In a 54-page report released today, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights encourages the U.S. to close the jail at Guantanamo "without further delay" and either try or free the estimated 520 detainees being held there.
From CNN.com:
It singled out "all special interrogation techniques authorized by the Department of Defense," urging they be revoked immediately.
And it called for the U.S. government not to send detainees to countries where there are "substantial grounds for believing" they might be tortured, a process called extraordinary rendition.
While the Bush Administration denounces the report as "largely without merit and not based clearly on fact," a group of British lawyers agrees with the U.N.'s assessment. This from the
BBC:
Lawyers for former UK residents being held at Guantanamo Bay have welcomed a UN report calling for the US detention camp to be closed.
Lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith said: "This is another authoritative body speaking and it's absolutely right."
The UN report, which the US has largely rejected, says some aspects of the inmates' treatment amounts to torture.
The timing of the report -- on the heels of the newly released Abu Ghraib torture photos -- can't be good for Rummy and Company. The BBC goes further on Gitmo abuses:
The UN also called for the US government to refrain from any practice "amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".
Mr Stafford-Smith, a British human rights lawyer based in the US, said: "The question now is whether the Bush administration are going to listen or do what we have always seen and bluster against the UN.
"The UN mentions in their report the coercive and violent way the US military is force-feeding people."
He said he had witnessed this himself when he visited a client at the camp.
"He had a 43-inch tube up his nose which he pulled out in an excruciating way," he said.
"He told me they had beat him up to force feed him."
Only 2% of the detainees at Gitmo have actually been charged with anything. According to an article just released on Canada.com, a measly 10 of the 500+ detainees have been charged in the last 5 years.
So, the $64,000 question: will Dems get behind the U.N., or ignore the report altogether?