme Court is expected to decide in June whether military tribunals can hear the cases of the detainees.

Bush said in the interview with ARD on Thursday that either way the court rules, "they will get a trial which they, themselves, were unwilling to give to the people that they're willing to kill."

Bush said the United States "is strong on human rights and civil rights."

"That's why we're leading the case in funding for HIV/AIDS in Africa," Bush said. "That's why we're trying to rally the nation to do something about Darfur -- the genocide in Darfur. That's why we provide food for the hungry. That's why we try to liberate people when we find them in the clutches of tyranny."

I think this transcript, from the White House website, is the interview described by AP:

"Interview of the President by Sabine Christiansen of ARD German Television" - interview transcript, the White House (Washington, DC), 4 May 2006

...Q We Germans seem to be more involved -- have been more involved in the Iraq war than anybody else knew -- involuntarily, I would like to say. Because the U.S. intelligence services used German airports for secret rendition flights, and interrogated, even, German citizens -- hardly what you'd expect, I would say, from a friend and ally.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, on intelligence matters, it's my policy not to talk about them, otherwise they're not intelligence matters anymore. And the questions you ask will be all -- in some cases, analyzed through courts, in some cases through press inquiry. But Germany is a friend.

Q But the behavior itself? Is it behavior for an ally --

THE PRESIDENT: Well, like, what are you talking about?

Q I mean that you do this, that you don't ask for help for some of the ally, that you don't inform the ally and so on.

THE PRESIDENT: On like what subject, for example?

Q Like these flights, for example.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, again, you're asking me to talk about intelligence matters that I'm not going to talk about. And people can say whatever they want to say, but we work closely with Germany on all kinds of fronts in order to protect ourselves.

Q Then let me ask you about the image of the United States, especially for us Germans after the war, the United States stood as the symbol of liberty, for democracy. And then we saw these -- we saw Abu Ghraib, we saw Guantanamo, and these seemed suddenly to be signals that you're abandoning these values of democracy and liberty. And how do you want to repair them?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, it's absurd to say America is abandoning our values. No question Abu Ghraib was a disgrace for our country. But I think people ought to take a look at what happened afterwards -- and those who are responsible for that disgraceful behavior have been held to account, have been tried, have been, in some cases, dismissed from our military.

We're at war with an enemy. And we've got to protect ourselves. And, obviously, the Guantanamo issue is a sensitive issue for people. I very much would like to end Guantanamo; I very much would like to get people to a court. And we're waiting for our Supreme Court to give us a decision as to whether the people need to have a fair trial in a civilian court or in a military court.

But in either case, they will get a trial which they, themselves, were unwilling to give to the people that they're willing to kill -- "they," the enemy.

And so it's -- no, listen, our country is strong on human rights and civil rights. That's why we're leading the case in funding for HIV/AIDS in Africa. That's why we're trying to rally the nation to do something about Darfur -- the genocide in Darfur. That's why we provide food for the hungry. That's why we try to liberate people when we find them in the clutches of tyranny....

Added 9 May 2006:

"President's Guantanamo Comments Raise Policy Questions," by Carol Rosenberg - the Miami Herald, 8 May 2006

Is President Bush signaling plans to send away detainees from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or to bring hundreds of captives there to trial, depending on how the U.S. Supreme Court rules next month on detainees' legal rights?

Neither, according to Navy Lt. Cmdr. J. D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

''U.S. policy for detention operations has not changed,'' the Pentagon point man for questions about Guantánamo said today.

Questions emerged after the White House released a transcript Sunday of a presidential interview with a German television station that suggested a coming change in detention policy....

At the White House this morning, National Security Council spokesman Fred Jones said the president was making clear that the United States intends ``to see that the individuals at Guantánamo Bay are brought to justice.''

''We've got to protect ourselves,'' said Gordon, a Pentagon official who is designated spokesman for issues related to the Navy base in Cuba. ``While Guantánamo is clearly a sensitive issue, the U.S. policy for detention operations has not changed.''

Also see:

"Attorney General Calls for Guantanamo to Close," by Jamie Doward and Mark Townsend - the Guardian (UK), 7 May 2006

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is set to trigger a diplomatic row between Britain and the United States by calling for Guantánamo Bay to close.

The decision by the government's chief legal adviser to denounce the detention centre in Cuba as 'unacceptable' will dismay the Bush administration, which has continually rejected claims that the camp breaches international laws on human rights.

