Bush Purposes Breach of the Geneva Conventions

U.N. rights envoys condemn Bush plan on interrogation

President Bush waves before departing aboard Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington September 21, 2006. REUTERS/Larry Downing

September 21, 2006

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations human rights investigators said on Thursday that legislation proposed by President Bush for tough interrogations of foreign terrorism suspects would breach the Geneva Conventions.

In a statement to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the five independent envoys also said Washington's admission of secret detention centers abroad pointed to "very serious human rights violations in relation to the hunt for alleged terrorists".

They again called for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of foreign terrorism suspects are being held, alleging continued violations of international law on torture and arbitrary detention.

Despite U.S. declarations of intent to shut Guantanamo, Washington had done nothing yet and was even planning to open a new cell bloc at the end of this month, they said.

"We call on the government to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center and, until that time, to refrain from any practice amounting to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," they said.

The statement was read out by Leila Zerrougui, the Algerian chairwoman of the U.N. working group on arbitrary detention.

She is one of the five investigators who have tried since June 2004 to visit Guantanamo detainees. Washington has said it would allow three of them to go for one day, but not to see prisoners privately, a key demand of the investigators.

In reply, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva Warren Tichenor reiterated Washington's desire to close Guantanamo but said that this could only be done when other countries agreed to take some of the prisoners being held there. Continued...

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