More Calls for the Closure of Gitmo

Diane Amann recently published “The Committee Against Torture Urges an End to Guantánamo Detention” in American Society of International Law’s Insight.  Here is an excerpt:

International criticism of post-September 11 antiterrorism measures has come to a head with calls from the U.N. body monitoring the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, Degrading Treatment or Punishment1 for several changes in U.S. policy – among them, a call for closure of the four-and-a-half-year-old detention camp at Guantánamo. Conclusions and recommendations of the ten independent experts comprising the Committee Against Torture were issued in mid-May 2006, soon after a two-day hearing in Geneva. State Department Legal Adviser John B. Bellinger III and about two dozen other U.S. officials reviewed with the Committee the Second Periodic Report filed a year earlier by the United States, a party to the Convention since 1994. Discussion centered on documentation and reports related to two issues: first, the conditions endured by persons whom the United States detains at its naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, at Bagram prison in Afghanistan, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and at undisclosed sites across the globe; and second, the extraordinary rendition of some individuals to countries where they have faced harsh treatment, perhaps even torture, at the hands of interrogators.

For the full story, click here.

Anupam Chander also chimes in on Gitmo  in the San Francisco Chronicle.  He contends that quitting Guantanamomight help rebut the claim that we will never leave Iraq . He suggests “a more permanent solution”: transferring the land to Cuba.”  Click here to see the piece.

KJ