But Goldsmith will tell a global security conference at the Royal United Services Institute this week that the camp at Guantánamo Bay must not continue. 'It is time, in my view, that it should close.' An urbane lawyer who eschews the limelight, Goldsmith is not known for shooting from the hip in such unequivocal terms; however, it is clear he has harboured grave doubts for some time over the legality of Guantánamo under international law.

'There are certain principles on which there can be no compromise,' Goldsmith will say. 'Fair trial is one of those - which is the reason we in the UK were unable to accept that the US military tribunals proposed for those detained at Guantánamo Bay offered sufficient guarantees of a fair trial in accordance with international standards.'

Although privately some senior ministers believe Guantánamo should be closed down, no one has so far condemned the camp in such open and trenchant terms. To date, the strongest criticism of the camp has come from Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland minister, who said on Newsnight in February that it was his personal belief that the camp should close, while the Prime Minister said only that it is an 'anomaly' that will have to end one day....

Added 11 May 2006:

"UK Told US Won't Close Guantanamo" - BBC News, 11 May 2006

The US has rejected the UK government's calls for closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for terror suspects.

US officials said the camp housed dangerous people who could pose a fresh threat if they were released....

Responding to the criticism, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the US "would like nothing better" than to close Guantanamo down at some point in the future.

Echoing the words of US President George W Bush - who in a TV interview on Sunday said he would like to "end" the detention centre - he said: "Nobody wants to be a jailer for the world."

"But the fact of the matter is that the people there are dangerous people," Mr McCormack said.

"One thing we don't want to do is release people now who might at some point in the future end up on the battlefield facing our troops or somebody else's troops, or committing acts of terrorism against civilians."

A Pentagon spokesman said: "The dangerous detainees at Guantanamo include terrorist trainers, bomb makers and would-be suicide bombers, many who have vowed to return to the fight."...

The problem with the 'dangerous people' defense, of course, is that stories about Guantanamo and US detention practices create additional enmity. The net effect does not improve US security.

US Defends GWOT Practices to UN Committee

"US Defends Treatment of Foreign Terror Suspects," by Stephanie Nebehay - Reuters (Geneva), 5 May 2006

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States on Friday defended its treatment of foreign terrorism suspects held abroad, telling a U.N. committee it backed a ban on torture and stressing there had been "relatively few actual cases of abuse."

John Bellinger, legal adviser at the State Department, said the Bush administration was "absolutely committed to uphold its national and international obligations to eradicate torture."

"There are no exceptions to this prohibition," he added.

Lobby groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch this week again accused the United States of mistreating detainees through cruel interrogation methods including "water-boarding" -- a form of mock drowning.

Bellinger, head of the American delegation to the committee against torture, said allegations of U.S. abuse had become so exaggerated as to be "absurd."

"This committee should not lose sight of the fact that these incidents are not systemic," he told the committee of 10 experts as it began a two-day probe of the U.S. record.

It would do a disservice to "focus exclusively on allegations" as "relatively few actual cases of abuse and wrongdoing have occurred in the context of U.S. armed conflict with al Qaeda," he said.

The United States is holding hundreds of al Qaeda and other suspects, arrested since the September 11 attacks in 2001, at U.S.-run detention facilities in     Afghanistan,     Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Bellinger said 30 senior American officials from four agencies would do their best to answer the experts' questions fully, but would not comment on intelligence activities.

The committee will examine U.S. compliance with the Convention against Torture for the first time since 2000 -- before September 11 and the United States declared its war on terrorism....

"US Denies Terror Suspect Torture" - BBC News, 5 May 2006

The US has defended its treatment of suspects detained in the war on terror, telling a UN committee that it considers the use of torture as wrong.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Barry Lowenkron told the Committee Against Torture in Geneva that US law prohibited such practices....

In his opening statement, Mr Lowenkron stressed that the US government rejected the use of torture.

"My government's position is clear: US criminal law and treaty obligations prohibit torture. Torture is wrong," he said.

Mr Lowenkron said abuses carried out by US soldiers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail had been "inexcusable, they were indefensible".

But he noted that more than 250 people had been held accountable.

State department legal adviser John Bellinger told the committee the US would answer its questions, but he urged its members "not to believe every allegation".

"When we make mistakes we take corrective measures. Our system is designed to do just that," he said.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Stimson said 120 detainees had died in Iraq and Afghanistan, 29 of whom might have been abused.

He said suspected cases were investigated and "appropriate action taken".

The BBC's defence and security correspondent Rob Watson says the size of the delegation - nearly 30-strong - indicates the determination of the Bush administration to fight back against the numerous allegations over its treatment of terrorism suspects.

