Amnesty calls for further Guantanamo Bay releases
Fifteen of the detainees being held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay will be released this week, according to officials.
The men were captured during the war against Afghanistan following the September 11th attacks in the United States, but it is now believed that they have not been linked to any crime and have nothing further to disclose about terrorist cells.
Human rights activists have welcomed the releases, but have stressed that the men represent a tiny minority of the more than 600 detainees who were alleged to have been Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters when captured. Nine of the men are British.
The men have not been granted prisoner-of-war status by the US authorities – being described only as ‘unlawful combatants’ – and the US courts have dismissed attempts by some detainees to gain a legal hearing, insisting that because they are based in Cuba they are outside their jurisdiction.
The conditions that the men have been held in have also been criticised and the United Nations has highlighted the fact that a small number of the detainees are actually under the age of 16.
They have not been allowed access to lawyers, and have not been charged with any crime.
The director of Amnesty International UK has called for the remaining people detained in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to be released.
Kate Allen noted: “There are still 600 people who have been in that camp for 16 to 18 months without access to lawyers, to their families, to anybody else.”
The detention of the men seemed to undermine the stance that the US recently took against the human rights abuses that were committed under Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
And US secretary of state Colin Powell is believed to have complained to the Pentagon last week about the difficult situation that the administration was placed in by the existence of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
