THE Bush Administration faced growing international calls last night to shut its Guantanamo Bay detention centre after a UN-sponsored report alleged torture inside the prison and demanded its immediate closure.

The recommendations in the report, by five independent investigators acting as monitors for the UN Human Rights Commission, were rejected by the White House, but its publication triggered fresh controversy over the jail at a time of intense anti-American sentiment across much of the Middle East.

The report disputes the Administration’s definition of the 520 detainees at the Cuban naval base as “enemy combatants”, and says that incarceration of inmates without charge — some for more than four years — violates their rights to physical and mental health.

“The US Government should close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay,” the report declares. It says that until the closure, or the transfer of inmates to pre-trial detention facilities, “the Government should refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, endorsed the report last night and called on the US to close the detention centre “as soon as possible”.

The report, which also condemns the dispatch of some detainees for interrogation to countries with poor human rights records — a practice known as “extraordinary rendition” — comes at a sensitive time for the US as it fights the War on Terror.

But the White House remained defiant. “These are dangerous terrorists that we’re talking about,” Scott McClellan, President Bush’s spokesman, insisted. He said that “nothing’s changed” in the US view that the facility is a legitimate and necessary tool to combat terrorism, and called the report a “rehash” of old allegations.

He added: “The UN should be making serious investigations across the world, and there are many instances in which they do when it comes to human rights. This was not one of them.”

Mr McClellan noted that the inspectors had turned down a US offer to visit the detention centre last year because Washington would not allow them to interview individual detainees.

The inspectors said their findings, including the claim that excessive force during transportation and force-feeding during hunger strikes amounted to torture, were based on interviews with past detainees, lawyers and replies to questions put to the US Government.

As the controversy raged, new details emerged about the extent of the abuse at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. The US website Salon.com said that 1,325 photographs, videos and documents had been leaked from a report of the Army Criminal Investigation Command in 2004.

INDELIBLE IMAGES

1,325 images in total of suspected detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, including:

93 video files of suspected detainee abuse

660 images of adult pornography

546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees

29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts

Source: www.salon.com

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