But he says it also seems to be an acknowledgement of the damage done to America's standing in the world....

"US Defends Record Before UN Anti-Torture Body" - AFP (Geneva), 5 May 2006

GENEVA (AFP) - The United States launched an emphatic defence of its record on preventing torture and abuse, as the UN's top anti-torture body opened its first public examination of that record since President George W. Bush unleashed a "war on terror".

"US criminal law and treaty obligations prohibit torture and the United States will not engage in it or condone it anywhere," top US human rights official Barry Lowenkron told the 10-member UN Committee on Torture....

However, US officials also highlighted their legal reservations about the reach of the International Convention Against Torture overseen by the UN Committee.

The United States insisted when it signed the treaty that it did not apply to armed conflicts, effectively excluding its activities in     Afghanistan and     Iraq, as well as the "war on terror", from the Convention's scope in US eyes.

Washington was last reviewed by the committee in 2000, well before it implemented tougher measures to detain and interrogate terror suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Most of the initial 59 written questions submitted by the panel dealt with those measures....

Key publics are asking questions about US detention practices at home, too. See:

"Senate Wants Government Opinion on Interrogation," by Liz Sidoti - AP (Washington), 5 May 2006

WASHINGTON - Frustrated by the Bush administration's response to a detainee-treatment law passed last year, a Senate panel wants a legal opinion from the government on exactly what interrogation methods are considered cruel, inhuman or degrading.

The provision, included in a sweeping defense authorization bill the Senate Armed Services Committee approved Thursday, reflects a bipartisan concern by senators that U.S. troops still don't have clear guidelines about what they can and cannot do when trying to extract information from captured enemies.

Congress passed a law last year that banned cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners and sought to standardize interrogation techniques by requiring U.S. officials to follow guidelines in the Army Field Manual, which was in the process of being updated.

But the public release of the manual has been delayed for months, raising concerns among lawmakers that interrogators still don't know explicit limits under the law.

AI Disputes US Claims on Mistreatment of GWOT Detainees

"Torture 'Widespread' Under US Custody: Amnesty," by Richard Waddington - Reuters (Geneva), 3 May 2006

GENEVA (Reuters) - Torture and inhumane treatment are "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere despite Washington's denials, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

In a report for the United Nations' Committee against Torture, the London-based human rights group also alleged abuses within the U.S. domestic law enforcement system, including use of excessive force by police and degrading conditions of isolation for inmates in high security prisons.

"Evidence continues to emerge of widespread torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees held in U.S. custody," Amnesty said in its 47-page report.

It said that while Washington has sought to blame abuses that have recently come to light on "aberrant soldiers and lack of oversight," much ill-treatment stemmed from officially sanctioned interrogation procedures and techniques.

"The U.S. government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture, it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill-treatment can flourish," said Amnesty International USA Senior Deputy Director-General Curt Goering.

The U.N. committee, whose experts carry out periodic reviews of countries signatory to the U.N. Convention against Torture, is scheduled to begin consideration of the United States on Friday. The last U.S. review was in 2000.

It said in November it was seeking U.S. answers to questions including whether Washington operated secret detention centers abroad and whether President George W. Bush had the power to absolve anyone from criminal responsibility in torture cases.

The committee also wanted to know whether a December 2004 memorandum from the U.S. Attorney General's office, reserving torture for "extreme" acts of cruelty, was compatible with the global convention barring all forms of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment....

Amnesty listed a series of incidents in recent years involving torture of detainees in U.S. custody, noting the heaviest sentence given to perpetrators was five months in jail.

This was the same punishment you could get for stealing a bicycle in the United States, it added.

"Although the U.S. government continues to assert its condemnation of torture and ill-treatment, these statements contradict what is happening in practice," said Goering, referring to the testimony of torture victims in the report.

NYT: Abu Ghraib Figure Admits He's Not 'Man on the Box'

See Abu Ghraib Abuse Victim Now Advocates Prisoners' Rights for background. I feel like less of a shrew for having suspected that the Der Spiegel journalist who profiled Qaissi months before the New York Times did had been taken in by a fraud. 

"Cited as Symbol of Abu Ghraib, Man Admits He Is Not in Photo," by Kate Zernike - the New York Times, 18 March 2006 (registration required)

In the summer of 2004, a group of former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison filed a lawsuit claiming that they had been the victims of the abuse captured in photographs that incited outrage around the world.

