Protests mark Guantánamo anniversary

Jan 16" Protests around the world marked the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first 20 prisoners at Guantánamo on Jan. 11 2002, including a demonstration on the Cuban side of Guantánamo's gate. A dozen US peace activists, including Cindy Sheehan, marched to the US military enclave in eastern Cuba and held a vigil to demand the detention camp's closure on the fifth anniversary of its creation. They chanted "Guantánamo prison, place of shame, no more torture in our name." "If dogs were treated like this in my country, there would be an uprising," Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, said as the group placed flowers by a barbed wire fence five miles from the naval base that houses the prison. In Washington, about 100 people gathered in front of the US Supreme Court, carrying signs stating, "The America I believe in would shut down Guantánamo" and "Stop the torture." "Guantánamo must be closed. It's an embarrassment for this country," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which organized the rally along with Amnesty International USA. About 75 to 100 people were arrested after they entered a federal courthouse in the U.S. capital wearing orange T-shirts, waving banners and chanting slogans against the prison, court spokesman Sheldon Snook said. In London more than 300 demonstrators played out the mock Guantánamo Bay camp scenario. Dozens of demonstrators dressed like Guantánamo prisoners also turned out at US. embassies in Greece, Denmark, Hungary, Germany, Turkey and Italy. Demonstrators outside the UN office in Rabat urged governments to press the United States to free their citizens jailed in Guantánamo, where five Moroccans are being held. In total, 780 detainees have been held at the camp. Despite international censure, the US government has continued to defend its indefinite detention of more than 400 prisoners without trial. The prisoners have been denied contact with their families throughout their detention. Many are without access to lawyers, and only 10 have been charged. Men interviewed after their release from the camp have repeatedly claimed to have been tortured. Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, says the British government has "shamelessly abandoned" the men to their fate. "We have interviewed many people who have come out of Guantánamo Bay who have a consistent and measured story of abuse taking place in Guantánamo," she says. "We are hearing stories of the use of isolation, the use of extreme temperature and noise and the use of dogs, sexual humiliation and prolonged interrogation over months and now years, with people not knowing when any of this is going to end. If there is evidence, they should be challenged and put in front of a proper court or released." The reason for these exceptional measures, explained the then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, was that the prisoners were highly dangerous. "These are the sort of people who would chew through a hydraulics cable to bring a C-17 [transport plane] down," he claimed. "They are very, very dangerous people." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the United States to shut down its widely condemned prison complex in Guantánamo Bay. "The prison at Guantánamo should be closed," Ban said in response to a question during his first formal press conference held at UN headquarters in New York Jan. 11. While the US military claimed Guantánamo inmates were captured "on the battlefield" in Afghanistan, and designated by President Bush administration as enemy combatants, there is mounting evidence that a number were victims of what is known as "extraordinary rendition"" capturing a person and sending him or her to a site recognized for practicing torture. Bush has implicitly admitted that others, including 14 so-called "high value" prisoners said to have played significant roles in the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist acts, were sent to Guantánamo after long detentions in the CIA's "black hole" secret prisons in Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and other locations. Human Rights Watch, a leading rights advocacy group, released its annual report deploring the lack of due process and treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo to coinside with the anniversary, amid calls for the European Union to take the leadership role in protecting human rights. "Detaining hundreds of men without charge at Guantánamo has been a legal and political debacle of historic proportions," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "It's time to close Guantánamo. The Bush administration should either charge or release the detainees trapped in a nightmarish limbo." The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights all appealed for restoration of the prisoners' right to habeas corpus–the ability to challenge their detention in US courts that was stripped from them by the Military Commissions Act passed by Congress in September. Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA, a human rights group that calls Guantánamo an "American gulag," said, "The US administration chose Guantánamo as the location for this detention facility in an attempt to hold detainees beyond the reach of US and international law." "The US government's own tribunals have determined that over half of those detained never committed any hostile acts against the United States," she said. "And most of those held at Guantánamo were not captured on any battlefield, but were handed over to the US by others in exchange for cash rewards. Critics say the low point of the past five years perhaps came in June 2006 when three prisoners–Ali Abdullah Ahmed of Yemen, and Saudi nationals Yassar Talal al-Zahrani and Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi– hanged themselves using torn sheets. Lawyers said they did so out of desperation but the base commander claimed it was "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us." Controversy had previously been stirred in December 2005 when it emerged the US military was strapping prisoners into "restraint chairs" to force-feed those who had gone on hunger strike. General Bantz Craddock, head of the US Southern Command, defended repeatedly inserting feeding tubes into prisoners' throats and nostrils, saying: "Some of these hard-core guys were getting worse." There have been numerous reports of abuse, humiliation and torture. Prisoners have allegedly been held in stress positions, locked in solitary confinement not permitted to sleep and been smeared with fake menstrual blood. Campaigners believed they had achieved a breakthrough last June when the US Supreme Court ruled that the Bush administration's use of military tribunals was unconstitutional. It also ruled that each of the prisoners had the right to have their cases heard in court. Meanwhile, in an effort to restrain President Bush from claiming inherent powers to determine what constituted cruel or inhumane treatment of prisoners, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act. The president signed the bill into law, but at the same time issued a "signing statement" that essentially claimed that the commander-in-chief could disregard the law when he deemed it in the national interest to do so. "It is remarkable that Guantánamo still exists five years on," said Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the British group Reprieve, which represents three dozen inmates. "But what is also remarkable is that Guantánamo has distracted attention from other secret prisons the US has. As of August last year we know there are 14,000 prisoners in US custody around the world."