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'Open Guantanamo to observers'
02/06/2005 15:12 - (SA)
Tokyo - The head of Amnesty International on Thursday hit back at United States outrage over the group labelling Guantanamo Bay a "gulag" and challenged Washington to open the military-run detention centre to outside inspections.
US leaders, including President George W Bush, had said they were shocked that the human rights group accused their country of running "a new gulag of prisons around the world beyond the reach of the law and decency".
The secretary general of London-based Amnesty International, Irene Khan, said the US response had lacked substance.
She said: "Their response has been defensive and dismissive. We have not seen from them a more detailed response to the concerns we have expressed in our report.
"Our answer is simple. If that is so, the allegations are unfounded, open up these detention centres. Allow us and others to visit them."
US responded for first time
Khan said: "What is interesting is that we are actually getting response from the US government" after failing to do so for more than three years.
"We welcome an opportunity to sit down and have a debate with them on the issue."
Because the US military base in Guantanamo Bay for prisoners from the "war on terror" was located in Cuba, the Bush administration argued its inmates did not enjoy the same legal protections as those held inside the US.
Khan said: "We are concerned about allegations of torture that frequently emerge and are not independently and fully investigated."
The Amnesty report came after allegations that interrogators at Guantanamo had desecrated the Muslim holy book, the Qu'ran, to pressure prisoners.
Source backs away from allegation
Newsweek magazine retracted the report after it set off deadly riots in Afghanistan and stirred outrage in the Muslim world, said its source had backed away from the allegation.
Bush said on Tuesday what he thought of Amnesty's findings: "It is an absurd report. It just is."
Bush said: "When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way."
He said: "It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of and the allegations by people that were held in detention, people who hate America, people that have been trained in some instances to dissemble, that means not tell the truth."
Khan said the report was compiled mostly by American staff.
- AFP
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