One, Ali Shalal Qaissi, soon emerged as their chief representative, appearing in publications and on television in several countries to detail his suffering. His prominence made sense, because he claimed to be the man in the photograph that had become the international icon of the Abu Ghraib scandal: standing on a cardboard box, hooded, with wires attached to his outstretched arms. He had even emblazoned the silhouette of that image on business cards.

The trouble was, the man in the photograph was not Mr. Qaissi. [Editors' Note, Page A2.]

Military investigators had identified the man on the box as a different detainee who had described the episode in a sworn statement immediately after the photographs were discovered in January 2004, but then the man seemed to go silent.

Mr. Qaissi had energetically filled the void, traveling abroad with slide shows to argue that abuse in Iraq continued, as head of a group he called the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons.

The New York Times profiled him last Saturday in a front-page article; in it, Mr. Qaissi insisted he had never sought the fame of his iconic status. Mr. Qaissi had been interviewed on a number of earlier occasions, including by PBS's "Now," Vanity Fair, Der Spiegel and in the Italian news media as the man on the box.

This week, after the online magazine Salon raised questions about the identity of the man in the photograph, Mr. Qaissi and his lawyers insisted he was telling the truth.

Certainly, he was at Abu Ghraib, and appears with a hood over his head in some photographs that Army investigators seized from the computer belonging to Specialist Charles Graner, the soldier later convicted of being the ringleader of the abuse.

However, he now acknowledges he is not the man in the specific photograph he printed and held up in a portrait that accompanied the Times article. But he and his lawyers maintain that he was photographed in a similar position and shocked with wires and that he is the one on his business card. The Army says it believes only one prisoner was treated in that way....

Records confirm that Mr. Qaissi became inmate 151716 sometime after the prison opened in June 2003, but do not give firm dates; Mr. Qaissi, a 43-year-old former Baath Party member and neighborhood mayor in Baghdad, said he arrived at Abu Ghraib in October 2003 and was released in March 2004, two months after the Army began an investigation into the abuse.

And he suffered mistreatment and humiliation at the hands of the same people who photographed the man on the box: photographs investigators seized show him forced into a crouch, identifiable by his mangled hand, with the nickname guards gave him — "The Claw" — scrawled in black marker across his orange jumpsuit.

But if he was the hooded man on the box, he did not mention it on several key occasions in the first months after the scandal broke....

Mr. Qaissi's lawyers also stress that the iconic photograph is not the basis of his case. In court papers, he also says he was punched, kicked, hit with a stick and chained to his cell while his captors poured cold water over his naked body.

Meanwhile, it is not clear what happened to the real hooded man, Mr. [Abdou Hussain Saad] Faleh [whose identity as 'the man on the box' is confirmed by logbooks and sworn statements from soldiers and detainees]. An Army spokesman said he was released from American custody in January 2004. Tribal leaders, and the manager of a brick factory next to the address where prison records say he lived, said they had never heard the name. Besides, they said, detainees often make up identities when they are imprisoned. Mr. Qaissi's attorneys said they have not attempted to search for him.

Also see:

"Corrections" - the New York Times, 18 March 2006 (registration required)

A front-page article last Saturday profiled Ali Shalal Qaissi, identifying him as the hooded man forced to stand on a box, attached to wires, in a photograph from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal of 2003 and 2004. He was shown holding such a photograph. As an article on Page A1 today makes clear, Mr. Qaissi was not that man.

The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi's account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account. The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it.

Despite the previous reports, The Times should have been more persistent in seeking comment from the military. A more thorough examination of previous articles in The Times and other newspapers would have shown that in 2004 military investigators named another man as the one on the box, raising suspicions about Mr. Qaissi's claim.

The Times also overstated the conviction with which representatives of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International expressed their view of whether Mr. Qaissi was the man in the photograph. While they said he could well be that man, they did not say they believed he was.

I imagine this news is going to lead to more comment on what a poor job reporters and editors do of checking their sources and facts. And it should -- not just the NYT but Der Spiegel and PBS should have caught some of the same things that struck me as funny about Qaissi's self-presentation. (Things that bothered me in the Der Spiegel account were that Qaissi was staying in an expensive, western-style hotel, and that he had supposedly drawn the room curtains to block out the sight of bathing-suit clad women around a swimming pool but had no qualms about inviting the German woman reporter up to his room.)

In the greater scheme of things, however, this development doesn't amount to much. Qaissi's misrepresentation might damage the law case he and other former detainees have filed in US court (I'm not a lawyer -- I don't know what effect it will have.) But in the court of public opinion it will barely cause a ripple. Iraqis' and others' perceptions of what happened at Abu Ghraib, and their assessment of the American institutions and authorities connected with that abuse, are rooted in experience that has nothing to do with Qaissi. That body of public opinion is a much bigger problem for the US than the court case is.

