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US Snubs UN Request on Detention Centers
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Released
detainees and advocacy groups have made regular accusations of
human rights violations at
Guantanamo
.
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WASHINGTON
, November 1, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The US
snubbed on Tuesday, November
1, a
request by a UN human rights panel's for information about its
detention centers in
Guantanamo
,
Afghanistan
and
Iraq
, a report revealed Tuesday, November 1.
"The
obligations assumed by the United States under the Covenant (on Civil
and Political Rights international human rights) apply only within the
territory of the United States," said the report, cited by Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
The
UN Human Rights Committee, made up of 18 independent experts elected
by the UN General Assembly, in July 2004 pressed
Washington
for information about its overseas military detention centers.
In
its response, the
US
said these centers fall outside the committee's remit because they are
"governed by the laws of war," an argument disputed by the
UN committee.
"The
United States has sought to respond to the Committee's concerns as
fully as possible, notwithstanding the continuing difference of view
between the Committee and the United States concerning certain matters
relating to the import and scope of provision of the Covenant,"
the US said in its report to the panel.
Like
the other 153 signatories of the Covenant, the
US
is bound to submit regular reports to the committee on its
implementation of the UN's core human rights accord.
Released
detainees and advocacy groups have made regular accusations of human
rights violations at the
US
military's foreign detention centers, stoked by the Abu Ghraib
prisoner abuse scandal in
Iraq
.
Suicides
In
a related development, the Washington Post reported Tuesday
that a Bahraini detainee at
Guantanamo
attempted suicide during his lawyer's visit in a sign of growing
desperation among the more than 500 detainees in the detention center.
Jumah
al-Dossari, who has been held since late 2001 after being seized in
Pakistan
, slashed his arm and hung himself from the ceiling during a bathroom
break from talks with his
US
lawyer on October 15, the American daily said.
While
suicide attempts have been reported before in
Guantanamo
, this was the first to be witnessed by an outsider.
The
paper said lawyers believe Dossari, 32, was reacting to nearly two
years of solitary confinement and attempting to communicate his plight
to people outside the walls of the infamous detention center.
According
to Amnesty International, he has undergone frequent beatings, torture
and long stretches of solitary confinement.
Like
many
Guantanamo
detainees, most of them seized in
Pakistan
four years ago, Dossari has never been charged and faces indefinite
detention.
A
Guantanamo
spokesman said there have been 36 suicide attempts at the facility,
according to the Post.
As
many as 200 detainees are reported to have taken part in a rolling
hunger strike since August to protest conditions at the prison.
According
to the Post, two dozen are being force-fed by prison staff.
Sexual
Abuse
Australia
's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday Australian detainee
David Hicks, a Muslim revert, had never complained of sexual abuse
during the several meetings with Australian officials.
"Our
officials have had many meetings with him and on no occasion has he
ever raised such a concern," Downer told a national radio.
Terry
Hicks, David's father, told a national television program screened
Monday his son had told him he was tortured by Americans during two
10-hour sessions shortly after being captured in
Afghanistan
in late 2001, including being anally penetrated with a number of
objects.
The
revelations follow last week statements by a former
US
army chaplain at
Guantanamo
that Hicks was offered prostitutes in exchange for information.
A
former Egyptian Guantanamo detainee revealed that US guards in the
notorious facility "took pleasure" in torturing the
detainees in the facility.
"The
torture I suffered in the military camp left me crippled in a
wheelchair," Sami Al-Leithy told the Egyptian television on
Sunday, October 9.
Last
week,
Washington
announced that it would invite three UN human rights experts to visit
the detention camp for a day but without being able to meet the
detainees.
But
on Monday the experts said they would only go on their proposed
December 6 mission if they have free access to the prisoners.
The
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday dismissed the
US
invitation as a "farce".
Kenneth
Roth, head of the rights group, said the conditional invitation was
"a show tour."
"It
is important for them to follow their regular terms of reference and
to have private, confidential access to any prisoner they want,"
Roth said.
Calling
it the "gulag of our time," Amnesty said
Guantanamo
has become a "symbol of abuse and represents a system of
detention that is betraying the best
US
values."
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