Ironically, today's NYT also ran this story:

"Before and After Abu Ghraib, a US Unit Abused Detainees," by Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall - the New York Times, 19 March 2006 (available at nytimes.com on 18 March)

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.

It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at American military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret Central Intelligence Agency detention centers around the world.

The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib....

UK Paper Says US Asking London for Help on Closing Guantanamo (Added 3/17: Nowak's Appeal; DOD Response)

"Britain and US in Talks over Closing Guantanamo Bay," by Severin Carrell - the Independent (UK), 11 March 2006

The US has asked the British government for advice in preparation for closing down the notorious prison camp at Guantanamo Bay by sending hundreds of alleged al-Qa'ida fighters back to their home countries, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Senior Bush administration figures have asked British officials for advice on how to hand alleged terrorists over to regimes with a reputation for torture and extra-judicial killings, such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Pakistan.

President Bush is under intense and growing international pressure to close down the notorious camp in Cuba, where more than 500 alleged Islamist terrorists and Taliban fighters are being held without trial.

Legal sources in the US have confirmed that senior Bush officials want to send most of these men, including senior aides to Osama bin Laden and at least five British residents, to be imprisoned in their home countries - a process that could start within weeks.

Last week, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asked British ministers about the Government's controversial attempts to deport terror suspects living in the UK back to their home countries in North Africa and the Middle East.

So far the Government has signed three deals with Lebanon, Jordan and Libya in which they undertake not to abuse terror suspects sent back from Britain.

The Government was forced to release more than a dozen alleged al-Qa'ida figures from high-security prisons last year after the House of Lords ruled ministers had breached the Human Rights Act by detaining the men without trial. The US is not bound by similar legislation, but it feels stung by the intense global criticism of its conduct at Guantanamo Bay.

Gonzales was saying rather different things about Guantanamo to public audiences during his recent UK visit. See Gonzales Defends Detention Practices to UK Audience.

Also see:

"US Says Looking at Alternatives to Guantanamo" - Reuters (London), 12 March 2006

The United States is seeking ways to repatriate terrorism suspects held in Guantanamo Bay, a move that could eventually lead to the closure of the detention camp, a senior U.S. official said on Sunday.

"We have no intention of operating Guantanamo any day longer than we have to," U.S. State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Colleen Graffy told Reuters. "If there is another viable alternative to deal with these detainees then that's something we are obviously always looking at."

She said there was no immediate plan to close the camp but that there were ongoing considerations about what to do with the detainees in the long term.

Her comments followed last week's visit to London by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whom the Independent on Sunday reported had asked British ministers about their attempts to deport terrorism suspects to their home countries....

Asked if Washington was talking to Britain about how to repatriate prisoners and close the camp, Graffy told BBC television: "There's continuous discussion about that".

"Hopefully, over the years, we will find a way to either release them to their country of origin or they will declare that they no longer want to kill us," she said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is under pressure at home to take a harder line with his Iraq war ally U.S. President George W. Bush over Guantanamo.

But Blair will not publicly go beyond saying the detention camp is an "anomaly" which must at some point end.

Added 17 March 2006:

"UN Investigator Pushes for Gitmo Closure," by Paul Ames - AP (Brussels), 16 March 2006

The U.N. torture investigator on Thursday urged U.S. allies in Europe to push Washington to close the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Manfred Nowak suggested European nations should help the U.S. by offering to try some of the detainees or set up an international terrorism tribunal as part of the effort to close the naval base prison....

Nowak, the special U.N. investigator on torture, was one of the authors of a U.N. report last month that said the U.S. must close Guantanamo.

"I hope that the European Union will take up our main recommendation in their dialogue with the United States," Nowak said. "The main recommendation is to close as quickly as possible the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities."

"What we are advocating is a burden sharing, in particular between Europe and the United States," Nowak said. "It's not enough just to call for a closure of Guantanamo Bay, but perhaps some of the European countries could take some of the detainees, bring them before their courts."

Although the U.S. has rejected calls to shut Guantanamo, Nowak said pressure from allies could persuade Washington to close the center. "I am still fairly confident that Guantanamo will be closed," he said.

The European Parliament and EU governments such as Germany have called for Guantanamo's closure, but the EU has not taken a united position.

NPR has been airing a series of reports about Guantanamo this week. This morning's report included a snippet of a US Army officer taking questions from foreign journalists being given a tour of Guantanamo. A South Korean journalist asked if it were true that Americans were tatooing the names or some kind of ID number on the skin of detainees. The fact that such a rumor is making the rounds as far afield as Korea is a disturbing indicator of what Guantanamo and our detention practices have done to this country's image.

"Military Grows More Defensive About Guantanamo Prison," by Jackie Northam - Morning Edition, NPR, 17 March 2006 (links to an audiofile of the report)

Gonzales Defends Detention Practices to UK Audience (Added 3/8: Minister Says Gitmo Must Close)

I'll post comments from UK media on Gonzales' address as I find them.

"Gonzales Defends US Policy on Torture," by Beth Gardiner - AP (London), 7 March 2006

The U.S. attorney general defended his country's treatment of terror suspects against criticism from Europe and elsewhere, saying Tuesday that the United States abhors torture and respects the rights of detainees.

Alberto Gonzales also said the U.S. did not transport terrorism suspects to nations where it was likely they could be tortured.

Human rights groups and other European critics have alleged that U.S. planes may be using European airports and air space to send suspects to nations that may torture them. They have also criticized the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo, and a U.N. report last month called for the facility to be closed "without further delay" because it is effectively a torture camp where prisoners have no access to justice.

The U.S. attorney general — speaking Tuesday at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London — vehemently denied such charges, but acknowledged that people might interpret the term "torture" in different ways. The U.S. abides by its own definition, which he said was the intentional infliction of severe mental or physical suffering.

"The U.S. abhors torture and categorically rejects its use," Gonzales said, adding that where appropriate the U.S. sought assurances from foreign governments before transporting detainees there, and did not transport anyone "to a country if we believe it more likely than not that the individual would be tortured."

Gonzales also said the U.S. did not use airports in Europe or anywhere else to move detainees for the purpose of torture.

"The United States has always been and remains a great defender of human rights and the rule of law," Gonzales said. "I regret that there has been concern or confusion about our commitment to the rule of law."

On the subject of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, Gonzales said detainees were treated properly and afforded with extensive legal protections....

Gonzales defended [detainees'] treatment and said the U.S. had to use all available tools to fight terror, reiterating U.S. claims that the detainees were "highly dangerous people" including terrorist trainers, bomb makers and potential suicide bombers.

"We are aware of no other nation in history that has afforded procedural protections like these to enemy combatants," he said.

Gonzales said the U.S. was continually reassessing the need for the camp to remain open, and could consider closing it if circumstances changed.

He acknowledged disagreements between the U.S. and Europe on tactics in the fight against terror, but said it was critical that the allies continued to work together. British Prime Minister     Tony Blair last week said Guantanamo was an "anomaly" that he hoped would be closed.

Gonzales said U.S. law also forbids cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in the United States or abroad by military or civilian personnel.

He declined to comment on alleged interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, such as water boarding, during which the victim believes he is about to drown, or the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners.

"If we went around this room, people would have different definitions of what constitutes torture, depending on the circumstances," he said.

Gonzales' ISS appearance coincides with the UK publication of the first book-length account of Guantanamo from a former prisoner:

"Former Guantanamo Prisoner Publishes Book," by Paisley Dodds - AP (London) 7 March 2006

In the first book known to be published by a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, Moazzam Begg says his three years in detention were marked by beatings, fear and unexpected friendships with his captors.

In "Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim's Journey to Guantanamo and Back," Begg describes his upbringing as a British Muslim from Birmingham who studied at a Jewish academy and sang Christian hymns in high school.

"I understood why the Americans felt they needed to question me," Begg, 37, told The Associated Press. "But I've never understood how they could have detained me for years."

It isn't difficult to see why Begg attracted suspicion.

He says he was working on an aid project building wells and schools in Afghanistan on Sept. 11, 2001. It was partly financed by the Muslim community in Birmingham, he said.

Years earlier, he went to Bosnia to support Muslims in the war, and visited camps in Afghanistan where Muslims — some linked to the Taliban or al-Qaida — were trained to fight in     Chechnya and     Kashmir. He also visited a front line in Afghanistan, but says he never trained or fought there.

"Back home in Birmingham, I began to feel in all the confusion of speaking both English and Urdu. ... the one thing that was coherent ... was my religion," he writes in the book, released in Britain on Monday.

Begg was freed last year after being held for three years without charges — two years at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and about a year at U.S. camps in Afghanistan. Some 490 men are still held in Guantanamo, some for years without charge.

The United States accused Begg of being a member of the al-Qaida terror network, which planned the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as recruiting for al-Qaida, sending money and support to al-Qaida camps, attending training camps linked to the terror group and preparing to fight U.S. or allied forces.

He admits to supporting militant Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir, but says he does not support suicide bombers or the Sept. 11 attacks. He even admits to buying a handgun in Afghanistan, but says he never received military training or planned to fight.

Despite his release, the U.S. government still views him with suspicion and has offered no apology for holding him or designating him an enemy combatant, a classification that provides fewer protections than prisoner of war status.

Begg said he was handed over to the U.S. military by Pakistani forces in January 2002 after fleeing U.S. bombing in Afghanistan with his family. From there, he was held in Kandahar and Bagram, where he said he was beaten and threatened.

Begg also said he saw U.S. troops severely beating detainees....

Bryan Whitman, a     Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement there was "no credible evidence that Begg was ever abused by U.S. forces." However, he declined to answer specific questions or say whether Begg's abuse allegations were ever investigated.

"He (Begg) certainly is a sympathizer, a recruiter, a financier and a combatant," Whitman said in the statement. "He admitted, and this again is a quote from him, `I was armed and prepared to fight alongside the Taliban and al-Qaida against the U.S. and others and eventually retreated to Tora Bora to flee from U.S. forces when our front lines collapsed.'"

"So Begg's story today is a whole lot different than what we know about Begg and what Begg has told us about Begg. Why is his story different? Well, his story is different because he is clearly lying. It shouldn't surprise us that he's lying. We know that terrorists are trained to lie," the statement said.

Begg says his story was twisted over a period of three years and if the United States had a case against him, they would have charged him.

He says the so-called confession he signed in Guantanamo came after nearly three years in prison. He said he thought if he agreed to the statements his U.S. captors had written — in their "terrible" English" — he would easily be able to prove his innocence in court.

He says he still hasn't seen a copy of the statement he signed despite requests. The government refused Monday to provide a copy to the AP....

Added 8 March 2006:

The text of Gonzales' address (as prepared) was distributed in a DOJ press release:

Prepared Remarks for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales at the International Institute for Strategic Studies - press release, US Dept. of Justice, 7 March 2006 (distributed from London by US Newswire)

...As democratic societies anchored on civil liberties and the rule of law, America and Europe face enormous challenges in responding effectively to the terrorist threat. And let us be frank: the United States and some of its closest democratic allies have disagreed on how to approach certain aspects of the struggle against terrorism. The war in Iraq and issues relating to the detention of terrorists and foreign fighters are extremely difficult and have caused particular concern. But I want to begin by underscoring that we are committed to working together with our Allies and partners, in full respect of our respective national sovereignties, and we wish to remain engaged in an open and constructive dialogue on these challenging issues. That is precisely what brings me here today.

Although these issues are complex we must not let the consensus between the United States and Europe in fighting terrorism be weakened over differences in how we approach the fight. Prevailing in this global struggle is essential to us all -- and only through a strong continued partnership between the United States and Europe will we be able to disrupt militant conspiracies, destroy their ability to commit terrorist acts, and give millions in a troubled region a hopeful alternative to the terrorists' ideology of hatred, fear, and repression. Freedom, after all, is not for Americans and Europeans alone, but is the enduring hope of all humanity. A close and united partnership between Europe and the United States remains vital to the security and prosperity of all our countries and, indeed, the whole world....

Also see:

"Minister Says Guantanamo Must Close to Save Democracy," by Andy McSmith - the Independent (UK), 8 March 2006

The US camp at Guantanamo Bay should be closed before it undermines the cause of democracy worldwide, a Foreign Office minister has warned.

The remarks by Kim Howells yesterday coincided with one of the most direct appeals yet by a high-ranking American figure for British support over Guantanamo Bay's continued existence. The Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, on a visit to London, said the that camp was lawful and necessary.

Mr Howells, the minister in charge of British policy in the Middle East, warned: "Our alliance with America is based on shared values. If those shared values are seen by the rest of the world to be terribly flawed that actually undermines the cause of democracy. If Guantanamo is undermining those shared values then it should go, it should close." Mr Howells went on to claim that the US had a problem with the "time scale."

"If you closed the camp down tomorrow, what would you do with these people? Where would they go? It's a difficult one. But the central point is if it is seen to be undermining the cause of democracy and freedom, you have got to address that."

Mr Howells' comments go beyond anything said about Guantanamo Bay by Tony Blair, or by the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Mr Blair's official spokesman said yesterday: "He has always said that it is an anomaly that should be dealt with sooner rather than later, but he has equally recognised the circumstances under which it arose."...

Added 9 March 2006 - also see:

"Doctors Attack US Over Guantanamo" - BBC News, 10 March 2006 (available as of 8:30 pm EST on 9 March)

More than 250 medical experts have signed a letter condemning the US for force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The doctors said physicians at the military prison had to respect inmates' right to refuse treatment.

The letter, in the medical journal, the Lancet, said doctors who used restraints and force-feeding should be punished by their professional bodies....

The open letter in the Lancet was signed by more than 250 top doctors from seven countries - the UK, the US, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Italy and the Netherlands.

"We urge the US government to ensure that detainees are assessed by independent physicians and that techniques such as force-feeding and restraint chairs are abandoned," the letter said.

The doctors said the World Medical Association - a world body representing physicians, including those in the US - specifically prohibited force-feeding.

Detainees at the camp have said hunger-strikers were strapped into chairs and force-fed through tubes inserted in their noses.

More than 80 inmates are said to have gone on hunger strike in December last year - a figure that has now reportedly dropped to four.

Dr David Nicholl, a UK neurologist who initiated the Lancet letter, told the Reuters news agency the allegations of force-feeding represented "a challenge" to the American Medical Association, which is a signatory to the World Medical Association's code of conduct.

"Are they going to obey those declarations [forbidding force-feeding], or are... [they] literally not worth the paper they are written on?" he asked.

Archbishop of Canterbury: Guantanamo a Dangerous Precedent

"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.

Also see:

"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....

For irony, see:

"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.

Also see:

"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....

Italian Candidates Agree Guantanamo Should Be Closed

"Italy's Prodi Calls Guantanamo 'A Wound,'" by Maria Sanminiatelli - AP (Rome) 28 Feb 2006

Romano Prodi, a former European Commission president running for premier in Italy, said Tuesday that the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay is a "wound" that should be closed.

In an interview with The Associated Press and Dow Jones Newswires, the leader of Italy's center-left coalition also said he would withdraw Italian troops from Iraq if he's elected.

Prodi, whose country has been a close U.S. ally in the war on terror, said he was following the lead of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has expressed her opposition to the U.S. camp in Cuba.

"It needs to be closed, also, because I think it has done a lot of damage to our image — because there have been abuses we know about, and because it is a constant wound on our image," he said....

Prodi faces a tough battle in the April 9-10 Italian elections pitting him against conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a strong U.S. ally who sent troops to Iraq and who met with     President Bush Tuesday in Washington.

In an interview last week with Arabic-language Al-Jazeera television, Berlusconi also said the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo should be closed immediately.

Prodi also reiterated his intention to order the immediate withdrawal of Italy's troops from Iraq if he is elected premier, to be done in consultation with Iraqi authorities. He said the troops would be replaced with a civilian force that would help with the Iraq's reconstruction.

Italy initially was among the most important U.S. allies in the Iraq war — which Prodi has opposed — having provided 3,000 troops to the effort in 2003 after U.S.-led troops had brought down President Saddam Hussein's government.

Italy now has 2,600 troops in Iraq and is in the process of removing them all by the end of the year, to be replaced by civilians.

"My position has not changed, but I see that the position taken by the premier is rapidly converging towards our position," Prodi said with a smile. "It's rapidly converging."

Berlusconi has stressed the troops would only be pulled out in consultation with the Iraqi government and coalition allies.

For another item about the role that voters' feelings about the US may play in Italy's elections, see:

"Bush Says Berlusconi 'A Strong Leader' -- But the White House Then Puts on the Brakes" - La Repubblica (Rome), 28 Feb 2006 (my rough translation of "Bush: 'Berlusconi un forte leader' - Ma piu tardi la Casa Blanca frena")

Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi are waging their electoral battle with a hand from international 'backers.' Yesterday [Prodi] basked in the blessing of German ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl...but today [Berlusconi] won the support of U.S. President George W. Bush.

"Berlusconi is a positive and optimistic person, a strong leader who has brought stability to the Italian government," Bush said. But a few hours later, an anonymous White House source issued something of a reversal, in the form of a clarification. The words of the US president in regard to the Italian president should not be interpreted as 'a political endorsement' of his ally in light of the April 9 elections. A source at the National Security Council, who asked not be identified, told ANSA that "We don't interfere in the internal politics of sovereign nations.  The President was speaking of his personal relationship with Berlusconi and expressing appreciaiton for his strong leadership. That should not be interpreted as support in the political sense."...